Music and the Performance of Identity on Marie-Galante, French Antilles (SOAS Studies in Music)
Routledge
ISBN13:
9781138265868
$76.94
Marie-Galante is a small island situated in the Caribbean to the south of Guadeloupe. The majority of Marie-Galantais are descendants of the slave era, though a few French settlers also occupy the island. Along with its neighbours Guadeloupe and Martinique, Marie-Galante forms an official d?partement of France. Marie-Galante historically has never been an independent polity. Marie-Galantais express sentiments of being 'deux fois colonis?', or twice colonized, concomitant with their sense of insularity from a global organization of place. Dr Ron Emoff translates this pervasive sense of displacement into the concept of the 'non-nation'. Musical practices on the island provide Marie-Galantais with a means of re-connecting with other significant distant places. Many Marie-Galantais display a 'split-subjectivity', embracing an African heritage, a French association and a Caribbean regionalism. This book is unique, in part, with regard to its treatment of a particular mode of self-consciousness, expressed musically, on a virtually forgotten Caribbean island. The book also combines literary, narrative, historical and musical sources to theorize a postcolonial subsurreal in the French Antilles. The focus of the book is upon kadril dance and gwo ka drumming, two prevalent musical practices on the island with which Marie-Galantais construct unique perceptions of self in relation, specifically, to Africa and France. Based on several extended periods of ethnographic research, the book evokes unique Marie-Galantais views on tradition, historicity, esclavage, nationalism (and its absence) and the local significance of occupying a globally out-of-the-way place. The book will be of interest not only to ethnomusicologists, but also to those interested in cultural and linguistic anthropology, postcolonial studies, performance studies, folklore and Caribbean studies.
- | Author: Ron Emoff
- | Publisher: Routledge
- | Publication Date: Nov 11, 2016
- | Number of Pages: 210 pages
- | Language: English
- | Binding: Paperback
- | ISBN-10: 1138265861
- | ISBN-13: 9781138265868
- Author:
- Ron Emoff
- Publisher:
- Routledge
- Publication Date:
- Nov 11, 2016
- Number of pages:
- 210 pages
- Language:
- English
- Binding:
- Paperback
- ISBN-10:
- 1138265861
- ISBN-13:
- 9781138265868