Sunday dances created African communal spaces colonial law struggled to control

Evidence

In the afternoon, after the market was closed, there was music and dancing. Accompanied by drums, calabashes filled with seeds, hand-clapping, improvised singing, and sometimes the music of a four-stringed instrument called the Banza, pairs of dancers would enter a circle formed by the others to dance what Moreau called a “Calenda.” Another dance he described was the “Chica”—called the “Congo” in the French colony of Cayenne—a “lascivious” dance in which women moved their hips while keeping the rest of their bodies still. Slaves also gathered in “cabarets,” which offered liquor and gambling. In Port-au-Prince there was a curfew: the church bell rang at 9:30 to call slaves back to their homes. There were also places to gather in the countryside. Near Petite-Anse in the north were two guildiveries (where alcohol was made), which provided a “meeting-place for a considerable number of negroes,” especially on Sundays and holidays. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 179

Categorization

• XREF: These drumming and dance gatherings presage the famous Bois Caïman ceremony that launched the 1791 insurrection. — connects to: Slave burial grounds doubled as gathering sites for Sunday dances — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 53; Colonial law transmuted cultural communities into political ones — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab: A History of the…, 39; Colonial law created an inside-outside sphere for customary law — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab: A History of the…, 39 (+5 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Slave burial grounds doubled as gathering sites for Sunday dances — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 53; Colonial law transmuted cultural communities into political ones — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab: A History of the…, 39; Colonial law created an inside-outside sphere for customary law — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab: A History of the…, 39 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Colonial ethnography reduces African rites to obscene primitive spectacle #complicates (0.71)