This is a blog post I originally wrote for use on the British Library’s website, promoting their public launch of the Andrew Salkey papers. In the aftermath of devastating ransomware attacks on the library, the launch has been delayed significantly. I wanted to share my reflections on my archival work in the library to draw attention to one of the many incredible resources endangered by this attack.
I came to the British Library intending to explore Andrew Salkey’s involvement with Carifesta (the Caribbean Festival of the Arts) and the Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM). Carifesta, started in 1972 in Guyana, was the first recurring regional cultural festival that united the Caribbean in all its diversity. Based in London primarily, but with satellite organizations in the Caribbean and elsewhere in England, CAM defined the trajectory of some of the most important writers, artists, and thinkers who have come out of the Caribbean. A founding member, Andrew Salkey was arguably the hub of CAM, as he seemed to know every Caribbean writer or artist who lived in the Britain in the 1960s.
One of my questions was how Carifesta related to CAM, as their stories shared many protagonists. I knew that Salkey had personally witnessed and contributed to the discussions that resulted in the dream of a regional, pan-Caribbean cultural festival. Guyanese PM Forbes Burnham first called artists and writers together to discuss this possibility in May of 1966, and he held another convention in February 1970. This is the convention Salkey attended along with - among others - his friends John La Rose, Sam Selvon, and Doris and Edward Brathwaite. For this visit, Salkey decided to do another one of his chronicles. He had written a documentary-travelogue called Havana Journal (1971) about the Cultural Congress of Havana, which took place in January 1968. The events in Guyana it turned out to be an equally momentous occasion. Georgetown Journal was the result. Salkey conducted dozens of interview with prominent Guyanese and he attended the national celebrations. I was particularly thrilled to find draft notes for his talk at the convention, which he did not reproduce in the book, but which directly speak to his hopes for Carifesta. In his remarks, he stated that the “Guyana proposal [for Carifesta] is intrinsically about our total cultural liberation; it is very definitely about our Caribbean Revolution, aimed at the dismantling of our underdevelopment and exploitation and our mimetic cultural position, at the moment.”
Ultimately, though, Salkey did not attend the festival. John La Rose joined him in this decision, while Brathwaite and Selvon still attended. Brathwaite lamented that Salkey wasn’t there to write a masterful chronicle of the manifold events. “[A] g’town journal from you wd have been WOW: and that too i miss: you being there recording it all. i int doin’ a journal: though i cd have. in a sense, i int doin’ it out of respect to you,” he wrote in a letter on September 29, 1972. Brathwaite wrote that he “will miss you and john there, but recognize and admire yr stand….” What was this stand, exactly? Brathwaite mentions a letter Salkey sent him about his decision, but it was most likely lost along with the rest of Brathwaite’s library in 1988.
I already suspected that Salkey’s decision had to do with political controversies in Guyana in the months leading up to the festival. The young nation had seen violence between Indo- and Afro-Guyanese groups during the 60s, followed by the CIA-influenced election of Burnham’s PNP over Cheddi Jagan’s PPP. For more on how these issues surfaced during Carifesta, see the excellent foundational article by Ramaesh Bhagirat-Rivera. Prominent Indo-Guyanese organizations boycotted Carifesta because the organizers took money “from the Indian Immigration Fund,” established for the return of indentured laborers to India, in order to pay for construction projects. Rivera estimates that at the time of independence, the fund contained between 380-440,000 Guyanese dollars, a substantial portion of Carifesta’s overall expenses of $2.5 million.
Salkey’s papers confirm that these issues played a role in his absence. In the months leading up to the festival, Salkey received or gathered entire newspapers as well as article clippings about Carifesta. Some of articles about political controversies in Guyana were highlighted by Salkey in red, and he focused in particular on the Indian Immigration Fund and Indo-Guyanese boycotts of Carifesta. The dates of these articles show that he was actively deliberating these issues in January of 1972. He must have made his decision in early February of 1972, but Carifesta organizers did not receive word of his cancellation until mid to late March. Ironically, he received his official invitation only in late February. Letters from Vera and Ismith Khan dated February 10, 1972, allude to conversations about the political motivations the Burnham government may have had with Carifesta. Vera Khan mentions that she had “received word from Sam [Selvon] about the Guyana affair. […] What is going on there? […] Do you and John (and others?) intend to do anything besides not go, like send around notice of a boycott or somehow publicize the details? Ismith’s response was immediate: of course, not to go and to indicate as much in a directive of some sort with all you fellars’ signatures.” Ismith asked Salkey to “please let me know what’s up. You know that I would not want in any way to contribute to anything that ‘uses’ me…or anyone, and if as I understand it…if the Guyana Carifesta is a political move…I would not wish to join that thing…whatever it is.”
The vagueness of these letters tell us that whatever political machinations Salkey objected to, his objections were not obvious to his friends, nor stated in public. It does not appear that Ismith Khan, who actually ended up attending, ever issued an open letter of dissent, nor that Salkey would have signed one. Did Salkey object to Burnham’s particular political goals, or did he, like Ismith, take issue with the political ‘use’ of literature and writers like himself? Salkey was not the only writer who eventually soured on Burnham’s patronage. He had kept an article by Raschid Osman from September 10th, 1972, entitled “Novelist against Govt patronage fo the Arts,” about Bajan writer Austin Clarke, who “will never attend another Carifesta.” Brathwaite, too, was ultimately disappointed in the lackluster role Carifesta had given writers like him.
During this month, I found so much more; too much to mention here. Personal testimonies in letters about Carifesta, rare posters and ephemera, government documents detailing the intent and organization of the festival, and even a draft of a poem written in the midst of the festival: these bits of the past will most likely make it into the larger story of my dissertation. But the another joy I found in archival work lay in my unexpected encounter with stories and fragments that did not and probably will not make it into capital-H history. There, my encounter with Andrew’s past feels personal. I found traces of his personality in numerous funny anecdotes, surprising neologisms, decaying political pamphlets, personal correspondence (including fan letters from two legendary Toni’s: Morrison and Cade Bambara), cheeky insults and in-jokes (Sam Selvon had a knack for these), and the record of one of his deepest friendships falling apart (I mean the brotherly bond between Andrew and Edward Brathwaite). That’s the Andrew I’ll remember.