An Anatomy of Creolization: Curacao and the Antillean Waltz

"Creolization is a miracle begging for analysis."

—Michel-Rolph Trouillot

The Antillean waltz denotes a genre enjoyed among the islanders of the Netherlands Antilles. While persons from Aruba and Bonaire share nominal claim, the Antillean waltz is most popular on the island where it originated—Curaçao. Today some Curaçaoan elitists, in the island's few concert halls, which they control, present refined renditions of the Antillean waltz, usually solo piano, in costly concerts whose audiences draw mostly from middle to higher social classes. Proper western attire is required here, with men expected to don suits or tuxedos; women knee- or full-length gowns. Special ushers watch over the front doors, ready to turn away would-be concertgoers inappropriately dressed. Audiences maintain strict concert protocol, remaining at quiet deference to the music, and applauding only at the proper places. However, another side to the modern Antillean waltz discloses such a context and belies the genre's more democratic roots, which traverse from among all Curaçaoan social classes. A more complete understanding of the Antillean waltz reveals strong creole metamorphosis.

In a sense, creolization describes an alloying process. Before slavery ended in the mid-nineteenth century, Caribbean blacks were forced to affect the standards and expectations of the dominant whites who forced their relocation in the New World. In Birth of African American Culture, Sidney Mintz and Richard Price observe that "The Africans who reached the New World did not compose, at the moment, groups. In fact, in most cases it might be more accurate to view them as . . . heterogeneous crowds" (1992, 10). In the New World, a diversity of African cultures was tossed into a melting pot, where stirred by slavery, it simmered for over two centuries into a chëmeia of half-remembered legend. The Greek word chëmeia refers to the act of mixing and casting metals, offering an interesting metaphor for the cultural transformations induced by creolization. Into the New World's proverbial melting pot, was poured an inevitable measure of cultural influence from the dominant society whose principles, standards, and expectations had been forced on them, its populace, for all those years. (In spite of this, when slavery eventually ended, emancipation failed to bring assimilation into the dominant culture, still unwilling to embrace Blacks as equals.) Emancipation, when it came, merely had the effect of cooling the New World melting pot, and a new cultural identity began to congeal through creolization—the melding of diverse cultural influence into something new and strengthened by the process.

The process of creolization began almost immediately when the captured people of many African nations were herded together aboard overcrowded slave ships—300 to 600 at a time—and transported to the New World. Jammed into small cargo spaces they were united in their mutual unhappy situation. Mintz and Price posited that however diverse the Africans might be, there existed "some core of common values," and they pointed out "the occurrence of situations [that existed] where a number of slaves of common origin might indeed be aggregated." "Processes of cultural change" were already being set into motion (Mintz and Price 1992, 10).

Music and dance were early venues for creolization as it occurred between and among the Africans aboard the slave ships. Alexander Falconbridge reported in his 1788 narrative, An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa, that Africans were regularly forced to dance while en route to the New World. "Exercise being deemed necessary for the preservation of their health," Falconbridge wrote,

[Africans] are sometimes obliged to dance when the weather will permit their coming on deck. If they go about it reluctantly or do not move with agility, they are flogged; a person standing by them all the time with a cat-o'-nine-tails in his hands for the purpose. (Falconbridge 1788 [1977], 26)

White cultural influence occurred early as well as European instruments such...