Jamaica’s rich culture is known the world over; and every aspect of this culture has been influenced by Jamaica’s African heritage. From speech to dress, and spirituality to dance, from food to folklore and from music to art and religion, African retentions from the time of slavery have become more than preserved aspects of Jamaica’s past; African traditions have become part and parcel of Jamaican culture. 

In this Reader, Coester and Bender have compiled some of the most important ethnographic work by noted researchers which, although previously published, have been exceptionally difficult to access by the growing community of scholars of African–Caribbean and Jamaican studies.  Several seminal articles on aspects of African–Jamaican culture are included in this rich and valuable collection that describes and analyses the elements that make up a distinctive African–Jamaican ethos. 

Includes works from: 

Walter Jekyll • Astley Clerk • Helen H. Roberts • Ivy Baxter • Sylvia Wynter •  Judith Bettelheim •  Cheryl Ryman • Kenneth Bilby • Monica Schuler • Elizabeth Pigou • Martha Warren Beckwith •  George Eaton Simpson • Edward Seaga • Barry Chevannes • Pamela O’Gorman • Garth White •  Laura Tanna • Olive Lewin • Adina Henry • Laura Tanna with interviews by Hazel Ramsay •  Maureen Warner-Lewis • Kenneth M. Bilby and Fu-Kiau kia Bunseki • Hazel Carter • Abiodun Adetugbo • Donald Hogg • Douglas R.A. Mack • Verena Reckord • Kenneth Bilby and Eliott Leib

Contents

Foreword / ix

Acknowledgements / xiii

Introduction / xvii

1. Digging-Sings                                                                                                                                         

            Walter Jekyll

2. Ring Tunes

            Walter Jekyll

3. Dancing Tunes

            Walter Jekyll

4. Extract from The Music and Musical Instruments of Jamaica

           Astley Clerk

5. Kingston Street Cries c. 1927 and Something About Their Criers

           Astley Clerk

6. Some Drums and Drum Rhythms of Jamaica

           Helen H. Roberts

7. Jamaican Folk Songs

            Ivy Baxter     

8. Social Dances and Dance Steps

            Ivy Baxter     

9. The John Canoe Masquerade

Ivy Baxter     

10. Jonkonnu in Jamaica: Towards the Interpretation of

Folk Dance as a Cultural Process

           Sylvia Wynter

11. The Jonkonnu Festival: Its Relation to Caribbean

and African Masquerades

            Judith Bettelheim

12. The Jamaican Heritage in Dance: Developing a Traditional Typology

           Cheryl Ryman

13. Jonkonnu: A Neo-African Form, Part I

            Cheryl Ryman

14. Jonkonnu: A Neo-African Form, Part II:

Stage 3–The Post Emancipation Period (1838–)

            Cheryl Ryman

15. Gumbay, Myal, and the Great House:

New Evidence on the Religious Background of Jonkonnu in Jamaica

            Kenneth Bilby

16. Myalism and the African Religious Tradition in Jamaica

           Monica Schuler

17. A Note on Afro-Jamaican Beliefs and Rituals

          Elizabeth Pigou

18. Some Religious Cults in Jamaica

           Martha Warren Beckwith

19. Jamaican Cult Music

           George Eaton Simpson

20. Folk Music of Jamaica

           Edward Seaga

21. Revival Cults in Jamaica: Notes Towards a Sociology of Religion

           Edward Seaga

22. Revivalism: A Disappearing Religion

           Barry Chevannes

23. The Introduction of Jamaican Music into the Established Churches

           Pamela O’Gorman

24. Traditional Musical Practice in Jamaica and its Influence on

the Birth of Modern Jamaican Popular Music

          Garth White

25. Tambu in Trelawny

           Laura Tanna

26. Emancipation Songs and Festivities

            Olive Lewin

27. Bruckins Party

            Adina Henry

28. Dinki Mini

           Laura Tanna with interviews by Hazel Ramsay

29. The Nkuyu: Spirit Messengers of the Kumina

           Maureen Warner-Lewis

30. Kumina: The Kongo Connection

          Laura Tanna

31. Kumina: A Kongo-Based Tradition in the New World

           Kenneth M. Bilby and Fu-Kiau Kia Bunseki

32. The Language of Kumina and Beele Play

           Hazel Carter

Annotated Kumina Lexicon with terms from the Beele ‘play’

and some Maroon items

            Hazel Carter

33. An Old Man Dies…A Book is Lost

            Olive Lewin

34. African Retentions: Yoruba and Kikongo Songs in Jamaica

            Laura Tanna

35. The Yoruba in Jamaica

           Abiodun Adetugbo

36. The Convince Cult in Jamaica

           Donald Hogg

37. The Kromanti Dance of the Windward Maroons of Jamaica

           Kenneth M. Bilby

38. Political Cultism in West Kingston, Jamaica

            George E. Simpson

39. Some Reflections on the Rastafari Movement in Jamaica:

West Kingston in the Early 1950s

           George Eaton Simpson

40. The Camps

            Douglas R.A. Mack

41. Rastafarian Music – An Introductory Study

           Verena Reckord

42. Kumina, the Howellite Church and the Emergence

of Rastafarian Traditional Music in Jamaica

           Kenneth Bilby and Elliott Leib

 About The Author:

Markus Coester is an anthropologist and music ethnologist at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. His work has centred on documentation and research of indigenous and popular music in the Caribbean and Africa. Dr Coester also led the digitisation of taped recordings of indigenous Jamaican folk music and other recordings done by Dr Olive Lewin and Marjorie Whylie from the 1960s to the 1980s, which documented African–Caribbean and Indian–Jamaican music as well as oral history from kumina, tambo and set-up to burru, jonkunnu, gerre and rastafari.   

Wolfgang Bender is an ethnologist and honorary professor at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. An accomplished researcher in modern African music, art and literature, he has established ethnomusical archives at several German universities and his extensive publications and recordings have assisted in the preservation of traditional and folk music from both Africa and the Caribbean.