Kingston, Jamaica: University of West Indies Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
248 p., Presents contemporary readings that contest in the areas of Caribbean religion, education, language, music, race, sexual behavior in a time of the AIDS pandemic, and the economy.
Since its publication in 1976, Ivan van Sertima's book They Came Before Columbus has gone through 21 printings, while receiving widespread--though not unanimous--condemnation from the American archaeological establishment, culminating in a hostile, full-length forum in Current Anthropology. And yet, startlingly, the field of American archaeology has recently found itself in the midst of a major paradigm shift, caused by archaeological evidence that obliterates the Clovis model as a legitimate demarcation of the first presence of human settlement in the New World. Kamugisha proposes to trace the response to They Came Before Columbus, while discussing the issue of diffusionism in van Sertima's work.;
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
187 p., Looks primarily at Negrismo and Negritude, two literary movements that appeared in the Francophone and Hispanic Caribbean as well as in Africa at the beginning of the twentieth century. It draws on speeches and manifestos, and use cultural studies to contextualize ideas.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
772 p., George Gershwin introduced Afro Cuban Music in America in 1926. Xavier Cugat during the 1930's introduced The Rumba dance. Three great innovations based on Cuban music hit the USA after World War II: the first was Cubop, the latest Latin jazz fusion. The rumbustious conguero Chano Pozo was also important, for he introduced jazz musicians to basic Cuban rhythms. Cuban jazz has continued to be a significant influence. The mambo first entered the United States around 1950, though ideas had been developing in Cuba and Mexico City for some time.
Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, Projected Date: 0812
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
364 p., Miller's extensive fieldwork in Cuba and West Africa documents ritual languages and practices that survived the Middle Passage and evolved into a unifying charter for transplanted slaves and their successors. To gain deeper understanding of the material, Miller underwent Ékpè initiation rites in Nigeria after ten years' collaboration with Abakuá initiates in Cuba and the United States. He argues that Cuban music, art, and even politics rely on complexities of these African-inspired codes of conduct and leadership.
Special journal issue: Communicating Pan-Africanism: Caribbean leadership and global impact, While kinship and political structures could not be transferred from Africa to the Caribbean under the conditions of forced migration, kinetic expressiveness, artistic skills and mental epistemologies were retained. These retentions covered domains such as religious ideas, musical instrumentation and morphology, dance choreography, culinary forms, hair and dress aesthetics, language syntax, economic activity and cooperation.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
223 p., Through complex explorations of narratives of Spanish Blacks in the Caribbean this collection of essays builds critically on mid and late twentieth century Afro-Hispanist scholarship and thereby amplifies the terms in which Africans in the Americas are generally discussed. Each of these essays deals with a pivotal aspect of the African experience in the Spanish speaking Caribbean from the period of slavery to the present day.
