The Music of the Netherlands Antilles. Jan Brokken

Чтение книги онлайн.

      5

       A Port of Transit

      Caribbean island music had that which I have always sought in my travel writing: it clearly expressed how cultures shade into one another.

      At the end of the eighteenth century, European frigates setting sail for the Caribbean islands brought all sorts of musical forms with them that had already crossed several borders on the old continent. For example, the English country dance had spread out across all of Western Europe, and on the other side of the Channel, owing to a faulty translation, was erroneously called contradanse. The French contradanse sailed to Saint-Domingue, which had become a wealthy colony because of sugar cane, and underwent African-influenced transformations in the plantation houses. The monotonous rhythmic thump was syncopated and changed into a rolling beat.

      A great deal of music was made on the Caribbean islands. It was the only form of entertainment, certainly on the remote plantation houses. Practically every country estate had a spinet, later on a piano, and not just for young ladies but young fellows as well. Whenever the planters went to the cities, they hurried to the stores where the latest sheet music was on sale. They were less interested in the gazettes, as they only contained old news; music was the slender thread that bound them to their country of origin: contradanses or minuets, printed in faraway Paris, but suddenly so close they could be performed in the homes of the urban citizenry or the backyards of the sugar farmsteads.

      In accordance with the basic principles of the French Revolution, the Jacobins abolished slavery in the French colonies in 1793. They applied the principles of liberty, fraternity, and equality to all citizens of the French territories, regardless of the color of their skin or status. In several colonies the whites refused to obey this decree, and in the end Napoleon would rescind the measure at the insistence of his beloved Joséphine de Beauharnais, who in turn was under pressure from her relatives in Martinique. The whites of Saint-Domingue had long since sought the help of the English, not only France’s archenemy, but the insatiable great power that lay claim to every single island in the West Indies. The slaves revolted against the English occupation in Saint-Domingue, led by Toussaint L’Ouverture. He declared it the first black republic and changed its name to Haiti. Most whites died in the fighting, were slaughtered, or fled to Martinique, Guadeloupe, New Orleans, Curaçao, Trinidad, and especially to Oriente, the easternmost province of the Spanish colony of Cuba. It was there the contradanse intermingled with the songs of love and death from the Iberian peninsula.

      In Oriente the contradanza had much more of a lilt than the original contradanse. It was more passionate, more whimsical—though not totally. The first section remained as it had been originally—bare, cool, restrained; passions were not unleashed until the second section. The first section remained Western European, the second became Cuban. When listening to a danza you can actually hear the journey the music has made.

      The journey did not stop in Oriente. From Cuba the danza spread out over the entire Caribbean archipelago and large areas of South America, via Curaçao, which fulfilled the role of a port of transit. Practically every cargo and mail vessel bound for La Guaira, Belém, Recife, Montevideo, Buenos Aires, or Valparaiso called in at the island. Cargo and parcel post from other islands were loaded in the port of Willemstad, the largest in the Dutch Antilles. It was just as easy to take onboard the sheet music hot off the local presses, or the Spanish-language weekly Notas y Letras, also published on Curaçao.

      The island may have been part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, but the number of inhabitants originally from the mother country could be counted on the fingers of a couple of hands. Not until Shell Oil set up its refinery in 1918 did a Dutch district arise, called Emmastad, and thirty years later a second one, Julianadorp; before that, colonial authorities and military garrison lived together in Fort Amsterdam. Outside that enclave, most whites were Jewish or descended from Protestant colonists who had settled on the island between 1650 and 1750. The Jews married among themselves, as did those Protestants from the upper echelons of society. Lower-class Protestants were content with Venezuelan or “colored” partners. By the nineteenth century, however, the caste system was no longer viable owing to a lack of marriageable daughters. The whites with double surnames (the upper class) also opted for partners from the nearby continent. The Protestants became Latinized. Instead of staying at home over a cup of coffee discussing the sermon, their dances were now held after church services, and these weekly recurring parties went on from 11 A.M. until late into the afternoon. “No pen could describe the furious dances they engage in here. Old, young, everyone jumps in,” the amazed Dutch lieutenant Van der Goes wrote home in 1830.

      Among themselves the islanders spoke either Papiamentu or Spanish. Dutch was seldom heard in the streets. Curaçao was home to a host of Spanish-language publications with such titles as Noticiero, El Imparcial, El Comercio, El Liberal, La Ilustración, El Evangélico, Liberal, El Correo de las Antillas, and—characteristic of its readers—La Política Venezolana or El Eco de Venezuela.

      Notas y Letras was the most international. It had subscribers throughout Latin America. Unlike in Cuba, ruled with an iron fist by Spain, there was no longer censorship in the Dutch colony. The Cuban governor general held his own with the South American dictators, nipping all resistance in the bud and only giving permission for a performance of Bellini’s opera I Puritani when the word libertá had been substituted by the female name Lealtá.

      Because of the total freedom of the press on Curaçao, Notas y Letras could become the tribune for South American liberals. Besides its irreverent words, it also came with notes: musical scores were printed in the mid-section of the magazine. Countless Caribbean composers published their dances, waltzes, and mazurkas in Notas y Letras.

      No Argentinean wants to believe it, but initially the tango was much more popular in Willemstad than it was in Buenos Aires. In the second section of his danza, the Curaçaoan composer Jules Blasini often made use of the tango rhythm. Long before Argentineans let their hair down with the tango, Blasini had Curaçaoans dancing to this rhythm. He published his works in Notas y Letras—undoubtedly to the utter amazement of its Argentinean readers: in Buenos Aires the tango was only danced in clandestine locations and only by men.

      Notas y Letras’ libertarian ideals did not get in the way of the commercial basis underpinning the weekly publications. The publishers, the four sons of Agustín Bethencourt, were keen to have as many copies as they could roll off the presses their father had founded. Father Bethencourt had fled from Venezuela for political reasons; in Willemstad he carried on the liberal offensive he had initiated on the mainland.

      Curaçao had enjoyed a liberal reputation ever since 1812, when Simón Bolivar went into exile in Willemstad. During their three-month stay СКАЧАТЬ