Caribbean and Atlantic Diaspora Dance: Igniting Citizenship

Notes

Notes Preface 1. For varied geographical, anthropological, and historical views of the CircumCaribbean region and its characteristics, see Michael Horowitz (Peoples and Cultures of the Caribbean), Sidney Mintz and Richard Price (An Anthropological Approach to the Afro-American Past: A Caribbean Perspective); Sidney Mintz and Sally Price et al. in Caribbean Contours; Franklin Knight and Colin Palmer (The Modern Caribbean); Alan Karras and J. R. McNeill (Atlantic American Societies: From Columbus through Abolition 1492–1888); and Percy Hintzen,“Cultural Politics of Development—Nationalism and the Invention of Development: Modernity and the Cultural Politics of Resistance.” In these references, the terms “Circum-Caribbean,” “Caribbean Basin,” or “Greater Caribbean” are regarded equally, depending on the purpose and perspective of the study. 2. My application of“Circum-Caribbean”terminology may challenge Latin Americanists whose work has not included the African segment of Latin American culture, or at least, not until recently.The works of historian George Reid Andrews and that of anthropologists Kevin A. Yelvington and Herbert Klein, following the authors in Manuel Moreno-Fraginal’s work and those in Ann Pescatello’s edited volume have shown important connections but also undisputable erasures or omissions regarding which ethnicities are included in the term “Latin American culture.” These views have generally neglected the ongoing culture niches within Latin America that echo Caribbean culture—in other words, the mixture of African and European heritages. 3. Alleyne, “Methodology and Historiography of the Caribbean.” 4. Sheila Walker, African Roots/American Cultures, 7. Chapter 1. Diaspora Dance: Courageous Performers 1. Readers should be mindful that even though this book is limited to the African Diaspora in the Americas or the“Atlantic Diaspora,”the African Diaspora extended north to Europe, east to Russia, and throughout Asia, as well as west to the Americas. See Harris, African Presence; DeBrunner; B. Lewis; Thornton; Gomez, Diasporic Africa; see also ASWAD (Association for the Study of World African Diaspora): www.aswadiaspora.org. From here on, the term“Diaspora”will presume the Atlantic African Diaspora. 2. As in any other region also, representative and contrasting dances draw from a dance vocabulary that is indigenous to the people who come to reside there. Thus, chart 1 indicates only one way to organize Caribbean dance culture. It is fleshed out in subsequent charts, but this particular chart serves as a representative structure for the vast variety of dances that can exist in any society.There may be other Diaspora dances beyond those listed, but I do not anticipate contrasts to the assessments of major types given here. 3. See Guerra, “My Experience.” 4. In this section in particular, I have relied on the research of Nia Love; I have revised and augmented our original joint venture in documenting Diaspora dance and its protagonists. 5. This history is told insightfully in Foulkes, 130–56. 6. An exemplary account is in Gottschild, Waltzing. 7. See Daniel, “Company.” 8. Compare biographical histories of African American dancers in the United States between Long, Black Tradition, and Myers, Genius. 9. Ethnologist Fernando Ortiz coined “transculturation” as the process in which European and African values and behaviors interrelated over time in Cuba (see Ortiz, Contrapunteo). Current dance scholarship has dealt with the meshing and interactions of cultures in a variety of ways: see, for example, Gonzalez, “Caught,” 149–56; Scott, “What’s it Worth,” 2–18; and Thomas, Modern Blackness. 10. Rogelio Martinez Furé (founding member and ethnologist of Conjunto folklórico nacional de Cuba) was my first contact with the term “living library” in Cuba 1986; however, Malian historian and diplomat Amadou Hampâté Bâ is cited for the same concept in a speech made in Paris in 1960 (see Walker, African Roots, 36–37). Here, my term “experiential librarians” is not aimed at elders but more so at knowledgeable musicians and dancers, which I fully discuss in Dancing Wisdom, chapter 2. See also forthcoming reports from Harvard University Symposium on Embodied Knowledge, March 2011. 11. Welsh-Asante, “Commonalities,” 71–82. 12. See Ephirim-Donkor; Fisher; MacGaffey, Religion. 13. Soledade,“Afro-Fusion”; see Gabri Christa’s fusion of dance, theater, and film performance at www.danzaisa.org. 14. See dance critic Jennifer Dunning’s review of Nia Love’s work in “Sidewalk Cracks”; see also Love, “Deconstructing.” 15. See Lamut; Tomko; also, see Desmond. 16. See Mackrell; Dance Magazine, “Young Choreographers.” 17. This chapter was written in memory of Emmika, a Surinamese dancer who committed suicide in part under the stresses of Diaspora dance practices. For per198 notes to chapter 1...