Over the past weekend I was part of one of those wonderful institutions of the Guyanese diaspora - the family reunion. Specifically, I was part of the Valz reunion.
Family reunions provide the context for reflection and for forward planning. More important, they provide the younger generation, especially those not born in Guyana, with an opportunity to know of their heritage. Such was the Valz reunion.
Oliver Valz, SC, the patriarch of the family, was there with the eloquence associated with a previous generation of Guyanese legal practitioners. He recalled for those gathered the known history of the Valz family in Guyana. The origins of the family lay in France or in the French-speaking canton of Switzerland.
The family's heritage is connected with sugar, Berbice, the Tinne family (of Sanbach Parker, Tinne, & Co). Coursing in the veins of the family is the blood of European, African, Amerindian, East Indian, and Chinese ancestors.
The reunion took place in Athens, OH, and members of the family travelled there from Georgetown, Guyana; Ajax, Ottawa and Toronto, Canada; California, St Louis, and Tennessee, USA; and The Turks and Caicos Islands and St Martin in the Caribbean.
The family celebrated achievements - the Guyana Scholar, the several PhDs and graduate degrees, the lawyers, schoolteachers and professors, religious scholars, senior governmental officials, accountants, actuarial scientists, research statisticians, financial specialists, small business entrepreneurs, and creative trailblazers.
In the sphere of creativity, three family members stood out as making substantial contributions to Guyana's cultural life - Sonja Abbott, Patricia Cambridge, and Ian Valz.
Sonja
Sonja Abbott (nee Valz), sister of playwright Ian Valz, an internationally recognized expert in special education, was associated with the formative years of Guyana's National Dance Company. She studied under Lavina Williams and Geraldo Lastra. Her cohort included Desiree Ali, Marcia Changa, Vivienne Daniels, Andrea Douglas, Linda Griffith, Malcolm Hall, Marilyn Hall, Mignon Lowe, Philip McLintock, Pamela Mosley, and Sandra Stuart. Those were exciting times.
"Lavina brought African, Indian, and Amerindian dancers into the dance school so we could study the dances and extract the special vocabularies associated with Guyanese dance forms," said Sonja.
She worked with Lavinia Williams to develop the curriculum to teach dance in Guyana's school system. Sonja, who was also a specialist teacher at the David Rose School for the Handicapped, is recognized for developing techniques for teaching deaf students to dance.
The first expression of her success in that realm was seen during Guyfesta II when students from David Rose won in the dance competition. That success led to a performance at the National Cultural Centre and exploded the myth that the deaf and hearing impaired could not participate in dance. The students demonstrated confidence with rhythm and special lyricism in their full-length presentation Life Style. That performance also opened the National Dance Company to deaf and hearing-impaired students.
When Sonja left for the United States to pursue post-graduate studies in special education, she continued to explore the place of dance in the special education curriculum. Upon her return to Guyana in the late 1970s, she focused her attention on applying dance in the curriculum for students with special needs.
In the early 1990s, Sonja was recruited to teach in St Martin. Here her love for dance found fertile ground. In addition to her normal teaching load she taught Afro-Caribbean dance at the Motiance School. Some of her students have gone on to professional careers. Sonja is particularly proud of her choreographies, especially The Fisherman's Sonata, which merged folk and classical dance forms.
According to family discussions during the reunion, Sonja had shown dance talent since the age of five. It was also pointed out that her father, the late Ralston Valz and her uncle, Oliver Valz were good dancers.
Patricia Cambridge
Patricia Cambridge's (nee Smith) mother was the late Ovril Smith (nee Valz). Patricia showed exceptional talent on the piano at an early age and is recognized as an accomplished pianist, organist, choir director, and composer. Her music teachers in Guyana were 'Aunt B' Simpson and Mrs Edna Jordan. In 1974, she won the Phillip Pilgrim Memorial Harp for her performance in the Grade VIII Royal Schools of Music piano examination.
At Bishop's High School, she mastered the steel pan, the guitar, and other musical instruments. As a result of her early musical accomplishments, she became the youngest accompanist for the Woodside Choir.
Patricia was awarded a Government of Guyana Scholarship in 1975 to study at the Boston Conservatory of Music where she specialized in music education. On her return to Guyana in 1981, she was appointed Associate Director of Music at the Department of Culture. She was later appointed Director of Music in the Mass Games Secretariat, and was responsible for composing and arranging the music that was played during the mass games.
In addition to those government-sponsored music projects, Patricia was engaged in several private musical ventures. She was the organist and choir director for Trinity Methodist Church, and she accompanied Brenda Rucker-Smith and Maisha Hazzard, visiting classical music performers. Patricia also performed as a jazz pianist in ensembles that included Harry Whittaker and Roddy Fraser.
Since 1986, Patricia has been living in the United States. In 1992 she earned her PhD in mass communication. Her dissertation focused on the role of music in American presidential campaigns, and she is currently a professor in the E W Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University.
According to family history, Patricia follows her grandfather and grandmother in piano playing and general love for music.
Ian Valz
Ian Valz is an important Guyanese creative personality of the post-independence era. As a playwright, he dominated radio and stage in Guyana. He has reproduced that excellence in St Martin, where he is held in high esteem as a playwright, actor, director, cultural administrator, and now, filmmaker.
Ian entered the consciousness of many Guyanese with his radio serial House of Pressure, which was cathartic during the dark times. Ian and Leon Saul were among the first to take a successful radio serial onto the stage of the National Cultural Centre. This move played an important role in the development of Guyanese theatre during the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Ian Valz is recognized as one of St Martin's leading playwrights and theatre directors.
He emigrated to St Martin in 1984 where he quickly established himself as a cultural leader in the mass media and on stages. He directed The Peacock Dance, the first television drama serial in St Martin.
"The eight-part miniseries was nominated for 'Best Drama Series' by the Caribbean Broadcasting Union. The programme has been sold to other television stations throughout the Caribbean basin that will air it as an eight-part miniseries or a two-hour made for television movie," according to the website for the Innovative Communication Corporation.
Ian's book Masquerade was published in 1988 by House of Nehesi Publishers. It includes his first three-act play by the same name and has attracted critical acclaim. In 1990, Masquerade was short-listed for the Guyana Prize for Literature and beat most of the candidates to be placed runner-up to the work of the winning playwright, Dr Michael Gilkes. Ron Robinson produced Masquerade and took it on a Caribbean tour with performances in Antigua, Barbados, and St Kitts. Ian's plays have been performed in St Lucia, Trinidad, and Jamaica,
Other plays by Ian Valz include A Christmas Play, and The Rhythms of the Palms. Ian is currently filming Panman, a full-length feature film in St Martin.
Family reunions always reveal work that needs to be done. The family reunion revealed that there is still much genealogical work to be done on the family. That task will not be left to the seniors alone; they will have partners - the upcoming generation of sociologists, information technologists, game designers, and creative personalities.