This article presents an introduction to essays on the book Beyond the Melting Pot. The essays were originally presented at a symposium at the 1998 annual meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society. The essays touch on many points in the immigration landscape today, from immigration's impacts on African Americans to immigration transnationalism, and identify a number of continuities and discontinuities between contemporary metropolis and that of nearly four decades ago. Further, Nathan Glazer's response provides his reflections on how well the book's portrait and predictions have held u
Using theories of performance geography, the author considers how black music and dance, especially the slave ship dance Limbo, create an urban counter-culture that evokes historic transcultural experiences of the Middle Passage, space, and modernity. Social theories of scholars including Michel Foucault, Paul Gilroy, and Catherine Nash are considered. Other topics include cultural geography, the Maroons of Jamaica, and dance customs of Trinidad. Interrelationships between performances at the Dancehall in Kingston, Jamaica, Blues music, and South African Kwaito music are explored.
During the early 1970s the U.S. songwriter, musician, and producer Van Dyke Parks completed work on a series of albums exploring the musical contours of the circum-Caribbean region and, through them, broader patterns and issues in 20th-century relations between the U.S. and the Caribbean.
"I suggest, based on a brief longitudinal observation of some twenty-five years, that both African- and European-derived musical styles and genres, in their forms truest to Old-World heritage, are both on the wane; and a fusion, a more populist and urban 'creole' music, is on the rise." (author)
