Music in the Francophone Caribbean

Abstract

The Francophone Caribbean is a complex region: while it shares a history of French colonialism, it is also marked by divergent political trajectories and profound economic disparities. On one hand, there is Haiti, the first independent postcolonial Black nation; on the other, the overseas French départements of Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Guiana. This combination of a shared history of colonial violence (including the genocide of indigenous populations and the enslavement of African people) as well as the diversity of modes and means of resistance against it has made of the Francophone Caribbean a crucible for a rich intellectual, artistic, and musical life. Indigénisme, négritude, marvelous realism, Antillanité, créolité are as many intellectual and artistic movements that have emerged from this crucible to impact intellectual life beyond the Caribbean. Likewise, biguine, konpa, and zouk are just a few of the musical genres whose aesthetic and commercial reach has far exceeded their islands of origin. For all of this musical richness, it is surprising that scholarly literature on music in the Francophone Caribbean has a rather limited scope. In Haiti, it has largely been focused on those practices associated with Vodou (ritual drumming and singing as well as the songs and music of rara) and, in the realm of popular music, with konpa and, to a lesser degree, mizik rasin (roots music) and classical music. Coverage in the French Antilles and Guiana is even more uneven. Guiana has received near to no attention. If scholars have written extensively about gwoka, the Guadeloupean drumming tradition, its Martinican counterpart, bèlè, has received less attention. And if there was a veritable craze for zouk in the 1990s, scholars have not followed Antillean audiences as their musical tastes evolved toward other styles of popular music in the new millennium. Likewise, biguine remains understudied given its transnational circulation in the 1930s. The various sections in this entry reflect these imbalances. If the current entry focuses on Haiti, the French Antilles (Martinique and Guadeloupe), and French Guiana, it should be noted that Dominica and Saint Lucia share the same Creole language, and contribute to the circulation of people, goods, and music in the Lesser Antilles. This being said, because the Oxford Bibliographies entry on music in the Anglophone Caribbean already covers Dominica and Saint Lucia, they have been left out of this overview.