Creolizing Contradance in the Caribbean - Temple University

Introduction 39
Patterns of Caribbean Creolization:
Regional Distinctions
Creolization was the generative process that animated the evolution of all the
Caribbean contradance and quadrille styles and made them distinctive and
unique. At the same time, in different parts of the region creolization operated
to different extents, in different manners, and with different historical timings.
These differences account for some of the dramatically divergent forms that
contradances and quadrilles assumed in the Caribbean.
While a region so diverse as the Caribbean does not lend itself to generalization,
one can, with some equivocation, discern certain broadly divergent
patterns of musical creolization, especially as pertain to contrasts between the
British Caribbean and the Hispanic Caribbean—particularly Cuba. On the
whole, in Cuba, creolization—as embodied in the contradanza—commenced
relatively early, being well underway by the start of the nineteenth century. As
we have seen, by the mid-century decades, in the Dominican Republic and
Puerto Rico as well as in Cuba, local contradanza styles had emerged that were
evidently danced and played by whites and people of color, often together. In
Cuba and Puerto Rico the contradanza (or danza) came to flourish not only
as a simple dance piece but also as a salon music genre cultivated by urban,
formally trained amateur and professional composers of diverse races. By the
1840s in Cuba, and a few decades later in Puerto Rico, the local contradanzas
had come to be recognized and celebrated as distinctively national, creole entities
and in some contexts became explicitly associated with bourgeois nationalism
and independence movements.
The contrasts with the British West Indies are striking. We do know from
travelers’ accounts that black slaves played and danced quadrilles and similar
genres from the early 1800s (if not earlier), and slaves who learned to play
fiddle and other instruments might provide dance music for the festivities of
plantation owners. Nevertheless, there appears to have been no counterpart to
the fluid cultural milieu existing in, for example, Havana, Santiago de Cuba,
or Ponce, in which free whites and people of color not only composed but
also collectively danced and performed contradanzas. While the quadrille may
have been popular among both whites and blacks in the Anglophone Caribbean,
it was neither cultivated as a vehicle for studied composition nor celebrated
as a symbol of cultural nationalism. Instead, it survived primarily as a
folk dance, and no West Indian equivalents to such Spanish Caribbean composers
as Saumell and Tavárez exist. The quintessential West Indian quadrille
ensemble was not a wind- and string-based orquesta típica of musically literate
urban professionals reading from a score, but rather an unpretentious, ad hoc,
fiddle-and-percussion trio recycling familiar, orally transmitted tunes. In general,
creole culture came much later in the Anglophone Caribbean, and the
quadrille played a less prominent role in it.