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.
The benefit features Dr. Raul Ruiz Miyares, a professor of Afro-Cuban culture and history at Casa del Caribe, Santiago de Cuba. His lecture, "Cuba & Africanismo: The Making of Revolutionary Culture", will include slides and a video. The benefit also includes: spoken word, an Afro-Cuban folkloric performance, a Caribbean dinner, and a Latin, World Beat dance party, all on Friday, May 2.6 p.m.
Alicia Alonso contended that the musicality of Cuban ballet dancers contributed to a distinctive national style in their performance of European classics such as Giselle, ou Les Wilis and Lebedinoe ozero (Swan lake), op. 20. A highly developed sense of musicality distinguished Alonso's own dancing. For the ballerina, this was more than just an element of her individual style: it was an expression of the Cuban cultural environment and a common feature among ballet dancers from that island. In addition to elucidating the physical manifestations of musicality in Alonso's dancing, this article examines how the ballerina's frequent references to music in connection to both her individual identity and the Cuban ballet aesthetics fit into a national discourse of self-representation that deems Cubans an exceptionally musical people. This analysis also problematizes the Cuban ballet's brand of musicality by underscoring the tension between its possible explanations—from being the result of the dancers' socialization into a rich Afro-Caribbean musical culture to being a stylistic element that Alonso developed through her training with foreign teachers and, in turn, transmitted to her Cuban disciples.
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Focuses on cultural manifestations of pan-Americanism through the development of Haitian folkloric dance by the Haitian-born dance director Jean-Léon Destiné and the U.S. African American dance educator Lavinia Williams. As early as the mid-1930s, the Haitian government began to support the advancement and consumption of Haitian cultural arts to increase tourism to the country. In fact, many Caribbean administrations encouraged similar investments in tourism during this time to complement industrialization and to answer the dilemmas of debt, unemployment, and failing economies. The work of Destiné and Williams sought to modernize Haitian dance or, rather, to discipline it, classify it, and theatricalize it so Haiti’s original art form could be exhibited on the world stage and educate audiences about Haitian history and culture. The establishment of cultural institutions and the training of Haitian dancers by a U.S. African American choreographer affirmed not only the spirit of pan-Americanism’s cultural exchange programs, but also the creation of an alternative world by black dancers in which African-based art forms were celebrated and in consistent dialogue with Western culture.
Addresses the socially controversial issue of the public expression of sexuality in dance in the Caribbean. Of particular interest is the phenomenon of 'wining' or 'wukkin' up', dancing involving pelvic gyrations.
Gonzalez,Anita, (Author), Jackson,George O. (Photography), and Pellicer,Jose Manuel (Photography)
Format:
Book, Whole
Publication Date:
2010
Published:
Austin: University of Texas Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
163 p, rticulates African ethnicity and artistry within the broader panorama of Mexican culture by featuring dance events that are performed either by Afro-Mexicans or by other ethnic Mexican groups about Afro-Mexicans. She illustrates how dance reflects upon social histories and relationships and documents how residents of some sectors of Mexico construct their histories through performance.
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 Philadelphia region was the site of a rare, artistic treat when Balé Folclórico, Brazil's premiere professional folk dance company made a special Black History Month visit. Formed in 1988, the 33-member troupe of dancers, musicians, and singers perform a repertory based on various Bahian folkloric dances of African origin, including: capoeira (a form of martial arts), samba and other cultural traditions celebrated during Carnival. Hailing from Salvador, in the northeastern state of Bahia, Balé Folclòrico represents Bahia's most important cultural manifestations under a contemporary theatrical vision that reflects its popular origins.
78 p., Examines the ways in which the African American identity articulates and constructs itself through dance. Norman Bryson, an art historian, suggests that approaches from art history, film and comparative literature are as well applicable to the field of dance research. Therefore, as his main critical lens and a theoretical foundation, the author adopts the analytical approach developed by Erwin Panofsky, an art historian and a proponent of integrated critical approach, much like the one suggested by Bryson. Demonstrates that Erwin Panofsky's iconology, when applied as a research method, can make valuable contributions to the field of Dance Studies. Uses Katherine Dunham's original recordings of diaspora dances of the Caribbean and her modern dance choreography titled L'Ag'Ya to look for evidence for the paradigm shift from "primitive" to "diaspora" in representation of Black identity in dance also with the aim of detecting the elements that produce cultural difference in dance.
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266 p, This study spans several linguistic areas of the Caribbean and parts of the Atlantic coast of the U.S., Mexico, and South America; it examines historical, national, popular, parading, sacred, and combat dances to reveal both meanings and consequences of performance. Beyond unfolding important physical and cultural significances of each genre, the analyses deepen to understand core motivations for African diaspora performance; the results are transcendence, resilience, and citizenship among dancing and music-making participants. The study repeatedly acknowledges Katherine Dunham, who began teaching the citizenship of Caribbean dance/music practices and reviews the literature since her original trilogy on Caribbean dance practices. Analyses also place local Caribbean dances as viable commodities within crucial Caribbean tourism and both cultural and economic globalization.
221 p., Carmen (Mérimée 1845, Bizet 1875), the story about the (in)famous Gypsy dancer from Spain, is the second most adapted narrative in the history of world cinema, with over eighty global versions officially recognized to date. Despite the global reach of the Carmen phenomenon, many scholars claim that this tale has hardly been reworked in Spanish America and never in the Caribbean. Following Carmen from Spain to Spanish America, the author shows how the template of Carmen (a love story that reveals the racio-ethnic and gender stratification in Spain) has been artfully but unsuspectingly reappropriated and "creolized" in postcolonial Cuba in the controversial film María Antonia (1991) by Afro-Cuban filmmaker Sergio Giral, based on the landmark play María Antonia (1964) by Afro-Cuban playwright Eugenio Hernández Espinosa.
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.
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Explores the vexed relationship between popular dance and value. In a critique of the Western art canon, it traces the shifting value systems that underpin popular dance scholarship and considers how different dancing communities articulate multiple and often paradoxical expressions of judgment, significance, and worth through their embodied practice. Employing a cultural theory approach, it focuses on the choreographic content of neo-burlesque striptease in London and New York, the dance styles of British punk, metal, and ska fans, and the vernacular dances of a British-Caribbean dancehall to interrogate how value is produced, negotiated, and reimagined. Yet this is not to assume that they are autonomous values untouched by the social frameworks in which they exist. Rather, the corporeal enunciations of value constructed by those engaged in popular dance forms are informed by a complex matrix of aesthetic, economic, political, and social values that are already in circulation
With questions of identity and multiculturalism remaining at the center of debates in the press, political, and academia arenas, a dance production tackles these issues head on in a surprisingly humorous and accessible way. Birmingham-based Sonia Sabri Company's Kathakbox is a collaborative production exploring the theme of ticking boxes, which sets out to challenge preconceptions about identity. Four specialists in kathak, hip-hop, African Caribbean, and contemporary dance are joined by three musician-vocalists who eschew instruments, utilizing their voices and bodies to create a vibrant rhythmic score influenced by a cosmopolitan mix of styles. Aesthetic and ideological meeting points occur onstage in the hour-long show, while counter-hegemonic possibilities emerge in associated workshops. The article explores how the narrative potential of kathak opens the way for Muslim women participants to delve into movement possibilities and improvisational potential of both the South Asian dance form and hip-hop.
The recent performance featured five of the pieces from their repertoire. Three of the pieces, 'Sankofa-Ja' (choreographed by Professor Kariamu Welsh Asante), 'Evolution' (choreographed by Abeldo 'Tokie' [Monika Lawrence]) and 'African Nite' (choreographed by Monica Lawrence assisted by Orville Hall) were added to the ensemble's repertoire this year. '[Liza]' weaves together the stories and music from 'Linstead Market', 'Mout-a-Massie Liza' and 'Every time me Memba Liza' to tell the story of a young girl who becomes disaffected with country life and goes off to the city.
Inspired by the African Diaspora in the Caribbean, Katherine Dunham spearheaded an American dance revolution, breaking down social barriers and prejudice
Through an examination of the recording Gargalhada (pega na chaleira), a chansonnette sung by Eduardo das Neves, the origin of the expression 'pegar na chaleira' (bootlicking) is traced, while some inconsistencies in the online catalogue of the Instituto Moreira Salles are revealed. Probably recorded in 1906, six years before the establishment of the Odeon plant in Rio, the piece was labeled a lundu, a paradigmatically Afro-Brazilian genre, in the 1915–26 catalogues. The music and laughter that Neves appropriates for himself were created by George Washington Johnson, the first black star of early sound recording, and reused in other Casa Edison (Brazilian Odeon) recordings on sale from 1913 to 1919. But while the former North American slave ridicules himself in accordance with white stereotypes, the self-designated Creole stages a satire on the behavior of upperclass men in Rio de Janeiro. In this process, the coon song turns into its antithesis., unedited non–English abstract received by RILM] Um exame do fonograma Gargalhada (pega na chaleira), cançoneta por Eduardo das Neves, expõe a origem da expressão “pegar na chaleira” e revela incongruências nos critérios de catalogação online do Instituto Moreira Salles. Provavelmente datada de 1906, a gravação aparece como um “lundu” em catálogos comerciais de 1915–1926, e as mesmas ideias musicais foram reaproveitadas em outros registros sonoros da Casa Edison comercializados entre 1913 e 1919. A música e o gargalhar que Neves reaproveita foram criados por George Washington Johnson, o primeiro astro negro da gravação mecânica. Mas enquanto o ex-escravo norte-americano se auto-ridiculariza de acordo com estereótipos brancos, o autodenominado “crioulo” encena uma sátira ao comportamento masculino das classes dominantes do Rio. Neste processo, a coon song transforma-se na antítese do gênero.
"For the ones who could not afford it, he (Nettleford) used his influence to get them into different dance schools throughout the world because he valued the totality in education in every genre of dance," he added. "He supported kids who weren't able to support themselves at the tertiary level, without fanfare. Many NDTC dancers get scholarships... the company sponsors them and pays their tuition while they are away." "Most of the steps that are considered Caribbean dance were developed by the NDTC under his tutelage," he said. "Dance companies in Jamaica mirror the NDTC and there are many other groups throughout the Caribbean doing these same dances." NDTC alumni have not just branched out to form their own dance companies in Jamaica, they have also had success internationally. Two prime examples are Jackie Guy, one of Britain's leading lecturers in Afro Caribbean dance, who choreographed "The Harder They Come", and Garth Fagan, who choreographed "The Lion King".
The major event -- "A Moment in Time" -- will take place on Saturday (June 25th). It's a white- tie tribute gala honoring the life mission of [Katherine Dunham]. The honorary chairs of the event -- Harry Belafonte, Danny Glover and Dick Gregory -- will be joined by a host of other luminaries, including Eugene Redman, poet-laureate of the State of Illinois, to highlight the many contributions of the "Grande Dame of Modern and African Dance" who was instrumental in projecting Haiti on the international scene in the 1940's and '50's. An alert Ms. Dunham reminisced about Haiti's "glorious days" under Presidents Estimé and Magloire. She said, "You all were too young to know about that!" When the Prime Minister said, "Oh no! We aren't that young, we were there too," she beamed and added: "So, you know what I'm talking about."
Katherine Dunham (1909-2006) is revered as one of the great pillars of American dance history. Her world-renowned modern dance company exposed audiences to the diversity of dance, and her schools brought dance training and education to a variety of populations sharing her passion and commitment to dance as a medium of cultural communication. Often recognized for her research in the Caribbean and on African dance traditions, Dunham's research also extended to black dance traditions of America. her research in American black dance traditions unearthed and contributed to the foundations of jazz dance and black vernacular movement vocabularies.
Chabela Ramírez, the black singer and activist born in Montevideo in 1958, is a singular personality of candombe, the only multi-form Afro-Uruguayan musical genre. Retracing her trajectory leads us through the history of Uruguay's black community (10% of the total population) and candombe, with particular attention on how this musical expression went from devalued practice to national heritage in a country deeply marked by a Eurocentric ideology. Ramírez founded and gave voice, with Afrogama, the choir and dance group that she leads, to a unique aesthetic thought that brought meaning to candombe via the field of Afro-religions (Umbanda and Batuque).
Like many other phenomena, the history of the tango is steeped in the notion of a progressive evolution at once social, sexualized, and racial, a sort of three-fold whitening which is accompanied by the contemporary tendency to valorize its 'black roots'. One can only be amazed at the studies which strain to drag in blackness, although the historiography of Argentina is primarily one of whitening, and the growing international adoption and adaptation of the tango leave little room for minorities. These strange hybridizations provide useful illustrations for exploring the questions of identity surrounding the tango (dance) known as 'Argentinean' in the context of its globalization., unedited non–English abstract received by RILM] Comme bien d’autres expressions, l’histoire de la danse tango est imprégnée par l’idée d’une évolution progressiste à la fois sociale, sexuée et raciale, un triple blanchiment en quelque sorte, qui s’accompagne d’une tendance contemporaine consistant à valoriser ses « origines noires ». On ne peut que s’étonner des travaux qui s’efforcent de rapatrier de la négritude, alors que l’historiographie dominante de l’Argentine est dominée par le blanchiment et que les conditions d’actualisation de cette danse de par le monde offrent peu de place aux minorités. C’est à la faveur de ces curieux croisements que sont examinées les questions identitaires qui gravitent autour du tango dansé que l’on dit « argentin » dans le contexte de sa mondialisation.
Mocko Jumbie, as it is called in the Caribbean, has been a part of the Virgin Islands culture for more than 200 years. The phrase "Mocko Jumbie" may have different meanings according to the different tribes that practices the art. "Mocko" could mean "Mock" or it could mean "Good God."
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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Examines a variation of samba called pagode baiano in several peripheral neighborhoods of the city of Salvador. Dance parties organized around this genre provide the context for the affirmation of a racial identity discourse as well as the reterritorialization of 'easy women', 'dishonest and lazy people', jobless people, homosexuals, and blacks. Pagode reintegrates aspects of traditional African manifestations found in Brazil, such as dance, call-and-response song, and the emphasis on polyrhythm. It embraces a sub-altern gender (feminine) and sexuality (homosexual) and undermines the hegemony of the macho. It exists as a musical experience whose feelings are particular and shared amongst certain subjects. Musicians and the public share a language and a way of speaking about themselves and others that reveal an emergent, imperfect citizenship.
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.
"The LTM and NDTC relationship speaks for itself, we need each other," she said, before continuing to creatively embroider her personal experiences with the NDTC into her speech. With the dance floor of the NDTC studio as the stage, the delightful evening's programme flowed with a message from the chairman of the Rex Nettleford Foundation, Carlton Davis, a vote of thanks from NDTC Musical Director, Marjorie Whylie, and excerpts from the company's' repertoire. The dances were performed by the now generation of dancers.
Nego Gato's current production, under the series "Brazil to Pittsburgh, Vol. 2, is Navio Negregiro: The Ships of Enslavement" is a new work created by organization founder [Mestre Nego Gato] along with Paco Gomes. This work is a combination of Modern and Traditional dances that tells the story of the Middle Passage from African and the subsequent struggles in Brazil to regain their freedom. This production runs April 6 and 7 at 8 p.m. at the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater and the goal again according to Mestre Gato is to "share the beauty, variety and dynamic power of Afro-Brazilian culture."
429 p., Founded in 1969 in Lima, Perú Negro is now the most widely recognized Afro-Peruvian dance and music company. In order to emphasize the black presence in a nation that has dominantly narrated itself as mestizo, Perú Negro has produced representations of blackness that are grounded both on the history of slavery and on Diasporic idealizations of Africanness. While meant to value blackness through its music and dance performance, Perú Negro’s representations have contributed to romanticize the slave past and essentialize the African roots. This is made clear in the group’s concept of “family” upon which Perú Negro has relied to define who can and cannot belong to the group as well as who is capable of performing blackness.
306 p., Investigates the shifts in gender constructions currently taking place in Jamaica, a peripheral nation-state, during a period which is characterized by hegemonic dissolution in the world-system. These shifts are defined by class- and gender-based conflicts over the norms, values and aesthetics associated with the traditional bourgeois classes. The fulcrum for investigation is Jamaica's Dancehall culture, which currently exhibits changes in the field of masculinity, in which clashes over the body occur constantly. These conflicts center around dress, gendered dancing styles and adornment.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
Unedited] Shows how community music-makers and dancers take in all that is around them socially and globally, and publicly and bodily unfold their memories, sentiments, and raw responses within open spaces designated or commandeered for local popular dance. The book reveals a rarely discussed perspective on contemporary Cuban society during the 1990s, the peak decade of timba, and beyond, as the Cuban leadership transferred from Fidel Castro to his brother. Simultaneously, it reveals popular dance music in the context of a young and astutely educated Cuban generation of fierce and creative performers. By looking at the experiences of black Cubans and exploring the notion of 'Afro Cuba', the book explains timba's evolution and achieved significance in the larger context of Cuban culture. It discusses a maroon aesthetic extended beyond the colonial era to the context of contemporary society; describes the dance spaces of Cuba; and examines the performance of identity and desire through the character of the 'especulador'.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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273 p., Explores the iconography of Cuban rumba--a unique AfroCuban dance and music complex that represents the foundation of contemporary Cuban popular culture--and argues that rumba constitutes an essential part of a greater African-based ontology. Rumba dance performance is conceptualized as knowledge embodied, an avatar of nonverbal cultural communication and consciousness, which plays a central role in the organization of daily life and formation of identity. This dissertation demonstrates that concrete continuities exist between the diaspora and mainland Africa through close scrutiny of rumba and parallel performance art traditions in north, west and central Africa. Also attempts to identify specific African-based stylistic conventions as exemplified by Sahara's Imazighen (also known as Berber) peoples, Mali's Mande (known as Gangá in Cuba) and related groups, and the Kongo civilization establishing that although ethno-cultural boundaries exist, they tend to be permeable.
The dance-music complexes known as salsa and bhangra have not been subjected to any comparative academic scrutiny, despite clear parallels in their respective histories as cultural processes born out of multiple ruptures and conjunctions, including European colonialism, migrations during the postcolonial period, and transnational cultural and commodity flows. While salsa has resulted from the movement of people, music, and rhythmic cultures across Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States, bhangra evinces their movement across the partitioned space of Punjab, the United Kingdom, and the post-Partition nations of India and Pakistan. Both salsa and bhangra have, moreover, moved beyond original regional ambits to become cultural signifiers (albeit often contested as much as claimed) of wider Latino/a and Desi (pan-South Asian) identities respectively. Undoubtedly, it is the academic and cultural embedding of salsa within a Hispanophone postcolonial paradigm, and of bhangra within its Anglophone counterpart, that has prevented serious comparative work between these two musical expressive cultures which are equally but differently exemplary of the complex relationship between music and migration. Yet across the world, from Delhi to San Francisco, the two dance-music complexes increasingly meet each other in the same space, particularly that of the dance floor. Drawing on such evidence as well as on personal experience of dancing both salsa and bhangra, I will advance in this article a theoretical framework for their comparison as transnational musics, suggesting ways in which such a framework can illuminate the circuits of pleasure and politics that traverse each of these dance musics as embodied histories of a traumatic yet life-affirming postcolonial modernity.
CARL Campbell Dance Company 7's forthcoming dance showcase will celebrate more than two decades in the business and in British creative dance work. Carl Campbell 7 is a contemporary Caribbean dance theatre company with a deep commitment to educational development as well as the appreciation and promotion of Caribbean dance and culture as a performing art. Using the medium of contemporary Caribbean dance, the youngsters will perform an exhilarating piece as part of Carl Campbell Dance Company 7's eighth dance education showcase.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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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.
The Los Angeles Caribbean Carnival, held in late Oct 2002, featured uninhibited dancing from scantily-clad women, entertainment from Calypso Rose and other Caribbean musicians and plenty of good food.
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.
Analyzes how identity construction and ethnic representation processes take place in a folkloric festival framed by the multicultural policies of the Colombian state. Accounts for how institutions and base Afrocolombian communities use bullerengue—a local musical tradition that is now strong in the Uraba zone—as a tool in this construction process.
