With stark income inequalities rooted in its dual currency economy, Cuba is taxing down high and unearned incomes, while trying to raise national productivity and official salaries through performance-related pay and labor restructuring. Such measures are portrayed as an abandonment of socialism, but in Cuba are discussed in terms of historic socialist debates about distribution and the balance of moral and material incentives at work, in a society still characterized by common ownership, social protection, and collective debate.
Case studies demonstrate how countries in the same region can develop health care policies that represent different biomedical and sociocultural outcomes. For example, Cuba's policies result in the lowest HIV/AIDS prevalence rates in the Caribbean, whereas Belize experiences the second highest rates.
Examines the role of successive intraregional migrations on the construction of cultural identity in Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles. The author analyzes the Afro-Dutch experience within the broader canvas of Caribbean migration studies, and thus brings a broader diasporic perspective to current research of identity and culture, with particular reference to Curaçao. Through migrations, the island has incorporated different kinds of musical expressions of the region. Of all cultural forms, music provides an ideal opportunity to explore cultural exchanges within and beyond diasporas. Curaçao therefore offers a rare window for viewing the role of intraregional migrations in the formation of discourses on diaspora and cultural identity. Migration studies that look only at the modern transnationalistic diapora obscure the deeply rooted significance of migration on Afro-diasporic identity within the Caribbean and the cultural identity of specific island societies. Intraregional migration movements both past and present profoundly influenced the cultural identity of Curaçao and its diasporic historical vision. Curaçaoan cultural identity has not been solely shaped by the internal dynamics of a merging of African and European cultures, but also intraCaribbean interactions of the descendants of enslaved Africans.
Special journal issue: New Perspectives on the Black Music Diaspora: Focus on the Caribbean., Includes Roger D. Abrahams, Questions of competency and performance in the black musical diaspora; Rose Mary Allen, Music in diasporic context: The case of Curaçao and intro-Caribbean migration; Nanette T. De Jong, Curaçao and the folding diaspora: Contesting the party tambú in the Netherlands; Elizabeth Mcalister, Listening for geographies: Music as sonic compass pointing toward African and Christian diasporic horizons in the Caribbean; and Raquel Z. Rivera, New York Afro-Puerto Rican and Afro-Dominican roots music: Liberation mythologies and overlapping diasporas.
Unedited] Blues scholarship has offered a number of interpretations for the haunted desperation of the souls of Delta blues musicians, their deals with the devil, and the magical acquisition of musical skill. The association of 1920s and 1930s blues musicians with the supernatural may have been fed by those rediscovered blues musicians sharing what their mid-20th c. white interlocutors wanted to hear, but they may also have resonated with a more metaphorical belief in the role of the supernatural. Robert Johnson’s diverse recordings, specifically “Crossroad blues,” “Preaching blues” and “If I dad possession over judgment day,” illuminate connections between blues and African Diaspora of the circum-Caribbean. The lyrical content, with its images of prayer and desperation, musical construction, with connections to common practices in religious musics in the circum-Caribbean, and ascribed primitivist elements in these songs suggest that Johnson’s invocation of the supernatural may also have been the metaphorical presentation of a widely known legend. Therefore, beliefs about spirituality in the blues, and the interconnection of blues and religion, have bases beyond religious or commercial sources.
Tambú represents a ritual from Curaçao, largest of the Netherlands Antilles, employed by the island’s African peoples as a religio-spiritual vehicle. In Dutch mainland cities, however, the Tambú has developed into a type of party music, with Curaçaoan immigrants joining other African and Afro-Caribbean immigrants to explore and express complex collective identities. These reinvented tambú parties constitute new sites of cultural reproduction as well as contestation, of solidarity as well as difference, providing the rare occasion to observe diasporic belonging among Afro-Caribbean communities in the Netherlands. These contemporary tambú parties provide a needed space to negotiate competing and overlapping identities, enabling both a specific Antillean identity as well as a more inclusive diasporic identity.
Special Religion issue, Includes Martha Ellen Davis, "Diasporal dimensions of Dominican folk religion and music"; Loren Y. Kajikawa, D'Angelo's voodoo technology: African cultural memory and the ritual of popular music consumption"; Joseph M. Murphy, "'Chango 'ta vein'/chango has come': Spiritual embodiment in the Afro-Cuban ceremony, bembé"; Teresa L. Reed, "Shared possessions: Black Pentecostals, Afro-Caribbeans, and sacred music"; and Rebecca Sager, "Transcendence through aesthetic experience: Divining a common wellspring under conflicting Caribbean and African American religious value systems."
In the 20th century jazz most of the time cannot be separated from definitions of African-American identity, American culture, Caribbean culture, and to some extent European culture. Jazz served as the metaphor for race-related differences, but also as a means to overcome these. Some of those basic premises, by which the consideration of the musicians and their music shows their cultural and historical significance within the Atlantic area, are discussed., unedited non–English abstract received by RILM] Im 20. Jahrhundert war Jazz die meiste Zeit nicht von Definitionen afroamerikanischer Identität, amerikanischer Kultur, karibischer Kultur und teilweise auch europäischer Kultur zu trennen. Jazz diente hierbei als Metapher für rassenbedingte Unterschiede, aber auch als Mittel, diese zu überwinden. Der Aufsatz thematisiert einige jener grundlegenden Prämissen, durch die die Betrachtung der Musiker und ihrer Musik auch deren kulturgeschichtliche Signifikanz innerhalb des atlantischen Raumes aufzeigt.
The concept of limping is widespread in various forms of music and dance in the northern Cibao region of the Dominican Republic. A limp is said to characterize the way in which accordion and percussion instruments interpret rhythms in merengue típico music, and some consider it a feature distinguishing the típico style of merengue from other styles around the country. Traditionally, merengue típico is also danced with a limping movement. Moreover, the typical Carnival characters of the Cibaeño cities Santiago and La Vega are also meant to move with limps. Musicians, dancers, and Carnival celebrants give various verbal explanations to explain the limp’s history and importance, and many of these tie it to stories about devils or other amoral characters. The limp is, however, not only a local stylistic feature, but one that connects Cibaeño culture with other expressions involving limps around the Caribbean region, from blues rhythms to zydeco dancing to the so-called pimp walk. The connective tissue between all these diverse cultural expressions might be Esu, Elegguá, or Papa Legba, the deity of the crossroads who limps, is sometimes syncretized with the Christian devil, and is invoked at the beginning and end of vodou and santería ceremonies. This article uses data collected through interviews with merengue típico musicians and dancers, four years’ participation in Santiago Carnival, and the theories of Henry Louis Gates and Paul Gilroy to explore Black Atlantic expressions in a Dominican context, while explaining the connections between dance and music from a Cibaeño perspective., unedited non–English abstract received by RILM] El concepto de “cojear” está muy extendido en diversos géneros de música y de baile en la región norteña de la República Dominicana denominada el Cibao. Se dice que el “cojo” caracteriza la forma en que el acordeón y los instrumentos de percusión interpretan los ritmos del merengue típico, y algunos lo consideran una característica que distingue el estilo típico cibaeño del merengue de los merengues de otras regiones el país. El merengue típico tradicional también se bailaba “cojeando.” Por otra parte, los personajes típicos del carnaval cibaeño en las ciudades de Santiago y La Vega también avanzan, según se dice, con un “cojo.” Músicos, bailarines, y carnavaleros dan varias explicaciones verbales sobre la historia y la importancia del cojo, y muchas se lo atan a historias sobre diablos y otros personajes amorales. Sin embargo, el cojo no es solamente una característica estilística local, sino una que conecta la cultura cibaeña con otras expresiones del “cojo” en toda la región caribeña, desde los ritmos blues hasta el baile del zydeco y el “pimp walk.” El tejido conectivo entre todas estas diversas expresiones culturales podría ser Esu, Eleguá, o Papa Legba, el dios de las encrucijadas que cojea, que a veces se sincretiza con el diablo cristiano, y a quien se invoca al comienzo y al final de las ceremonias de vudú y de la santería. El presente artículo utiliza los datos recogidos a través de entrevistas con músicos y bailarines del merengue típico, cuatro años de participación en el carnaval santiaguero, y las teorías de Henry Louis Gates y Paul Gilroy para explorar las expresiones del Atlántico Negro en un contexto dominicano, mientras explique las conexiones entre la danza y la música desde una perspectiva cibaeña.
