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Jamaican History February 2004 |
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George Davis Goode was born in Port Royal in 1882.
His father, who was a ship’s carpenter and also kept a small grocery shop, made sure that his son, and his daughter,
Florence, received as good an education as possible. The children attended the Government Elementary School, and then were
taught by tutors paid for by their father. They also received music lessons, at which George did so well that by the age of
15 he was the organist at St Peter’s Church. Later as his ability as an organist became known he was appointed organist
at the Kingston Parish Church in 1906, and then at St Michael’s in 1910, where he served until 1960. From this time
he became a close friend of another bright young organist, Samuel Kitchen, of the East Queen Street Baptist Church. In 1909
he married Hilda Dawkins, whom he had met when he was at the Parish Church where she was a member of the choir.
George Goode had also become a competent scientist. After gaining an unpaid job as an apprentice at the Government Laboratory at Hope in 1903, he quickly improved his qualifications; by 1905 he was Second Assistant Chemist in the Sugar Department, and in 1907 started teaching agricultural science. In 1910, when the Farm School was set up, he was appointed as a master there. From 1912 he worked on the clerical side of the Ministry of Agriculture, holding different posts of responsibility until his retirement in 1942. George Goode is, however, chiefly to be remembered for his contributions to music in Jamaica. In 1909 he and Samuel Kitchen started the Kingston Glee Singers, who delighted audiences with their unaccompanied singing until the early 1930s. In 1913, as organist at St Michael’s, he organised a festival in honour of the great Afro-British composer, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, who had died in the previous year. The festival was a musical triumph, though it failed financially. Goode’s most memorable contribution was his involvement with the Diocesan Festival Choir which he conducted from its inception in 1925 until his retirement on grounds of ill health in 1952.
George Goode taught many pupils to play the organ,
and was involved in most musical activities of the period. He gave lectures on musical, scientific and religious topics. In
1951 he was awarded the Gold Musgrave Medal in recognition of his outstanding contribution to music in Jamaica. Only one person
had been awarded the Gold Medal before this – Edna Manley in 1943. He died in December 1960, mourned alike by Jamaicans
and those abroad who valued his dedicated service to the promotion and appreciation of music in his homeland.
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