The Great Gatsby, the literary classic which will be portrayed on film for the fourth time since its 1925 publication as a novel, is likely to include a song by American-Bajan songwriting genius Irving Burgie when it is released next May.
The romantic drama, based on the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, will have as its main star Leonardo Dicaprio and is expected to feature in its sound track Day-O, the evergreen hit penned by Burgie and William Attaway in 1956 for Harry Belafonte’s million-selling album Calypso.
“It feels great to have that happen at this stage of the game because that just goes along with the first break in the movies for my work when I wrote the songs for the film Island In The Sun back in 1957,” said 88-year-old Burgie, who was in Barbados this week to present the annual national Irving Burgie Award to local literary students Racquel Griffith, Mark Ramsay and Nicholas Roach-Holder.
“In 1989 my work was also featured in the movie Beetlejuice, and then we had a music video with Li’l Wayne called 6 Foot 7 Foot two years ago which was No. 1 on the charts. The whole thing is coming back now and I’m looking forward to The Great Gatsby which should be out in the early part of the year. You never know what can happen in the movies, but I’ve got my fingers crossed,” he told the WEEKEND NATION.
Burgie, who is based in New York, said he was also in Barbados to discuss the shooting of a television documentary, which will be produced locally and marketed worldwide.
While he did not elaborate on that, the songwriter and former folk singer who was born to a Barbadian mother in Brooklyn on July 28, 1924, said he would be releasing his second autobiography next month.
He explained that the previous book had given the impression that Belafonte had penned the globally famous songs that made the 1956 album Calypso the first ever to sell a million copies worldwide.
“He sang the [11] songs but I wrote eight of them, so I found it necessary to come up with a revision of my autobiography and to set the record straight,” he said with a chuckle.
Calling Barbados his second home, Burgie said his mother Viola Callender was born in Watts Village, St George, and while he himself was born in Brooklyn, he had grown up on West Indian food and culture.
“In those days, people from different parts of the world came and resided in New York. They settled in the neighbourhoods where their friends were, friends from the old country. West Indians were no different and settled in south Brooklyn,” he said.
“I became quite associated with the Caribbean and Island In The Sun was about the black and white issues that were similar to the civil rights movement, and several Caribbean islands were moving toward independence at the height of the civil rights movement in the 1950s.
“I was involved in the civil rights movement in the United States, and it was therefore easy for me to become involved in the independence movement of the islands.”
As a songwriter, he said most poets were basically lyricists and were therefore poised to make their mark on the lucrative music industry as he had done.
“The lyrics of the songs are the most important part and . . . even though poetry is something you’re hard pressed to make a living at, as a lyricist the whole world can get to know you. In the television and recording business it’s a thing that you can make quite a bit of money from,” he explained.
“I still live on royalties, that’s a feat. Poetry is really the key to writing. Music is one of the biggest industries in the world, and a song is poetry,” said the author of the National Anthem.
Hence, the local literary award which he started with his own funding in 1982 in honour of his mother.
“Despite a tradition of dance and music in Barbados, I felt the writing was weak in local schools at the time,” recalled the writer of classics like Jamaica Farewell, Come Back Liza and the Banana Boat Song popularly known as Day-O.
The Great Gatsby was first screened in 1926, a silent film starring Warner Baxter in the title role of Jay Gatsby.
In 1949 it starred Alan Ladd, and in 1974 featured Robert Redford in the title role and Mia Farrow as Gatsby’s ever-elusive love Daisy Buchanan.