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Following the abolition of slavery in the Caribbean, a concerted effort was made to replace enslaved labor with indentured Indian labor, and this book recounts the story of one woman's tragic experience in trying to immigrate to the Caribbean in the nineteenth century. The book combines documentary evidence with a surrounding narrative interpretation in order to highlight the experiences of the young Indian woman, Maharani, who was allegedly raped and died subsequently on board the ship Allanshaw that sailed from Calcutta to colonial Guyana in 1885. The work sheds light on the general history of bonded labor migration as well as ""sexploitation."" Maharani's death gave rise to an extraordinary nine-day investigation involving some twenty-two witnesses, including some of the emigrants themselves. By making use of the emigrants' depositions, the book projects the voice of the indentured servants from India on their long voyage to the Caribbean. The events on this passage from India provide further evidence that 19th-century labor ""migration"" replicated several aspects of the middle passage of enslaved Africans, although it never reached slavery's brutal limits.

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From its first appearance in 1939 with a group of men knocking on pots and pans to the 1951 Trinidad All-Steel Percussion Orchestra (TASPO), steelband has fascinated the world. Relying largely on oral histories, this work investigates and documents the different technical, musical and organisational steps by which the steelband movement was born and grew to maturity.

This study is a radical break with the approach to cultural creativity in general and music of the African diaspora in particular, emphasising the role of individual agency, microsociology and aesthetic values. This contrasts with the resistance school of thought, which views music as an automatic reaction to oppression rather than a deliberate attempt to satisfy aesthetic needs and impulses.

The minute biographical and psychological details provide a unique theory of creolisation and chart its relationship to African retentions, based on empirical data. This authoritative study will appeal to both the general reader interested in the origins of steelband and to scholars concerned with the creolisation of African and European cultures and Caribbean creativity.

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Shared Visions Contains fifty high-quality color reproductions of Caribbean art and sculpture housed at the three campuses of the University of the West Indies in Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago. The book is a magnificent and rich celebration of heterogeneity, of unity in diversity, and of the creativity of Caribbean society, particularly in the visual arts. The book contains works by thirty-three Caribbean artists, including Edna Manley, Albert Huie, Gloria Escoffrey, Roger Mais, Rex Dixon, David Pottinger, and Barrington Watson.

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The bicentenary of Haitian independence in 2004 triggered a renewed interest in Haitian history and culture. In many ways, however, much work is still required in this fertile field. Reinterpreting the Haitian Revolution and Its Cultural Aftershocks, the first collection of essays edited by Martin Munro and Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw, addressed the repercussions of the Haitian Revolution in Haiti, the Caribbean, North America and Europe. This present volume develops and complements the previous collection to meet the growing demand for original scholarly work on Haiti. Widening the cultural lens to include diasporic studies, art, and questions of race and gender, Echoes of the Haitian Revolution exposes how the history of Haiti has shaped our ideas of race, nation and civilization in ways that we are often unaware of. Haiti's lessons continue to engage us in a dynamic dialog that compels us to question and revisit received arguments. The essays collected here provoke and stimulate these necessary conversations by approaching the legacies and repercussions of the revolution from a cultural perspective.

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Lady Nugent's husband was governor of Jamaica during a critical period of the Napoleonic Wars. Her personal diary conveys impressions of life among the slave-owning colonial gentry. The journal was first published in 1907.

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This book brings together contributions from a broad spectrum of authors on the most challenging issue for the Caribbean - against the dominating efforts of European colonizers and their descendants, the long-standing struggle of Caribbean people to fashion a culture and society that would give full space to the African heritage of the majority while accommodating their new and evolving circumstances. The book presents contemporary readings that contestation in the areas of Caribbean religion, education, language, music, race, sexual behavior in a time of the AIDS pandemic, and the economy. It grew out of a conference held in 2006 in honor of the scholarship of internationally acclaimed Professor Alston Barrington Chevannes, professor of social anthropology at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica. This book is unique, therefore, in both the breadth of its focus and range of topics as well as the specific issues considered, most essays being useful case studies in particular fields. The geographical span includes Jamaica, Martinique, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, indeed the Caribbean as a whole. There is perhaps no other publication with such an aim, range and relevance. The theme of a Caribbean world view makes this book a pioneering contribution to Caribbean studies. The collection also contains an autobiographical essay by Professor Chevannes.

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The anglophone Caribbean has long been celebrated and known for its vibrant and innovative music. Reggae, dancehall, calypso, soca, gospel and ringbang have flourished within the Caribbean and have exploded on the worldwide stage. Somewhat surprisingly, many facets of this contribution have not been analysed or discussed by academic writing. This work deliberately moves away from the customary exclusive focus on Trinidad and Jamaica and broadens the discourse to represent the wider region. It addresses such topics as the status of Caribbean gospel; the birth of new musical styles in the Eastern Caribbean; cultural misrepresentation in Caribbean music videos; the representation of Aids in Caribbean music; and the impact of the actual music technology utilized by Caribbean musicians since the 1980s.

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Beyond Borders"" is a multidisciplinary collection of essays with a focus on contemporary issues in Caribbean cultural studies. Culture and cultural identification are without a doubt highly charged political Goliaths with local and global ramifications. This is one of the reasons for the virtual boom the discipline has enjoyed, and the Caribbean is no exception. As a result, there is a growing demand for information in the field for both research and teaching purposes. The essays in this collection provide such a resource. They explore cross-cultural themes and issues across a range of disciplines that include literature, language, education, history and popular culture. They will interest a broad cross-section of regional and international readers, including a wide range of scholars, professional teachers, students and members of the general public wishing to understand the complex dynamics of Caribbean culture. The issues of cultural survival and negotiation with which most of these essays deal, serve to foreground a history of domination, resistance and marvelous transformations within and beyond the borders of this archipelago. It is no longer possible to pass culture off as simply a matter of commonalities, interests and values, as if politics and power were innocent of influencing what gets defined and consumed as culture. ""Beyond Borders: Cross-culturalism and the Caribbean Canon"" offers a forum for contemporary debates on Caribbean culture in its ongoing process of evolution.

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Jamaican place names range from the commonplace to the bizarre. Densely distributed across the map of the island, they not only intrigue the visitor and the resident but also provide clues to Jamaica's past landscapes and its social and economic history. Written from a historical and geographical perspective by two authors with an intimate knowledge of the island, this book presents an entirely new approach to the study of Jamaican place names. Maps and other sources dating from the earliest years of European contact to the twenty-first century are used to compile a data base of over 20,000 names. Analysis provides clues to the culture and national origins of the dominant planter population who were the major name-givers but also include many names with distinctive Jamaican 'creole' meanings. Today, Kingston, May Pen, Rio Bueno, Me No Sen You No Come, George's Plain Mountain and Content, names derived from a variety of sources, are all equally Jamaican and equally fascinating. ""Jamaican Place Names"" is written for both the scholar and the general reader with an interest in the island's landscapes and history.