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Arts of the Suriname Maroons

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Arts of the Suriname Maroons Arts of the Suriname Maroons Sally Price The daily life of Maroons in the interior of er, the third woman is busy crocheting a pair of Suriname is unusually rich in artistic activity and multi-color calfbands for her husband, working aesthetic discussion. The anthropologist Melville slowly around a bottle to create an evenly circu­ Herskovits remarked in 1930 (using a term for lar band. the Suriname Maroons that was standard in his The noted carver rotates the prepared cal­ day): "Bush Negro art in all its ramifications is, in abash shell, trying to recapture in her mind the the final analysis, Bush Negro life." A scene like details of a particular configuration. She discuss­ the following is typical: es with the woman sitting at her side the design Three women are sitting in an open-sided they'd like to reproduce, but when neither one shed. Carefully patterned arrangements of scar can remember just how its appendages were tissue create sharp accents on their faces and curved, she settles on a new version which, she chests, and their wrap-skirts later decides, is even better and waist ties make splashes than the original. The of color against the earthen woman with the calfbands floor. One of them is bak­ crochets steadily, enlisting ing manioc cakes over a both her friends' advice barely smoldering fire. She about the width of the red spre<tds the flour deftly over and yellow stripes that will the dry griddle, draws her form its center. As the three fingers over the surface to of them work, their conver­ form selected decorative sation alternates between patterns, and sifts a thin village gossip and discus­ layer of flour on top. While sion of their artistry. each cake bakes, she works Gatherings like this on a complex, triple-tech­ bring together the artistic nique hairdo for the sec­ dimensions in different ond woman, who sits on a areas of Maroon life, from handsomely carved wooden preparing food and serving stool, an as-yet-uncarved This Ndjuka wooden tray is used for winnow­ meals to furniture, clothes calabash shell on her lap. ing rice. Winnowing trays are often carved by and grooming. Artistry, aes­ Well-known in the village Maroon men as gifts for their wives. Photo by thetic discussion and social for her technical mastery Diana Baird N'Diaye interaction are routinely and sense of design in this woven together in the fab­ medium, she is marking out a pattern for the ric of Maroon daily life. third woman, who will later use pieces of broken Music and dance are equally integrated into glass to finish the bowl carving. For now howev- village activities. Specialized dances are per­ formed by the mediums of various possession gods, and there are many secular dances, each Sally Price's books include Co-Wives and Calabashes, win­ ner of the Hamilton Prize in Women's Studies, and Primi­ enjoyed in a particular social context. It is rare to tive Arts in Civilized Places. With Richard Price, she has walk through a Maroon village without hearing written Mro-American Arts of the Suriname Rain For­ someone singing. Distinctive song styles con­ est, Two Evenings in Saramaka, Stedman's Surinam tribute to the whole range of Maroon ritual and, most recently, Equatoria. events, from complex funerary rites to the MAROON CULTURES 67 "domestication" of a newly discovered spirit; they porary social setting than in the context of their are also part of communal labor such as felling African roots. The villages of the rainforest have trees or hauling logs and are also performed in often been seen as a "little Africa in America" many casual or even solitary settings. Drums are and Maroon arts as direct "African survivals." used singly or in various combinations to accom­ The title of one article in a 1939 issue of Natural pany different secular dance forms; to an­ History magazine promised a description of nounce, supervise and comment on the proceed­ "Africa's Lost Tribes in South America" in the ings of large public council meetings; and to form of "an on-the-spot account of blood-chilling communicate with each kind of possession god, African rites of 200 years ago preserved intact in with other deities and spirits, and with the ances­ the jungles of South America by a tribe of run­ tors. And there are other musical instruments as away slaves." More recent visitors have even well - bells and wooden trumpets, a stringed claimed that Maroons have maintained a society instrument made with a gourd, and "finger "that is 'more African' than much of Africa is pianos." today." Behind this view lies the myth that so­ Finally, the verbal arts - folk tales, play lan­ called primitive societies exist outside of history, guages, proverbs, speeches made by possessed changing only when other, "more advanced" mediums, oratory and prayer- employ a wide societies impinge on them and erode their "tra­ range of styles based on everyday languages, and ditional way of life." they keep alive a large number of distinctive eso­ In fact, non-Western societies differ enor­ teric languages used only in special ritual set­ mously in their attitudes toward change and in tings. the amount of internal dynamism that character­ In general, Maroons expect all these activi­ izes their cultural life. The societies of the Suri­ ties to be practiced and discussed by the entire name Maroons, like the vast majority of societies population - in contrast to many African soci­ in West and Central Africa, have always been eties, where only certain individuals are trained highly dynamic. Art historical research in to be artists, and where critics may also play a archives, museums and the villages of the Suri­ specialized role. The most important cultural name interior has demonstrated conclusively the division is gender-related; men's and women's high value Maroons place on creativity, innova­ arts are distinctive in their tools, media and dec­ tion and artistic development from one genera­ orative styles. At least until recently, all Maroon tion to the next. Far from being static leftovers men were adept at carving a wide range of wood­ from 17th-century Africa, Maroon art has contin­ en objects as gifts for women - from canoes and ually developed as its makers played and experi­ house fronts to combs and food stirrers - and mented with their ancestral heritage, adapting it all women produced elaborate patchwork and creatively to their changing lives. embroidered textiles to be worn by men. Even We know that the original Maroons pro­ today, this pattern of general artistic exchange duced little decorative woodcarving or textiles; helps shape relations between men and women their clothing was extremely simple and their for most of the Maroon population. houses and furnishings were largely unembell­ When Maroons talk about art, which they ished. It was only over time that the relatively do often, they almost invariably refer in some crude woodcarving of the mid-19th century way to its central role in social life- to artfully­ evolved into a beautiful 20th-century art that has designed objects presented at a birth ceremony struck many outsiders as "African-looking." And or at a ritual marking adulthood, to beautifully the multi-colored Maroon narrow-strip textiles decorative textiles draped on the gabled coffin at that so closely resemble West African kente cloth a dignitary's funeral rites, to the art objects were invented only during the present century as exchanged to mark the establishment and con­ a replacement for a very different textile art for­ tinuation of a marriage, to the gifts given to help merly embroidered by Maroon women in red, celebrate a man's return from long-term wage white, and black or navy. Paints, introduced in a labor at the coast, and so forth. People rarely few conservative colors some 100 years ago, have comment on a woodcarving without referring to since come to play a central role among the east­ the maker, to the woman for whom it was made, ern Maroons. And calabashes, which until the and to details of their relationship at the mid-19th century were decorated only on the moment he presented it to her. outside surfaces by men, began to be carved on Many visitors to Suriname have understood the insides by women, who used new tools and Maroon arts less in the context of their contem- produced an entirely new decorative style. 68 MAR 0 0 N CUlTURES A Saramaka man in Asind66po displays a deco­ rated rattle used to accompany songs for forest spirits. In front of him are two carved apinti drums. Photo by Diana Baird N'Diaye A young Saramaka woman, Fandolina, braids the hair of her friend Doisimoni in Asind66po. The name of this particular hairstyle, goon uwii, likens it to a cultivated field. Photo by Diana Baird N'Diaye In light of this history of change, how does clothes, served their meals, and in countless one explain the visible resemblances between other aspects of daily life. These expressive forms the arts of the Maroons and those of the peoples did not require the specific resources of more of West and Central Mrica? If stylistic develop­ formally elaborated artistic media, and in this ments have repeatedly led Maroon arts in new way, aesthetic ideas were passed on and applied directions, then how has the cultural legacy of inventively to the changing artistic materials Mrica been expressed in Maroon art over the available to each generation. Forged in an inhos­ centuries? The answer lies more in the continu­ pitable rainforest by people under constant ity of Mrican aesthetic ideas than in the direct threat of annihilation, the arts of the Suriname transmission of Mrican artistic forms from one Maroons stand as enduring testimony to Mrican­ generation to the next.
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