Examines the role of successive intraregional migrations on the construction of cultural identity in Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles. The author analyzes the Afro-Dutch experience within the broader canvas of Caribbean migration studies, and thus brings a broader diasporic perspective to current research of identity and culture, with particular reference to Curaçao. Through migrations, the island has incorporated different kinds of musical expressions of the region. Of all cultural forms, music provides an ideal opportunity to explore cultural exchanges within and beyond diasporas. Curaçao therefore offers a rare window for viewing the role of intraregional migrations in the formation of discourses on diaspora and cultural identity. Migration studies that look only at the modern transnationalistic diapora obscure the deeply rooted significance of migration on Afro-diasporic identity within the Caribbean and the cultural identity of specific island societies. Intraregional migration movements both past and present profoundly influenced the cultural identity of Curaçao and its diasporic historical vision. Curaçaoan cultural identity has not been solely shaped by the internal dynamics of a merging of African and European cultures, but also intraCaribbean interactions of the descendants of enslaved Africans.
Special journal issue: New Perspectives on the Black Music Diaspora: Focus on the Caribbean., Includes Roger D. Abrahams, Questions of competency and performance in the black musical diaspora; Rose Mary Allen, Music in diasporic context: The case of Curaçao and intro-Caribbean migration; Nanette T. De Jong, Curaçao and the folding diaspora: Contesting the party tambú in the Netherlands; Elizabeth Mcalister, Listening for geographies: Music as sonic compass pointing toward African and Christian diasporic horizons in the Caribbean; and Raquel Z. Rivera, New York Afro-Puerto Rican and Afro-Dominican roots music: Liberation mythologies and overlapping diasporas.
Unedited] Blues scholarship has offered a number of interpretations for the haunted desperation of the souls of Delta blues musicians, their deals with the devil, and the magical acquisition of musical skill. The association of 1920s and 1930s blues musicians with the supernatural may have been fed by those rediscovered blues musicians sharing what their mid-20th c. white interlocutors wanted to hear, but they may also have resonated with a more metaphorical belief in the role of the supernatural. Robert Johnson’s diverse recordings, specifically “Crossroad blues,” “Preaching blues” and “If I dad possession over judgment day,” illuminate connections between blues and African Diaspora of the circum-Caribbean. The lyrical content, with its images of prayer and desperation, musical construction, with connections to common practices in religious musics in the circum-Caribbean, and ascribed primitivist elements in these songs suggest that Johnson’s invocation of the supernatural may also have been the metaphorical presentation of a widely known legend. Therefore, beliefs about spirituality in the blues, and the interconnection of blues and religion, have bases beyond religious or commercial sources.
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.
"Dominican culture and society can be characterized as a hybrid whose nature is expressed in various domains. For example, folk or popular Catholicism, the religion of some 90 percent of the national population, is in summary a cultural amalgamation. But deconstructed, it can be seen to retain elements of the various contributors to its eclectic configuration: Spanish of different regions, classes, Catholic religious orders, and even religions with regard to Judaic and Islamic features retained in Spanish folk Catholicism; West and Central African of various ethnic origins; continuities of native Taíno beliefs and practices; and other origins, such as the possible East Indian origin of the vodú deity of the “black” Guedé family, Santa Marta la Dominadora." -The Author
Tambú represents a ritual from Curaçao, largest of the Netherlands Antilles, employed by the island’s African peoples as a religio-spiritual vehicle. In Dutch mainland cities, however, the Tambú has developed into a type of party music, with Curaçaoan immigrants joining other African and Afro-Caribbean immigrants to explore and express complex collective identities. These reinvented tambú parties constitute new sites of cultural reproduction as well as contestation, of solidarity as well as difference, providing the rare occasion to observe diasporic belonging among Afro-Caribbean communities in the Netherlands. These contemporary tambú parties provide a needed space to negotiate competing and overlapping identities, enabling both a specific Antillean identity as well as a more inclusive diasporic identity.
Special Religion issue, Includes Martha Ellen Davis, "Diasporal dimensions of Dominican folk religion and music"; Loren Y. Kajikawa, D'Angelo's voodoo technology: African cultural memory and the ritual of popular music consumption"; Joseph M. Murphy, "'Chango 'ta vein'/chango has come': Spiritual embodiment in the Afro-Cuban ceremony, bembé"; Teresa L. Reed, "Shared possessions: Black Pentecostals, Afro-Caribbeans, and sacred music"; and Rebecca Sager, "Transcendence through aesthetic experience: Divining a common wellspring under conflicting Caribbean and African American religious value systems."
Unedited] Focusing on R&B neo-soul singer D’Angelo’s 1999 album Voodoo, this article explores the relationship (both real and imagined) between African American popular music and Afro-Caribbean religion. While most songs on the album do not use traditional Caribbean rhythms, the album’s imagery appears to equate Voodoo’s blend of funk, soul, and gospel with Afro-Diasporic religious practices such as Santeria or Vodou. Not only do D’Angelo’s own statements about the album affirm this connection, but his fans also contribute valuable evidence supporting the link. Surveying the reception of Voodoo by music critics as well as hundreds of online customer reviews of the album via Amazon.com, I argue that D’Angelo’s listeners characterize the album as an inner-directed musical experience approximating spirit-possession. By consicously linking the repetitious, circular grooves of black popular music with the form and function of Afro-Diasporic religious traditions, D’Angelo and his fans testify to the value of black spirituality and offer a critique of the hypermasculinity and materialism pervading contemporary hip-hop and rap music. Voodoo refocuses our attention on the spiritual qualities of African American music that persist even in an age of mass-mediated global capitalism.