Masquerade in the Guyana Museum on a Saturday afternoon..

Far Left: Joshua Tujay Macey: Right Mad Cow, Stilt Walker and flouncers from Victoria Renegades

Masquerade 

Saturday afternoon, humid. Loud drums, triangle and flute making noise all over the Guyana National Museum - Museum which is usually quiet except for traffic outside. The music is floating around all the old things.. historical things - which relate to Guyana.. the beats and tweets I imagine could be absorbed by the things which are in cases .. things which are 'dead' in a way.. dead history.... 

Masquerade though is living history.. 

and so I turn the corner and see the masqueraders.. and the musicians and the people brought together by the Masquerade Association Guyana Inc  for the first Masquerade Day on 29 November, 2025.

 A man tells me 'masquerade is for outside, open spaces not inside .. too confining' and it is true.. but something about how this masquerade is weaving .. the Museum 'used to have' an exhibit in one alcove of masquerade but it was not there.. there is now though the 'oil corner'..

The museum has space which must have been beautiful back in the day.. to the west. I have passed there many times and never saw the Masquerade Mural , I guess because cars parked on the street in front and vendors around and so hide it. So the masquerade there associated with the history , and the museum.. but well.. still not out there in a way!.

 Red House

 There is a floor model of the Red House  - colonial building used to house the Colonial Secretary, then Premier Cheddi Jagan and some Government offices and so after independence). 

Something about how the Man on Stilts is towering over this model, when back in the days when Red House was used , masqueraders would not have been invited near the Red House. Or the Museum.

A kind of revolution in a way. What if the flouncers mashed up the floor model to say to hell with colonial histories and legacies.

I see an empty plastic bottle that must have held water which is placed on the Red House floor model. I don't know if this is a revolutionary act .. somebody who vex with Guyana like the thousands of others who just throw their garbage on the land and country which probably they think treats them like rubbish.

I pick up the bottle and go ask for rubbish bin. I want to move to the beats of the drums and the sounds of the flute with the plastic bottle which was on the Red House floor model. 

The staff member of the Museum takes the bottle from me to throw away. She and I agree that yeah.. things crazy in this place.. people don't care. 

But hopefully we wouldn't through plastic bottles or boxes or other rubbish on masquerade and on our history, and that like the members of the masquerade bands, find ways to hold on to traditions which nurtured us like keeping the place clean.. 

 And maybe the 2026  Masquerade Day could be held in the dead historic Parliament Buildings ..and the drums and flutes and triangle and dances will bring the Parliament .. Guyana- back to life..