Music and the Performance of Identity on Marie-Galante, French Antilles

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. The country forms an official département of France and historically has never been an independent polity. Marie-Galantais express sentiments of being 'deux fois colonisé', or twice colonized, concomitant with their sense of insularity from a global organization of place. Dr Ron Emoff...
More 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. The country forms an official département of France and historically has never been an independent polity. Marie-Galantais express sentiments of being 'deux fois colonisé', 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. The focus of the book is upon kadril accordion dance and gwo ka drumming, two prevalent musical practices on the island with which Marie-Galantais construct unique perceptions of self in relation, specifically, to Africa and France. The book will be of interest not only to ethnomusicologists, but also to those interested in cultural and linguistic anthropology, postcolonial studies, performance studies, folklore and Caribbean studies.