Attempts to understand what the presence of Black music means in the absence of Black people. Is this an expression of a global circulation of Afro-Caribbean cultural trends as symbols of belonging and difference among urban youngsters? Does it take us back to the history of Quintana Roo as a Caribbean region and the Black Atlantic? Is it a form of revision of Mexican national ethnic mixture and inclusion of other population groups? Adapted from the source document.
According to McPherson, Spenser has gathered a remarkable international ensemble of scholars who collectively ask what the East-West Cold War meant in Latin America
Journal Article, Taking an Afrocentric approach to the study of Africans who were enslaved by the Spanish in Mexico, the author traveled to Mexico on many occasions to study the retention of African cultural forms, concepts, practices, and values. This article provides the reader with a critical literature brief on the issues surrounding the current discourse.
Reyes appreciation of nature and the wonders of the New World helps to understand the beauty of new frontier opened to humanity upon the discovery of the Americas. Also see author's "Alfonso Reyes, Critic and Artist," Ph.D. thesis, University of Washington, 1973.
On Christmas Day 1521, in the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo, the first recorded slave revolt in the Americas occurred. A group of African, likely Wolof, slaves came together with native Indians led by the Taino cacique Enriquillo to assert their independence. Beyond being the first slave revolt in the Americas, it was also one of the most important moments in Colonial American history because it was the first known instance when Africans and Indians united against their Spanish overlords in the Americas.
The singing of capeyuye (the Mascogo—Black Seminole people—equivalent of the U.S. spiritual) became a significant token of individual and communal identity in that population. The life and career of Gertrudis Vázquez are studied as emblematic of that tradition. The technical aspects of capeyuye are described and its performance is examined with the context of Mascogo society, particularly its connection with important events such as funerals, birthdays, and other festive occasions.
Located in the eastern Brazilian Amazon roughly three hours by boat from the open Atlantic, the port city of Belém do Pará has been an important point of convergence for transnational flows of commodities, people, and culture, including a vast array of up-tempo Caribbean dance genres known locally as lambada. Since the late twentieth century, inhabitants of Belém and surrounding areas have sought to make a virtue of their liminal position between the hegemonic centers of southeastern Brazil and the circum-Caribbean. This article shows how musicians, dancers, listeners, and culture brokers draw on the local history of Caribbean cosmopolitan musicality to articulate an alternative Amazonian regional identity, one characterized by connectedness and proximity to their Caribbean neighbors rather than by isolation and provincialism. In so doing, the article contributes to the remapping of the cultural contours of Brazil, the Caribbean, the Amazon, and Latin America.
