Guyanese Online

  Stabroek News – July 4, 2021 – By Dave Martins

Looking back on the story of the emergence of my Tradewinds band in Caribbean music, it is interesting that I did not have any burning desire to be a professional musician when I migrated from Guyana to Toronto, Canada, in the early 1950s. There was no powerful impulse for the move, as I remember it. I was living in Vreed-en-Hoop, working at Atkinson Field (now Timehri) and my elder sister Cecelia had moved to Canada and was really excited up there and it kind of evolved that the other Martins should do the same thing, so I was the second one in the family to go.

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I was still wet behind the ears, didn’t have a clue about what I wanted to do in life, but Toronto sounded good, with all the opportunities, so I went, simple as that, with very little accoutrements other than the hand-made acoustic guitar I had bought in Timehri via a Brazilian passing through.          Continue reading →