Martinique - The Traveller's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands - page 40

played the smaller instrument beat as fast as he could go, producing a noise without marking the cadence
of the dance or the movements of the dancers.
The participants were drawn up in two lines opposite each other, the women on one side and the men
on the other. One of them improvised a song, of which the refrain was taken up by dancers and spectat-
ors alike, and scanned by universal clapping. The dancers held up their hands in the position of castanet
players, leapt and pirouetted, and shuffled towards the opposite rank and retreated interminably, only to
advance again, until a change in the tempo of the drumming gave them the signal to strike their thighs
against those of their opposites, dancing round and round each other, withdrawing and advancing and
repeating the hip-striking, as many times as the drums beat that particular rhythm, avec des gestes tout
à fait lascifs . Sometimes they danced round each other slowly with their arms interlocked, kissing their
partners, with thighs touching, then recoiled once more. This dance, the monk continues, became such a
favourite among the Spanish Créoles of the Americas that they seldom had thoughts for anything else.
'They dance it in their churches and their religious processions, and it is even performed by the nuns on
Christmas night, on stages specially erected in the chancel behind an open grille, so that the people can
share the joy to which these good souls bear witness at the birth of their Saviour. It is true that no men
are admitted to join them in so devout a dance. I am even ready,' he concedes, 'to admit that they dance
it with completely pure intentions. But how many spectators must there not be who judge less charitably
than me?'
Negroes of the Congo danced in a completely different way. Men and women formed a queue all fa-
cing in one direction, and the two ends joined in a circle. Then, without moving backwards or forwards,
they bent double, and, for hours on end, beat a shuffling rhythm on the ground with their feet, 'mum-
bling some rubbish' that was led by the voice of one of the dancers. The rest answered in chorus, while
the spectators beat time by clapping. The Mine Negroes also danced in a ring, all facing outwards, while
those from Gambia and Cape Verde practised their own tribal steps. 'But these dances, though more de-
cent, are very dull, and all, no matter where they came from, prefer the calenda . To drive the idea of this
infamous dance out of their heads, their masters taught them various French steps, the minuet, the cor-
anto, the branle and des danses rondes , which many of them learnt with infinite nimbleness and grace,
often better than Europeans who plume themselves on being fine dancers.'
Apart from the astonishing vision of the dancing nuns, the Father's account of these dances is import-
ant for several reasons. Firstly, because the addiction of the Spaniards of America to the dances of the
jungle indicates a common ancestor to all the Latin-American dances that evolved in the ensuing cen-
turies. Surely the earliest begetter of the rhumba, the samba, the son, and even the tango, can be none
other than this calenda from the coast of Guinea? Even if its authentic African origin were not known,
the description of the dance of the Congolese at once suggests to anybody who has seen it the Conga of
the Negroes of Cuba. More important still, Father Labat's two main classifications—which, of course,
subdivide into as many tribes and kingdoms as existed in either region—the Arada of the Guinea coast
and the Congolese, were the same influences that dominated the formation of Voodoo, the Negro reli-
gion of Haiti. The dark mysteries of the Pétro rite grew up in the Antilles long after the slaves were first
established there, but the two purely African rites of Haitian Voodoo, Rada (originating in Allada and
Dahomey) and Congo , come from exactly the regions that the Father names, and the striking similarity
of the calenda with the shuffling yanvaloux of the Voodoo temples will become clear in a later chapter.
Those minuets and branles which the slaves learnt from their French masters have plainly left their
mark on the dance in Martinique, and the biguines that Costa and I were watching seemed to have des-