113 p., Jamaican folk songs have become a definitive characteristic of Jamaican culture. They are exemplars of a culture whose music reflects the lifestyle of most of its citizens. In modern times, their beauty has been show cased in local and foreign performances which exposes an element of the country to the world. Additionally, the arrangements of songs by Jamaican composers like Noel Dexter and Peter Ashbourne have aided in their renaissance in modern times. This research analyzes the arrangements by Noel Dexter and Peter Ashbourne. It explores the transition of Jamaican folk songs from the slave fields to the art music stage.
237 p., Free people of color held an ambiguous place in Caribbean slave societies. On the one hand they were nominally free, but the reality of their daily lives was often something less than free. This work examines how free people of color, or libres de color , in nineteenth-century Cuba attempted to carve out lives for themselves in the face of social, economic, and political constraints imposed on them by white Cubans and Spaniards living in the island. It focuses on how through different Afro-Cuban associations some libres de color used public music and dance performances to self-fashion identities on their own terms.
