Birthday Greetings - Mighty Sparrow

 On this special day, the Trinbago Unified Calypsonians' Organisation (TUCO) joins the global calypso community in celebrating the incredible journey and remarkable contributions you have made to the world of music. Your unparalleled talent, wit, and charisma have solidified your place as a true icon in the realm of calypso.

Throughout your illustrious career, you have captivated audiences with your powerful and socially-conscious lyrics, blending humour, satire, and social commentary in a way that only a true musical genius can. Your songs have not only entertained but have also served as a voice for the voiceless, shedding light on important issues and sparking meaningful conversations.

As the "Calypso King of the World," you have been recognised with numerous accolades and honours, including the prestigious Order of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago (ORTT), the Order of the British Empire (OBE), and the Caribbean Music Lifetime Achievement Award. These accolades are a testament to your immeasurable impact on the music industry and your unwavering commitment to preserving and promoting the rich cultural heritage of Trinidad and Tobago.

Your influence extends far beyond the shores of your beloved homeland, as your music has resonated with people from all walks of life around the globe. Your artistry has transcended boundaries, uniting people through the universal language of music and fostering a sense of pride and identity in the Caribbean diaspora.

Today, on your 88th birthday, we celebrate not only your remarkable musical legacy but also the incredible person that you are. Your humility, kindness, and dedication to uplifting fellow artists have inspired generations of musicians and have left an indelible mark on the hearts of your fans worldwide.

We wish you good health, happiness, and continued success in all your future endeavors. May your melodies continue to enchant us, and may your spirit forever soar high like a Mighty Sparrow. Happy birthday, Dr. Slinger Francisco!

Hindu Wedding - Guyanese

 A Hindu wedding long ago amounted to a performance filled with culture, religion and deep family values. 

How would you assess a Hindu wedding performed in these times?

Hindu weddings are our passion. They are vibrant, colorful and exciting!

Non Alcohol, vegetarian food (7 Curry)

Chey-Kai – The Engagement Ceremony

Everyone Performs at the Sangeet

The Bride's Hands and Feet Are Adorned With Henna

Mehendi – The Dulahin's Seductive Body Art

Hardi Night – The Couple Prepares

Maticoor – Ladies' Night

The Bride Wears a Red Dress

The Groom's Arrival Is a Celebration in Itself

Baraat Milan/Agwani – A Father's Welcome

Parchay – A Mother's Welcome

Tilak/Dwar Puja – A Brother's Welcome

The Father of the Bride Gives Her Away - A Parents' Farewell (Kanya Daan)

Couple Weds Under a Mandap

A Fire Burns in the Center of the Mandap

Hindu Wedding Rituals Begin With a Prayer to Ganesha

Bride and Groom perform a Hawan

Lawa Hawan – The Dulahin as Head and Leader

Lawa Bhawar – Around the Sacred Fire

Asmarorhana – Stepping on the Stone

Exchanging of Marriage Vows – The Requests of the Dulahin

Exchanging of Marriage Vows – The Requests of the Dulaha

The Couple Exchanges Floral Garlands During the Jai Mala

Saptapadi – The Seven Steps

The Bride Is Adorned With a Necklace Called the Mangala Sutra

The Bride and Groom's Garments Are Tied Together

The Newlyweds Shower Each Other With Rice

Sindoor Daan – Is Applied to the Bride's Hair, The Symbol of a Married Woman 

Aashirvaad/Viserjan and Kitchree – The Dulaha's Meal

The Couple's Sendoff Is an Emotional Vidaai Ceremony

History of Guyana

 History of Guyana

Early history

The first human inhabitants of Guyana probably entered the highlands during the 1st millennium BCE. Among the earliest settlers were groups of Arawak, Carib, and possibly Warao (Warrau). The early communities practiced shifting agriculture supplemented by hunting. Explorer Christopher Columbus sighted the Guyana coast in 1498, and Spain subsequently claimed, but largely avoided, the area between the Orinoco and Amazon deltas, a region long known as the Wild Coast. It was the Dutch who finally began European settlement, establishing trading posts upriver in about 1580. By the mid-17th century the Dutch had begun importing slaves from West Africa to cultivate sugarcane. In the 18th century the Dutch, joined by other Europeans, moved their estates downriver toward the fertile soils of the estuaries and coastal mud flats. Laurens Storm van ’s Gravesande, governor of Essequibo from 1742 to 1772, coordinated these development efforts.

Guyana changed hands with bewildering frequency during the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars (mostly between the British and the French) from 1792 to 1815. During a brief French occupation, Longchamps, later called Georgetown, was established at the mouth of the Demerara River; the Dutch renamed it Stabroek and continued to develop it. The British took over in 1796 and remained in possession, except for short intervals, until 1814, when they purchased Demerara, Berbice, and Essequibo, which in 1831 were united as the colony of British Guiana.

British rule

When the slave trade was abolished in 1807, there were about 100,000 slaves in Berbice, Demerara, and Essequibo. After full emancipation in 1838, black freedmen left the plantations to establish their own settlements along the coastal plain. The planters then imported labour from several sources, the most productive of whom were the indentured workers from India. Indentured labourers who earned their freedom settled in coastal villages near the estates, a process that became established in the late 19th century during a serious economic depression caused by competition with European sugar beet production. The importation of indentured labourers from India exemplifies the connection between Guiana’s history and the British imperial history of the other Anglophone countries in the Caribbean region.

Settlement proceeded slowly, but gold was discovered in 1879, and a boom in the 1890s helped the colony. The North West District, an 8,000-square-mile (21,000-square-km) area bordering on Venezuela that was organized in 1889, was the cause of a dispute in 1895, when the United States supported Venezuela’s claims to that mineral- and timber-rich territory. Venezuela revived its claims on British Guiana in 1962, an issue that went to the United Nations for mediation in the early 1980s but still had not been resolved in the early 21st century.

The British inherited from the Dutch a complicated constitutional structure. Changes in 1891 led to progressively greater power’s being held by locally elected officials, but reforms in 1928 invested all power in the governor and the Colonial Office. In 1953 a new constitution—with universal adult suffrage, a bicameral elected legislature, and a ministerial system—was introduced.

From 1953 to 1966 the political history of the colony was stormy. The first elected government, formed by the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) and led by Cheddi Jagan, seemed so pro-communist that the British suspended the constitution in October 1953 and dispatched troops. The constitution was not restored until 1957. The PPP split along ethnic lines, Jagan leading a predominately Indo-Guyanese party and Forbes Burnham leading a party of African descendants, the People’s National Congress (PNC). The elections of 1957 and 1961 returned the PPP with working majorities. From 1961 to 1964 severe rioting, involving bloodshed between rival Afro-Guyanese and Indo-Guyanese groups, and a long general strike led to the return of British troops.

Independence of Guyana

To answer the PNC allegation that the existing electoral system unduly favoured the Indo-Guyanese community, the British government introduced for the elections of December 1964 a new system of proportional representation. Thereafter the PNC and a smaller, more conservative party formed a coalition government, led by Burnham, which took the colony into independence under its new name, Guyana, on May 26, 1966. The PNC gained full power in the general election of 1968, which was characterized by questionable rolls of overseas voters and widespread claims of electoral impropriety.

On February 23, 1970, Guyana was proclaimed a cooperative republic within the Commonwealth. A president was elected by the National Assembly, but Burnham retained executive power as prime minister. Burnham declared his government to be socialist and in the later 1970s sought to reorder the government in his favour. In 1978 one of the most bizarre incidents in modern history occurred in Guyana when some 900 members of a religious community known as the Peoples Temple committed mass suicide in their Jonestown commune at the behest of their leader, Jim Jones.

In 1980, under a new constitution that provided for a unicameral legislature, Burnham became executive president, with still wider powers, after an election in which international observers detected widespread fraud. Two major assassinations also occurred during this time—Jesuit priest and journalist Bernard Darke was killed in July 1979, and prominent historian and political leader Walter Rodney was murdered in June 1980. Many observers accused Burnham of involvement in the killings. In the following years Burnham faced an economy shattered by the depressed demand for bauxite and sugar and a restive populace suffering from severe commodity shortages and a near breakdown of essential public services. Burnham enforced austerity measures, and he began leaning toward Soviet-bloc countries for support. When he died in 1985, Burnham was succeeded by the prime minister, Hugh Desmond Hoyte, who pledged to continue Burnham’s policies. In elections held that year, Hoyte won the presidency by a wide margin, but once again charges of vote fraud were raised.

In the late 1980s Hoyte gradually shifted away from Burnham’s ideology, denouncing communism and granting more rights to the Guyanese. His administration, confronting worsening financial and economic problems, moved to liberalize the economy. He also bowed to pressure for electoral reform, and elections held in 1992 were considered free and fair by international observers. The PPP triumphed in the elections, and Jagan became president. In contrast to the strong socialist views he had held decades earlier, Jagan now advocated policies more conducive to democratization and economic reform. After Jagan’s death in 1997, his wife, Janet Jagan, was elected president in elections held later that year. The PNC disputed the results of the elections, however, and many demonstrations and protests ensued. Janet Jagan stepped down in 1999, attributing her resignation to ill health. Bharrat Jagdeo of the PPP was appointed president; he was reelected in 2001 and again in 2006.

Bonham C. Richardson

Jack K. Menke

Jagdeo’s administration was beset with numerous difficulties. The PNC staged more protests after the 2001 parliamentary elections, when it seemed to many that the PPP would continue to win control of the government simply because their constituency, mainly Indo-Guyanese, was the majority population in the country. A violent crime spree, fueled by political unrest, broke out in 2002 following the escape of five convicts from Georgetown Prison. In 2005 severe flooding killed dozens of people and destroyed large amounts of the rice and sugarcane crops.

Prospects brightened in September 2007 when a United Nations international tribunal settled a long-standing maritime boundary dispute between Guyana and Suriname by granting Guyana the far-larger share of the Guyana-Suriname Basin in contention. A new boundary was drawn, and soon afterward offshore oil exploration was begun there. Despite his apprehension, Jagdeo signed a trade agreement with the European Union in 2008; he hoped to increase economic stability and strengthen international relations. Guyana continued to struggle with violent crime, ethnic tensions, and episodic political unrest, but the economy improved, as the government invested in the agriculture and forestry sectors, in offshore oil exploration, and in new roads and bridges.

Jack K. Menke

Jagdeo was constitutionally prohibited from running for a third term, and in November 2011 Donald Ramotar of the PPP was elected president. That year, however, his party and its junior coalition partner, the Civic Party, subsequently lost their majority in the National Assembly when a coalition was formed by A Partnership for National Unity (APNU)—an alliance comprising the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR; a reconstituted PNC, including the former Reform Party) and several smaller parties—and the Alliance for Change (AFC) party. APNU-AFC’s single-vote majority, combined with the PPP’s continued control of the presidency, resulted in a period of legislative gridlock. In November 2014 Ramotar, fearing an imminent no-confidence vote in response to some $22.5 million of spending without parliamentary approval, prorogued parliament. Although the constitution allowed the president to suspend parliament for up to six months, the opposition accused him of acting dictatorially.

In the national election in May 2015 the combined APNU-AFC slate garnered some 207,000 votes compared with about 201,000 for the PPP, meaning that the presidency went to the coalition’s candidate, publisher and former general David Granger. Ramotar protested the results, but international observers declared the election to be free and fair.

The stakes in Guyanese politics were raised in 2015 by the discovery of a rich oil field in the country’s offshore waters. By the end of 2020, another 17 underwater fields had been discovered in Guyana’s Stabroek Block in the Atlantic, promising to transform the country’s economy into one of the fastest-growing in the world as Guyana entered a partnership with Exxon, which had made the discoveries. Both APNU-AFC and the PPP jockeyed for position to control the development of the new industry and the disposition of the wealth portended by the oil boom.

Criticized for not acting quickly enough to regulate the oil industry, Granger’s government lost a vote of confidence by the narrowest of margins (33–32) in December 2018. Instead of scheduling an election within the three-month period mandated by the constitution, however, the ruling coalition sought to have the vote of confidence overturned in the courts. Ultimately, its efforts proved futile, and, after much wrangling, an election was set for early March 2020. The election sparked its own controversy when Granger’s claim of victory was challenged in the wake of obvious election fraud. A 100-day-long national recount followed and revealed the PPP to have been the winner by a margin of about 15,000 votes. Once again APNU-AFC challenged the results in court, and for some five months Granger balked at handing over power. Finally, responding to intense international pressure, he stepped aside, and in early August 2020 Mohamed Irfaan Ali of the PPP became Guyana’s president.