Examines the political and cultural possibilities and limits of the wide-ranging reggae scene that has emerged along both sides of the U.S./Mexico border since the 1990s. It investigates why and how members of seemingly disparate border communities, including Mexicanas/os, Chicanas/os, and Native Americans, find common social and political ground playing Afro-Caribbean inspired music. It also interrogates how people living in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands have responded to the impact of economic and political globalization by using reggae to fashion multiethnic and post-national political formations and social relationships at the grassroots.
Around the beginning of the 20th century the codes for representing masculinity in opera began to change. This essay focuses on how the changing codes of masculinity in leading male roles are calibrated differently for white European characters and nonwhite characters with non-European ancestry (for example, African American, Caribbean, Moorish, or African) and shows how masculinity and heroism are brought together differently for black and non-black characters. The first section examines Giuseppe Verdi's Otello (1887) and focuses on a critical moment near the end of the opera that links orchestral developments in Italy at the end of the 19th century with the way Verdi dramatizes Otello's vicious murder of Desdemona. A broader overview considers four operas written in the first half of the 20th century: Berg's Wozzeck (1925), Krenek's Jonny spielt auf (1927), Gershwin's Porgy and Bess (1935), and Britten's Peter Grimes (1945). Two of these operas (Wozzeck and Peter Grimes) feature white European title characters, while the other two feature African American protagonists.
Explores the onboard experience in situations of extreme musical commodification during cruising, with the ship resembling a floating pleasure palace that provides a monopolistic tourist environment that taps into the 'experience economy' concept. The authors' ethnographic insights reveal how music is a quintessential means to create congenial ambiance in order to encourage consumption of experience enhancements (like gambling, dancing, or drinking) and boost onboard revenue, especially through live music performance of various types and levels of interaction, whereby performer-audience interaction and participation play a major role in consumption of touristic music. While much of this music is drawn from familiar, predictable Western culture, some performances readily tap into tourists' expectations of journeying to and encountering the exotic Other, even if presented as part of their onboard experiences. Such touristic musical performances, which stereotypically include Caribbean bands performing calypso classics, Harry Belafonte and Bob Marley numbers, and tropicalist Western pop songs, are usually promoted as authentic extensions of the culture from which they originate. These situations of extreme commodification have not only transformed some of the most secluded locations into commercially viable tourist destinations, but have turned transport facilities themselves into hyper-commercialized locales of touristic consumption.
Pages: 1-17., Examines the songs of the insular Caribbean as a contribution to the oral literature of the Caribbean region, with particular reference to the songs and singers of Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and to a lesser extent, Barbados. Among the artists discussed are Trinidad's African Queen of Song, Ella Andall, Dominica's Nascio Fontaine, and Carolyn Cooper's perspectives on the Jamaican dancehall and Kittitian legend King Ellie Matt, 'De Hardest Hard', who reigned supreme during the 1970s and 1980s. He influenced the late Daddy Friday, whose songs still receive significant airplay today. Trinidad's chutney soca songs speak to the presence of its East Indian singers while Jamaican sisters Tami Chynn and Tessanne Chin of Chinese, Cherokee, European, and African descent have become known, respectively, as pop and rock reggae singers.
Katherine Dunham (1909-2006) is revered as one of the great pillars of American dance history. Her world-renowned modern dance company exposed audiences to the diversity of dance, and her schools brought dance training and education to a variety of populations sharing her passion and commitment to dance as a medium of cultural communication. Often recognized for her research in the Caribbean and on African dance traditions, Dunham's research also extended to black dance traditions of America. her research in American black dance traditions unearthed and contributed to the foundations of jazz dance and black vernacular movement vocabularies.
The Caribbean coastal region of Colombia is called the costa, and its inhabitants are referred to as costeños. The müsica costeña (coastal music) is a product of tri-ethnic syncretic cultural traditions including Amerindian, Spanish, and African elements, a merging that begins with the colonial period and continues into the republican period on the Caribbean Coast. Traditional music from the Colombian Caribbean coast expresses its tri-ethnic costeño identity in various vocal styles and musical forms and through its types of instruments and the way they are played. This essay describes the aspects and circumstances under which cumbia, a coastal musical genre and dance form of peasant origins characterized by an African-derived style, has spread from its local origins in the valley of the Magdalena River to acquire a Colombian national identity, becoming in a few years a transnational musical phenomenon.
Focuses on specific aspects of the independent, creative network of musicians who in the late 1960s and early 1970s bonded together as the nueva canción or nueva canción movement across the Latin American continent, the Caribbean, and Spain. The author traces nueva canción through various key phrases. Nueva canción describes a music enmeshed within historical circumstances which included: the forging of revolutionary culture in Cuba; the coming together of political parties to form a coalition to elect the first ever socialist president in Chile in 1970; resistance to brutal Latin American dictatorships; and the struggle for new democracies. The music was often referred to by different names in different countries. It was known as: nueva cancionero (new song book) in Argentina; nueva canción (new song) in Chile and Peru; nueva trova (new song) in Cuba; and volcanto (volcanic song) in Nicaragua. Nueva canción musicians never saw their music as protest song. Nueva canción was regarded as a social force in itself and a key resource for creating collective bonds. This movement in its various forms was an emblematic music of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Functioning as both a national and international music, nueva canción has become part of the active memory of this period. Its potent legacy can be seen in the fact that many high-profile commercial singers today continue to be influenced by it: nueva canción continues to be perceived as a legitimate, unifying, and active force for peaceful change.
The third album by the Clash, London calling captured the zeitgeist of its time with references to various domestic and international news items that had captured the attention of Joe Strummer (née John Mellor) and Mick Jones as they composed the songs. Many seek to represent the state of Britain in the late 1970s, where an inflation rate of 25 percent and high unemployment fueled anger at the government and sparked attacks on minorities who were blamed for taking jobs that might otherwise have employed Britons. The album tackles such issues as racial disharmony, police brutality, unemployment, drug and alcohol abuse, and the sense of alienation felt by many working-class youths and contextualized these social ills in a broader international frame with references to similar political and social crises in Spain, the Caribbean, and the Middle East.
An overview of choral activity in Latin America, including cathedrals, missions (particularly Jesuit missions), and musical centers such as the Escuela de Chacao in Venezuela and the Escola Mineira in Brazil. The 20th century witnessed a renaissance of choral music, along with the development of national conservatories and a variety of choral institutions. A regional survey highlights some of the activities in Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico; the Caribbean region, including Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic; and the Andean region, including Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chili, and Uruguay. Composers have been inspired by the burgeoning choral ensembles, writing music that may use contemporary compositional techniques, popular music, folk music, as well as arranging popular music for choirs.
Caribbean identity is informed by the condition of being islands and also by its sociopolitical conditions of colonialism, (e)migration, and pluralism. The uncertainty of not being grounded to the specificity of place is in conflict with generalized notions of nation and cultural identity. As people migrate, they create shifting identities following the process of addition and flux that has characterized the region. Cultural identity and migration are central issues in songs, which play a key role of lending continuity to culture and reconstructing symbols.
Examines children's musical practices on Corn Island, some 52 miles off the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, which has long been a site of cross-cultural interaction and exchange. In 1987, as part of the postwar peace agreements, two autonomous regions—north and south—were established on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua. The cultural and education aspects of autonomy came to be envisioned largely through concepts of interculturalidad, or interculturalism. Children's musical practices enter into discourses of interculturalism in several ways. They are often important symbols of the future; informal genres of vernacular expression (such as singing games) are a key resource for curricular reform that aims to bring regional folklore into the classroom; and they are central to processes of cultural interaction, exchange, and transformation. This is because children's activities are often oriented toward playful improvisation and because children are key actors in processes of socialization and adaptation to changing circumstances. Expressive practices such as music are dialogic tools through which differences are enacted, through which boundaries are constructed within and between social groups. This understanding of interculturalism as an everyday practice helps us see how culture emerges from interaction and play and how communication is accomplished using a diverse pool of resources. This essay focuses on the children of Miskitu migrants on Corn Island, particularly on singing game performance.
Adieu foulard, adieu madras is a very popular tune from the French Caribbean. It is just as popular today in continental France, where it has been adapted to different musical genres. Yet, for those familiar with the simple melody and its evocative lyrics, which encourages carefree humming, not many may be aware that it is so deeply rooted in the history of French colonialism, island tropes, and ethnic relations. This essay uses Adieu foulard, adieu madras and its multiple sonic meanings as the lens to better understand the dynamics of the (post)colonial relationship of the people of the French Antilles, particularly from the island overseas departments of Martinique and Guadeloupe, many of whom have now migrated permanently to metropolitan France. For these, Adieu has now also become their song of exile.
Unedited] The career of Laba Sosseh, the Senegambian singer of Afro-Cuban music, challenges many of the dominant paradigms of world music' research. His music was not the product of Western influence nor was Sosseh shaping his music to please elite Western audiences. Sosseh instead sought to Cubanize African popular music and Africanize new world Latin music. He was active in several West African music centers in the 1960s and 1970s and New York in the 1980s. He was the first musician reportedly to have a gold record in West Africa and his recordings for a U.S. Cuban-owned company circulated widely throughout the Caribbean Basin. In the 1990s, Sosseh returned to Dakar, Senegal, to mentor a new generation of Senegalese Latin musicians. By looking at Sosseh’s life on both sides of the Atlantic, it becomes clear that world music can come from unexpected places in unanticipated ways. Sosseh’s music had its roots in a South-South dialogue that underscored cultural difference and local identities. His work demonstrates that globalization does not inherently produce global homogeneity. Non-western communities can deploy communication technologies (records, radio and cassettes) to create forms of counter-globalization that rather than promote Western cultural hegemony resist it.
An essay is presented on tropicalized and touristic imagery in colonial photographs and its impact on black histories. It offers critiques on current uses of old touristic postcards as it offers unproblematic historical evidence. It examines the ways in which black inhabitants resisted and critiqued this tropicalization of the islands with an account on how a swimming pool became a site of political protest against tourism's demand for a picturesque and disciplined black population.
Special journal issue: Papers in Honour of Merrick Posnansky., Archaeological and ethnological evidence from the site of Efutu in Ghana is used to indicate the African cultural background of people imported into the Caribbean for enslavement in historical times.
Bilby,Kenneth M. (Author) and Neely,Daniel T. (Author)
Format:
Book, Section
Publication Date:
2009
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
The Anglophone Caribbean islands are host to a rich and diverse tradition of dances and dance music adopted from European ballroom traditions. These traditions should be seen less as examples of “assimilation” than as products of a shared history of creativity, struggle, and adaptation among the colonized. Thus, for example, the related “tambrin” tradition of the island of Tobago has served as a vehicle for spirit possession in ceremonies with clear African-derived elements.
Cyrille,Dominique (Author), Gidal,Marc Meistrich (Author), and Vaughan,Umi A. (Author)
Format:
Book, Section
Publication Date:
2009
Published:
Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
Explores the relationships between music, religious affiliations, and difference. The primary case study is the multi-ethnic, multi-class Afro-gaucho religious community in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. The local term Afro-gaucho calls attention to African descendents in the region and their efforts to valorize their contributions to gaucho culture. Since a majority of the estimated 40,000 worship houses practice three religions (Batuque, Umbanda, and Quimbanda), participants use music to help segregate and mix the religions and their denominations.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
[Unedited] The méringue as a type of contredanse was the major social dance of Haiti. Related to other dance genres of the Caribbean, the méringue crossed the various class lines in Haiti. A fast tempo méringue would be danced by lower classes whereas a slower tempo would be heard in the salons of the middle and upper class. Subject matter for the lyrics could be political or social in nature. The contredanse was a prevalent dance found in Europe and then reshaped after its migration to Haiti. Some African influences can also be found, especially in the use of 5/8 meter, at least as transcribed by some of the ethnomusicologists in the field.
Peek, Philip M. (Editor) and Yankah, Kwesi (Editor)
Format:
Book, Section
Publication Date:
2004
Published:
New York: Routledge
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
593 p, Written by an international team of experts, this is the first work of its kind to offer comprehensive coverage of folklore throughout the African continent. Includes Maureen Warner Lewis' "Caribbean verbal arts."
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
[Unedited] Examines the 1948 Mexican film-musical Angelitos negros (Little Black angels) as an example of how racial otherness and its exploitation could be staged, both on the stage itself, and on the stage-within-a-stage of the Latin American melodrama, in which cabarets and other performance venues were common backdrops. In using Afro-Cuban or Afro-Caribbean music, dance, and cultural icons, the film exhibits the allure of Blackness within the frame of popular music and dramatic performances, and the ways in which the Blackness was more easily simulated than assimilated. Subsequent use of blackface for Black and mulatto characters in many Mexican or Cuban-Mexican films is coupled with blackface and Afro-Cuban musical performances. Parody and caricature result in a superficial rendering of Blackness in this and other film musicals. They should be viewed as ambivalent vehicles for the vindication of the Black role in Mexican or Latin-American history.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
Examines aspects related to the plural constitution of Afro-descendants informed by black discursiveness in Salvador, Bahia. This discursiveness is strongly marked by the role of black music and by the history of Afro-descendant Carnaval. This essay shows that these subjects are a product of modernization and operate in it, while giving it a specific configuration. Social agents as 'reflexive audience' play a decisive role in the review and criticism of such modernity, pluralizing it and pushing the boundaries of democracy and of representation politics, in their demand for recognition and changes. Music, as discursive production and as sociability experience, plays a key part in this process.
Chabela Ramírez, the black singer and activist born in Montevideo in 1958, is a singular personality of candombe, the only multi-form Afro-Uruguayan musical genre. Retracing her trajectory leads us through the history of Uruguay's black community (10% of the total population) and candombe, with particular attention on how this musical expression went from devalued practice to national heritage in a country deeply marked by a Eurocentric ideology. Ramírez founded and gave voice, with Afrogama, the choir and dance group that she leads, to a unique aesthetic thought that brought meaning to candombe via the field of Afro-religions (Umbanda and Batuque).
Much of the music literature of churches in the Philippines was destroyed during World War II, particularly in Manila. Marcelo Adonay (1848–1928) was one of the major figures in Philippine music of the 19th century European traditions and styles of choral music prevailed in Latin America; however, the period of 1810 to 1830 witnessed efforts towards independence from Spain in many areas, including music. Unfortunately, this independence weakened some of the institutions that supported and produced music, including the church. A brief survey is provided of sacred, theatrical, and civic choral music (the major venues, composers, organizations, works, and developments) in Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, Venezuela, the Andes region, the Rioplatense region, Brazil, and Spain.
In colonial Spanish America, there were immensely complex systems of identity and power. One aspect of this is the distinction between the Peninsular Spaniards, that is those who were born in Spain and allowed to travel to the New World only after having proved their purity of blood, and the white Spaniards born in the New World. The latter were known as criollos and as a body were designated as mantuanos. By revealing cultural and religious manifestations, as once public and allegorical, of the partisan conflict between the mantuanos and Peninsular residents in the pre-independence era, the documentation that traces the historical development of the Fiesta de la Naval—a commemoration of the Christian victory over the Turks in the Battle of Lepanto (1571)—affords the source of information of the greatest symbolic significance for the study of the social, religious, and musical repercussions that sustained criollo power between 1687 and 1810. An appendix lists payments made between 1709 and 1812 the three categories of musicians: the gallery musicians of the Caracas cathedral; the military band of the black and mixed-race battalions of the province; the musicians from confraternities of pardo freemen. The nature and employment of each of these groups is described. The list of payments shows that the Fiesta de la Naval involved the whole of urban society and shifted the center of religious power away from the cathedral and toward the space occupied by the manutanos. The Fiesta was thus an example of Venezuelan cultural ownership and social and racial identify that formed part of the legitimization of the mantuanos power as opposed to the power of the Peninsular Spaniards.