African Consciences is a Parisian based initiative of artistes from the `Black Atlantic' and Africa. They use music to shape a discourse on their identity in relation to Africa, strongly bound to consciousness. The musical itinerary provided by reggae and hip hop constitutes what they see as a means for action to bring alive a "global African network". In this chapter I will reconsider the practice of repatriation, and the meanings it conveys now. I will try to analyse it through African Consciences' "Door of no Return" where they intend to travel back the road of the trans Atlantic trade in Africans. African Consciences has a mediated relation to Africa through roads that join their musical practice to their understanding of African history and tradition. It also carries an ideological intent to bring forth a global Africa through the articulation of routes and roots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR].
Relying mainly on the manuscript records of the Royal African Company, we explore the factors that contributed to the large gap between slave prices in Africa and the Caribbean. Twenty-two voyages from the mid-1680s are analyzed. These were conducted with hired ships and the payments to the shipowners and captains were recorded. In addition to transport costs, mortality and morbidity had a big effect on slave prices; while the earnings from the trade in gold and ivory had a moderating influence. The effect of mortality and transport costs on slave prices during the eighteenth century is also explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR].
In this article, I analyse patterns of classifications and naming of African "nations" in colonial Cuba. Based on parish records, I suggest possible interpretations of African patterns of classification, identities and social arrangements during the formation of Cuban plantations over the course of the eighteenth century. I discuss some of the methodological implications that can be explored regarding marriages of enslaved people in Cuba based on ecclesiastical sources, chiefly in the case of Guanabacoa. I have furthered the social/demographic analysis of "nations" in Cuba, underscoring how Africans could have been the agents of networks and alliances through organizational strategies and the formation of identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR].
