Caribbean Repatriation Program
Raoul ("Ti Raoul") Grivalliers, left, with Florent Baratini, center, on drum. June 1962, in Pérou, Sainte-Marie, Martinique.
ACE’s preservation, publishing, dissemination and repatriation of Caribbean cultural materials are a function of the fact that so much of the core culture of the Caribbean is orally based and transmitted. The digital revolution makes it possible for us to gather these resources and return them to repositories in their countries of origin as well as in the immigrant Diaspora. It is essential to broadcast that they are there and available and let people know what they are and why they are important.
The Caribbean Repatriation Program has been carried out in collaboration with the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College, Chicago, for the Eastern Caribbean, and the Green Family Foundation for Haiti. High-quality digital copies of Alan Lomax’s Caribbean collections are presented to repositories in the Caribbean. Of the following collections comprising Lomax’s Caribbean documentation, the Eastern Caribbean recordings have been digitized and cataloged; the Haiti recordings are in process (see Special Projects); and the Bahamas recordings await further funding.
The Bahamas
In 1935, at the urging of novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston and on a budget of $198 from the Library of Congress, 19-year-old Alan Lomax sailed to Nassau, Cat Island and Andros Island to record sailors, sponge fishermen, farmers and dockworkers. African and New World styles and traditions are charmingly intertwined in their boat-pulling songs, shanties, anthems, and old story songs (a cross between Jack tales and African Anancy tales of trickster lads outwitting the devil). The "John B. Sail" is one of the songs in this collection whose engaging melody and lyrics made it a popular hit, sung by The Weavers, Pete Seeger, Roger Whitaker, Dick Dale, The Beach Boys, and Johnny Cash.
Haiti
In 1936–37, Alan Lomax persuaded the Library of Congress to sponsor an extensive recorded survey of Haitian music. Again at the behest of Zora Neale Hurston, and with guidance from Melville Herskovits, Lomax made fifty hours of recordings documenting early Rara, combite, children’s game songs, Vaudoo, antique French ballads, and legendary composer Ludovic Lamothe (1882-1953). The collection is accompanied by a compelling diary and correspondence chronicling the trip, with diagrams, drawings, and film footage. This rich corpus languished for seventy years until ACE transferred the recordings to DAT and restored them.
The Eastern Caribbean
In 1962, with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation and sponsorship from the University of the West Indies, Alan Lomax arranged to record the music of the Lesser Antilles, the chain of islands forming the eastern rim of the Caribbean. Over the course of six months, Lomax made 1,859 field recordings and 1,093 documentary photographs in twelve islands, including Trinidad and Tobago, Dominica, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Carriacou, St. Lucia, St. Barthelemy, Anguilla, and St. Kitts, and Nevis. Collaborators and advisors to the project were folklorists Jacob D. Elder, Dan Crowley, Roger Abrahams, Philip Sherlock (University College of the West Indies, Jamaica), and Andrew C. Pearse (St. Lucia). A complete copy on open-reel tape was deposited at the University College of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica. Later in the 1960s Lomax made recordings in St. Eustatius and the Dominican Republic.
The Repatriation Process
On November 14, 2005, the Nevis Historical and Conservation Society (NHCS) received the first donation of recordings and photographs through ACE’s Caribbean Repatriation Program. The ceremony was attended by Dr. Rosita M. Sands (CBMR), John Guilbert (Executive Director of NHCS), and Gail Dore (Curator for Collections and Museums at NHCS).
In a ceremony held on June 18, 2006, at the Folk Research Centre/Plas Wichès Foklo (FRC) in St. Lucia, Rosita Sands of the CBMR and Jeffrey Greenberg, representing ACE presented recordings, photographs, and field notes made by Alan Lomax in St. Lucia in 1962. The material, presented on a hard drive with an accompanying digital catalog, now resides at the FRC, whose director is Kennedy Samuel.
Recordings and photographs of the French Antilles were presented to the Mediatheque Caraibe (MC) in Guadeloupe on July 8, 2007, during the Gwoka Festival. With Prof. Rosita Sands of the Department of Music, Columbia College, ACE is researching appropriate repositories in other Caribbean countries, including Haiti.
Folk Research Center
Castries, St. Lucia, West Indies
(St. Lucia recordings)
Mediatheque Caraibe
Guadeloupe, French West Indies
(Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Dominica recordings)
Nevis Historical and Conservation Society
Charlestown, Nevis, West Indies
(Nevis and St. Kitts recordings)
|
