Barbados is currently caught up in the music and excitement of Crop-Over, but the man considered “father” of Barbados’ biggest festival is tuned out.At age 92, an ailing Julian Marryshow merely reflects on the event he conceptualised over three decades ago.His eyes light up over the memories, when he talks about the many cultural events of the festival, mostly so as he relives the experience of being among throngs of people following the decorated donkey cart parade through Broad Street. And he regrets such early cultural features of the festival are no more, replaced by “wuk up” and “raise yuh hand in the air”. “This wuk up and hand in the air I don’t approve of” he told the Weekend Nation in an interview on the patio of his Hastings, Christ Church home yesterday.Marryshow was heading his own advertising agency when the Barbados Tourist Board invited advertising agencies to submit proposals for a project that would sensitise Barbadians to the importance of the tourism industry. Marryshow’s company won with its submission Project T- Tourism Needs You, You Need Tourism.It turned out to be his passport to a job with the Barbados Tourist Board as public relations consultant and later consultant public relations manager.Working with the Barbados Tourist Board, he realised that June was a particularly dead month for Barbados’ tourism. “I felt that we could do something to promote that month”.Celebration by slaves Then, through research by Flora Spencer, he discovered the celebration by slaves on Barbados’ plantations at the end of the sugar cane crop. Thus was born Crop-Over in June 1974.“How I did it? I had divided each activity into groups and you had a group leader and he reported back to the main committee, which was chaired by Emile Straker, and there was Livvy Burrowes.” The people mentioned were all members of the Tourist Board of the day.Last canesThe festival opened with the cutting of the last canes, and Marryshow asked plantations to leave some cane behind to be harvested symbolically for the festival.“I had the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Tourism, I had other officials not only being there, but cutting the canes . . . We had a man to demonstrate how to cut the canes, then we did it ourselves until we got enough canes to fill the cart.”That dray cart load of canes was later decorated and led the very popular cart parade that opened the event. Hotels competed, entering their own decorated donkey carts in the competition, and thousands lined the streets of Bridgetown and every vantage point afforded by business houses along the way to witness the parade. Regional artistesMarryshow recalls that the Crop-Over of yesteryear was filled with sporting and cultural activities – goat and donkey cart racing, and he invited dancers and other artistes from Martinique, Cuba and Trinidad to participate. These regional artistes were also a feature at the plantation fairs. “The whole island was involved in Crop-Over, and there were events all over the island.”As a festival with its roots in the plantation, Crop-Over saw well organised fairs at plantation grounds that drew hundreds of patrons.Disappointed“I was disappointed that the plantation fairs were discontinued,” Marryshow said. “We tried to have one north, south, east and west. We would have a merry time, with trying to catch the greased pig, climbingthe greased pole.” Admission to those fairs was $1 for adults and fifty cents for children. While these fairs provided an opportunity for participation by rural communities, activities like the barge show in the Inner Basin of the Careenage in Bridgetown attracted people from all over the island.There was also a calypso competition. Reflecting on it now, Marryshow says in jest, “Praise God I did not have calypsonians as they have today. People were given tokens as prizes. They were not paid any money so they could not go on strike.”He recalls the legendary Sir Don (Don Marshall) and the Mighty Dragon winning the crown.Today’s Kadoomentis yesterday’s Trinidad-styled “ole mas” at the Marine Hotel where small groups competed.Marryshow, a Grenadian by birth, left Barbados shortly after the Ministry of Culture took over Crop-Over in the early 1980s, only returning about ten years later.Premier cultural eventThe festival has evolved, and the “father” of Crop-Over is happy that it is now Barbados’ premier cultural event, attracting not only Barbadians from throughout the diaspora, but hundreds of other visitors from around the world as well. He is a “little disappointed” that it has become more of a Trinidad-styled carnival than the cultural event that he conceptualised.And he remarks: “Since I left the Tourist Board nobody has ever asked me to organise anything about it. I have never been asked anything about Crop-Over and I have never looked at it.”Instead he is happy with his quiet, retired style of life. “I have just taken my new guard at cricket. I have to keep batting until I am 100,” quipped Crop-Over’s pioneer.
