1:09BThank you.
1:10AAnd the University of Guyana should begin to do the same thing because cultural workers like yourself need that recognition. I can tell you that your music, your lyrics are being taught now in universities. I teach a course called Music as Political Discourse at Arizona State University on calypso, reggae, and hip-hop, and I use your song Tell It Like It Is as one of the texts.
1:44BThank you.
1:44AIn my classes. So the point I’m making is that your music and the music of our musical stalwarts really deserve PhDs, because you all did the research, you all did the writing, you did the music, you did all that arrangement. And people like myself are now able to use your lyrics as teaching tools in the university. Eze, it’s 50 years. 50 years. How do you feel?
2:20BWell, I feel honored to serve this nation for 50 years. And one of the -- we are doing an anthology on the Yoruba Singers’ music. 90% of the music would be out of the bowel of the Yoruba Singers. But more significantly, we’re doing a song that I wrote that was never recorded. One of my first songs that I write on this journey was something called African People, and the lyrics goes like this: African people everywhere, African people do not despair, African people wherever you go, African people we love you so, African people the struggle is on. Let’s organize, mobilize, educate, and learn. This principle is ours. Let’s practice it too. Don’t let the enemy take what belongs to you. And the last verse says, African people, there’s no time to rest. Brothers and sisters, we got to try our best. To be drowsy and sleepy would do us no good. We got to free ourselves like a fighting people should. And I start calling Zimbabwe and Brazil, wherever African people are, so they would feel welcome and know they’re included in this state of affairs.
3:46AThank you very much. I can’t wait to hear that in music. The lyrics are very arresting and compelling, and it is part of the tradition of Black resistance. Black resistance.
3:58BYou see, Kwame, you see, Kwame, you saw me singing the song. Everywhere, way back in the woods.
4:05AYes. And as you talk about the UC question, yes, I told him I was going to interview him.
4:12BAs relevant today as it was then.
4:15AAs it was then, yes. I told, I told Brother UC I was going to interview you, and he told me I should read something he had written at, in the, um, um, on the 50th Independence anniversary in some publication that he had written on you and Yoruba Singers. And he reminded me that Yoruba Singers was part of that movement of the ’70s. You yourself joined ASCRIA when you were a teenager. Tell us about that.
4:52BThat’s right. Well, I was -- because my name is Eze, I got the name when King Eze or Prince Eze from Nigeria came to Guyana. All the boys in that time, because they were to bring Marcus, but Marcus couldn’t come.
5:10ARight.
5:11BSo Eze was studying somewhere in the States and they brought him and the people were really looking for Black leadership at the time. Right? And we were always looking for good leadership. So King Eze was an inspiration to the people and to the movement, was, um, Legal -- League of Colored People.
5:32ALeague of Colored People.
5:33BYes, LCP. Yes, that was the movement at the time.
5:37AIn the 1950s, when Prince Eze came here, I understand it was a very big thing.
5:43BYeah.
5:43AAnd that’s where you got your name from?
5:47BRight.
5:47APeople think that you’re from Kitty, but you’re a Barbican. I’m from Mycony. There you go.
5:54BAnd I learned that Mycony people came as indentured, not slaves.
5:59AFrom Bahia?
5:59BI learned that 10 years ago.
6:01AOkay. Yes, there were Barbadians and from some of the islands, but mainly Barbadians who came as indentured laborers.
6:10BThe big shipment came from a place called Bahia.
6:14AUh-huh, uh-huh, oh, Bahia, in Brazil, in Brazil.
6:18BYes, yes.
6:19AAnd your family settled in Kitty?
6:22BWe were there 6 years later, 6 years after --
6:26AAfter you were born, and it was in Kitty that you came into contact with ASCRIA?
6:31BThat’s right.
6:32AWhat made you join?
6:33BWell, because I feel a sense of consciousness and belong. Belonging to something that resonates with me and my gene, my genetics. So I decided I will have to join this organization to learn more about our culture.
6:56AAnd at that time, many young people joined, and it was out of your membership --
7:01BYeah.
7:01AOut of your membership of ASCRIA that came this band. Tell us how the idea came about, who were some of the people involved?
7:11BWell, we had a compound, a kitty compound of Ashford. And before we start the meeting, to start deliberating, we used to play, a man playing the beat on the desk, a man brought a guitar, a man had a mouth organ, and We had some percussion and the man come and hear the song, bring a flute. And of course, that’s how it started because we were simultaneously members of the Young Socialist Movement at the time.
7:47AYes.
7:48BSo we had both an idea of the political stage and the cultural stage.
7:58AUh-huh.
7:59BAnd I was also always influenced by Kwame Nkrumah because my dad used to always talk about Nkrumah, Nkrumah. He was really into Kwame Nkrumah. And I always hear Kwame said that freedom is not a commodity that is given to the enslaved upon demand. It’s a precious reward, a trophy of struggle and sacrifice. So you have to sacrifice to bring something that benefits your people, because it is always about the others and not you. It is never about you, it’s about others. If you die tomorrow, you can’t carry yourself to the burial ground, others have to take you.
8:43AYes, and as I said earlier in the program, the band was first called the Young Ascrians, no?
8:52BThe Young Ascrians, yes. We used to play all across the country at these concerts that Ascrian would organize. And Amsterdam, Mike Pony, um, and his group, Buxton, um, Denhamstead. Ascrian had another group called the Black Showcase in Denhamstead.
9:11AUh-huh.
9:12BRight, and then where UC Mandilio was from, George Street, there was the the Georgetown group. And then we had some other group, and then we had Tutashinda from Buxton.
9:24AYes, I was a member of Tutashinda.
