History of Music in Virgin Islands
The Virgin Islands music reveals the long-standing West Indian ethnic ties to the Island countries to the south, the island’s African trad...
http://worldhitz4u.blogspot.com/2014/03/history-of-music-in-virgin-islands.html?m=0
The
Virgin Islands music reveals the long-standing West Indian ethnic ties to the
Island countries to the south, the island’s African traditional and European
colonial record, as well as new North American influences.
source of picture: piratesparadiseadventures.com
However
the United States Virgin islands and British Virgin Islands are politically
different, they maintain close ethnic ties. From its neighbors, the Virgin
Islands have imported different pan-Caribbean genre of music, which include the
calypso from Trinidad and reggae from Jamaica.
The
main local type of music is the scratch ensemble (which is also known as fungi
ensemble in the British Virgin Islands), which utilized improvised instruments
like gourds and washboards to make a type of music that is known as quelbe. A
Virgin island traditional chant known as cariso is also known as well as St.
Thomas’ bamboula. The quadrille is the traditional folk dance of the islands,
and includes the following types like St. Croix’s Imperial Quadrille and St.
Thomas’ Flat German Quadrille. The Heritage Dancers are a respected dance group
that performs traditional folk dances from the Virgin Islands and outside.
Virgin
islander culture is syncretic, based mainly on African, European and North
American cultures. However the Danish controlled the current United States. Virgin
Islands for over the years, the leading language has been an English-based
creoles since the 19th century, and the islands continue to been
much more receptive to English language renowned culture than any other. The
French, Dutch and the Danish assisted rudiments to the country culture, as have
settlers from Arab world, India and other Caribbean countries. The single
biggest influence on the current Virgin Islander culture however came from the
African enslaved to work in the cane fields during in the 17th to
the mid-19th centuries. These African slaves introduced with them
their customs from across a varied swathe of African, which include Senegal,
Nigerian, Gambia, Congo and Ghana.
