Putting the drum in conundrum: Guadeloupean gwoka, intangible cultural heritage and postnationalism

Abstract

Since 2004, Felix Cotellon, the president of the centre for traditional music and dance on the island of Guadeloupe, has spearheaded a grass roots campaign to see gwoka inscribed on the UNESCO’s list of Representative Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanities. The move has been surprising, even controversial. Gwoka, a drum-based music and dance, has been used as a symbol of Guadeloupean cultural identity and resistance against French colonialism since the late 1960s. Moreover, Cotellon has had a long association with separatist activism. However, because Guadeloupe remains a French overseas department without a seat at the UN, the petition to add gwoka to the ICH list had to be sponsored by the French state. Following a successful bid, gwoka is now listed as representative of the culture of a French region. In this article, I draw from my ethnographic work as well as my own involvement in the committee that drafted Guadeloupe’s application to trace the complex network of individuals, who are shaping gwoka’s transformation from weapon of national resistance to symbol of humanity’s cultural diversity. I argue that these individuals shape and operate within a ‘zone of awkward engagement’ that allows for the emergence and expression of a postnationalist political subjectivity.

Keywords:

• music
• Caribbean
• UNESCO
• France
• heritage
• postcolonialism

Acknowledgements

This research was partially conducted with the generous support of the Mellon postdoctoral program Culture in Transnational Perspective under the direction of Françoise Lionnet and Shu-mei Shih, UCLA.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Following Bendix (2011), I prefer the neologism ‘patrimonialisation’ – based on the French patrimoine – over terminology referencing ‘heritage’, as is more common in the anglophone literature. Indeed, Bendix draws a helpful contrast between héritage and patrimoine, linking the former with private property and individual or small group responsibility and defining the latter as ‘large-scale heritage’ for which questions of responsibility are more fluid and contested. Furthermore, the etymology of ‘patrimonialisation’ highlights the role of the nation (French patrie), an aspect that is central to the argument I develop in these pages but which gets lost in the English ‘heritage’.

2. Defining Guadeloupe as ‘postcolonial’ is admittedly problematic. Indeed, Puri (2004) argues that Guadeloupe and Martinique are still ‘classically colonial’. Yet this characterisation contradicts the motivation of Césaire and his allies who very much viewed political assimilation as a path to decolonisation. In many ways, whether it is independent or not, Guadeloupe today faces many of the same neocolonial pressures and challenges – both in terms of its economy and its politics of representation – as other, sovereign, postcolonial states.

3. On the process of decolonisation through departmentalisation, see Adélaïde-Merlande (2002, 80–85), Hintjens (1995) and William (1997).

4. I borrow the concept of ‘participatory music’ from Turino (2000).

5. By using the term ‘Africanism’ here, I do not necessarily want to imply a simple model of retention à la (Herskovits [1941] 1990; Maultsby 1990, Floyd 1996). Although these debates are largely irrelevant to the present topic, I am well-aware of the complex processes of syncretisation that have contributed to the emergence of Creole cultural expressions (Mintz and Price 1992) as well as the ongoing – and often deliberate – efforts to re-imagine and revitalise African-derived practices in the New World (Palmié 2008, 2013). I simply wish here to highlight the argument put forward by the AGEG’s activists.

6. Cyrille (2011) explains how the socio-racial hierarchy of Antillean colonial societies led to the social stratification of Creole musical practices in which the European-derived quadrille served as a tool of social ascendency while African-derived dances, painful reminders of slavery, became markers of lower social status.

7. Literally, ‘music of old negroes’. The phrase vyè nèg is derogatory and was used to designate poor and marginal members of society.

8. Although France ratified the ICH convention in 2006, it had been involved in the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity programme since 2001.

9. A Cuban participant had been invited but was forced to cancel at the last minutes due to delays in processing her visa application.

10. In January 2008, Cotellon was invited to participate in the capacity of ‘expert’ in the meeting of a UNESCO-sponsored subsidiary committee reflecting on the implementation of the ICHC’s operational directives. He has since identified himself as ‘Expert UNESCO pour la sauvegarde du patrimoine culturel immatériel’ (UNESCO expert for the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage).

11. “C’est à ce moment là qu’on en a vraiment pris conscience. Même si lui Félix savait que ce processus était déjà mis en marche, c’est à ce moment là qu’on en a pris conscience. […] On a pris conscience, c’est ce que je te disais, au moment de réaliser le dossier”.

12. I borrow the term ‘entanglement’ from Hesse (2000) and Guilbault (2005).

13. « J’ai été militant nationaliste, donc j’ai pas peur. J’ai pas peur d’aller rencontrer l’autre. […] C’est pas en fermant les frontières qu’on va avancer. […] C’est pas dramatique si un chinois joue du tambour. Il faut arrêter. Ici, on joue la musique de tout le monde. […] On est dans la mondialisation. Comment on peut se faire connaitre? ».

14. « Parce que vous savez, parce que souvent, peut être parce que nous sommes une ile, peut être par rapport a notre statut, mais c’est souvent l’ailleurs qui nous conforte dans l’idée que nous nous faisons de nous-même. Lorsque l’ailleurs reconnaitra que ce que nous avons est fort et suffisamment costaux pour que nous nous appuyons dessus, à ce moment là nous nous rendrons compte que nous pouvons nous appuyer dessus et nous allons pouvoir en faire un outil […] ».

15. The concept of postnationalism emerged in the 1990s as scholars considered the impact of globalisation on the nation state as well as the specific consequence of the emergence of the European Union on state sovereignty (Appadurai 1996a, 1996b; Corona and Madrid 2008; Habermas 2001; Rowes 2000). Although very much informed by her work, my own understanding of the term reaches beyond Puri’s (2004) stark contrast between what she calls ‘postnationalism’ and ‘transnationalism’. The entanglement of nationalism, statehood and sovereignty deserves to be explored further with attention paid to the specifics of postcoloniality in addition to the general effects of neoliberalism. For an example of the instrumentalisation of heritage as a tool of state-making for a non-sovereign territory, see De Cesari (2010).

16. “… permettra aux Guadeloupéens d’avoir un autre regard sur leur propre musique …”.

17. “sera une occasion exceptionnelle de dire au monde que le Gwoka est à la fois un fait social et un fait musical, qu’il est un espace où les identités s’affirment, se construisent et s’expriment, un espace de contestation politique et d’expression de solidarités”.

18. “Nous, on peut dire que nous sommes des peuples ayant une communauté de destin et nous sommes une nation sans état. C’est même pas grave. Mais nous avons au moins quelque chose à donner, à offrir au monde et je crois que le gwoka peut être, en tous cas, cet outil qui va à la fois nous définir et nous rendre visible”.

19. This changed to a large degree in April 2014 when the Association of Caribbean States conferred the status of Associate Members to both Guadeloupe and Martinique, thus making it possible for these islands to represent themselves directly within the ACS.

20. I do not want to dismiss the work of the Kolektif pou gwoka who has raised many important issues regarding the institutionalisation of gwoka, such as the impact it will have on intellectual property rights for gwoka composers. Unfortunately, space constraints keep me from fully dealing with this aspect of the zone of awkward engagement.

21. “Le gwoka n’a jamais été reconnu comme tradition française. Or, avec la convention, il va être reconnu mondialement comme un pratique française. […] Donc ça, ça pose un problème aux gens du gwoka qui très souvent on suivi un cheminement indépendantiste, qui ont suivi le cheminement nationaliste même s’ils l’ont laissé après. Mais ils gardent quand même cette image du gwoka comme une pratique guadeloupéenne, qui s’est formé en Guadeloupe et qui n’a rien a voir avec la culture française. Les gens disent même que le gwoka, c’est notre identité. Ils vont même plus loin et ils disent que c’est l’âme de la Guadeloupe, tu vois? Alors, personne n’ira mettre son âme ailleurs que chez soi”.