Guyanese Online

Like most people in their growing up years, I discovered early the influence music can have in our lives, ranging from birthday parties to wedding receptions to special days in the year, and in celebrations big and small in venues ranging from simple to elaborate. Also in my 50-plus years as a musician, I have seen that influence being played out in a range of occasions in a range of countries, with joy and exhilaration so frequently the result.

I readily confess to always being taken aback by this reaction on December 31, in many different countries, with different populations, but with me not fully understanding what was playing out.  We don’t see it at a christening, where a new life is being celebrated, or at a wedding, where an exciting union has been joined, or at a funeral, where heads are bowed for the passing of a singular soul.

Surely those would qualify as most fitting for such treatment, but for some reason it is only at December’s end when this music is heard; it is a fixture at no other time.

I can further attest that several other musicians have expressed the same bewilderment at this one song, on just this one occasion, suddenly creating this total shift in mood in the crowd for those three or four minutes, only to resume just as suddenly with the previous frenzy and celebration. Musicians are involved in delivering it but the exercise itself is peculiar, going from cheese to chalk, momentarily, and then back to cheese again.  I can hear the comments regarding “remembering the past” etc., but it has always struck me as odd that only on New Year’s Eve is that remembrance eulogized in this way.

I can also hear the suggestion by some that I should take the time to explore the history of Auld Lang Syne as we have come to know it, and I suspect that my raising the subject here may indeed help to provide the answer. I end by stressing that no other day in the year has this joint display of almost total abandon, halted by a brief moment of solemnity, with heads bowed and hands over hearts, and then immediately back to even more frenzied flat out abandon.  As someone on the stage, repeatedly standing there and seeing the twin exercise, I have seen it without ever fully unravelling it.

I appreciate the remembrance as well as the celebration functions taking place, but why only then?

Perhaps the answer is that Old Year’s Night is actually not so much in remembering the past, but in the high expectation of the coming year with developments to benefit all.  Indeed, one suspects that in this year of COVID, the country, and indeed the world, is awash with mankind looking forward anxiously to better days, probably making the revelry this year after Auld Lang Syne more frenzied than ever.  I won’t be on a bandstand here this year to see it, but it will surely be so as we turn our gaze to 2021 and onward. Happy New Year, folks. Live in a manner to keep you and yours safe.

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