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Top photo: Radio announcer and comedian George McKesey broadcasting from his studios in the 1950's. It was located behind Paslow Building. He was such a funny guy, we listen to story times. Listen for that special music he played in at one o'clock in the afternoon my you know you are late getting back to school. run run lol ..

Michelle Rivana Buckley: Sunday afternoon was classical music. I remember the children’s corner program. I remember the story of Nicki Nicki nimble no so Timble. Also Mrs Maddox. Excellent stories. Our entire neighborhood had their radios on early morning. It was fun!

Edith Young: Good ole days when you wanted to send a request you stop by downstairs and by your request cards,and hear them in about 3 days time.

RiyannaLynn Smith MaCoon Young: Use to go there for the Colgate companionship.

The Ghost of George McKesey Still Haunts Us All!

Pinned down in a green and mahogany sofa set near the radio my father made from his own hands in our small but neatly arranged living room, the captivating voice of the Belizean storyteller, George McKesey, that Belizeans of the 1960s and 70s had come to know as the true theater of the mind, explodes in the best Kriol lingo. I never wanted to miss a Don't Laugh radio program.

My being was so entertained by the Belizean folklore stories he told. McKesey takes the Belizean cultural mind deep down into the core of his imagination, pulling out traditional Belizean narratives passed down from one generation to the next with excellent comic relief that my mother would say makes you laugh “til yo wahn split yo side!”. He was exceptionally talented as a Belizean historian, entertainer, and broadcaster who displayed oral excellence in technique and delivery although he never even went beyond the primary school grade.

For me as just a boy then, George McKesey was the epitome of Belizean radio that was in its infancy in terms of broadcasting. Those like him and other pioneers that came from out of the colonial British Kriol establishment and wrote and spoke in the Queen’s English with excellence and eloquence, built Radio Belize (formerly the British Honduras Broadcasting Service – BHBS)from the ground up into one of the best broadcasting networks in the Caribbean.

Radio Belize was everything, from entertainment, to local and foreign news from BBC, American radio soap operas like “Doctor Paul”, “Chee Chi”, and others, as well as Belizean Kriol folklore.

It was in the folklore that McKesey created a kind of genre of Belizean theater that came out of Radio Belize in the 1960s and then on to the stage at the Bliss Institute in the 1970s. Written, produced and directed in typical Belizean Kriol, this master of Belizean linguistics had amalgamated the Kriol lingua franca into the fabric of Belizean life that can be noted today as authentically “Belizean”. His broadcasting techniques using the spoken word of the Belizean people institutionalized Kriol as a language rather than a dialect.

He was one of the first, along with the legendary “Johnny Kwaku” (who was George Gabb), to tell stories on the radio using Kriol. And when he told them, it was like an imaginary television screen was beaming at you in the room though Belize did not have television in those days. You just could see it and could not stop listening for every word was so well pronounced as to make you see the action.

McKesey incorporated the anthropology of Belizean Kriol vocabulary, proverbs, norms, sayings, music and dance using soundtracks of speech to dramatize the plot, raising action and climax of his stories. The most famous of them were “John Di Chiney Man”, “Midnight at Di Graveyard”, “Siman an Det”, and “Bra Hanancy an di Craab.”

To prove his point that Kriol is a language and not a dialect, McKesey wrote and produced a book in 1974 called, “The Belizean Lingo”, that compiled Belizean Kriol proverbs, vocabulary words, and sayings, in perhaps one of the first Kriol dictionaries. It also included a radio diary of his broadcasting memoirs and dialogue of his shows that he broadcast on Radio Belize during his career as a civil servant there. It’s a rich collection of the Belizean culture all intertwined within one of the most scholarly presentations that appears to have gone over the heads of Belizean academics. Whether McKesey’s work has been ignored for the mere fact that the black petty bourgeois of Belizean society had seen Kriol as “corruptions” to the English language, the visibility of “The Belizean Lingo” appears to have vanished from Belizean high schools, bookshelves and libraries where English has been taught as a primary language.

Perhaps the jury is still out on whether it is better to teach Belizean children nationwide in the African-originated so-called “Broken English” rather than the European-originated English language. Studies in education have continued to show internationally that African and Indigenous children learn better in the language of their culture that is not necessarily English. Although there is a colonial mindset that still affects Belize after one of its most noteworthy linguists had passed on, most of the results of what is coming out of Belize today in relation to Belizean education within the underserved communities nationwide have not been all that good.

And some of the reasons may be pointing to just what George McKesey may have been pointing out in his research that Belizean Kriol has “grown out of English and other languages”. Because some Belizean children are still writing and speaking Kriol in English, Belize may need to improvise its educational curriculum using English as a second language to Kriol so as to produce better results.

The school of Belizean lingo that the legendary Belizean linguist George McKesey innovated, continues to influence Belizean culture directly and indirectly through the language of broadcasting we hear on Belizean media now, especially the grassroots KREMANDALA in Belize City. The old Belize capital has become the Mecca of the Belizean Kriol communities. Nowhere else do we hear more Belizean Kriol spoken in broadcasting in Belize today than on KREM radio and television. Perhaps that is what it means in Kriole to be “Belizean tu di bone”. The ghost of George McKesey still haunts us all.

Top photograph courtesy Jape Greg Belize.

Radio Belize 1972, those were the glory days of Radio Belize: Eustace Usher, Everal Waight, Seferino Coleman, Guy Sandyford, Anita Chong. Anthony (Mac) Moreno used to work there as a technician. I remember that Gerald Garbutt also worked there. I believe there was another announcer named Howell Hulse. Sergio Gomez broadcast in Spanish. Frank J Spooner was the Architect for that building, known as The Albert Cattouse Building, it was built in the mid to late 1960's and housed Radio Belize (later BCB), Cable & Wireless. I remember hearing ZIK2 broadcasts. I think one of the pioneers of that station was Monrad Metzgen. That must have been in the late '30s or early '40s. The transmission tower was at Newtown Barracks. In the 1980s Rene Villanueva was the GM. Sergeant Major used to work there as the radio Librarian.

Robert Alexander Mitchell Sr. used to tell Anansi stories on Radio Belize back in the late 70s, early 80s on the show Kiddies Corner, and would sing bruk down creole songs. Everyone knew him as Mr. Bob Mitchell from Flowers Bank Village.

In the 90s, Radio Belize and Friends FM studios and offices occupied the first and third floors, BTL was on the second floor, and Studios were one the third floor. Carol Ann Moore and Therese Pollard Matus worked there as international telephone operators with Cable & Wireless. Operator 105. BTL and C&W were at the same switch Board. Cable & Wireless occupied the ground floor up to 1981 while Gustavo Mahler was Executive Assistant. C&W moved when they built their own building on St. Thomas Street on the present BTL compound.

Accounts Clerks at Cable and Wireless worked at the counter (Regent Street entrance), and would take payments for overseas calls made in the kiosks and would also read telegrams which were received for the British soldiers to their operator over the phone.

For a lot of folks, it was their first ride in an elevator. They would sneak in and ride it!

David Chavarria: Gertrude Smith was a wonderful announcer at Radio Belize! And Brad Pat was great at country music and announcing. The other lady is Anita Cheong.

Dora Riverol: Brad Pattico's specialty in those days was country and western... he also sang it and was good at it having just the right voice for it... this before he got into Belize folk music.

Harriet Scarborough: That's my girl, Gertrude! One of the first few female announcers on radio. I swear I still hear her playlist on LoveFM whenever I visit.

Steven Anthony Perriott: i worked there in 1981 or 82, DJ Rogers was the name. I had a show called Disco Sounds... as a matter of fact if it wasn't for Evan Gordon i may never have gotten in this industry.

Tom Greenwood Sr.: I went to work there at Radio Belize as an announcer and programmer on the 3rd floor 1964 to 1977.

Jeremy A. Enriquez: I remember as a kid I often tried to mimic your voice Tom, as I read aloud to my sisters, pretending to read the news. It was from a childhood admiration.

Myrtha Perez: Yes Tom I remember Teen Tempo always use to look forward to it Good days.

Neima Castillo: I was a bilingual announcer previously from The British Honduras Broadcasting Service, Neima Castillo. BHBS was housed behind Paslow Building.

Romel Perdomo: Seferino Coleman used to cross the street and come to our liquor store.

Mrs Lydia Ramirez in the two photos, just above and below. Top photo at San Pedro Airport with Diana Perez, bottom photo during carnaval. These two photos courtesy Ambergris Today & Gustavo Ramirez

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