The Wordsworth McAndrew Awards celebrate Guyanese

Guyana

Guyana , officially the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, previously the colony of British Guiana, is a sovereign state on the northern coast of South America that is culturally part of the Anglophone Caribbean. Guyana was a former colony of the Dutch and of the British...

 who have made important contributions to the country's cultural life. Awardees' talents include broadcasting, cultural promotion, drama, music, painting, theatre, and writing. The awards, founded in 2002, are presented by the Guyana Folk Festival, a Brooklyn

Brooklyn

Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...

, NY, USA-based organization.

The awards honour Wordsworth McAndrew

Wordsworth McAndrew

Wordsworth McAndrew was a leading Guyana folklorist, poet, and creative artist.He was born in 1936 in Georgetown, British Guiana, to Winslow Alexander McAndrew and Ivy McAndrew. His father was a schoolteacher, musician, and catechist, who taught in rural Anglican schools...

, one of Guyana's leading folklorists, poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

s and creative artists.

The 2004 Wordsworth McAndrew Awardees were selected from a list of 150 persons nominated by Guyanese worldwide. The Awards Ceremony took place on 3 September 2004 at the Rose Castle Grand Ballroom in Brooklyn, New York. The 38 awardees were:

• Andre Sobryan - Theatre
• Aubrey Cummings
  Aubrey Cummings
  Aubrey Cummings was a renowned Guyanese musician. He was born in 1947 and grew up in the Alberttown/Queenstown neighborhoods of Georgetown...
  
   - Music
• Aubrey Williams
  Aubrey Williams
  Aubrey Williams was a prominent artist and art lecturer in the United Kingdom.Williams was educated and worked in the Civil Service...
  
   - Painting
• Basil Hinds - Broadcasting
• Bert Rogers - Music
• Charlie Knights - Music
• Chuck Girard
  Chuck Girard
  Chuck Girard is a pioneer of Contemporary Christian music. He was born August 27, 1943 in Los Angeles, California, and moved to Santa Rosa, California in his young teens...
  
   - Music
• Claire Goring - Cultural Promotion
• Clairmonte Taitt - Broadcasting
• Daphne Elaine Rogers - Drama
• David Dabydeen
  David Dabydeen
  David Dabydeen is a Guyanese-born critic, writer and novelist.Dabydeen was born in Berbice, Guyana, his birth registered at New Amsterdam Registrar of Births as David Horace Clarence Harilal Sookram...
  
   - Writing
• Denis Williams
  Denis Williams
  Denis Williams was a Guyanese painter, author and archaeologist.Williams' early promise as a painter won him a two-year British Council Scholarship to the Camberwell School of Art in London in 1946. He lived in London for the next ten years, during which he taught fine art and held several one-man...
  
   - Painting
• Desiree Edgehill - Drama
• Eddie Hooper - Music
• Eddie Rogers
  Eddie Rogers
  Eddie Rogers was an American football player. He was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1968....
  
   - Music
• Edgar Mittelholzer
  Edgar Mittelholzer
  Edgar Mittelholzer was a Guyanese novelist. Born in New Amsterdam, the country's second largest town, he was the son of William Austin Mittelholzer and his wife Rosamond Mabel, née Leblanc...
  
   - Writing
• Henry Muttoo - Theatre
• Henry Rodney -Theatre
• Jan Carew
  Jan Carew
  Jan Rynveld Carew is a novelist, playwright, poet and educator. His works, diverse in their forms and multifaceted, makes of Jan Carew an important intellectual of the Caribbean world...
  
   - Writing
• John Agard
  John Agard
  John Agard is an Afro-Guyanese playwright, poet and children's writer, now living in the United Kingdom.-Background:...
  
   & Grace Nichols
  Grace Nichols
  Grace Nichols is a Guyanese poet. She was born in Georgetown, Guyana, in 1950. After working in Guyana as a teacher and journalist, she emigrated to the UK in 1977. Much of her poetry is characterised by Caribbean rhythms and culture, and influenced by Guyanese and Amerindian folklore.Her first...
  
   - Writing
• John Rickford - Writing
• Keith Proctor - Music
• Malcolm Hall - Dance
• Marc Matthews
  Marc Matthews
  Marc Matthews is a writer who was born in Guyana in the 1940s. He received, he reports, "a mid-Victorian education" at Queen's College, Georgetown....
  
   - Theatre
• Michael Gilkes
  Michael Gilkes (writer)
  Michael Gilkes is a Caribbean critic, dramatist, filmmaker and university lecturer. He has been involved in theater for over 40 years...
  
   - Writing
• Moses Josiah - Music
• Philip Forrester - Music
• Pitra Pyari - Dance
• Rector Schultz - Music
• Romanie Kalicharran - Dance
• Ron Robinson - Theatre
• Rudolph Shaw - Theatre
• Sheik Sadeek
  Sheik Sadeek
  Sheik Sadeek is a writer who was born in Guyana. His stories provide a colorful and lyrical evocation of the rural, Guyanese landscape.Some of his better known works are Windswept, Bundarie Boy, Namaste, The Pork-knockers, and Song Of The Sugarcanes .His poetry anthologies are Dreams And...
  
   - Writing
• Uncle Ramdhani - Music
• Victor Davson - Painting
• Victor Forsythe - Broadcasting
• Wilson Harris
  Wilson Harris
  Sir Theodore Wilson Harris is a Guyanese writer. He initially wrote poetry, but has since become a well-known novelist and essayist. His writing style is often said to be abstract and densely metaphorical, and his subject matter wide-ranging.Wilson Harris was born in New Amsterdam in what was then...
  
   - Writing
• Wrickford Dalgetty - Music