Research on Caribbean dance has revealed consistent ongoing contredanse-related practices since the 17th c. in the Spanish islands and since the 18th c. in the French, British, Dutch, and former Danish islands. The Caribbean forms that emerged do not stand together in an obvious manner because of diverse names for similar configurations and different forms. The discussion, based on comparative fieldwork and a survey of Caribbean dance practices, attempts to overcome some of these difficulties and to show pointedly that Caribbean quadrilles by many names express the ongoing but submerged agency of African-descended performers, that Caribbean dance history and categorization are lacking, and that the royal pageantry that is associated with quadrille performance is significant.
There are many parallels between the music and worship of the African American Pentecostalism of the author’s upbringing and that of Afro-Caribbean religious groups, including Trinidadian Spiritual Baptists, the Haitian Heavenly Army, and Jamaican Revival Zionists. This can partly be attributed to their shared West African roots. Many features of West African worship have survived among these two geographically separate groups, including a heavy use of rhythm and percussion instruments, a call and response vocal form, and a climax of spirit possession, when congregants reach a state of rhythmically induced ecstasy in which they feel fully possessed by the divine. Both groups have also independently adopted white Christian hymnody, in which they stay true to the text but often change the music in an improvisatory style.
The article discusses engineer and service corps in the British Army which operated during the 18th and 19th centuries and were made up of African, African-American, and West Indian soldiers and laborers. According to the author, the existence of these corps is not readily apparent in the historical record because they depended on commissioned officers from other units for senior command and because for political reasons their funding was taken discreetly from the budgets of other units and government departments. Details on the roles of enslaved soldiers in engineer and service corps are presented. Other topics include the corps' service in Jamaica, Grenada, St. Vincent, the abolition of slavery in Great Britain, and compensation received by the soldiers.
