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.
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.
By reflecting on the intersections of race, nationality, and the body within the specificities of Black Seminole border culture and history, the essay problematizes Anne Anlin Cheng’s notion of racial melancholia, suggesting that self rejection might be a more strategic move than Cheng acknowledges it to be. In the end, the author coins the term dialectical soundings and proposes that the singing of spirituals among the Black Seminoles in fact operates as such, rendering blackness visible in the context of the Mexican border essentialist racial discourse.