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.
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.
The Caribbean coastal region of Colombia is called the costa, and its inhabitants are referred to as costeños. The müsica costeña (coastal music) is a product of tri-ethnic syncretic cultural traditions including Amerindian, Spanish, and African elements, a merging that begins with the colonial period and continues into the republican period on the Caribbean Coast. Traditional music from the Colombian Caribbean coast expresses its tri-ethnic costeño identity in various vocal styles and musical forms and through its types of instruments and the way they are played. This essay describes the aspects and circumstances under which cumbia, a coastal musical genre and dance form of peasant origins characterized by an African-derived style, has spread from its local origins in the valley of the Magdalena River to acquire a Colombian national identity, becoming in a few years a transnational musical phenomenon.
Tambrin music on the Caribbean island of Tobago is traditionally performed to entertain people at weddings and other family celebrations. The genre is also connected with healing ceremonies and the belief in ancestral spirits. It can cause trance and possession. Nevertheless, today’s musicians hardly ever play in these traditional contexts. Opportunities to perform arise from political events, folklore festivals, and concerts for tourists. In consideration of theoretical views concerning cultural contacts, preservation, and staged respectively participatory performances, the article deals with different forms of musical interaction and different ways of playing depending on repertory, individual performers, and performance conditions, based on fieldwork conducted between 1995 and 2009, thus comprising the music of two generations of musicians.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
As contemporary tambú music and dance evolved on the Caribbean island of Curaçao, it intertwined sacred and secular, private and public cultural practices, and many traditions from Africa and the New World. As she explores the formal contours of tambú, the author discovers its variegated history and uncovers its multiple and even contradictory origins. She recounts the personal stories and experiences of Afro-Curaçaoans as they perform tambú–some who complain of its violence and low-class attraction and others who champion tambú as a powerful tool of collective memory as well as a way to imagine the future.
Jackson: University Press of Mississippi Jackson, MS, United States
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
The Brazilian berimbau, a musical bow, is most commonly associated with the energetic martial art/dance/game of capoeira. But the instrument has played a prominent role in several genres of Brazilian music from the 1950s to the present, including bossa nova, samba-reggae, música popular brasileira (MPB), electronic dance music, Brazilian art music, and more. Berimbau music spans oral and recorded historical traditions, connects Latin America to Africa, juxtaposes the sacred and profane, and unites nationally constructed notions of Brazilian identity across seemingly impenetrable barriers. The berimbau is discussed beyond the context of capoeira, exploring the bow's emergence as a national symbol. It engages and analyzes intersections of musical traditions in the Black Atlantic, North American popular music, and the rise of global jazz.
Examines the history of a genre that spans several continents and several centuries. Material from Mexico, Cuba, France, and Great Britain are brought together to create anew, expand upon, and critique the standard histories of danzón narrated by Mexico's danzón experts and others. In these standard histories, origins and nationality are key to the constitution of genres that are racialized and moralized for political ends. Danzón, its antecedents, and successors are treated as generic equivalents despite being quite different. From the danzón on, these genres are positioned as being the products of individual, male originators and their nations. Africa is treated as a conceptual nation, and Africanness as something extra that racializes hegemonic European music-dance forms. Political leanings and strategies determine whether these music-dance forms are interpreted, adopted, or co-opted as being black or white.
Considers the characteristic features of Garífuna music, which are intrinsically related to the history of slavery, warfare, miscegenation, and resistance of this people of African and Caribbean ancestry, living today mainly on the Atlantic Coast of Central America and in the U.S. Based on his analysis of the Wanaragua or Yancunú rhythm, performed in Livingston, Guatemala, by dancers wearing shell rattles (illacu) tied to their ankles, and a musical ensemble consisting of two drums (garaón) and gourd rattles (sisira), the author examines the metric ambiguity of its basic “time line” or 'clave' of 3:3:2 as well as the rhythmic flexibility and unpredictability with which the dancers and musicians relate to it, as a musical expression of the social and cultural conditions created by that history, especially by the processes of miscegenation.
