African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
138 p, Description and analysis of the two most important religions of African descent in Cuban spiritual life: the first of Yoruban origin; the second of Congo-Bantu origin
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
282 p, A popular exposition of the theology of the Rastafarians. Attempts to allow the Rasta to explain their doctrines in their own words, examining all key doctrines in different chapters.
An essay is presented which discusses the religious history and identity of the Caribbean Area and Africa from the Haitian Revolution through the 2010s, with a particular focus on Islam and voodooism. African and Caribbean identities, including the role that cosmopolitanism plays in identity formation, are discussed. An overview of the religious identity of the Muslim Haitian Revolution leader Dutty Boukman is provided.
The article focuses on the interactions between anglophone blacks, black Caribbeans, and indigenous southern Mesoamericans during the second half of the 18th century. The author discusses the history of race relations between Europeans, Africans, and Indians within the British and Spanish empires, examines the relationship between Mayas and Spanish colonists, and analyzes the role of religious differences within their encounters.
243 p, "Explores the Rastafari movement and the Nation of Islam as institutions that provide a group-identity for their adherents. The study seeks to determine the characteristics of the identity that is institutionalized by each movement, and the nature of the institutionalization process. The research was conducted primarily in South Florida where both movements exist... Both movements were found to be millenarian in nature, essentially because of the significant utility of the concept that their members would rise to prominence through God's grace. Additionally, both movements were identified as expressive social movements, since they were determined as being primarily concerned with changing the attitudes of their members rather than effecting structural social change." (author)
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
202 p, "The Quest for the Cuban Christ, the most recent work of Miguel A. De La Torre, is an exceptionally concise exploration of the ways in which Cubans have both conceived and perceived religion in general and Jesus Christ in particular, over the last five centuries. Specifically, the author examines religion and spirituality from the point of view of both subaltern and dominant groups throughout the history of Cuba. The real focus, however, is on the role of faith in the formation of the identity of Cubans resident and in exile that have been historically subordinated to the interests of hegemonic powers like Spain, the United States, and successive Cuban (including revolutionary) governments." (Jason M. Yaremko, H-LatAm [October, 2003]))
The month of March sees thousands of West Indians in the U.S. and abroad in colorful celebration of their Phagwa holiday- the origin of which is almost mythical and its exact time of origination is not known
"En Martinique, lors des décennies qui précèdent l'abolition de l'esclavage, tous les groupes sociaux redoutent les sorts et les maléfices qui peuvent leur être jetés. Les colons ont peur des nègres empoisonneurs, les esclaves et les affranchis sont terrorisés par les pratiques magiques qui les menacent. Certes la religion catholique prétend protéger, mais lui est souvent préférée l'intervention d'un sorcier désenvouteur." (author)
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."
Can musical sounds reveal history, or collective identity, or new notions of geography, in different ways than texts or migrating people themselves? This essay offers the idea that the sounds of music, with their capacity to index memories and associations, become sonic points on a cognitive compass that orients diasporic people in time and space. Explores grassroots religious musical productions to show that Afro-Caribbean groups can stake out multiple diasporic identities in overlapping diasporic spaces through the various political registers of tribe, kingdom, and nation.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
399 p, Focusing on developments in Afro-Cuban religious culture, demonstrates that traditional Caribbean cultural practices are part and parcel of the same history that produced modernity and that both represent complexly interrelated hybrid formations. Palmié argues that the standard narrative trajectory from tradition to modernity, and from passion to reason, is a violation of the synergistic processes through which historically specific, moral communities develop the cultural forms that integrate them.
"The Spanish expression--la cultura cura (culture heals)--is an affirmation of the potential healing power of a variety of cultural practices that together constitute the ethos of a people"
