Description
Book SynopsisA look at how West African and Caribbean Francophone writers use rhythm, music, and sound to create and negotiate identity
Trade Review"Huntington’s emphasis on the interconnections of the related arts—music, poetry, fiction, oral tradition etc.—is one of the few to treat systematically, and in a sound, sophisticated theoretical and ethnographic framework, the important traits of African literary, oral and musical productions. Sounding Off will make a great contribution to the interdisciplinary study and thus provide a deeper understanding of musical and literary-artistic productions in African and diasporan communities."
—Daniel Avorgbedor, Ohio State University, Columbus
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction
1. Rhythm and Transcultural Poetics
Rhythm and Transculture
Method
2. Rhythm and Reappropriation in God’s Bits of Wood and The Suns of Independence
Language and the Language of Music
Rhythm and Reappropriation in the Novel
Instrumentaliture at Work
Rhythm and Transformation
Ordinary and Extraordinary Rhythms
3. Rhythm, Music, and Identity in L’appel des arènes and Ti Jean L’horizon
Rhythm, Music, Subjectivity, and the Novel
Rhythm and Identity in L’appel des arènes
Rhythm and Identity in Ti Jean L’horizon
Rethinking Rootedness
4. Music and Mourning in Crossing the Mangrove and Solibo Magnificent
Memory, Mourning, and Mosaic Identities
Rhythm, Music, and Identity as Process
The Sounds of Death and Mourning
Configuring Rhythmic and Musically Mediated Identities
Concluding Remarks
Works Cited
Index
