Caribbean and Atlantic Diaspora Dance: Igniting Citizenship

Preface

Preface Many lovers of the dance are engaged profoundly by African dance, and the aim of this book is to provide a thorough background for those interested in the Caribbean and Afro-Latin contributions to African Diaspora dance. My primary goals are to support teachers and beginning students in their Caribbean dance practice and to dialogue with Diaspora researchers and those audience members who are intensely struck by African Diaspora dance. All forms of dance can be engaging, but each has its special appeal, and viewers of dance profit from specific information for full understanding. My hope is for a solid foundation on which African Diaspora dance genres can be examined as representative culture of related peoples. I join many American and British anthropologists in the use of “culture” as the determinant for the geographical territories I cover. My perspective is also consistent with recent efforts to reformulate “Africa” and its Diaspora cultures away from geopolitical boundaries. Consequently, I examine dance practices in the many locations that exhibit Diaspora culture, especially in the “Circum-Caribbean culture sphere.” That sphere is part of the African Diaspora and includes the Caribbean islands and related mainland territories .At times, this area has included Louisiana, Georgia, Florida, North and South Carolina in the southern United States, coastal segments of Mexico and Central America, and parts of Colombia, Venezuela, and northeastern Brazil. It has consistently included Suriname, Guyana, and French Guiana in South America, and occasionally the sphere has been extended to the Rio Plata region of Uruguay and Argentina. Regardless of location, it is the entanglement of Europe and Africa in the historical practices of plantation economies that has produced a particular mix of peoples and thereby, a particular culture sphere.1 With no intent to either diminish constituent peoples or disturb any sense of individual or national identities, this book goes beyond conventional geopolitical boundaries to seek out common dance data. I limit my discussion of Latin America to those territories where the dances and ethnic histories resemble Caribbean dances and people—in other words, select parts of Afro-Latin America. I discuss a few dances from the Atlantic coast and omit many others, in addition to omitting the many related dances of the Pacific coast (for example, Afro-Peru). My main concern is shared dance culture within the reaches of a large but limited Atlantic/Circum-Caribbean cultural sphere.2 Accordingly, I expand the examination beyond the hegemony of Englishspeaking islands. Striving for a more representative view of African Diaspora dance culture, I attempt to move the view of the Caribbean from the United States or “the West” to the multilingual, plural perspective from the Caribbean and its related mainland sites, where several views must be considered .3 The scope is huge and the data are not always even for each area. For example, I did no fieldwork in French Guiana, St. Lucia, or Dominica and, therefore, data on these important Circum-Caribbean sites are limited or excluded entirely. Additionally, I analytically separate dance from music practices. This could be viewed as a violation to Caribbean and Diaspora dance and music, which are most often considered inseparable; however, studies of Caribbeanderived music have been numerous and sometimes misleading when it comes to dance. Caribbean and Diaspora dance studies have only amounted to a few, and these have mainly covered the theme of identity, but Diaspora dance comprises other equally important themes—for example, nationalism , globalism, tourism, agency, coloniality, continuity, resistance, change, etc. Focusing primarily on dance movement for at least this one study can yield intriguing and provocative information. The result of my concerns and boundaries is an“Afrogenic”4 investigation of dance genres, a broad but critical review of interrelated dance cultures that I have worked on. Differing from “Afrocentric,” the term “Afrogenic” does not insist that African-derived cultures are at the center of concern. Rather, Afrogenic analyses insist on a comparison of Diaspora understandings. My focus on dance and bodily movement across each linguistic segment of the Caribbean and select Afro-Latin cultures balances the available music literature on the same sites with an anthropological and dance specialization perspective. I began this book as I retired from teaching dance technique, as I completed a research project that surveyed several Caribbean islands, and just xvi preface after the death of one of my professional foremothers, Katherine Dunham. As I mourned her passing and pondered the activity of my...