Black Music of the Caribbean and the African Diaspora
This course offers an overview of the Afrodiasporic musics of the Caribbean. Placing these musical styles in cultural and historical context, it emphasizes the ways that Afro-Caribbean musics have both retained aesthetic principles inherited from Africa and developed them through varying historical trajectories. The course takes as its central thread the Carnival traditions that are common throughout the religion, following this thread around the Caribbean and relating Carnival practices to broader music and dance and to other art forms. Finally, through readings, lectures, films, discussions and projects, the course emphasizes the ways that Caribbean musics have now themselves migrated to other places, joining an ever more intensely globalizing Afrodiasporic musical world.