Nesbit Chhangur You’ll Always Be There

Review

Many, many years ago Nesbit Chhangur was dubbed Guyana’s Singing Cowboy, but not because he worked on the cattle ranches of Guyana’s vast Rupunnuni savannahs. It was more from his style and repertoire: distinctly American as seen and heard in the “cowboy and Indian” movies of the 1950s shown widely all over Guyana. Decades later his newest release You’ll Always Be There shows that he is still earnest in his delivery of American country music.

There are sixteen songs most of which have the same pace and musical texture except two tracks, Ponytail Samba and Good Morning Neighbour. They convey a calypsoesque sound. If you are lulled into melancholy in the first half you are jolted by these two renditions, there is even a synthesized pan introduction in Good Morning Neighbour. The brief stimulation of happy sound ends as abruptly it started. The remaining tracks are true to form American country music except the anthem-like Canadians We Will Always Be. [eCaroh/Ron]