HGP Nightly News – The widow of legendary Guyanese singer and songwriter Dave Martins has publicly endorsed a parliamentary critique of the government’s neglect of cultural icons, revealing that her own repeated efforts to have her late husband honored have been met with silence.
Mrs. Annette Arjoon was responding to remarks made in the National Assembly by WIN MP Odessa Primus, who argued that artists are left to “die powerless” and that the nation fails to preserve the legacies of its pioneers.
“Odessa Primus’s presentation hit a nerve. Because all that she said about us not honoring our heroes while they are alive, much less when dead, were spot on,” Arjoon-Martins stated.
She provided a personal account of her attempts to secure recognition for the “Not Easy” and “Blade of Grass” singer. Arjoon revealed that while her husband was still alive, she reached out to two government ministers with a specific proposal: to install a statue of Dave Martins with his guitar at the new roundabout entering his native Region Three. The request, she said, went unanswered.
“Since his passing one and a half year ago I have advocated tirelessly for his legacy to be preserved to no avail to date,” she added, noting she recently expressed a hope that it might happen within her lifetime.
Her testimony directly substantiates the broader allegations made by MP Primus, who during the budget debate lamented the powerless deaths of cultural figures like Henry Rodney and Habib Khan. Arjoon-Martins invoked the poignant lyric from one of her husband’s most famous songs to frame the ongoing issue: “The question in Dave’s song ‘Where are your heroes Caribbean?’ remains unanswered in Guyana.”
The statement from the artist’s widow transforms a political critique into a personal appeal, highlighting a recurring tension between national rhetoric celebrating Guyanese identity and the tangible mechanisms, or lack thereof, for preserving the contributions of those who helped define it.
