The Politics of Quadrille Performance in Nineteenth-Century Martinique

Abstract

Much has been said of the tradition of quadrille dancing that exists in the Caribbean. This dance and music repertory was first introduced there in the late eighteenth century by European colonists who wanted to recreate some of the aristocratic lifestyle they would have enjoyed in their country of origin. But soon after its introduction, people of African descent whom the Europeans had forcibly introduced in the Caribbean appropriated the dance and transformed it to fit the new environment.In his overview of Caribbean music, Kenneth Bilby noted that the most ubiquitous music traditions of the Caribbean seem to be the ones that grew out of the European social dances and music genres of an earlier era (1985, 195). Establishing a parallel with the Creole music of the Seychelles, which bears strong resemblance to Caribbean forms, John Szwed and Morton Marks (1988) suggested that the French contredanse and quadrille were instrumental to the emergence of the Creole repertories, primarily because, just like many of the Caribbean islands, the Seychelles were French colonies in the eighteenth century.