Soucoyan

by Alwyn St Omer

Our Art, Constantly bombarded with exterior forms and patterns has nevertheless, groped blindly in the darkness – in which it is cast – to find a firm foothold. The very foundations of our culture reverberate with the incessant soundtracks from foreign ‘flicks’ that inhabit our television screens with a purposeful delight in altering the basic psyche of our island people. This pattern is repeated in the music piped through our airwaves and the pirated CDs purchased at a discount on any street corner. The only bastion that has endured appears to be our Art and our Artists. Our younger playwrights are gradually being sucked in by meaningless ‘Hollywood Style’ plots and our writers, particularly our poets seek sanctuary in an imported ‘Rap Sub-culture’ that appears alien on their lips like a falsetto. Against this dismal cyclorama, a thin ray of hope shines, through the picture-board tales of Alwyn St. Omer. Soucoyan, a graphic tale, by Alwyn St. Omer may not be the first of its kind in the region moreover, definitely not in this hemisphere. However, it is one that takes an inward look at our origins - at the source of our fables – to distill their old alchemy in a new genre, infusing it with a freshness of time and place. The characters from these fables hounded our childhood, at some stage or other with a fear that always seemed to crystallize on full moon nights, but by some unimaginable twist remaining always in the shadows. Alwyn, through his skills as an artist, has created on paper those amorphous beings, imbuing the hideous images that resided only in our subconscious with an existence only equal to our own inveterate perceptions. Alwyn is currently following the same path a young Derek Walcott followed to discover ‘Ti Jean and his Brothers’ A path also followed by his twin brother, Roderick and by Charles Cadet through music. They pursued the echoes of our oral traditions to the inevitable source and uplifted the images they found beyond mediocrity. This is as it should be, to preserve custom and art, we of the current generation must lift the mirror beyond the age and raise life from the status of mere mimicry to a new and glorious existence, fit for the stage. There is never enough of the oral tradition the Greeks have shown us. After two thousand years, the Aristophanes, Euripides and Sophocles, still enthrall us with their mythical beauty. These were the first explorers in conventional western civilization who took the raw images of their oral tradition, shepherd’s tales, warrior tales and enriched them with another dimension that gave them legs to survive the ages, until we in turn were able to discover and enjoy them. Only time can measure the classical propensity of this work, but one thing is certain, Alwyn has drawn legs to this St. Lucian Folk Tale. The inspiration to walk or gallop is the mind of the reader. For my generation and others who still remember vividly the stories about Bolom, Mama Dlo, Papa Bois and Soucoyan, this work is a treat. It recreates long forgotten incidents from childhood, filled nostalgia and mixed with all those other simple ingredients that made the world a better place to live, as we for one fine moment relive the dreams of youth. Mac Donald Dixon.

102 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 13, 2020