Caribbean Culture: Soundings on Kamau Brathwaite (review)

Who is Kamau Braithwaite? He is a poet and a historian. He is a cultural critic and a Caribbean intellectual. He is a man of many talents whose contributions to Anglophone Caribbean literature and studies are boundless. Through his poetry and scholarship, Brathwaite “challeng[es] us to rethink and renew our disciplinary languages, methodological frameworks and modes of imagining” (Edwards 2007:17). No one collection could successfully capture the scope of his influence. Recognizing the futility of assembling such collection, Annie Paul instead offers a glimpse into the genius that is Brathwaite with her edited volume Caribbean Culture: Soundings on Kamau Brathwaite. A compilation of twenty-two papers presented at the Second Conference on Caribbean Culture back in 2002, Caribbean Culture is an excellent introduction for any reader who has never encountered Brathwaite’s work or, for the reader who is familiar, it provides the opportunity to engage his work in another way.

The volume opens with Nadi Edwards’s instructive introduction which situates the significance of Kamau Brathwaite to the Caribbean while explaining the motivation of this text. While previous collections have also provided multidisciplinary readings, this volume differs in its approach by examining issues of globalization and subalternity while putting Brathwaite in conversation with other regions. The twenty-two essays are divided into seven sections which organize them by common questions, interests, or methods.

Part one, “Ceremonies of the Word,” examines the orature and performances of Brathwaite’s poetry through five essays. The section begins with Kofi Anyidoho’s “Atumpan: Kamau Brathwaite and the Gift of Ancestral Memory.” Textually invoking Brathwaite, Anyidoho examines how Brathwaite’s experience of Africa, both as ancestral memory and from living in Ghana, informs his use of the word. While it becomes evident the influence of the Akan tradition on Brathwaite’s poetry, Anyidoho argues that Brathwaite is not mimicking Africa, but producing culture which is Caribbean and aware of its history and place. Moving away from the text, Maureen Warner-Lewis considers the impact of Calypso sound and rhythm to demonstrate how Brathwaite crafted his poetry to “captur[e] West Indian sounds, voices, and speech acts” (p. 55). Hubert Devonish continues this examination of speech acts in his analysis of a 2001 calypso competition in Barbados. In his essay, J. Edward Chamberlin shifts discussion away from Brathwaite’s contribution to the Caribbean and towards how he inspires the Americas to claim their respective nation language. Jeanne Christensen concludes the section by exploring how Brathwaite challenges Western notions of knowledge through the language of myth.

The three essays of part two, “Jah Music and Dub Elegy,” investigate the role of music. From the drums of Africa to jazz and West Indian music, Brathwaite had an immense appreciation and understanding of music. In “The Music of Kamau Brathwaite” Lilieth Nelson explores how Brathwaite integrated musical elements, such as form, rhythm, and harmony, into his work. Donette A. Francis, on the other hand, argues jazz allowed Brathwaite to discover “an aesthetics of dissonance that enabled him to conceive of an alternative to Eurocentric culture and aesthetics” (p. 142). While not focused on him, Linton Kwesi Johnson discusses how dub poets, like Michael Smith, took a cue from Brathwaite by using vernacular language and reggae rhythm in their poetry to counter/challenge European notions of poetry.

“The Sea is History,” part three of the volume, considers the relationship between Brathwaite and history. By re-examining Brathwaite, Elizabeth DeLoughrey calls for a “tidal dialectic,” which considers both roots and routes to decolonize history. While previous scholars have established the ocean as the site of history, this view fails to capture the true complexity of history. A more productive approach not only understands water as a space where history is recognized as fluid and in flux, but also how land, or national sovereignty, impacts the water. In her essay, Marie-José Nzengou-Tayo discusses Brathwaite’s Dreamstories, a set of poems inspired by the Haitian boat people. Through these poems, he...