Manmay LaKay Magazine Issue 2 April 2018 | Page 31

culture and the survival of our culture
mean to you?
Everything. My happiness is everything
about St.Lucia and everything about where I
came from and everything about our food,
our music. My culture is very dear to me. I
cannot picture my life without music,
without dancing, without art. Without those
things I'm nobody.  
You recently won the Mizik En San Nou
creole song competition, what does that
mean to you?
That felt good. You know, I've always said
we need to keep the culture alive. It's
survival depends on the merging of young
and old. It depends on everybody making a
contribution.
If we are ashamed of the language and don’t
speak it we won’t pass it on you know. It
will die. We cannot let that happen.
You know what’s surprising – the English
language is a system taught to us, the creole
language was a way of life for liberation, for
freedom. So to me the creole language
is more powerful than we even understand.
It's harsh yet so plain and straightforward
you cannot go wrong with it – just bam,
bam, bam. One meaning – unlike the
English language that's a little more
complex.
What would you say has been your biggest
accomplishment in life thus far?
I don’t know if you’ll understand it. People
tend to label accomplishments with where
they've been and who they know but, I think
my biggest and most difficult
accomplishment was finding myself. To