An African Song or Chant from Barbados

An African Song or Chant from Barbados
World document heritage
Granville Sharpe (1820)
State (s):	Barbados United Kingdom
Period:	1772-1779
Storage:	Gloucester Archives
Register link:	An African Song or Chant from Barbados
Admission:	2017 ( session 13 )

An African Song or Chant from Barbados is the manuscript of a slave song that was included in the UNESCO World Document Heritage of Barbados and the United Kingdom in 2017 . The sheet is kept in the Gloucester Archives (Clarence Row, Gloucester , England) and has the signature D3549 / 13/3/2758.

It is the earliest known work song (late 18th century) of enslaved Africans in the sugar cane fields of the Caribbean. Although had Hans Sloane already in 1688 three African-American songs in Jamaica listed, but not from the working context of the slaves and are also incomplete.

Writing down the song

The lyrics and melody were written down by Granville Sharpe , a prominent opponent of slavery in Britain. His informant was William Dickson, who lived in Barbados for about 13 years from 1772 and was Secretary to the Governor. He heard the "African song" in the sugar cane fields of Barbados. For a Briton in his position, Dickson was unusually interested in the life of slaves. A critic of the slave trade, he published a two-volume work in 1789 which is an important source for the slave holding society in the British West Indies. Dickson can therefore be considered a reliable witness for the lyrics. However, it is not known what musical training Dickson had and how he conveyed the text and melody to Sharpe.

With Sharpe's estate, the song sheet came into the possession of the Lloyd-Baker family, who gave it to the Gloucestershire Archives for safekeeping in 1977 .

melody

The melody is notated in a minor (probably E minor ) and differs significantly from later music examples from Barbados. The lead singer and choir alternate ( call and response ), the call spanning 13 bars and the response being of a comparable length; later work songs, on the other hand, have short songs.

song lyrics

The text is an early Creole language document in Barbados.

In terms of content, the song is considered a unique source of how the slaves themselves perceived their situation. Singing at work was allowed, learning to write or writing something was forbidden; therefore the text could only be preserved for posterity by Europeans when it was written down. With the sentence: “Massa buy me he won't killa me” the reality of slave life becomes clear right from the start: Slaves were a material value for the owner (“Massa”) and killing them would be less moral for him Problem, as a financial loss. The cruelty of the owner is also clearly stated ("'For I live with a bad man"). Slaves often changed hands ("Oh 'for he kill me he ship me regulaw"). That slaves were preferred to be transported by ship at that time is indicated several times in the song ("I would go to the Riverside regulaw").

literature

• JS Handler, CJ Frisbie: Aspects of Slave Life in Barbados: Music and its Cultural Context . In: Caribbean Studies 11 (1972), pp. 5-46.
• John R. Rickford, Jerome S. Handler: Textual Evidence on the Nature of Early Barbadian Speech, 1676-1835 . In: Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages ​​9 (1994), pp. 221-255. ( PDF )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ John R. Rickford, Jerome S. Handler: Textual Evidence on the Nature of Early Barbadian Speech, 1676-1835 , 1994, p. 230 f.
2. ↑ It is typical for the Creole of the Caribbean that the unchanged verb stem (buy ) can express the past ( bought ).
3. ↑ The enclitic vowel in killa (instead of kill ) is typical of early text examples of pidgin-creole: John R. Rickford, Jerome S. Handler: Textual Evidence on the Nature of Early Barbadian Speech, 1676-1835 , 1994, p. 232.
4. ↑ The loss of the unstressed first syllable (aphesis) is characteristic of pidgin and creole languages ​​based on English: John R. Rickford, Jerome S. Handler: Textual Evidence on the Nature of Early Barbadian Speech, 1676-1835 , 1994, pp. 232.
5. ↑ On regulaw, Sharpe noted as a conjecture that this means: to be sold .

Web links

• Slavery Images: An African Work Song, Barbados, ca.1770s-1780s