Alexandre Grondeau (ed.), Reggae Ambassadors. La légende du reggae

Reggae Ambassadors has the look of an anthology of short articles from a glossy French music magazine. It does not purport to be a scholarly study. However, as France has produced some of the best reggae journalism of recent times, this is not necessarily a bad thing. This book, like the much-missed French fanzines Natty Dread and Ragga, displays a relatively high standard of music journalism (as does the companion video documentary released in conjunction with it). It consists of thirty-four..

Surviving Secularization: Masking the Spirit in the Jankunu (John Canoe) Festivals of the Caribbean

Jankunu (Jonkonnu, Junkanoo), an Afro-Caribbean Yuletide tradition centering on masked dance, is generally characterized as a secular festival. This article presents contemporary ethnographic evidence showing that certain older variants of the tradition remain closely connected with African-derived religious concepts and practices. On the basis of this new evidence, the author argues for a reexamination and reevaluation of the historical significance of this tradition, which even today, despite its ostensible secularity, has vaguely "spiritual" associations for many in the region—including some of those who represent it as "secular." The article interprets this apparent contradiction as the result of a historical process of secularization (in response to the stigmatization of African modes of religiosity) that was only partly successful

Tracking the Caribbean sound: three current hits

[First paragraph]
 Zouk: World Music in the West lndies. JOCELYNE GuiLBAULT (with GAGE AVERILL, ÉDOUARD BENOIT & GREGORY RABESS). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. xxv + 279 pp. and compact disk. (Cloth US$55.00, Paper US$ 27.75) 
 Calypso Calaloo: Early Carnival Music in Trinidad. DONALD R. HlLL. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993. xvi + 344 pp. and compact disk. (Cloth US$49.95, Paper US$ 24.95) Calypso & Society in Pre-Independence Trinidad. GORDON ROHLEHR. Port of Spain: Gordon Rohlehr, 1990. x + 613 pp. (Paper US$ 40.00)
 In 1983, from my Hstening post in Cayenne, the southernmost extension of the French Caribbean, I reported that "popular musicians in the Lesser Antilles are in the process of breathing life into new musical varieties blending soka, cadence, and reggae" (Bilby 1985:211). Little did I know that what I was describing was the sudden emergence, at that very moment, of an entirely new music in French Guiana's fellow Départements d'Outre-Mer to the north, Martinique and Guadeloupe. Down in Cayenne, which has always had close ties to the French Antilles, there was a feeling in the air that some fresh and invigorating cultural trend was about to burst forth. Even in the Maroon villages of the French Guianese interior, where I relocated in early 1984, the excitement was palpable

Afro-Caribbean Culture and the South: Music

Session I