Walter Ferguson – A wonder West Indian child

A child was born on May 7, 1919 in the town of Guabito in today’s border line between Panamá and Costa Rica, then a fragile area of undefined and disputed limits among both countries. That child was Walter Ferguson Byfield, the son of West Indian immigrants who arrived in this area to build a railway, and after, to join the United Fruit Company (UFCO) industry.

Nobody could imagine then, the talent of that humble little newborn baby and the glory eventually involved in his musical work for him and his ancestors.

Soon, his family moved to the town of Cahuita in the Costa Rican Republic’s province of Limón on the Caribbean coast, where his father became a small farmer associated with the UFCO, but as an independent supplier of bananas, and later of cocoa.

Towns like Cahuita and Puerto Limón were a replica of the environments and landscapes of Jamaica, since most of the former immigrant settlers preserved the customs of their West Indian ancestors, cultural practices, history and vision of the world.

Walter grew up on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica among British-inspired cricket matches, picnics on the beach, religious services – Anglican, Baptist or Methodist Church – among others. Always aware of hybrid cults of African and European colonial beliefs, such as Pocomía, present in the province during his young years, but harshly repressed by the then government in the decade of the 1930s.

LEARNED TO PLAY INSTRUMENTS

From religious chants to popular songs heard on the radio, Walter learned to play instruments like the harmonica, ukulele, guitar and clarinet by his own means, rejecting the formal music lessons offered by a wealthy aunt who lived in Port Limón, where he spent sometime learning the organ.

His soundscape included Jamaican mento and square dances, where the clarinet was a central instrument. With his band, ‘Miserable’, he performed the fashionable Caribbean music of that time, rumba, pasillo, mento and bolero, as well as swing and blues.

In the 1970s he retired from music, performing and started his most creative stage in life, writing hundreds of Jamaican-inspired mento traditional songs, framed in the calypso etiquette. Songs kept the spirit of the old mento, but added the philosophy of newer calypso, emulator of critical and socio-political issues, without neglecting humour and satire.

In the last three decades of his life, he became an extraordinary figure in Costa Rica and Latin America, considered one of the greatest composers of popular songs of calypso. He received in his house great figures like Chalkdust and Devon Seale, Latino artistes like Javier Ruibal and Perotá Chingó. Two presidents of the republic and other distinguish visitors too. Walter Ferguson is the only Costa Rican artiste included in the Smithsonian Institute music collection. His songs were performed by 23 artistes from 16 countries on the album, 100 Years of Calypso: Walter Ferguson, released in 2019 for his 100th birthday anniversary, including Jorge Drexler, Devon Seale, Inti Illimani, Perotá Chingó, Marcel Padey, Deborah Dixon and the Costa Rican Kawe Calypso, Editus and Cantoamérica.

OFFICIAL RECOGNITIONS

He received several official recognitions, like the Popular Culture National Prize and the designation of the day of his birth as the National Calypso Day by the government of Costa Rica, the Reca Mora Prize, the highest recognition to a national musician by the Association of Musical Authors and Composers ACAM, and the doctor honoris causa from the National University of Costa Rica.

Only two days before his death at the age of 104 years on February 25, he received the designation of Honorary Citizen by the National Congress of the Republic of Costa Rica.

Walter’s songs, framed on Jamaican roots, sung in Caribbean Patois, emulate landscapes, food (callaloo), legends and tales (Anancy stories), magical religious myths (obeah), and the entire wonderful Caribbean world that luckily Costa Rica received starting in 1872 the beginning of the migration of Jamaicans looking for work in Central America, that today binds our two nations in a shared heritage of our people and culture.

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