Walter Ferguson

Walter Ferguson Byfield (7 May 1919 – 25 February 2023) was a Panamanian-born Costa Rican calypso singer-songwriter. He was popularly known as Mr. Gavitt or Segundo, in his hometown of Cahuita. Biography Walter Ferguson was born in Guabito, Panama on 7 May 1919, the oldest of six children. His father, Melsha Lorenzo Ferguson, was a Jamaican farmer for the United Fruit Company, and his mother, Sarah Byfield Dykin, a Costa Rican seamstress and baker of Jamaican descent. When Walter was two, his parents moved from Panama to the small fishing village of Cahuita in the Costa Rican province of Limón, where he ended up spending the rest of his life, almost never leaving it. A precocious musical talent, Ferguson showed an interest in singing and music from a young age:“I had a clear vocation for music from a very tender age. No one ever taught me anything. My mum told me that when I wasn’t even six, every time I heard someone else singing, I would sing too. […] Maybe I couldn't get all the lyrics right, but the intonation was good. She used to tell me that I would become a great musician, and that I would have never needed to work the land." When he was seven, his mother sent him to the Caribbean port city of Limón to live with her sister Doris, who offered to help him learn to read, write and play music on her piano. His aunt's discipline and rules, however, didn't resonate well with young Walter, and he soon asked to go back to his beloved Cahuita. Without any formal musical education, he taught himself to play the dulzaina, the harmonica, the ukulele, the guitar and the clarinet, his favourite instrument. Inspired by older calypsonians such as Mighty Sparrow and Papa Houdini, he started writing his own songs and attending all the calypso challenges around the Caribbean coast.