by Petamber Persaud
The Song of the Republic
(words – Cleveland Hamilton)
(music – Frank Daniels)
From Pakaraima’s peaks of pow’r
To Corentyne’s lush sands,
Her children pledge each faithful hour
To guard Guyana’s lands
To foil the shock of rude invaders
Who’d violate her earth
To cherish and defend forever
The state that gave them birth
We’ll forge a nation’s mighty soul
Construct a nation’s frame
Freedom our everlasting goal
Courage and truth our aim
Unyielding in our quest for peace
Like ancient heroes brave
To strive and strive and never cease
With strength beyond the slave
Guyana climb that glorious perch
To fame prosperity
Join in the universal search
For world wide comity
Your people whatsoe’er their breed
Their hue or quality
With one firm never changing creed
The nation’s unity
And to think such a song almost never made it to the public let alone national acceptance. Here is that story.
Almost four decades ago – sometime in late 1960s, a competition was set in train to select an appropriate anthem to celebrate Guyana’s attainment of Republic status.
The story goes that the writer of ‘Song of the Republic’ was at the time in the ‘black book’ of the government of the day because a civil issue from which the writer was to benefit was determined politically against him. It is said the man’s outspokenness landed him many times in hot water and true to form, he wrote about this slight in his newspaper column. Afraid his entry may be treated with political discharge, he submitted the words to the competition using a nom de plume, Thomas Theophilus Halley, his father’s name. That entry won from 135 submissions.
That entry won from 135 submissions. The judges were A. J. Seymour, Mrs. Stella Merriman and Milton Drepaul; the ‘judges made certain amendments to the entry so as to accord it greater suitability and make it eminently sing able’. It was long after the announcement that his entry had won that he went forward to accept the glory by which time the song had gained acceptance. That writer was Cleveland Hamilton whose death anniversary is marked around this period.
Cleveland Hamilton also a sedate yet busy legal practitioner that ever so often escaped the straightjacket to don the mantle of a poet, letting his imagination go as he immortalised people, places and events. Some of his popular pieces include ‘Requiem for Walter Rodney’, ‘Requiem for Father Bernard Darke’, ‘For Soweto’, ‘For Steve Biko’, ‘To Nazism’, and ‘Leningrad’.
It is useful to note that Hamilton came into contact and under the influence other writers whose poetry was also put to music. Some of those writers include J. W. Chinapen, R. C. G. Potter (who wrote the music for the National Anthem) and A. J. Seymour, all patriotic kindred spirits. The writers of the time were imbrued with a patriotic spirit and it was manifested in their work; it was a new theme, new impulse in which to dabble, it was post-colonial writing but still influenced by ‘colonial’ form and structure.
Cleveland Hamilton died on February 22, 1991, on the eve of another republic celebration which was to be marked by the song he wrote for the Republic, the song that almost never was.
Responses to this author please telephone 226-0065 of email: oraltradition2002@yahoo.com (Guyana Times Sunday Magazine)
