African Roots of Jamaican Culture is a timely addition to Jamaica’s living cultural heritage.

First published in 1988 with the title of Roots of Jamaican Culture,  this path-breaking study is being given new life with a new title, for the benefit of a new generation of Jamaicans and their ancestral brothers and sisters in Jamaica, Africa, and their global diasporas. This classic work by Mervyn C. Alleyne is being re-published unchanged but with the addition of a contextual ‘Introduction’ by Maureen Warner-Lewis and Rupert Lewis.

This is first and foremost a cultural history of the Jamaican people. In this respect, it differs from existing historical works that have focused on the country’s political, economic, and constitutional development. Prof. Alleyne argues and demonstrates that Africans and their descendants have reconstituted aspects of African culture in Jamaica in music, art, dance, religion and, importantly in the context of ongoing contemporary debates, their language. In so doing, he has given us a foundational understanding of Jamaican culture and the corresponding worldviews out of which various cultural areas have been formed. For Maureen Warner-Lewis, what makes this work a classic in the writing of Jamaican cultural history is that it summarises how West and Central Africans, for four hundred years under conditions of racialised chattel slavery and colonialism, created ways of living that built the foundations of Jamaican culture.

Contents

List of Figures and Tables

A Critical Introduction

Preface

Introduction

Cultural Contact and Cultural Change

The Provenance of Africans and Capsules of their Culture

Arrival of Africans in Jamaica

African Religion in Jamaica

Music and Dance

Language

Conclusion: The Modern Period

Notes

Glossary

Bibliography

Index