Sounding Off: Rhythm, Music, and Identity in West African and Caribbean Francophone Novels

Contents

Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1 Rhythm and Transcultural Poetics 20 Rhythm and Transculture 42 Method 50 2 Rhythm and Reappropriation in God’s Bits of Wood and The Suns of Independence 62 Language and the Language of Music 67 Rhythm and Reappropriation in the Novel 84 Instrumentaliture at Work 90 Rhythm and Transformation 98 Ordinary and Extraordinary Rhythms 108 3 Rhythm, Music, and Identity in L’appel des arènes and Ti Jean L’horizon 112 Rhythm, Music, Subjectivity, and the Novel 121 Rhythm and Identity in L’appel des arènes 124 Rhythm and Identity in Ti Jean L’horizon 138 Rethinking Rootedness 152 vi / contents 4 Music and Mourning in Crossing the Mangrove and Solibo Magnificent 160 Memory, Mourning, and Mosaic Identities 170 Rhythm, Music, and Identity as Process 173 The Sounds of Death and Mourning 188 Configuring Rhythmic and Musically Mediated Identities 202 Concluding Remarks 217 Works Cited 223 Index 235 To my parents, Ann and Kim Huntington, to my grandparents and great-grandparents, stars forever . . . ...