Aime Cesaire and Frantz Fanon are today globally revered writers. They were reared in societies of the French islands of the Caribbean that are not as well-known as their work. We often pay homage to their literature and not to folk culture in the Caribbean that does what their literature advocates. An example is of this folk culture is Bèlè dance and music.
Aime Cesaire and Frantz Fanon are so popular that we often take them out of the context that gave his ideas birth. Fanon is one of the great critics of Black life in the Western Hemisphere. Not only are his books required reading in many Universities but they are also books that are being sold on many street corners and street stalls. He grew up in Martinique where one of his High School teachers was the poet Aime Cesaire.
Aime Cesaire, wrote the majestic line “je ne ferai pas avec le monde ma paix sur vos dos” or “I will not make peace with the world on your backs” in Notebook of a Return to the Native Land. This line encapsulates his commitment, to quote the Haitian communist Lyonel Trouillot.
Both Fanon and Cesaire were theorists of negritude, a call for the valorizing of blackness. Fanon not only criticized but also took to its highest intellectual level by using psychology and philosophy to analyze what colonialism had done to black life and to theorize a way out. Both were communists for some time and though their paths diverged, both were committed to improving human life.
Some French Caribbean music has achieved Cesaire and Fanon’s ideas though most of it has not. Martinique’s Bèlè is a shining example. The Bèlè descends from African fertility dances. Fanon wanted to give black communities life through his books and according to Freudian psychology — that Eros is life — the preserving of folk, or own, celebration of fertility attempts to do the same thing.
In Bèlè, a man and woman show off their dance skills as a “chantuelle” sings lyrics and a “lavway” sings a chorus. A drum is played by a “bwate” who beats a drum with two sticks or ‘ti bwa”. The name comes from the French seeing the dance perform the dance and naming it Belair which became Bèlè. Drums were banned by colonial policy and despite this the tradition went on.
The Bèlè is sometimes happy and sometimes sad but the performance and the belief in tradition goes on, in the name of what fertility can bring to human life. The Bèlè is much less popular than it was once but it is today preserved and through it life continues.
Authentic Bèlè has resisted French colonization. Music wise, not all Martinique music is pro-black music. A very well-known song in the French Caribbean, Adieu Foulard, Adieu Madras, was written in 1769 by Francois Claude de Bouillé, the Governor of Guadeloupe, who was the cousin of the Marquis de Lafayette who fought on the side of the Americans during the American Revolution.
Adieu foulard, adieu madras,
Adieu grain d’or, adieu collier choux,
Doudou an mwen ki ka pati
Hélas, hélas cé pou toujou.
Doudou an mwen ki ka pati
Hélas, hélas cé pou toujou.
Goodbye scarf, Goodbye madras
Goodbye grain of gold, Goodbye necklace
My Doudou who might be leaving
o god, o god, it’s for always
My Doudou who might be leaving
o god, o god, it’s for always
The song laments about a light skin woman’s being sad because her white man, her doudou, is leaving. It is the sort of song that celebrated the exotic pleasures of colonialism in the violent colony of Guadeloupe, the exact opposite of Bèlè love.
Traditional rhythm does always equate with good and it often used for propaganda. One song by a Gwo Ka legend Robert Loyson “Garde A Vous” sings of a man fighting in Algeria as Frantz Fanon also did. However it is an ode to General De Gaulle, the person that Fanon fought against in Algeria’s War for Independence. “Garde A Vous” is a French military order to tighten the ranks in respect to something or someone in particular. De Gaulle did call for an end to the Algerian War but he fought the Algerians relentlessly and was no person to sing an Ode to.
Garde a vous
wo!
Soldat brave Danje
fizi a la main
kan la guerre termine, manman
viv general de gaulle.
An Algerie la guerre termine, manman
viv General De Gaulle.
Garde a vous
wo!
soldier fought through danger
gun in hand.
when the war came to an end, momma
long live General De Gaulle.
In Algeria the war is at its end, momma
long live General De Gaulle.
The Gwo Ka literally means the Big Ka. The Ka is a traditional drum that slaves made on their to make music despite colonial bans on drumming. There are two different Ka’s, the Makè and the Boula and the music is also played with a Cha-Cha. The Boula or multiple Boulas play the rhythm to which one dances and the Makè, or marker, mimics the dancer.
There are seven basic Gwo Ka rhythms and variations of each. In this case, both the dancer and the Makè are supposed to be going along with French colonial policy, which there was nothing jovial about.
Bèlè is hope. It is hope is in life that can come from sex and love, and hope in a great world despite atrocity. It is what Fanon meant by “Today I believe in the possibility of love; that is why I endeavor to trace its imperfections, its perversions” in Black Skin, White Masks.
Author: Adolf Alzuphar
