Caribbean Popular Culture : Power, Politics and Performance

Caribbean Popular Culture: Power, Politics and Performance is an anthology of previously published works, newly commissioned pieces and substantially revised or updated articles which examine the Caribbean popular - an idea that has been an important and contested terrain for exploring the dynamic and oftentimes subversive cultural expressions of the region. The Caribbean popular arts, whether embodied in the hybrid musical genres or vernacular performance and festival traditions, have historically provided a space for social and political critique, the performance of visibility and also articulations of a temporal emancipatory ethos with its attendant acquisition of power and status. Beyond the spaces of their local/regional enactments and the social realities out of which they emerged and continue to circulate, Caribbean popular culture has over time contributed to contemporary understandings of global and diasporic cultures and, at the same time, the dynamics of inter-cultural encounters. In this collection, key writings on the Caribbean expressive terrain and popular cultural production are also supplemented by an extensive further reading list and arresting colour plates.