Dancing the Archive: Rhythms of Change in Montserrat's Masquerades

Abstract

On 17 March, the last day of Montserrat's annual St. Patrick's Festival, locals and tourists gather at the culminating Slave Feast event to commemorate the island's attempted slave rebellion on that same day in 1768. At the Slave Feast, festivalgoers enjoy local foods, buy handmade crafts, and watch artists perform music, dance, and poetry. Masquerade dancers form a circle among the crowds; the young performers wear grinning masks that dangle in front of their faces as they stamp and spin in the dusty street. Their bodies move polyrhythmically, shoulders pulsating up and down. The troupe's captain cracks a whip that bites at the dancers’ feet, urging them to step faster, higher; the performers become more frenzied. As their feet punctuate the pavement below, there is a sense that they are floating just above the ground, occasionally dipping their bodies toward the earth and momentarily disrupting the driving rhythm of the dance. Their hands gesture in toward and then away from their torsos, fingers pointing to their temples and then opening out into serving motions in front of them. The sound of the masquerade “boom” drum vibrates through the space, the high-pitched fife dictates the dancers’ steps and formations, and the goatskin kettle drum emits driving rhythms that become increasingly heated (see figure 1). Echoing the multiple voices that contribute to the community's cultural heritage, the fife layers European-sounding melodies onto African-sounding drum patterns. The discrete physical and historical elements of Montserrat's masquerade dance combine to “remember” a “dismembered” community, one that has been divided and dispersed over centuries of trauma inflicted by both man and nature. These performers dance the archive; these dancers are the archive.