A national icon has voiced deep concern over the declining visibility of Montserrat’s heritage during annual national festivals.
Everton “Reality” Weekes, an acclaimed musician and composer, cautioned that crucial elements of local culture are slowly fading from the public stage.
Appearing on the show “Embracing Quality Education”, Weekes, who won the national calypso title five times, called for greater prominence to be given to the island’s traditional arts.
“What they should have done was make sure that our traditional values didn’t get lost along the way, but they did not do that. And I’m not blaming anybody, I’m just saying that if you didn’t know, you didn’t know, right? They left out the people like the Mama Yam and the Peter Ploko and the Jackie Pepper and these people were unknown because they were country people. The culture itself did not grow along with our festival.
Weekes bemoaned the fact that culture “always get left behind and when they have a show, it’s like a string band would make an appearance as a sidebar, not as a feature. So you did not have a strong representation of our culture. So after a while, there became nobody. I remember one year I came back to visit and before Silcott died, and to me, that is like a travesty. I went into his shop and he had all the traditional instruments there. They were there, nobody to play them.”
The former calypso monarch is reminding “the people who are organizing Montserrat Festival, they should always remember that there cannot be a tradition if it’s not passed on. If it’s not passed on, it’s dead.”