THE arts can fillip the dismantling of the garrisons, Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka told the Calabash Literary Festival following the killing of 73 citizens in West Kingston last week.

Art is not a “magic wand” but a transformative medium, he told over 1,000 patrons at the festival, whilst sipping beer with the sea to his back. “It’s a slow poison.”

It was not empty chatter: Soyinka, the Nigerian-born activist and author, worked with a Jamaican inner-city youth group in the adaptation of his play the Beatification of Area Boy in the late 90s. He witnessed the calming effect that the group had on the warring communities in Kingston.

“The sketches and the play were so effective that these dons — hardened gun fighting dons — ordered performances in their garrisons. [But] there were audiences across garrisons because we said that we were not going to play if audiences [could not] come across,” said Soyinka who spent 22 months as a political prisoner during the Nigerian civil war but now teaches at some of the most prestigious universities in the world.

Area Youth Foundation evolved out of that project — a non-governmental organisation that promotes peace and life skills building through the performing arts. Last year the group’s accompanying performance troupe, AY Krew launched its full length CD entitled, Building Bridges, under the Stage label.

“The Area Youth Foundation grew out of the development… these kids took on a new life of their own,” he said.

In the preface of his play Opera Wonyosi, a critique of elites during the oil boom years, he wrote: “Art should expose, reflect even magnify the decadent roughest underbelly of a society that has lost its direction in the confidence that sooner or later the society will recognise itself”.

Soyinka who berated most African leaders for the continued underdevelopment of the continent, acknowledged two leaders whom he respected — Julius Nyerere of Tanzania and Nelson Mandela of South Africa.

Soyinka won the prestigious Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986, having published over 20 works of drama, novels and poetry. His literary language is marked by great scope and richness of words, wrote Nobel Prize on honouring Soyinka.

The Nobel Prize honours individuals for outstanding achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and for work in peace since 1901. The prize is in memory of Alfred Nobel a scientist, inventor, entrepreneur, author and pacifist.

Calabash 2010 was marked by novelists, poets and artistes including Etana, Freddie McGregor, peppering tributes for the West Kingston 73. There was no explicit support for the security forces, but rather implied sympathy for the over 70 killed in the Kingston community, last week.

The festival of over 32 performers recorded two official cancellations, Feryal Ali Gauhar from Pakistan and Marjorie Agosin from Chile/US, resulting from the State of Emergency imposed on the nation’s capital. Despite the cancellations, the Festival still had writers from nine countries led by Nobel Prize winner Soyinka, and cost over US$100,000 ($8.9 million) to stage.

Calabash’s charismatic founder and artistic director Colin Channer stated that not even the limited State of Emergency could cancel the festival. The original line-up included authors from Africa, Pakistan, India, South Korea, Egypt, US, UK, Cuba, Bahamas, Trinidad and Jamaica.