Caribbean Popular Culture
1. Sugar Cane Alley
2. Language, 3. Dub poetry
4. Music: Bob Marley & Fugees as
Examples
Popular Culture & Racial
Consciousness
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Voodoo or other African folk beliefs
Pre-Emancipation: riot, petit marronage
(小走私) in francophone islands-leaving home to
meet girl friends, or for a forbidden
church meeting. * Maroons (孤立的黑奴遺族)
– Music: Work Song, Abeng
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Post-Emancipation: Violent riot
20th Century:
– dub poetry and its Conscious Use of Creole
– Carnival,
– Music: Calypso, Reggae
The Caribbean Islands and their
migrants
Canada
The U.S.
“Children of the Sea”; Fugees
Annie John
M. Cliff, B. Marley
Wide Sargasso Sea
Sugar Cane Alley
England
France
Sugar Cane Alley: background (
)
1
•
Setting: Martinique in the 1930s; Black
Shack Alley, Port-de-France
1. Slums of the Empire
2. Emancipation as the false door to
freedom;
Toils on the sugar cane plantations:
Sugar Cane Alley: background (
)
1
Toils on the sugar cane plantations:
Season: right after X’mas to August.
1. Working hours: 10-11 hrs a day, six
days a week.
2. The traditional planting method: hoe
(instead of plough); dung basket
(instead of cart)
3. Cutting: in a dry season, sent to the
factory right away. Bend down to cut at
the bottom, and then stand up to strip
trash or dry leaves.
e.g. “[Cutting cane] has given me a house and
helped me raise six children, . . . but [cutting
cane] can take everything out of you.
Sugar Cane Alley:
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background (2)
film production:
(1985, Euzhan Palcy); from the novel
Joseph Zobel, Black Shack Alley
worried about the white creole elites’
responses
– use French, but not Creole French
– first shown in Martinique but not in
France; several awards in Venice film fest
and French Cesar
Sugar Cane Alley: Major
Themes

Exploitation of the black laborers and their ways
of resistance (examples of Caribbean folk culture)

Cultural identities -- different senses of
black/creole/white identities.
– What contrasts or oppositions are portrayed in the film?

Education --Who gets educated and by whom?
Sugar Cane Alley: Major
Themes
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Exploitation of the black laborers and their
ways resistance (examples of Caribbean
folk culture)
-- the laborers: Ti Coco, Twelve-Toe,
Medouze
-- the colonizers and overseers: Mr. de
Thoral, Mr. Whitley, Carmen’s mistress.
-- in-group exploitation: Mme. Leonce
Sugar Cane Alley: Exploitation

Exploitation of Labourers before and
after Emancipation
– the workers -- their songs; their ways of
rebellion; Ti CoCo's wage;
– Medouze
– the overseers -- e.g. Whitley

Seen from the children’s perspective
– the broken bowl episode
– the rum-drinking episode
laborers
child
Sugar Cane Alley:
Cultural/Gender Identity
Who else (besides Jose) gets education or
“liberated”?
Self-Hatred (or Black Skin, White Mask):
M. Flora
Cross-Cultural Gender relations:
a. Black women’s position: Leopold’s
mother
b. Carmen
Jose’s friends,
Sugar Cane Alley: Education
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Education of Jose
the grandmother’s role;
Medouze’s influence: respect for nature, “Africa”
the two teachers
Major turning points in the film:
– Rum
– Medouze’s death
– Mme. Leonce
moving to the town
– Being chosen
to Port-de-France
– Being suspected of cheating.
Getting full scholarship
Sugar Cane Alley: Education
How do you read the line at the end--"Take
my Black Shack Alley with me"?
Does Jose's "success" suggest that things are
changing? That there will be justice? Or is
he simply an exception?
Sugar Cane Alley: Filmic
Techniques
1.
2.
Structure: the post card views at the
opening
Colors:
 the use of different color tones for different
settings (Black Shack Alley—dark and sepia,
Leopold’s house & Port-de-France--bright)
3.
Shots:
 no scenery shots
 Many close-ups
The people’s resistance to colonialism:
some examples of
Caribbean Popular Culture

Ways of rebelllion:
– with music, dance, religion (voodon), or
simply their different way of living;
– pretend sickness, steal, or even poison
their masters.
– Dub poetry: forerunner of hip-hop
– Calypso: originated in the songs of
African slaves who worked in the
plantation fields of Trinidad. Forbidden
to talk to each other, they used calypso to
communicate feelings and information.
Bob Marley(1944-1981) &
Jamaica: his efforts in promoting peace
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Formed the Wailing Wailers in 1963.
Attempted assassination: before the PNPsponsored "Smile Jamaica" concert in 1976.
the One Love Peace Concert in 1978.
Received the Third World Peace Medal by
all the African delegations at the United
Nations.
Rastafarianism Cf. Bob Marley site
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Origin in Africa: the Nile Valley
(including both Egypt and Ethiopia) ;
Ethiopian Orthodox Church, a pure form
of Christianity that kept its connection
with its Judaic and Egyptian pasts, all
elements within Rastafarianism.
Major Belief: the blending of the purest
forms of both Judaism and Christianity;
rejects the Babylonian hypocrisy of the
modern church. (Babylon can also refer to
the Western colonial culture in general.)
Rastafarianism (2)
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practice: the herb "ganja" (marijuana) was
regarded as "wisdomweed for a religious
rite; a life of asceticism and artistry; the
difference between rastas and hippies.
Jah: Haile Selassie, Emperor of
Ethiopia, arrived in Jamaica in 1966
the 1930s in Jamaica: were years of social
upheaval and labor strikes --perfect timing
for the rise of Rastafarianism, a religion of
the dispossessed. (Different from hippie
culture)
Bob Marley’s major messages:
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Peace, love & Anticolonialism & selfliberation
e.g. Redemption
Song (first part,
about slavery)
“ Old pirates yes they rob I
Sold I to the merchant ships
Minutes after they took I
From the bottomless pit
But my hand was made strong
By the hand of the almighty
We forward in this generation
Triumphantly
All I ever had, is songs of freedom
Won't you help to sing, these songs
of freedom
Cause all I ever had, redemption
songs
Redemption songs
Emancipate yourselves from
mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our
minds ...
Bob Marley’s song: another
example

“Buffalo Soldier” from Legend-A gritty
ballad that tells the cruelly ironic story of
black men being conscripted into the
ranks of the Union Army to kill indians.
Fugees: The Score
“No Woman, No Cry”
I remember when we used to sit in the
government yard in Brooklyn.
Observing the crookedness as it mingled with
the good people we meet.
Good friends we had,
Good friends we've lost along the way.
In this great future you can't forget your past,
So dry your tears
I say And to my peers who passed away,
No woman, no cry, no woman no cry, say say
say.
Fugees: a “Hopeful” Image about
the refugee
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A Hip-Hop band from Haiti
Hip-Hop style: re-assemble a lot of music
and styles by the Black singers in the past;
the themes: refugees; colonialism/sexism;
their escape and tendencies to commit
crimes in the host city
these themes are treated with sympathy for
the refugees and/or uplifting messages.
Killing Me Softly
Strumming dub plates
with our fingers,
Eliminate sounds with
our song,
Killing a sound boy with
this sound,
Killing a sound boy with
this sound,
Taking sound boys' lives
with this dub,
Killing him softly with
this sound.
Strumming my pain with
his fingers,
Singing my life with his
words,
Killing me softly with
his song,
killing me softly with his
song,
Telling my whole life
with his words,
Killing me softly with
his song.
Carnival by Wyclef Jean
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Carnival: the setting is a court trial, in
which Wyclef tries hard to excuse himself.
 e.g. Guantanamera: disclose the beauty myth about the
Caribbean woman,
who is actually a prostitute.
Carnival by Wyclef Jean
Closing Arguments
In closing, ladies and gentlemen of the jury
I'm not gonna sit here and bore you with a
long, drawn out story or excuse, of why I
think Wyclef is guilty I'm gonna stand by
the exhibits as well as the tapes And songs
such as Jeopardy, Til Novemeber, All the
Girls, and Bubblegoose, which stand side
by side with my allegations I rest my case
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Carnival by Wyclef Jean
.. .
Your honor see, this, this is exactly
what I'm talkin about
I mean I've been meaning to ask this
the whole time Who the hell is Bishop?
Eh?
And and why the hell hasn't he been
brought on the stand?
Bishop, bishop, not true, false, bishop
Ohh, bullshit!
Map:
traveling of people & cultures
Canada
The U.S.
“Children of the Sea”; Fugees
Annie John
M. Cliff, B. Marley
Wide Sargasso Sea
Sugar Cane Alley
Derek Walcott
Austin Clarke
Neil Bissoondath
England
France India
American Imperialism in the Caribbean
Area (Cf. Bob Marley site
http://www.bobmarley.com/)
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Economic
– the area becomes the tourists’ heaven and a
cheap labor factory (capital, technology and
management shipped to the area to use the labor
power without leaving the profits there.)
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military:
– take over the military bases of several islands,
– "Caribbean Basin Initiative “a bribe to induce
Jamaica and the rest of the Caribbean to
accredit the armed confrontation in Grenada.”