Pages: 1-17., Examines the songs of the insular Caribbean as a contribution to the oral literature of the Caribbean region, with particular reference to the songs and singers of Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and to a lesser extent, Barbados. Among the artists discussed are Trinidad's African Queen of Song, Ella Andall, Dominica's Nascio Fontaine, and Carolyn Cooper's perspectives on the Jamaican dancehall and Kittitian legend King Ellie Matt, 'De Hardest Hard', who reigned supreme during the 1970s and 1980s. He influenced the late Daddy Friday, whose songs still receive significant airplay today. Trinidad's chutney soca songs speak to the presence of its East Indian singers while Jamaican sisters Tami Chynn and Tessanne Chin of Chinese, Cherokee, European, and African descent have become known, respectively, as pop and rock reggae singers.
Adieu foulard, adieu madras is a very popular tune from the French Caribbean. It is just as popular today in continental France, where it has been adapted to different musical genres. Yet, for those familiar with the simple melody and its evocative lyrics, which encourages carefree humming, not many may be aware that it is so deeply rooted in the history of French colonialism, island tropes, and ethnic relations. This essay uses Adieu foulard, adieu madras and its multiple sonic meanings as the lens to better understand the dynamics of the (post)colonial relationship of the people of the French Antilles, particularly from the island overseas departments of Martinique and Guadeloupe, many of whom have now migrated permanently to metropolitan France. For these, Adieu has now also become their song of exile.
Around the beginning of the 20th century the codes for representing masculinity in opera began to change. This essay focuses on how the changing codes of masculinity in leading male roles are calibrated differently for white European characters and nonwhite characters with non-European ancestry (for example, African American, Caribbean, Moorish, or African) and shows how masculinity and heroism are brought together differently for black and non-black characters. The first section examines Giuseppe Verdi's Otello (1887) and focuses on a critical moment near the end of the opera that links orchestral developments in Italy at the end of the 19th century with the way Verdi dramatizes Otello's vicious murder of Desdemona. A broader overview considers four operas written in the first half of the 20th century: Berg's Wozzeck (1925), Krenek's Jonny spielt auf (1927), Gershwin's Porgy and Bess (1935), and Britten's Peter Grimes (1945). Two of these operas (Wozzeck and Peter Grimes) feature white European title characters, while the other two feature African American protagonists.
