COMMENTARY: Dr. Alwin Bully – Artist, Educator, Social Engineer & National Hero

Alwin Bully November 3, 1948- March 10, 2023 – Forever in our hearts

ACT I – Like a Fire Bell In the Night 

Alwin Bully’s death came to us like a fire bell in the night. Though I knew he was ailing, we had spoken a month before his death courtesy of his kind sister-in-law Rosalind Astaphan. That contact was part of an effort to interview him about his life – part of an audio memoir project of the kind done for Dame Mary Eugenia Charles and others.  We did not get it done as his voice was weak. Yet, ever faithful, he tried to speak best he could. I had hoped that we had more time.

Dr. Alwin Bully was born on November 3, 1948, and died on March 10, 2023. Between Dr. Bully’s coming and his ascension, the richness of his offerings in artistic endeavor and education forged for us a deep sense of national pride, while his inclusive personal traits furthered the cause of social cohesion. His life was emblematic of our own time of intellectual maturation and national identity. He was a man whose life was lived with kindness and compassion towards the grassroots people of our country with whom he made common cause and otherwise welcomed with open arms. With his wife Anita, equally welcoming and possessed of an effervescent smile, they made a fine couple, who gave much to building a united society.

ACT II – The Setting:

Dr. Bully was born after World War II; a time when the sun was setting on the British Empire within whose bosom Dominica resided. Dominicans were agitating for better social conditions and the Dominica Trade Union led by Emmanuel Christopher LoBlack had been formed in 1945 as the agency through which beneficial social change could be achieved. When LoBlack joined with white Dominica-born poet, author and socialist Phyllis Shand Allfrey to form the Dominica Labour Party in 1955, their union disrupted hard divisions of class and colour of what was a former slave state.

On what was then a British colony, Black and Kalinago (referred to as Carib in those days) people were at the bottom of the social ladder and denied opportunities in education, employment and upward mobility common to those the colored elite who were of European descent.

In the 1960’s of my youth Edward Oliver LeBlanc’s government pursued the path of creole nationalism and made November 3, Dominica Day – instead of “Discovery Day.”  Alwin Bully was therefore born on Dominica Day and the flowering of his artistic talents was rooted in the rich soil of an increasingly democratic society.

It was a society in which the formerly voiceless now found a place in our parliament. Such a democratic dispensation enhanced access to secondary and university education to the children of the common people. In 1961, there were only four high schools in Dominica: The Dominica Grammar School and Saint Mary’s Academy for boys and the Convent High School and Wesley High School for girls. Interestingly, the University of the West Indies (UWI) had been founded in October 1948, one month before Bully’s birth.  UWI was to become the fulcrum of a new English speaking Caribbean intelligentsia; one oriented towards engraving a dignified nationalist consciousness on a people seeking self-determination. By 1961 however, increased access to high school was facilitated for working class and country folk  It was a time of Civil Rights and Black Power in the United States and the Caribbean. It was a time of African Liberation in Africa. Alwin Bully presented to those of our generation as a man who believed in Civil Rights, Black Power, and African Liberation.

In the words of Honor Ford-Smith, Professor Emerita, Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University who studied with, and worked alongside, Alwin Bully:

I and dozens of students primarily from the Eastern Caribbean gathered at the Cave Hill campus of the University of the West Indies (“the Hill”) during the late nineteen sixties/early nineteen seventies—the Black Power period, as it was dubbed. We were societies emerging from a common history of enslavement and colonialism that had not been accurately told, the struggles of which had not yet been celebrated. The calls for creative thinking to inform new ways were strong.

It was from amidst the surge for self-determination that the creative genius of Alwin Bully blossomed in ways multifaceted and grand.

ACT III – Cometh the Art Master with his Brush 

Alwin Bully attended the Dominica Grammar School (DGS) and manifested his early leadership in the arts while a student. Indeed, there is a documentary online of Queen Elizabeth’s visit to our island in 1966 which may be the earliest image of Alwin Bully on film, He can be seen in a brief clip doing an energetic and delightful rendition of his version of Dominica folk dance on a stage at the Botanic Gardens in Roseau. See here – (44) Queen Meets Her Peoples – Technicolor (1966) – YouTube

In 1972 my class entered the DGS. We had graduated to a higher level, and we were all full of excitement. More than fifty years later, those  of us who entered the hallowed halls of our high school, recall with affection the zest for creativity and the desire to share his knowledge that Mr. Bully brought us.

It was that same year that Bully had returned to his alma mater from his studies in English Literature at UWI.  Our class was a potpourri of Roseau folk and those from the rural areas. Our class represented a great mingling of African, European and Kalinago roots.  Some came from elite homes, others from more humble backgrounds.

Alwin was a more liberal teacher, at a time when strict discipline at schools was still the norm. It was still a time when canings were administered. The boys were whipped on their behinds and girls were whipped on their hands – to protect their femininity I suppose.  Not once did I ever recall Alwin subjecting us to such corporal punishment. Indeed, Minister of Education Ronald Green did our country a great service when his administration outlawed corporal punishment in Dominica’s schools during his 1995-2000 term in office.  Alwin Bully smiled at us and did not look down his nose at us. His demeanor was open and welcoming. With a stylish Afro, he was dashing, and debonair. He had skill and  shared his knowledge with us, with great love and affection. He was not simply a teacher teaching for a salary. He put his heart into it. And his back too!

To that end one week prior to the 1973 carnival, I bent costume wire on long, hot weekday afternoons constructing a carnival costume on wheels for a DGS female student – a Ms. ‘Queen’ Thomas of Marigot. Under the superb direction of our art teacher, using glue to affix sequins on the structure, or wielding a can of spray paint I dove into the costume project. On the Friday before carnival when the Junior Carnival Queen contest was to take place, I helped Alwin Bully roll the costume into Windsor Park. Once in the park, we put our backs into hoisting Alwin’s creation onto the temporary carnival stage atop which prisoners from Her Majesty’s Prisons at Stockfarm were still scrambling to do finishing touches. In those days the prisoners built stands and the carnival stage at Windsor Park under the direction of civilians.  After carnival was over the prisoners helped disassemble the wooden stands and stage until the next year.  Alwin Bully’s superb craftmanship in carnival costume design, and the charm of Ms. Thomas, one of the first DGS female students (the DGS became co-education in 1972) won the day.

In that first form of 1972-1973, we always awaited Mr. Bully, or “Sir,” with great excitement when it was time for Speech and Drama classes. He also taught art in the afternoon at the DGS Technical Wing section. With different artwork tools, be it charcoal, crayon, colored chalk, watercolor or oil paint, Mr. Bully coaxed us along to learn the finer points of graphic art. In the warm afternoon, amidst the metal lathes, drills, and worktables for carpentry and other industrial arts of what was a vocational education section to the DGS, Alwin walked around looking over our work. He patiently burnished our skills in drawing and painting. In doing so he taught us about the vanishing point so necessary when drawing a building, or scenery, to gain the right perspective of the work. More than fifty years later, I remember what Mr. Bully taught us. He said:

“The Vanishing Point is a dot in an image, where all objects eventually converge to. The vanishing point will give a realistic touch to your artwork and provide depth.”

Those of us who were so fortunate to have been schooled by Alwin Bully in arts and drama have, by and large, gone on to lead meaningful lives on island and in the Diaspora. Up and down the length and breadth of Dominica, and abroad, are  lives enhanced by the brilliance of Alwin Bully in art and drama education.

In the words of a Brooking Institute 2013 study on the importance of art education, it was reported:

We find that a substantial increase in arts educational experiences has remarkable impacts on students’ academic, social, and emotional outcomes. …arts students experienced a 3.6 percentage point reduction in disciplinary infractions, an improvement of 13 percent of a standard deviation in standardized writing scores, and an increase of 8 percent of a standard deviation in their compassion for others. In terms of our measure of compassion for others, students who received more arts education experiences are more interested in how other people feel and more likely to want to help people who are treated badly. 

These findings provide strong evidence that arts educational experiences can produce significant positive impacts on academic and social development. Because schools play a pivotal role in cultivating the next generation of citizens and leaders, it is imperative that we reflect on the fundamental purpose of a well-rounded education. This mission is critical in a time of heightened intolerance and pressing threats to our core democratic values. 

Alwyn rose above color prejudices by being compassionate, and caring for those who had been treated badly. One felt no prejudice or bias in his manner, and his nature was one of peace, love and inclusivity.

Bully spoke to that surge for self-respect, kindness, national pride and independence in a May 19, 2016 launch of a Pont Casse Production compilation of short stories “Rain on a Tin Roof” that I had written. At that time, he said:

But just to say a few words, actually, to talk and to reminisce a little bit about the 70s there when you were also fired up with our idea of independence and the fact that we will be taking care of our own business as we called it in those days. The age of very, a very hopeful age, basically the age of expectation, a venture into a new world, and exploring of the arts which were flowering at the time. 

Alwin It was a time when, I guess, in preparation for independence we were looking into ourselves: a crossing from one culture to the next, or a blending, nationalism as it was called. A creole nationalism. When the leaders of the Caribbean world exalted us to be proud of who we are, who we were in terms of a people, in terms of a people seeking a new beginning, one which we thought was going to be a beautiful experience. Being masters of our own fate and the old question of looking at literature as a major part of that. 

Alwin Many of the writers of the 70s and late 60s have become the icons of Caribbean literature I’m talking about. People like Earl Lovelace and the Walter Brothers in theater, George Lamming and Selvon, Samuel Selvon. And they basically were writing in dialect and writing about their own experiences and that gave us a lot of hope for the future. Of course, after independence, the dream began to fade very quickly. We began to realize that we weren’t, in fact, in charge of our own destinies to the extent that we thought we would be. 

I think it’s sort of like hope that sunk deeper and deeper as the years have gone by. But recently I’ve been feeling that there’s been a resurgence of interest in the arts and music and literature. For that reason, we’ve been happy to know that people like Gabu and especially the authors of Ponte Casse Press and the publications that they’ve brought forward are encouraging us to write and to write about a wider range of subjects. Biographies being a greater one, but also creatively. The short stories, the early works of both Arundel, Thomas, and Gabu himself. And also, of Dr. Irving André. So, the re-publication of this book, I think, is a major step in the right direction. Gabu and I go way back to the days of the Dominica Grammar School. I got back from university in 1972 and taught there for 12 years and a number of young men like Gabu his contemporaries went through my hands, so to speak. Not with canings. [laughter from the audience] Not with caning, but with ideas and encouraging them to write and to look at Caribbean literature and look at our own culture. 

Alwin Bully’s more complete comments can be found here – (47) Remembering National Hero Alwin Bully: Teacher, Scholar, Artist, Designer of Dominica’s Flag – YouTube

That was Alwin Bully speaking of that which shaped his outlook as he acted as a key midwife who presided over the birth of our creole nationalism. I use the word “key” as Alwin was not the only midwife to birth that process of crafting a proud Dominican identity. There are others. Here I acknowledge J.R. Ralph Casimir, Phyllis Shand Allfrey, Alick Lazare, Cissie Cauderion, Dr. Lennox Honychurch, Jeff Joseph and the Grammacks, Gordon Henderson and Exile I, Ophelia Olivacee, Chubby and the Midnight Groovers, Swinging Stars, Dr. Irving W. André, Sonia Lloyd, Dr. Edward Scobie, Elma Napier, Raymond Lawrence, Lemuel McPherson Christian, Earl Etienne, Wilfred O.M. Pond, and Pearle Christian in that group of cultural icons.

Act IV- The Playwright and Dominica’s Liberty Banner, Rising

British colony that we were in my school days, our flag was the Union Jack – the flag of Britain. Our thinking was rooted in English rhymes from kindergarten and later works by the playwright William Shakespeare. As noted Caribbean writer V.S. Naipaul has written: We mimicked the dominant traditions of the colonizer. Dominicans acted out on stage that which they had read in a book from somewhere else, with very little – if any – local content.  We had very little literature or history about Dominica by Dominicans. Plays, like the movies, were focused on somewhere else.  Indeed, we were babes in the woods of life,  emerging from the thick forests of ignorance of self.   With a limited sense of self-actualization or national consciousness, we mostly parroted what we had been taught. The slow unveiling of our creativity would soon bloom, like a hibiscus hedge at full rush. It was now time to give birth to a new breath of freedom.

Alwin Bully, in laying the foundation of the Peoples Action Theater brought theater to the masses, focused on local issues, our culture, our ingenuity and skill. Atop the stage Alwin was what we would call the “starring” or the star. With his large Afro born of the “Black is Beautiful” ideology of the time, Alwin Bully gave us pride in our African and Kalinago ancestry.

In his encyclopedic work on Dominican literature, Distant Voices: The Genesis of Dominican Literature (Pont Casse Press, Irving W. André, 2021) Dr.  André covers the work of Alwin Bully. With regard to Bully’s play, Streak, Dr. André stated:

In 1975 Bully produced another play called Streak in which he portrayed, through various character, how the island had been stripped of its core values such as respect for human rights, the erosion of the presumption of innocence, the denial of bail, and the arbitrary arrests of citizens without reasonable or probable [cause] grounds. The play suggested that these core values had been replaced by vices such as petty jealousy, hatred, gossip, selfishness, political victimization, and the lack of due process.

Bully was therefore unafraid to wield his pen, though with a sober subtlety, in defense of civil liberties and a more genteel, united, and loving existence for our island folk.

There are others who will speak with more detail of Alwin Bully’s gigantic effort in popularizing the dramatic arts.  However, for those of my generation of the 1970s, to see Alwin Bully hoisted atop a cross as Jesus Christ in Jesus Christ Superstar was positively transformative. Of course, Lennox Honychurch has stated how, as a white Dominican, he was often type-casted in plays as a British Governor or plantation owner. But to see Jesus with an Afro was something subversive of the old colonial thinking – even where Alwin’s aquiline features favored the portrayal of Jesus by the dominant Roman Catholic Church.

It was within the bosom of that humanitarian consciousness fostered by Alwin Bully, that the Dominica flag, our liberty banner, was born. I was in 5^th Form in 1977 and a student in Alwin Bully’s English Literature class, when he started to design the flag. Independence was hurtling along and was set for 1978.  Bully had just returned from his friendship tour of Cuba. On that tour he accompanied Desiree John, the wife of then Premier Patrick John. That mission was organized by the Dominica-Cuba Friendship Society, founded in 1976 by Roosevelt “Rosie” Douglas after he returned to Dominica from Canada. Douglas had also founded the Popular Independence Committee and was the most strident voice leading youth in that surge towards independence. Alwin Bully was stirred to creative heights by that ferment of independence-seeking energy.

Premier Patrick John was a man also seized of a degree of creole nationalism and spoke of his desire of building a socialist society on Dominica. It was within that context of what we called progressive politics, that Alwin crafted Dominica’s flag with a red orb at the center. He said to me personally, that the red stood for socialism, and the blood our people had shed over the years to abolish slavery. I was a member of the Cuba Friendship Society and had lobbied hard for the teacher closest to me to go on that trip.

In designing the flag Alwin remained true to his spirit of inclusivity. He made sure to include references to our African and Carib (Kalinago) ancestry. He never forgot our freedom struggle and was a keen commentator on the need to remember that heroic heritage of anti-slavery resistance. At the 2016 inauguration of the Negre Maron statue in Roseau Bully stated:

“the problem Dominicans face is not knowing enough about their past, especially the history of the Maroon people. They were freedom fighters who succeeded on many fronts and harassed the oppression of the British especially in those years.”

ACT V – Fond Farewell

A genuine national hero has died.  In essence, Alwin Bully was  our master craftsman of the art of nation building His dedication to the development of the arts and a culture of self-respect improved our society.  With great humility he buttressed our humanity, creativity, and sense of dignity.  Most of what Alwin Bully did, as with other great teachers of the time, was voluntary. His volunteerism in the national interest is a most worthy example to be emulated by Dominicans at home and abroad for all time.

With his passing it remains the duty of each Dominican and those who claim to govern or love our island, to ensure that we dedicate ourselves in ways meaningful to arts and cultural education in our schools. Where our students are taught a healthy work ethic in way of creativity, carving sculptures, painting murals, engagement in the dramatic arts such as in plays, dance, film, crafting fine works of prose and poetry, we shall have a better society. Left idle and bereft of the nourishment of our spirits born of the creative arts, the unskilled and voiceless descend into the mayhem of self-destructive behavior.

To nurture that beloved community we must work to realize poetry readings and plays acted out across the land. We must work for the profusion of art galleries exposing our talents  that shall make for a great civilization. We know we have the talent, yet often fail to resource such worthy initiatives in art education. Where we are a society that exhibits gratitude for the contributions of our hardworking parents and teachers such as Alwin Bully, we shall enter a new Jerusalem in which all Dominicans can play a respectful and productive role. That was the Dominica that Alwin Bully dedicated his life toward building.

Though we bid Alwin a fond farewell, he shall continue to live within the lines of every book, play, poem or artwork he inspired.

In closing Pont Casse Press extends its sincere condolences to Anita, Sade, and Brent Bully, our friend Rosalind Astaphan,  and Alwin’s extended family, friends and our distracted country.

To honor our national hero, a most worthy and lasting tribute would be the creation of an Alwin Bully Foundation for Arts & Culture Education. Or Simply ACE! An ace, indeed, he was.

We shall remember him.