11/04/2024
Artist, Alwyn St Omer, “Moon Dancer, the Silent Rebellion"
Masquerade Moon Dancer series 4ft x 5ft
St. Omer pays homage to the masquerades that were once performed as street theatre during the Christmas period when he was growing up in Castries, during the 1960’s and early 1970’s. St. Omer sadly remembers the tradition strangely disappearing in the mid 1970’s, the time of the last Toes or Papa Djab.
Nonetheless, St. Omer, in his Moon Dancer series, immortalises the masquerade while memorialising the resilience of West African enslaved people. This tribute to the resilience and survival of enslaved Africans also carries a powerful message today. It connects many ancient and current cultural practices from various West African cultures, to that of the African Diaspora. In turn, that acts as a force for understanding, education and reconciliation between the two.
St. Omer recollects that the Moon Dancer masquerade thus emerged as series of abstract paintings created to save the lost masquerade tradition of Saint Lucia in painting. This attempt to preserve an ancient tradition led him to discover, that masquerades were actually ritualistic gifts from the African past; a tradition emanating from secret acts of slave rebellion in the plantation system.
Whenever the plantation owners permitted any form of celebration from their daily misery, enslaved people would revert to the traditional forms of their masking tradition. Thus rein-acting a quiet revolution and secret link to the motherland, from whence they were so savagely torn. It was a silent conquest over those who sought to be their masters; those ritualistic gifts provided quiet comfort to the enslaved, soothing the pain in their hearts.
St. Omer theorises that the Moon Dancer pieces can be interpreted as a universal symbol of survival against systemic racism and various forms of oppression.
Looking at the masked figures in the Moon Dancer series, there is a feeling of mystery and trepidation of the unknown. The figures are united in wild contortions of the body; perhaps reminiscent of a time when the enslaved were free to abandon their shackles momentarily through dance. Nonetheless, it is equally easy to see how the faceless dancers and the fluidity of their body movements could evoke terror in children.
The Saint Lucian masquerade characters in the early 1960’s contained various symbolic characters that could be colourfully mesmerizing yet frightening. The procession was lead by Toes or Papa Djab, the all-powerful leader who wore a mask with horns on his head; he was dressed in red and his face was painted white with a long beard. There was his pregnant wife, Mary Ansèt and also the Ti Djabs or little devils who blindly followed Papa Djab, to do his bidding. There was also Kabwit a goat-like creature with a calabash horned headdress, whose costume was made from crocus bags. Another interesting but frightening masquerader was the Pie Banan, whose costume was made from dry banana leaves. With such a motley crew, it is easy to understand the fear, magic and mystery that such performances would conjure up, and why sometimes even the young St. Omer refused to be an onlooker in those festivities.
Today, the Moon Dance is still performed under the light of the moon, in a ritualistic dance of rebellion and redemption by secret societies in the African Diaspora and in parts of West Africa.
Excerpt from an article by Scherin Barlow Massay
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Soucoyan the Graphic Novel https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08CPCD7D9/
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