Music and the Performance of Identity on Marie-Galante French Antilles

Marie-Galante is a small island situated in the Caribbean to the south of Guadeloupe. The majority of Marie-Galantais are descendants of the slave era though a few French settlers also occupy the island. Along with its neighbours Guadeloupe and Martinique Marie-Galante forms an official département of France. Marie-Galante historically has never been an independent polity. Marie-Galantais express sentiments of being 'deux fois colonisé' or twice colonized concomitant with their sense of insularity from a global organization of place. Dr Ron Emoff translates this pervasive sense of displacement into the concept of the 'non-nation'. Musical practices on the island provide Marie-Galantais with a means of re-connecting with other significant distant places. Many Marie-Galantais display a 'split-subjectivity' embracing an African heritage a French association and a Caribbean regionalism. This book is unique in part with regard to its treatment of a particular mode of self-consciousness expressed musically on a virtually forgotten Caribbean island. The book also combines literary narrative historical and musical sources to theorize a postcolonial subsurreal in the French Antilles. The focus of the book is upon kadril dance and gwo ka drumming two prevalent musical practices on the island with which Marie-Galantais construct unique perceptions of self in relation specifically to Africa and France. Based on several extended periods of ethnographic research the book evokes unique Marie-Galantais views on tradition historicity esclavage nationalism (and its absence) and the local significance of occupying a globally out-of-the-way place. The book will be of interest not only to ethnomusicologists but also to those interested in cultural and linguistic anthropology postcolonial studies performance studies folklore and Caribbean studies.