Music and the performance of identity on Marie-Galante, French Antilles

By Ron Emoff

Subjects: Folk music, Manners and customs, Guadeloupe, Folk music, history and criticism, Instruction & Study, MUSIC, Caribbean area, social life and customs, Social life and customs, History and criticism, Theory

Description: "Marie-Galante is a small island situated in the Caribbean to the south of Guadeloupe. The majority of Marie-Galantais are descendants of the slave era, though a few French settlers also occupy the island. Along with its neighbours Guadeloupe and Martinique, Marie-Galante forms an official departement of France. Marie-Galante historically has never been an independent polity. Marie-Galantais express sentiments of being 'deux fois colonise', or twice colonized, concomitant with their sense of insularity from a global organization of place. Dr Ron Emoff translates this pervasive sense of displacement into the concept of the 'non-nation'. Musical practices on the island provide Marie-Galantais with a means of re-connecting with other significant distant places. Many Marie-Galantais display a 'split-subjectivity', embracing an African heritage, a French association and a Caribbean regionalism. This book is unique, in part, with regard to its treatment of a particular mode of self-consciousness, expressed musically, on a virtually forgotten Caribbean island. The book also combines literary, narrative, historical and musical sources to theorize a postcolonial subsurreal in the French Antilles."--Jacket.