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There is no fight for culture which can develop apart from popular struggle.--Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of Earth Liberation is a praxis: action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it.--Paulo Friere, The Pedagogy of Oppressed The future of West Indian militancy lies in art.--Derek Walcott, Twilight Says THERE WOULD BE NO POINT IN WRITING THESE WORDS TO EXPLAIN MY CONDUCT AND aspirations as an artist and an intellectual if, first of all, I did not believe that it was my duty to transform my community. As a Caribbean person of African decent and as a postcolonial person with a particular kind of training and perspective, I see artist as a teacher, an activist, a catalyst, and dissenter; someone who, in words of Edward Said (1996: 22), belongs on same side as weak and unrepresented. What I want is a more egalitarian society, a more tolerant society, a more democratic society--a society that is less exploited and exploitive. What I want is a life less brutal and cheap. I have for many years tried to make that world come into being through my art. I have been convinced that at some point art could change world by changing people. This article describes my country, The Bahamas, and my vexed relationship to it; it describes my life in it, my life as an artist, my life as what some in my country might even call a radical. I am amused by term because, truly, in these prosperous Bahamian islands, most have lost all sense of what is truly at stake in world. This article gives a brief history of Track Road Theater Company, which I established in 1996 at age of 27. I will discuss expectations, failures, and successes of group's first 10 years. My vision of Track Road was to be a means of getting avant-garde theater to the people and of exposing them to politically progressive ideas. The operation of an amateur theater company with an anti-establishment bent in this small island society has been an education in censorship, class dynamics, systematic neglect, and popular indifference. It has also been a lesson in pragmatism. We have persisted and adapted in interesting ways. This article maps my own journey as a playwright and artist, and it offers a critical look at cultural development and politics of identity in post-independence Bahamas. Let us first look at cultural situation in my country. After over 30 years of independence from Great Britain, The Bahamas is still very much searching for its identity. The pace of social transformation and modernization since Black Majority Rule in 1967 and Independence in 1973 has been dramatic, and nation is still trying to gain its bearings culturally. Always a marginal colony in British West Indies, mass tourism has brought not only economic prosperity and development to post-World War II Bahamas, but also attendant problems of increased crime, overpopulation in capital, depopulation and underdevelopment of rural islands of archipelago, breakdown of extended family structure, and decline of many intangible forms of culture. To put it simply, tourism comes at a social cost (Pattullo, 1996: 80-101). Slavery played no small part in convincing black Bahamians of their inferiority. British colonialism left Bahamians lacking in cultural confidence; we, like so many colonials, became mimic men--a phrase popularized, of course, by V.S. Naipaul (1967). Since Independence, we have exchanged English hegemony for United States of America's cultural hegemony, partly due to our proximity (less than 50 nautical miles) and partly to fact that biggest U.S. exports have been its. cultural products: its music, movies, television shows, books, and mythologies. In shadow of that behemoth called American Entertainment Industry, seeds planted by our dramatists, poets, songwriters, and other artists have some difficulty sprouting and bearing fruit. …
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