Dave Martins at 90
Dave Martins, a legend of Guyanese music, culture, and literature celebrated his 90th birthday last week.
Such is the life-force, the relevance and national importance of Martins’ music to the popular culture and consciousness that it reverberated on the airwaves as well as on the lips and in the memory of the Guyanese population late in 2023 when the nation rallied its people in a patriotic stand against Venezuelan sabre rattling and other forms of recent aggression in its outrageous claim to Guyanese territory. That is because a few of Martins’ most popular songs appeal directly to what the writer himself calls “the love of country”. Guyana immediately remembered “Is We Own” and the immortal hit “Not A Blade of Grass”, which came to be hailed as Guyana’s unofficial second national anthem. Such songs lend themselves to a sense of patriotism and national identity, making up a great part of the reason why the nation celebrates Dave Martins – the prevailing and unstinting power of his contributions to national music and literature.
Popular music is known to be characteristically ephemeral, but it also happens that there comes along a particular song or a body of popular music that defies mortality and never fades even after several decades. In the case of Martins in the Caribbean, this celebratory survival refers to a whole body of music, a long list of songs that were hits at the time of their release, some as long ago as the late 1960s, and are still known and repeatedly played today. That quality is also recognised as an achievement by another extraordinary Guyanese artist, Eddy Grant. It is, internationally, the enduring attribute of the great works of Bob Marley.
A most efficient way of summarising Martins’ achievements and contributions is by reference to his recognition by the University of Guyana. The institution conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, in 2022, for his contribution to culture, to music, literature, theatre, entertainment and the arts over a period spanning more than 50 years.
To be more precise, Martins has been musician, songwriter, singer, calypsonian, satirist, band leader, recording artiste, nightclub proprietor, playwright, storyteller, stage performer, comedian, social commentator and newspaper columnist. To go further, he has advanced the cause of Caribbean performance, language and local traditions. In all of these roles he has made a social impact and an overall expansion of knowledge and entertainment worthy of an honorary doctorate.
His interest in and devotion to language is a notable case. He served a period as Artist in Residence at the University of Guyana and in a public talk during that
residency offered an exposition of his interest in and approach to language – in particular, Guyanese and West Indian English and especially, Guyanese Creole. He has been faithful to language use as an integral part of his art, his career and social stance. His career actually took off in Canada where he lived for a very long time. One of the things he built was a nightclub in Toronto called “We Place” in which his band The Tradewinds performed. Note, for example, the name of the band, which has a significant West Indian reference. The Trade Winds are particularly known in the Caribbean as a standard climatological /meteorological phenomenon, winds blowing according to an annual cyclic pattern. Martins’ use of the name speaks to his consistent regional identity. Beyond that, the music they created did blow across the Caribbean, sweeping it with successive hits of entertaining calypso.
The name of the club further bears this out. He commented that Canadians commonly thought it meant “a wee place”, which is English for “a little place”, and that was okay for business. But more than that, it really meant “we place”, which is “our place” in Caribbean language. It was a statement of allegiance and identity.
Martins’ love of language served his trade, as he wrote his songs in Guyanese English or in Creole, and paid particular attention to the nuances, taking advantage of lexicon and syntax where they mattered.
The American folk and rock legend Bob Dylan shares with Bob Marley the immortality of their music, written in popular genres. Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, a ground breaking recognition of his work as belonging to the hallowed halls of mainstream literature. It was a significant acceptance of the place of popular compositions of the Dylan type by the Swedish Academy as part of the international literary output. There was a similar recognition by the University of Guyana where Martins’ work is concerned. Such compositions long ago came to be identified with the literary corpus and Martins’ life work is part of Guyanese literature. Note is taken not only of the calibre of the lyrics that made them outstrip the ephemeral, but their weight in preservation of and commentary on national traditions and their satirical social comment.
As calypso, this work surpasses Guyana and expands to the West Indies, since it speaks to the wider region. But several of the songs celebrate Guyanese traditions. To their credit, then, they contribute to the consciousness about culture, and they enlarge the form of satire. The popularity of “It’s Traditional” or “Copy Cat” is an example of the effective and entertaining use of satire. This, too, is an important form of literature in the Caribbean. Martins is thus recognised for his contributions to the calypso in its manifestations as satire and as humour, with similar contributions to these forms of literature.
It is important to notice Martins as a humorist. Laughter has long been a feature of his most popular calypsos, such as “Honeymooning Couple”, “Cricket in the Jungle” or “Wong Ping”. Yet it is the nature of these songs that they often surpass consideration as one type.
However, the contribution to storytelling is very much significant in “Cricket in the Jungle”. It is well within the tradition in its cast of animal characters as in the Caribbean folk tale and the dramatic situation that is narrated, and, additionally, the humour. In this song Martins says “I get this one from Ken Corsbie”, acknowledging his source as a fellow artist famous for storytelling as he is for stage performance and for humour. Martins has also performed in these areas, well within the Caribbean storytelling tradition.
As a stage performer, Martins had a long stint as storyteller and as stand-up comedian. Many of his tales drew on his youth on the West Bank Demerara where he grew up and in Georgetown where he later lived. Numerous were his narratives arising out of his job working at the Timehri Airport and of characters with whom he came in contact. His stage act was much driven by his guitar and his songs, but also by his sense of humour and theatre. Like Corsbie, he provided the brand of Caribbean performance in drama. He is known to have written one play – a musical titled Raise Up which was produced in Guyana by Ron Robinson and Gem Madhoo’s Theatre Company.
Yet, he continued even off stage with work that was no less dramatic, informative and entertaining. He has had further great volumes to impart off stage, and did it through his columns in the Stabroek News. He wrote a series of dramatic narratives overflowing with information about art, music and society. There were many elucidations of his career in Toronto, with the Tradewinds and in the Cayman Islands. He served as a cultural director in Grand Cayman.
The Caribbean celebrates a highly talented and fabled personage on the occasion of his 90th birthday. He has given gifts to Guyana and the region that are not bound by time, just as his songs have overcome temporal limitations and have kept the impact of those gifts alive in the present time.