Music Folklore among Haitians in New York: Staged Representations and the Negotiation of Identity
How migrant peoples see themselves, how others see them, and how they would like others to see them is explored via a staged theatrical form of Haitian folklore, examining the role of musical culture in the construction of these visions. Haitian folklore companies and their repertoire developed in the context of the negritude movement (1915-34). Ambivalent attitudes toward the African past, engendered in Haiti by the persistence of colonial class divisions and by decades of cultural intervention related to foreign hegemony, are reinforced in New York by negative stereotyping of Haiti's neo-African culture in the American media and entertainment.
