We came from a culture that has not been given much to self-examination or to historical enquiry. And it is only today, after the old culture has more or less been lost, its value overthrown; it is only today that people can begin to look at themselves.
-V S Naipaul, 1975
In the annals of East Indian music of Guyana, the contribution of women who worked on the plantations and estates is unquestionably extraordinary. For generations, a group of women from Grove, East Bank Demerara - all members of a weeding gang, made some of the most remarkable folk music. While this essay attempts to celebrate two of them - Elsie Sargeant popularly known as 'Dougla' Elsie and Kassri Narine, called 'Kaytie - it also honours in spirit their multi-talented supporting cast, all of whom have since died: Sundarie, Sumintra aka 'Lada,' Budnee, Dulari called 'Sardaren,' Kawalpatie, and Sajaan Ramotar. Each was a singer in her own right, and many were efficient on the dholak (drum).
'Dougla' Elsie was born to an Indian mother and an African father in the early twenties on Plantation Diamond (Diamond), East Bank Demerara, bedrock of East Indian culture before its inhabitants migrated from the logies to Grove next door. As her mother died shortly after Elsie was born, the child came of age under the tutelage of a grandmother who came from India. Young Elsie started singing early, but would become most notable after her marriage and the move to Grove in the fifties.
Essentially a folklorist, like many musicians of the period she lacked any formal education (musical or otherwise), but knew how to move song-wise between vernaculars, and was familiar with the Hindu culture practised locally. Apart from having the most distinct voice among her companions, she played the dholak, damru (small hand-drum), harmonium, and was conversant with the lingua franca used on the plantations.
Kassri Narine
To interpret the life of this cultural pioneer is not easy, because Elsie the musician evolved hand-in-hand with the very culture of Indian music, which underwent a metamorphosis owing to the experience of indenturship and because of its interface with the world of Western music. Thus, in playing music for the community from weddings to 'nine-day' birth rituals to religious ceremonies, these estate-employed women operated between traditions.
Because historians have largely ignored them, the depth of skills acquired and their intricacies remain hidden. On the one hand, traditional Indian songs (eg, bhajans) were done closer to the Indian musical scale, expressing a variety of raag (melody) and at differing rhythmic cycles (taal). On the other, their 'rhyme songs' (that is, songs done in Anglo-Indian dialect) were sung in a Western scale and this led to substantial improvisation, pushing East Indian music into a region that was, arguably, neither East nor West.
Recently, I listened to a number of songs by these women from Grove, recorded by Peter Kempadoo and Marc Matthews in the early seventies. Thirty years later, it is altogether a mesmerizing display of musical talent and feminine energy. The setting is raw with no acoustics to capture or purify sounds, and the instruments are rudimentary; there is a relentless dholak, backed by the undying presence of dhantal and manjiras (or kartal, cymbals), and occasionally, tali (handclapping). The harmonium was set very low. While Elsie (who had an extensive repertoire of songs - a different type of song for differing occasions) was mostly the lead singer, she did not always lead. In fact, at least four of the women led at one time or another.
While hearing the recordings today suggests some primitiveness, there is hardly a sense of trepidation about possible mishaps between keys by these estate women who, undeniably, were at ease in the business at hand. One is awed at the movement between music scales, sub-genres of songs, and of course, vernaculars - from a sohar or 'birth song' to a bhajan to an adamant anti-British East Indian folk song (Elsie, lead vocal) sung in Anglo-Indian dialect, to a medley of English nursery rhymes (eg, 'Mary Had a Little Lamb') to which, yes, was added a Bhojpuri refrain to the common quatrains that used the a,b,a,b rhyme scheme.
From these recordings, Kempadoo- Matthews would cut a record of Elsie singing Bangali Babu, a song originally sung by a musician from the Portuguese Quarter, Berbice, but which was popularized by Elsie. In the up-tempo Shivaji Mandir, which seems to resemble the intricate but traditional 14-beat chowtaal, the women encourage us to attend mandirs and sing the name of the God; and Garam Massala (Elsie, lead vocal) is a folk song that incorporated subtle ribaldry - using spicy Indian food items to describe the vivaciousness of "dis time young gyal" regarding courtship. A Bhojpuri recitation, which is customarily sung as a dulaha and dulahin enter under the manro (ceremonial tent) in a Hindu wedding, is heard for a staggering four-and-a-half minutes - all vocals and no instruments.
One cannot exaggerate the role of music in the life of Indians, where it has surpassed itself as an art form, becoming life itself. This was best exemplified by these weeding-gang musicians whose 'life' belonged to the community. What they played to the villagers, was often rehearsed in the canefields where saucepans and cutlasses became dholaks and dhantals. It seemed unnatural, but underlying these recordings is an intensity that is characterized by years of impromptu versification. These women were so devoted that they often attended Friday night matikors and would then return home after the kanghan on Monday. Elsie's son, nicknamed 'Bongo,' one of her five children and former member of the sixties' Chandi Orchestra from Grove - laughed when he remembered his father Dalfus, who "would cuss" sometimes upon coming home to find his wife gone.
Kassri Narine ('Kaytie'), whose house stands one block from where Elsie lived, arrived last year on a rare visit to Guyana from Venezuela where she now lives. I met her quite accidentally while researching the music of Grove. Increased hardship under the PNC regime and the murder of her brother by bandits, led to her moving across the border to spend her last years. Here was one of the community's legendary folk singers, but it eventually dawned on me that neither music nor history was on her mind. Perhaps it was because the old 'songster' (which is what musicians of earlier times were called) was very sick.
She was born in 1934, not far from where the first Diamond-Grove mandir existed (site of current Diamond-Grove Vishnu mandir at the border of the villages). One of the first mandirs in Demerara, it was here (before the reign of the Deodat Sharma clan of pundits) under Pandit Durga (father of PPP MP Reepu Daman Persaud) that Hindu culture thrived - such as, allegedly, the first-ever staging of the Ramlila pageant-plays, based on the Ramayana. This community has influenced her tremendously, as it did Elsie and all those who were involved with music before the expansion of Grove in the fifties.
Kaytie had been singing since she was in her teens, and was exposed to some level of music at home, since her brother, the late Sugrim Gobin, was also a musical talent. Additionally, she had a chacha who was famous for playing the enormous Tadjah drum at Diamond ground whenever fairs were held. Arguably, Kaytie was not as versatile a singer as Elsie, but her skills as a dholak player was indisputable. She was married twice and had four children altogether. When I met her, she rattled off a number of stanzas randomly (despite being weak), before speaking about the harsh conditions in which they worked and sang - before the time of electricity, such as when the villagers gathered at nights to sing in the light of jug lamps - making what they called "jug music."
In 1973, two of her songs became records - one was Oh Maninja, a folk anthem or 'rhyme song' re-popularized by Kanchan in the eighties. For the Kempadoo-Matthews Jarai sessions, Kaytie sang a different (probably the earliest) version of the song. The record that was made, however, was done from a different session in Grove at the home of Sugrim Gobin, in a room constructed specially "for recording music." Of course, it was primitive - a mere room with high, sealed walls to exclude the sound of car engines and dog barks. Two of Grove's well-known talents played on that record: Harrychan on dholak and Ata Baba on harmonium. To capture the sounds from which a master tape was used to press the 45 records, Kaytie used a tape recorder.
In all of the folk literature to originate from the East Indians, there is almost no verse that is as poignant and famous as the chorus of Oh Maninja. Unwisely, as has been generally the case with East Indian writing not regarded as proper culture by the guardians of Guyanese literature, these lyrics have long been ignored. The song epitomizes the appalling realities of estate village life - of stark poverty, the rising cost of living, hard labour for little return, thriftiness, brutal estate management, and despair:
Oh Maninja! Oh Maninja!
Cane ah cut and price nah pay a-tall,
Rice and flour dere a shop
A wah you mean a-tall?
Me wuk hard in de backdam
Till me hand get wan ton,
When me get a money
Ee gan in de pan
Grove lost its great music culture long ago as it began to lose its music matriarchs. As generations changed, musicians migrated elsewhere or passed on: Arthur 'Rock 'n Roll' Budram and Leonard Latachana (both from Chandi Orchestra) left for the city and Canada respectively. Others like Ata Baba, Raymond Bandhu, and the spirited women of the weeding gang died. The Chandi Orchestra that toured Suriname was disbanded. Sugrim Gobin, who made about a dozen records, moved to Friendship and was murdered by kick-down-the-door bandits. After Kaytie left for Venezuela, Elsie remained as the last of the musicians in Grove.
Where hard life had failed, old-age eventfully wore her down until the artist disappeared, leaving only the woman. Abandoned by the sound-system technology that had stormed away an oral tradition she helped glorify, Elsie became a mere accessory of the time. In 1993, the incredibly talented 'Dougla' Elsie died, leaving behind her old dholak and a handful of exhilarating recordings, remnants of an excitingly rich past.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Dr Vibert Cambridge in the US; Populay Gobin and Pauline Mahadeo (Aunty Pauline) of Grove; Subhas Singh and Kawall Persaud in New York; Leonard Latchana, Atma Persaud, and Yvette Singh in Toronto; Kampta Karran in the UK, and www.guyanaundersiege.com. Special gratitude to my nani, Gangadai Singh, Vicky 'Pone' Mahadeo, and the Sargeant family in Grove; and to Kassri Narine in Venezuela.
Editorial comment: Rakesh Rampertaub can be contacted at rrampert@yahoo.com
Ohio University is proud to have a copy of the Jari Tapes recorded by Peter Kempadoo and Marc Matthews during the 1970s. That collection is an important record of Guyana's oral and aural history and the originals should have a special place in Guyana's sound archives.