Although the Americas and Caribbean region are purported to comprise different ethnic groups, this article’s focus is on people of African descent, who represent the largest ethnic group in many countries. The emphasis on people of African descent is related to their family structure, ethnic identity, cultural, psychohistorical, and contemporary psychosocial realities. This article discusses the limitations of Western psychology for theory, research, and applied work on people of African descent in the Americas and Caribbean region.
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.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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The pioneering collector of African American music writes of a trip to West Africa where he found the cultural and historical roots for musical expression from Brazil to Cuba, to Trinidad, to New Orleans, to the Bahamas, to dance halls of west Louisiana and the great churches of Harlem. He recounts experiences from a half-century spent following, documenting, recording, and writing about the Africa-influenced music of the United States, Brazil, and the Caribbean.
Bilby,Kenneth M. (Author) and Neely,Daniel T. (Author)
Format:
Book, Section
Publication Date:
2009
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
The Anglophone Caribbean islands are host to a rich and diverse tradition of dances and dance music adopted from European ballroom traditions. These traditions should be seen less as examples of “assimilation” than as products of a shared history of creativity, struggle, and adaptation among the colonized. Thus, for example, the related “tambrin” tradition of the island of Tobago has served as a vehicle for spirit possession in ceremonies with clear African-derived elements.
West African powers in the Caribbean have often been studied as important cultural and religious formations. This article treats them as ontological formations by collapsing the modern opposition between reason/knowledge and power/force. The distinction between the "knowing" West anchored in a unified scientific reason and the "believing" Rest who trust in many cultures is therefore refused. With the above prerequisite in mind, a new approach to creolization, termed "tukontology," is deployed to reveal a Kuhnian type paradigm shift in the war-medicine of blacks on British West Indian plantations between 1645 and emancipation in 1838.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
129 p., One of only a few studies using ethnographic research to document and analyze the self-identification and retention of African culture by Afro-Mexicans in Tamiahua, Veracruz, Mexico.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
An exploration of the relationship between music and social and political consciousness on the southern Caribbean island of Trinidad, which is known for its vibrant musical traditions, all of which reflect the island’s ethnic diversity.
Studies paralinguistic, pragmatic, and discourse markers of "kiss-teeth" by mapping the distribution of the gesture and its names and exploring previously unresolved problems of their meanings and use
"The contributions of a number of First and Third World scholars to the development of the anthropology of the African diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean have been elided from the core of the discipline as practiced in North America and Europe. As such, the anthropology of the African diaspora in the Americas can be traced to the paradigmatic debate on the origins of New World black cultures between Euro-American anthropologist Melville J. Herskovits and African American sociologist E. Franklin Frazier." (AR Journals Annual Reviews)
Group AFROCUBA de Matanzas, one of Cuba's most acclaimed folklore groups, is one of the few troupes who showcase the wide diversity of African cultures that survive on the island. The group was founded in 1957 in the city of Matanzas, which is considered the prime repository of African culture in Cuba. AFROCUBA is comprised of 19 very talented drummers, dancers and singers, some of whom display talent in each discipline. Even their government representative, Ileana Hernandez, is a talented singer and dancer. Francisco Zamora Chirino, affectionately known as "Menini" has been the troupe's director for a number of years. The dancers include Julia Zulima Echeoana, Antonio Figueroa, Juan Carlos Golbelm, and Leniel Perez. The percussionists include Osmudo Barbaro Aldazabal, Franciso Dominquez Boada, Reynaldo Gobel, Enrique Mesa, Oluis Cancino Morales, and Pedro Abelle Torrente. The singers include Bertina Aranda, Sara Gobel, and Amparo Rodriquez. Of special note are Maria Dolores Perez and Regla "Pola" Perez, whose sister Ana is the featured dancer with Matanzas "other word famous troupe, Los Munequitos, dancer Reynaldo Gonzalez, and Rameses Zamora, "El Professor," who is a music professor at the University of Matanzas.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
279 p, A comprehensive description of the West African language of Yoruba as it has been used on the island of Trinidad in the southern Caribbean. The study breaks new ground in addressing the experience of Africans in one locale of the Africa Diaspora and examines the nature of their social and linguistic heritage as it was successively retained, modified, and discarded in a European-dominated island community.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
138 p, Description and analysis of the two most important religions of African descent in Cuban spiritual life: the first of Yoruban origin; the second of Congo-Bantu origin
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
363 p, "A reprint of this extensive study of Afro-Cuban music examines the musical traditions of the African population in Cuba, including rhythmic and melodic features, instrumentation, and vocal characteristics. It must be studied in conjunction with Ortiz's Los bailes y el teatro de los negros en el folklore de Cuba (1993) and Los instrumentos de la música afrocubana (1995), both of which have been reprinted. The three works have also been reprinted in Spain (Madrid: Editorial Música Mundana Maqueda, 1997)"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
489 p, Examines the musical traditions of the African population in Cuba, including rhythmic and melodic features, instrumentation, and vocal characteristics.
Eight objects from Dutch Guiana, South America, recently presented to the Museum by Mr. and Mrs. Maurice Berkson, of High- land Park, Illinois, are of especial interest because they show the survival of Negro crafts that have persisted in the West Indies and Guiana since the importation of slaves from West Africa several centuries ago;
