Marronnage and Arts

Book excerpt: Marronnage is a stance, an attitude, a mentality or even a style. This book gives a large span of declensions of marronnage and shows how the quest for freedom during Slavery has infiltrated social relationships and the arts. Thus, identity approaches and expressions very specific to postcolonial societies and conditioned by the interracial and phenotypical-social interactions have developed. Those musics and dances are cosmogonies with their particular codes. New spheres where the enslaved black men and their descendants could and can claim their freedom anew. Within this book, the contributors shed new light on those phenomena and unveil the preconceived stereotypical, folklore-wise, sensualized and heavy ideological blanket that conceals the Caribbean, African and Indian Ocean cultures. From the French West Indies to Madagascar and Brazil, this book offers an incursion into a phenomenon which mutates across the ages, from its origins in the colonial era up until today: metamorphoses, syncretisms and political activisms. Through music and dances, it is possible to discover how revolt could be incarnated in bodies and voices.