Creolization in Caribbean Music

This blog will focus on the theme Creolization found in the book 'Tour de Force: A Musical Journey of The Caribbean'. 

In the book mentioned above, the authors Christine Gangelhoff and Cathleen LeGrand emphasized Creolization as the process by which different cultural traditions are blended which creates new and unique cultures. This creolization process was of course highlighted in the musical sense. This mixed musical form can be seen in places such as regions from: - Africa, Europe, East Asia and Danza. 

This blog will demonstrate different ways creolization is showed, in food and even rituals including music.

The textbook provides jambalaya as a creolized dish. This is a West African, French and Spanish influenced Creole rice dish that contains mainly meat and vegetables. 

Below is a picture of the Jambalaya dish and also a video showing how it is made. In this dish, from the looks of it, it seems as if it contains sausage, shrimp, onions, tomatoes, sweet pepper and rice.

Picture taken from: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/

 

This video shows how the dish is created. 

Video taken from: https://www.youtube.com/

Creolization can be witnessed in religion as well. In creole religion they portray their religion through voodoo. This was practiced throughout African and European religion in Haiti. Voodoo is a mix of Vodun religion.

Below is a picture of Voodoo being practiced and a video showing the origination. 

Picture taken from: https://tripfreakz.com/galleries

This video explains the origination of voodoo, going more in depth of my explanation,

Video taken from: https://www.youtube.com

 References:

Gangelhoff, C., & LeGrand, C. (2019, December 31). Tour de Force: A Musical Journey of The Caribbean. Sound Caribbean.

Naylor, Michael Lee (1997) The creativity in culture: Creolization in the musical genres of the Seychelles Islands. Retrieved from: https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/