The Jamaican airs: An introduction to unpublished pieces of musical notation from enslaved people in the eighteenth-century Caribbean

Abstract

ABSTRACT “The Jamaican airs” is a paper introducing an unpublished primary source from the C. E. Long Papers at the British Library in London. Although much of the source’s content was originally printed in 1797, in a periodical called The Columbian Magazine, about half has never been published. This half features the most extensive pieces of musical notation from the early-modern era of songs that were composed and performed by enslaved people. The present article is an early step in an ongoing and collaborative effort to share this music with people interested in studying Caribbean history and culture. It introduces the pieces of notation by contextualizing the larger primary source in which they are embedded. This is done in three parts: overall description, provenance and archival context, and preliminary analysis. The complete primary source has been made available to the public in an online exhibit with the Early Caribbean Digital Archive.