Dudley and Walrond approach the steelpan and steelband within different lights. Dudley's focus is localized in the Caribbean, in Trinidad and Tobago, on the rupture in the offical/popular, cultural/political, elite/lower-class dichotomous nationalism that steelband via creolization causes there. While Walrond sets research in Canada with Caribbean women playing the steelpan as part of TrinCan Steel Ochestra, and steers the conversation towards the cultural inappropriateness of the Canadian school system and subsequently worries about the alienation of Caribbean women in the adult education system.
Dudley starts off by presenting theories on popular nationalism and sentiment by Anderson, Turino, and Hutchinson. Follow-up theory is presented through Berrios-Miranda's work on salsa music as consolidation of national sentiment through popular music, a sentiment against colonial subjugation, whereby the meaning is produced by both the producers and listeners/dancers. Bridging these theories is Dudley's explanation that in the Caribbean, everyone is a newcomer, and a creolization process is driven by non-european elements, non-elite, and the elite attempting to abstract calypso and steelband. Gellner writes that the deception of nationalism "involves the incorporation of popular culture icons into a format that is more congruent with elite aesthetics". (267) Dudley goes on to present this creolization as the rupture in the dichotomy of elite and popular culture. Lovelace and Job explain that the 1950s rising middle class in Trinidad, occurred simultaneously with the construction of national identity and 'colonization' of calypso and steel pan, i.e. attempts to stylize as symphony orchestra (concert hall performance v. street march). But labourers have enjoyed renderings of western classical music on stage, and business execs in festive street march, this is all drawn on at Panorama (festival of Caribbean arts). Not to be left out is the fact that lower-class panmen traditionally have rendered Mozart and Beethoven and middle-class politics have attempted to purge this from Carnival. Dudley concludes with thoughts that Panorama has a changing audience: more tourists, more expats, fewer youth and working-class adults) -- increased sponsor participation in steelband, decreased community participation in steelband.
I think here about kitsch and authenticity, as reappropriation and abstraction come up in Dudley's examination of the steelband tradition in Trinidad. With the changing demographics of Panorama, there is a changing aesthetic to steelband, namely the concerthallitization of a formerly public march type atmosphere. I wonder about the diaspora which due to radicalization which often times forces one to be closer o to their culture, acts similarly to the non-racialized Irish American diaspora who fervently consumes the reappropriated official and elite symbols of nationalism. I appreciated Dudley's complication of colonial state nationalist and tradition construction as something that has always been a space of mixing elite, lower-class, colonized, colonizer, official and popular, cultural and political.
Walrond further complicates ideas of nationalism and tradition with the second diaspora, Caribbeans in Canada, and the realm of women players of steelpan. However, Walrond's focus is not nationalism at all, but rather education, using on focus group interviews with Caribbean students in Edmonton and their experiences with sharing steelpan. The paper asks how can this critical Caribbean instrument be used in adult education for caribbean people in canada to make it more culturally relevant, in an environment that has traditionally been troublemsome to Caribbean people's education. Walrond steeps the first part of the paper in critical race pedagogical theory about the 'cultural absenteeism' practiced as part of 'multiculturalism' in public schools and their effects on young Caribbean women. Walrond uses Sleeter's study of schools which found they "had little (if any) connection with community-based movements that aim toward equality and social justice" (25), while maintaining special tokenistic events like Culture Days, or bring you cultural instrument to school day, at which the interviewees in the paper had experienced and used to share their steelpan with the other children. Walrond leads cultural absentism pedagogy into questions of adult education for Caribbean women living in Canada, occupying a 'third space' of 'home/Caribbean' and 'home/Canada': and their "exclusion from activities that are necessary to sustain a quality of life that first world countries such as Canada excel at and are proud to acclaim." (25) This is further signified by Guy's observation of white predominence in adult education spaces in 'first world communities'. The interviewees express pan as passing on of culture of resistance, as integral to their lives, as fun, as informal structure, as community: Caribbean Canadian and African Canadian women together in an environment of learning.
With Walrond, I found it difficult to make the links from the critical race theory on pedagogy to the interviewees experiences documented in the paper. Although I understand and have experienced the alienation of the 'multicultural' Canadian school curriculum, and witnessed the failure its had for black female students around me, I'm not sure this comes through in the paper itself. I would have appreciated a clearer linking and contrasting of Caribbean women's steelpan pedagogical experience with colonial Canadian mandatory pedagogical experiences. Also, I don't feel the gendered aspect of mandatory colonial Canadian education was expressed clearly in the paper. This definitely could have been drawn out more and linked more heartily with the interviewees. For example, how does the Canadian public school system disempower Caribbean women in ways that steelpan community education has repaired?
Questions
1) Walrond's essay makes implicit links between Caribbean students to black students in Canadian school systems that use culturally inappropriate pedagogy to educate them. However, is the lack of mention of specifically Indo-Caribbean women's experience significant?
2) How is the Canadian colonial school system, though Eurocentric, also a space of contrary hybridity like steelband tradition in Trinidad? What are we forgetting when we gloss over the material presented as white-owned?
Hey Kenji,
ReplyDeleteI think that your first question draws on a very important point within the Walronds article. I found this read frustrating because of the many general and open claims that were made, whilst vying for change to a very small community. If there had been a focus on Indo-Caribbean experiences, this would have made the argument for Steelpan woman's groups a much stronger solution. However, I found the issues raised bespoke that of a much larger black community, a community who did not seem to be considered in the solution.