Alan Bush (left) on arrival in British Guiana, August, 1959
AJ Seymour's Name Poem speaks to the:
Beauty about us in the breath of
names
Known to us all, but murmured
over softly
Kwe-Kwe scene from the opera The Sugar Reapers
Woven to breath of peace.
If but a wind blows, all their
beauty wakes.
Guyanese place names tell us much about the history and the people. As Seymour writes "Guiana, Waini are cousin water words .../The Demerary, Desakepe and Courantyne/Flow centuries before strange tongues bewitch/Their beauty into common county names."
Consider also, "Words born upon Dutch tongues live in our speech./The sentinel that was Kykoveral/ Beterverwagting, Vlissengen and Stabroek/And the sonorous toll of bells in Vergenoegen."
Seymour amplified the music in the names of Guyanese places when he created Name Poem, which still brings "water to the eyes" of Guyanese in the diaspora.
There is music all around Guyana-in bird song, in place names, and even in our political history.
Guyana's post-World War II politics was the inspiration for Alan Bush's opera The Sugar Reapers (or Guyana Johnny), which premiered in Leipzig, East Germany, in 1966.
Alan Bush was born in south-east London in 1900, and at the age of 18 became a student at the Royal Academy of Music. There he studied organ, piano and composition. After graduation he did post-graduate studies in Berlin, studying philosophy and musicology at the Friedrich-Wilhelm University.
Philosophically, Alan Bush supported progressive causes. In 1924, he joined the Independent Labour Party. He was one of the founders of the Workers' Music Association, and in 1935, he joined the British Communist Party.
Bush was a prolific composer. According to his daughter Rachel O'Higgins, he "has more than one hundred orchestral, instrumental, and vocal works to his credit ...together with four full-length operas."
Bush's operas and his earlier works, such as The Pageant of Labour indicate that his works were informed by his ideological beliefs and were in solidarity with working class people and their struggles for liberation.
His opera Wat Tyler (1950) dealt with the English Peasant Rebellion of 1381. The Men of Blackmoor (1955) explored "the struggle of Northumbrian coal miners in the early 19th century." The opera Joe Hill: The Man Who Never Died (1967) "celebrated the life and death of the American proletarian revolutionary, Joe Hill, composer and singer of songs, in the USA."
The anti-colonial struggle in British Guiana was the inspiration of his opera The Sugar Reapers, which explores "the struggle of the African and Indian sugar workers of Guyana against British imperialism in 1953." It was written in 1964 and had its premier in the Leipzig Opera House on December 11, 1966. His wife, Nancy Bush, wrote the libretto.
Bush stated that after the first performance of The Men of Blackmoor at the German National Theatre in Weimar, Karl Kayser suggested he compose a third opera, the first performance of which Kayser hoped to stage in his theatre. Bush readily accepted the invitation.
Bush recalled the fight for independence by the people of Guyana, especially the 1953 struggle, which served as the inspiration for the opera.
So, in August 1959, Bush and his daughter Rachel travelled to British Guiana to conduct field research. According to Bush, the People's Progressive Party, which had been returned to power in 1957, were generous hosts.
"We were provided with a car and driver, and travelled almost all over the country by road, by motor-launch along rivers and by air," recalled Bush.
Rachel remembers the help given by Janet Jagan. "She helped us find a house to rent for a month, provided two women to help us with the housework, cooking, etc. She also organised a driver, Annibourne who took us everywhere."
In a recent e-mail, Bush's daughter, Rachel reminisced on the trip, "We travelled all over the country. We went up north to the Venezuelan border, and inland to Lethem ...We also travelled down the coast and visited various people, we had a marvellous visit. It was most memorable."
During his field work, he "talked to all kinds of people and recorded a great many of their songs." He also had the opportunity to witness the life of sugar workers such as "the gravely insufficient water-supply on the sugar plantations, the incessant indebtedness of the sugar-workers to the local shop-keepers" and poor living conditions. In 1959, some sugar workers were "obliged to live in the so-called 'ranges,' which had been built for the slave-workers of the... early 19th centuries."
"These social disabilities are all shown in the opera as motivating forces in the struggle for independence," said Bush.
According to Rachel, her father was "disappointed that he didn't find much evidence of Amerindian music and culture."
An important theme in The Sugar Reapers is the overcoming of racial hostility between Guyanese of African and Indian ancestry. In addition to chronicling a political struggle, the opera is also a story of true love between an Indian girl, Sumintra, and an African boy, Johnny Lucas.
According to Bush, "[The opera is] set in British Guyana in 1953, where the local inhabitants have their first election and the Popular Party wins a majority of the seats. It takes place in a village near Georgetown, British Guiana and a street outside Georgetown prison."
Bush was influenced by Guyanese folk songs he recorded in the field. They include "the African Song of Emancipation from the year [1834] when slavery was abolished, the classic African paddling song Itanami, the African betrothal songs, known as Que-Que songs, and the Indian folk and religious songs."
In addition to the premier in Germany, The Sugar Reapers was performed in the then USSR in the Tartu Opera House, Estonia in 1969 and the Odessa Opera House in 1973.
The opera was also broadcast on radio in East Germany and in the United Kingdom. "The Leipzig production was broadcast by East German Radio in 1968; this radio version was broadcast by BBC Radio 3 in 1976 with added English narration and subsequently repeated twice."
The opera received positive reviews in the East German and British press.
"His use of Indian and African folk music has given the score a new freshness and flexibility. This opera is no less serious than his previous ones, but more genial and approachable, and more varied in colour and texture; the composer has written nothing finer than the choral dances at the end of the Act I, and nothing more beautiful than the opening chorus and the quiet introduction to second scene of Act II," reported Stage and Television Today in December 29, 1966.
In Bush's opera, Johnny and Sumintra are emblematic of the Guyanese people and their common histories and common aspirations. I wish it were possible to say, almost 50 years later, that they lived happily ever after.
Sources
E-mail correspondence Vibert Cambridge and Rachel O'Higgins (July 17 and 20, 2005)
AJ Seymour (1980) Name Poem In A Treasury of Guyanese Poetry (Georgetown, Guyana, 1980, p 107 -108)
Rachel O'Higgins (March 2000) Profile of Alan Bush Available on-line at