Cy Grant: Doing it his way This is the twenty-third article in our series on famous Guyanese artiste
Celebrating our creative personalities
By Vibert C Cambridge, PhD
Stabroek News
April 18, 2004
During the 20th century, many forces propelled Guyanese to migrate. One can find Guyanese and descendants of Guyanese on every continent and in virtually every country today. This Guyanese diaspora has influenced and continues to influence the culture of the host societies.
Among the forces that increased Guyanese migration to the UK was World War II. The story of Berbice-born Cy Grant helps to provide some detail on that pull force. His story also provides an example of the cultural contributions Guyanese have made to their host societies.
The arrival of the Empire Windrush at Tilbury Docks in 1948 was a seminal moment in the construction of multi-racial Britain. For on that steamship arrived the first significant wave of West Indian immigrants to Britain since the end of World War II.
In preparation for the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Empire Windrush, Guyanese-born writers Mike and Trevor Phillips conducted a number of interviews with important West Indians for their book Windrush: The Irresistible Rise of Multi-cultural Britain. One of the persons they interviewed was Cy Grant.
Grant left British Guiana during World War II to join the Royal Air Force. As he said to the Phillips brothers, "Joining the air force was one way of my getting out of Guyana and seeing the rest of the world. Purely and simply. I don't think it had anything to do with patriotism or anything like that. It was an adventure."
When Grant joined the RAF in 1941, things were going very badly for Britain. The RAF was losing aircrews, and as a result, it "started to recruit from the colonies."
According to Grant, "prior to that they did not want black airmen." Grant, who wanted to become a fighter pilot, was trained to be a navigator and attained the rank of flight lieutenant. He was shot down after his third mission and spent two years as a prisoner of war in Germany. He discussed his experiences as a black officer in a German prisoner-of-war camp in his interviews with Mike and Tony Phillips.
After World War II, Grant studied law and in 1950 "was qualified to go to the bar." After an unsatisfying period practising law in colonial British Guiana, he returned to Britain with the hopes of practising law there. That also proved to be very difficult. As a matter of fact, he stated that he found it difficult to find a job based on his legal qualifications.
Grant's applications were generally unanswered. The racism that seemed to disappear during Britain's "darkest hour" returned after the war. This black officer who had been held for two years in a German prisoner-of-war camp was very disappointed with this reality. Not one to ring his hands in despair, he took the bold move to start a career in the performing arts.
Grant's career in the performing arts has been multi-dimensional and influential. He performed on stage, in cabaret and in film. He made records and was a television pioneer.
As an actor he has been part of Britain's leading theatrical companies. He was a member of Lawrence Olivier's Festival Company and the Royal Shakespeare Company during the 1950s.
He has performed on some of Britain's finest stages, including the Arts Theatre, the Garrick Theatre, the King's Head, the Royal Court Theatre, and the National Theatre in London. In Bristol, he performed at the Old Vic. Other important theatres included Leicester's Haymarket and Phoenix Theatres, and the Derby Playhouse.
Grant has had roles in Shakespearian plays and innovative works such as the opera Cindy-Ella which used Negro spirituals to tell the Cinderella story. In that show he performed with Cleo Laine and Elizabeth Welch. His one-man show of Aime Caesaire's Return to My Native Land toured the United Kingdom for two years and was presented at the important Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Grant also established himself as an important singer and guitarist in folk idioms, including calypso. He performed in cabaret at some of the world's leading venues in England, Europe, and Africa. Among them were the Savoy, Churchill's, Quaglinos, and Esmeralda's Barn in London. In Rome, he performed at Bricktops. In Kenya, he performed at the New Stanley Hotel in Nairobi. In addition, he has entertained British forces in Cyprus, the Maldives, Singapore, and Libya.
Grant has also performed in prestigious concert halls in Europe, among them the Kongress Halle of the Deutschen Museums in Munich, Germany, and Queen Elizabeth Hall, London. He has also performed Christmas concerts with the Leicestershire Philharmonic Choir.
Grant's film career started in 1956 with the Twentieth Century Fox movie Sea Wife, which was shot on location in Jamaica. The cast included Richard Burton, Joan Collins, and Basil Sydney.
In 1958, he was in the Italian film Calypso. In 1967, he played the role as a revenue agent in The Honey Pot. Other members of the cast included Rex Harrison, Susan Hayward, Capucine, Maggie Smith, and Cliff Robertson.
In 1973, he played the role of Emir Ramila in Shaft in Africa, and in 1974 he was Ra in Kevin Connor's At the Earth's Core.
Grant's television credits start with his 1956 role in BBC's Man from the Sun, which explored contemporary racial tensions in Britain. It continued throughout the remainder of the 20th century. In 1998, he participated in the Windrush Gala.
Grant has attracted significant attention for his work with the innovative BBC live evening news show Tonight. He joined the show in 1957 and stayed with it until 1960. During those three years he "sang the news in calypso." His songs were called "topical calypsos."
Grant's involvement in British radio broadcasting is also extensive. The BBC Sound Archives has more than 90 entries for his radio work between 1954 and 1997.
Grant also established himself as a recording artist with recordings on the Columbia, Parlophone, and Pye labels. His discography lists four LPs and several 45 rpm records. His LP Cool Folk, which features songs such as Where have all the flowers gone? Yellow Bird, O Pato, Blowing in the Wind, Work Song, and Every Night When the Sun Goes Down, is a collector's item.
His calypso King Cricket and The Constantine Calypso refer to the better days of West Indian cricket.
Grant's book Ring of Steel: Pan Sound and Symbol published by MacMillian Caribbean in 1999, was immediately recognized as an important work on the steel band.
The book "traces not only the physical development of the instrument, the plight of the early pioneers and their struggle for survival and acceptance; the social function of the panyard and the rivalry between the pans manifest in the annual Panorama competition, but also the spirit and pan-world spread of Pan."
In addition to being a performer, Grant has also been an arts administrator. In 1974, with John Mapondera, he established the Drum Arts Centre. The centre, was responsible for premiering Sweet Talk, a critically acclaimed play by the Guyanese playwright Michael Abbensetts.
During the 1980s, Grant became director of the Concord Multicultural Festivals. The aim of those festivals was to "celebrate the cultural diversity that is the reality of life in Britain."
Between 1981 and 1985, the Concord mounted "20 multicultural festivals in major theatrical cities in England and Wales," according to Grant. In 1996, the group organized a country-wide festival in Devon. A similar festival was held in Gloucestershire in 1997.
Grant represents that great Guyanese attribute of being adventurous. He was one of the wave of Guyanese who went to the United Kingdom before the great exodus that started in the 1960s. His body of work has made an indelible contribution to British cultural life.
Grant's son Domminic is considered by critics to be an outstanding guitarist and he has followed his father's work. He received critical acclaim for the CD Festivo which was funded in 1998 by the Arts Council of England as part of the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the arrival of the Empire Windrush. The album features guitar, violin, pan, and bass.