Art Music by Caribbean Composers: Barbados
Owing much to its dual heritage, Barbadian culture is a mix of primarily African and British traditions. Unique forms of indigenous folk music include tuk and spouge music. Tuk music, a local version of the common fife-and-drum marching band, dates back to the 18th century (Bilby, 2008). Tuk music is “lively, with an intricate, pulsating and quick rhythm” (Marshall & Watson, 2008, p. 347). Spouge is a 20th century development (Best, 2005). The Crop Over festival, which originated during colonial times as a harvest festival and which was revived in the 1970s as both a cultural and commercial event, provides an annual venue for traditional and popular music as well as other cultural activities.
Barbadian tuk Music: Colonial Development and Post-independence Recontextualization
Tuk is a genre of fife and drum music found on the island of Barbados. While it exhibits a number of parallels with British military fife and drum music which may be attributable to the influence of the British army that was garrisoned on the island for over two hundred years, other influences have also played a part in the development of tuk, notably the musical heritage of the African-descended population. The first part of this paper examines the early history of tuk and places it in its original performance contexts. In more recent times, the creation of a national identity drawing on the heritage of the majority African-descended population has helped to preserve customs and traditions that may otherwise have died out. Although once looked down upon by some sectors of the population, these traditions have now been recontextualized to serve a specific purpose in post-Independence Barbados and are more widely (though not universally) accepted. The way in which this transformation has been achieved is explored in the second part of the paper.
Tuk music: Its role in defining Barbadian cultural identity
Tuk, a syncretic fife and drum tradition of Barbados, may have roots stretching back to the first stationings of British troops there in the 17th c. It was the music of the black plantation slaves until Emancipation in 1838. Subsequently, two specific functions for tuk developed: as entertainment for the working classes and as the music of the Landship, a music and dancing society. The tradition declined during the 20th c. due to several cultural factors, but a revival began in the 1970s and in the 1990s the government started to promote it as a unique Barbadian tradition, in contrast to more widespread West Indian popular genres.
This article uses plantation archaeology to explore white Barbadian responses to the British anti-slavery campaign during the late eighteenth century. By blurring disciplinary boundaries between history and archaeology, we examine how competing British and Caribbean images of West Indian planters were contested through material culture. Drawing on an archaeological case study at St. Nicholas Abbey sugar plantation, St. Peter, Barbados, we highlight how the landscape of slavery was transformed with the emergent, English ideal of ‘improvement’. This early Barbadian response to anti-slavery was a form of political mobilization deployed by the planter elite, allowing for the construction of new racial and cultural identities. [
