Legacy of broadcasting icon Eugene Godfried hailed in Caribbean and US
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| Published on Thursday, April 9, 2009 |
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WASHINGTON, USA: Veteran Washington-based broadcaster Von Martin joined thousands all across the Caribbean, North America, and elsewhere, mourning Eugene Godfried, the champion radio broadcaster, community organizer, music producer and ethnomusicologist, who died this past Sunday in Willemstad, in his native Curaçao. The director of Radio Eugene Godfried International was 56, and was buried in Curaçao.
Martin’s Caribbeana program on Washington’s WPFW 89.3 FM conducted a massive tribute to Godfried, whose death was being called the closing of an important chapter in the political life of the Caribbean in general and the Dutch Caribbean in particular.
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| Eugene Godfried |
Eugene Godfried Presilia, a much-revered intellectual and long-time Director of Radio Havana Cuba’s Caribbean Division, died Sunday morning following a massive stroke he suffered a week earlier. He leaves two daughters, Yomini and Nohraya Godfried in Curaçao; one daughter, Krisjocelyn Godfried in Oriente, Cuba; father Alwin Godfried; sisters Alwina and Nathaly, brothers Egbert, Alwin Jr. and Nathaniel, and a host of other family and friends.
“As activist, as radical politician, as radio journalist, as researcher and propagandist Eugene articulated a constant message of challenge and change, of hope and transformation, from one end of the Caribbean to the other,” said James Millette, a professor of African American Studies at Oberlin College in Ohio, in a stirring appreciation he wrote lionizing Godfried whom he has known since the early 1970s. “For more than thirty years the name and the activities of Eugene Godfried had to be reckoned with in the region.”
Offering a synopsis of how “the dead hand of history” gripped the Dutch Antilles in particular, Professor Millette said Eugene himself, in his many writings and speeches about his life and work identified that reality and that period as important in the building of his own political consciousness and in the creation of a new consciousness in Curaçao. He said that “the period of the 1970s and after was for him [Godfried] the best and the worst of times.”
It was the best of times because, as Godfried often put it himself, “it opened up a whole vista of intimate interaction with the people of Curaçao and other parts of the Netherlands Antilles and with the broader Caribbean. In the service of that mission he threw himself vigorously into the radicalization processes in the region between 1969 and 1983.” And, Millette continued, it was the worst of times “because it soon became clear that the struggle for political liberation in the Netherlands Antilles would be frustrated by forces rooted in the history of the region and the islands themselves: forces that had frustrated his ideological mentors and progenitors and were also frustrating him. It is against these forces that Eugene battled for most of his life, and it was that struggle that he conducted right up to the time of his death.”
Millette waxed especially lyrical as he eulogized this “very cultured, very sophisticated… the quintessential Caribbean man,” who was fluent in nearly all the languages of the region —from Papiamentu to Patois to Kreyol to Sranang to French and English and Spanish and Dutch and Portuguese, to name only a few. He willingly interpreted the various cultures in language and in meaning to each other and to all those seriously interested in knowing the real Caribbean.
Added Millette: “He was at home everywhere: at ease in Trinidad and Tobago as he was in Martinique and Guadeloupe, intelligible and engaging as he spoke of Surinam and Curaçao and Cuba and the Dominican Republic, completely informed and informative as he spoke about the latest developments in Guyana, or as he reminisced on the history of Jamaica or Grenada or St. Vincent or Barbados or the wider Black diaspora. He was completely at ease discussing Toussaint or Aristide, Marti or Fidel, Bogle or Boukman, Piar or Nanny, Nkrumah or Mandela; Maurice Bishop or Michael Manley, Lula or Chavez, Bolivar or Maceo, Butler or Jagan, and of course he would be nearly delirious when talking about his own homegrown heroes –Kodjo and Magdalena and Kwasi.”
WPFW’s Von Martin, meanwhile, in his letter of heartfelt remembrances sent to Godfried’s daughter Nohraya, says the people of Cuba especially “will have lost a most invaluable treasure, for he was a voice that did so well for them, for all of us.” He accentuated Godfried’s influence in delivering “a true interpretation and picture of Cuba that no one else has been able to give.”
A close friend of Godfried’s for many years, Martin hailed the late broadcasting icon as one of the leading voices of Caribbean and black movement, and notes that “the world now has a better vision of the plight of our African brothers and sisters in the struggle in Cuba and further in Latin America” because of the work of Eugene Godfried. Eugene was such a uniquely brilliant man who had an impact on “any person who was in his presence,” Martin goes on to note. “People who met him were always amazed at his knowledge and his consciousness about humanity.”
And, while Eugene Godfried has met heads of state, prime ministers of the Caribbean and other notables, he was most passionate about the concerns of the ordinary citizen and “worked tirelessly for the cause of our African brothers and sisters born in the Diaspora.” Eugene recognized the importance radio played and still plays in our people’s lives. It is still one of the most critical mediums that reach the common man, insists Martin, who until mid-2008 produced the English radio broadcast for the Organization of American States from its studios in Washington, D.C., for nearly 30 years.
His webcasting of Radio EugeneGodfried International has been one of those revolutionary mechanisms which have touched thousands of peoples, Martin said. “Curaçao has truly lost a most valuable son of the soil. The Caribbean has lost a major resource. I will continue to be a beacon of his friendship and impact, for through my own website http://www.caribbeana.org/ I will link people to his work.” | | | | Reads : 1835 | | | |
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