“…To refer to the culture of the Caribbean geographically–other than to
call it a meta-archipelago–is a debilitating and scarcely productive
project…” (Benítez-Rojo 1996: 24). Recent trends in ethnomusicology
have included a greater emphasis on the study of translocal cultural
formations, social processes, and musical idioms, as well as on the
processes of globalization and intercultural exchange, and often less
emphasis on bounded geographical specificity. This graduate seminar
will explore the implications of this shift by examining how various
scholars have approached “the Caribbean” through locally situated
ethnographic research and how they have engaged with locality,
transnationalism, and the conditions of coloniality and
post-coloniality? We will consider what value “area studies” still
holds in ethnomusicological research? How does one identify an“area” in
globalized spaces? And more generally, how and where do we locate “the
Caribbean?” We will begin by surveying a number of important early
scholars working in the Caribbean basin (Carpentier, Cesaire,
Herskovits,Ortiz, among others), assessing how their influence has
shaped our present conceptions. We will then turn to a number of
scholars from outside of ethnomusicology whose work has exerted
considerable influence on more recent scholarship (Benítez-Rojo,
Clifford, Duany, Flores, Gilroy Hall, Roach, et.al.). We will finally
turn our attention to a number of recent ethnomusicological studies of
the Caribbean (Averill, Guilbault, Largey, Moore,Manuel, Ochoa, Veal,
Wade, among others) analyzing how each author grapples with the larger
questions of place and the post-colonial conditions fully reverberant
with varied notions of homeland, diaspora, cultural pride, alienation,
and displacement.
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