Black Expressive Cultures in the Diaspora

Abstract

A Jamaican dancehall star's current collaboration with a white American rock band disseminates a trademark local vocal style worldwide through the infectious medium of MTV. A recent film vehicle for a Spanish movie star features Brazilian practices of Candomblé as mediated through the fetching figure of a black drag queen. That black cultural practices considered marginal just decades ago can show up in songs and films with mainstream exposure owes much both to an unprecedented synergy of artistic and entertainment media as well as significant shifts in the types of audiences that are avid to consume black history and black style. In light of the increasing [End Page 996] accessibility of representations of black diasporic experience, however, it becomes ever more critical to have scholarly studies that will ground and contextualize such examples of pop ephemera. Two recent texts illuminate understudied aspects of the African diaspora with considerable clarity and complexity. Rachel E. Harding's A Refuge in Thunder: Candombléand Alternative Spaces of Blackness and Norman C. Stolzoff's Wake the Town and Tell the People: Dancehall Culture in Jamaica, although hailing from different disciplinary locations, contribute in a complementary fashion to a much-needed mapping of black expressive cultures in the diaspora.