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Creolizing Contradance in the Caribbean

2011; Duke University Press; Volume: 91; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-1165469

1527-1900

Christina D. Abreu,

Philippine History and Culture

Peter Manuel and the contributors to this volume deliver a much-needed study of the contradance and quadrille traditions of the Spanish-, French-, and English-speaking Caribbean islands. Rather than focus on individual islands or twentieth-century music and dance genres, Creolizing Contradance offers a panregional, synthetic examination of contradance and quadrille music and dance forms as they developed in the Caribbean in the nineteenth century. This neat volume is refreshingly cohesive, a feat this reviewer attributes to the contextual information presented in the introduction and to the individual authors who follow through on the methodological goals of “treat[ing] each area in a relatively consistent manner, covering historical development, musical and choreographic aspects, and a set of relevant sociocultural themes and approaches” (p. 2). The introduction and subsequent six chapters (on Cuba; Puerto Rico; the Dominican Republic; Guadeloupe, Dominica, Martinique, and St. Lucia; Haiti; and the English-speaking Caribbean) take careful note of the general similarities as well as the unique trajectories of the contradance and quadrille traditions in each area.One of the volume’s keenest contributions comes in the form of Manuel’s historiographic positioning within the Herskovits-Frazier debates on creolization. Manuel emphasizes the power dynamics that shaped musical creolization and explains that the contradance and quadrille brought to the Caribbean were “already creolized in their own way” (p. 33). Rather than a process of deculturation, African survivals, or simple imitation, he and his collaborators contend that creole genres like the contradance and quadrille were new creations produced by interactions between different social groups, European and African. For example, Manuel stresses the contributions of black and mulatto musicians and notes that the plantation owner’s house, military bands, port towns, local theaters, and other social institutions served as sites of cross-cultural interactions. Additionally, his essay on Cuba sketches brief biographies of four contradance composers of the nineteenth century (Manuel Saumell, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Igna-cio Cervantes, and Ernesto Lecuona). Kenneth M. Bilby and Daniel T. Neely’s chapter on the English-speaking Caribbean engages scholarly debates on mimesis as a relational process, focusing on the subaltern point of view in a global colonial world.Manuel has smartly provided two escape routes for those nonexperts prone to skipping over lengthy sections of musical notations and analyses. Each essay can be read on its own or in tandem with the introduction, and he has included a CD with illustrative examples of the contradance and quadrille styles found in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Curaçao, and the West Indies. Historians in general will appreciate the efforts made by each of the contributors to understand contradance and quadrille music and dance forms as contested sites “inherently imbricated in the sociopolitical dynamics of their historical contexts” (p. 41). In their essay on Puerto Rico, Edgardo Díaz Díaz and Peter Manuel draw from original research and existing scholarship to argue that the danza, as a dance and artistic expression, “possessed the power — especially at key moments, such as the 1868 anticolonial insurrection in Puerto Rico and Cuba — to unite all social classes and mobilize Antillean social life” (p. 114). Another contributor to the volume, Dominique O. Cyrille, found that the quadrille dance has helped foster a shared creole culture among the people of the neighboring islands of Guadeloupe, Dominica, Martinique, and St. Lucia. She contends that Antilleans recognize the French colonial influence but insist that the dance is a new creation “adopted and subsequently transformed by the people of African descent” (p. 190).Most of the contributors reflect on the difficulties faced by researchers interested in uncovering the history of creole dances in the Caribbean. In his essay on the Domini-can Republic, Manuel notes the recent efforts made by Dominican, Puerto Rican, and North American writers to reconstruct this history, but stresses that musical scores and accounts are strikingly limited when compared to those available for Cuba and Puerto Rico. Researchers must contend with very few contemporary written records, and particularly missing from the historical record are the perspectives of people of color. Confusing terminology yields an additional set of obstacles for researchers who, in the case of the Dominican Republic, must decipher the intended meanings of terms like “merengue,” “danza,” and “tumba” (p. 155). Manuel has avoided most of the confusion by using the term “contradance” in this volume to denote a “panregional sense” and limiting language-special terms like “contra dance,” “country dance,” “contredanse,” and “contradanza” to regional contexts (p. 3).Creolizing Contradance stands as an important resource for serious students and experts of the Caribbean interested in the complex process of creolization and the power of music and dance to cut across social classes and develop as a symbol of national identity.