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THE AFRICAN INFLUENCE ON BARBADIAN CULTURE
by Trevor G. Marshall
PAGE 5
In the arts (that is arts and crafts) here is another major area of African expression and African productivity and contribution. Perhaps the main area visibly that we can identify in arts and crafts is pottery, earthenware. Some 12 miles East of here is the Chalky Mount Pottery village and that is evidence of an expansive and extensive tradition of the ceramic art exclusively African. There is no evidence that the Europeans taught the Africans who were slaves ceramic art, the art of earthenware production. That pottery utilising no kiln, just a wood fire and using the iron pots for 'open-hearth' technique and technology, that practice of utilizing a primitive wheel or no wheel at all, has produced urns and the peculiar jars, which Alfred should have here such as the 'monkey', which kept water cool. They produced urns for keeping meat not only cool but well preserved (well-salted) for long periods. Every possible utensil that you can think of, plates, pots, cups, bowls, vessels for washing etc. were produced by African potters here and that tradition of producing for the household, for the market is also well shown in Ann Watson Yates' book. Here is evidence of the pottery and of a marketeer, a woman, and this is the Wharf in Barbados about 100 years ago and that lady is having a pottery sale not only to Barbadians but to inter-island vessels and visitors. Men and women were the potters, but this lady is marketing. The story of the African here in Barbados is one of men and women working together. When I talked about the African bringing brawn, it was not only male brawn but female brawn as well because in cane fields able bodied men and women worked together and there was activity as you can see there, in that wall painting; men and women using hoe cultivation, weeding fields and that has been a feature of our agriculture for over 300 years - women alongside men. So in pottery, in basketry, in needle craft, in weaving etc, the African brought those skills and those practices and products to Barbados. There was not so much painting until the 20th century, although we find petroglyphs which could be Amerindian or could be early African in some caves but we do not find wall daubs. In fact the tradition of painting in Barbados has only taken off in the last 15 or so years, prior to that it was an exercise of Europeans and North Americans and really could not be considered a major form in this island, but practices such as weaving cloth, peculiarly African practices, these were brought to Barbados. We tend to think, and the literature tends to suggest, that Africans wore cast-off European finery, in the case of the mulattos and the lighter ones, and that the darker skins wore next to nothing, a loin cloth etc. But Africans in Barbados continued the West African practice of weaving their own cloth on primitive racks and making cloth and one has to say it died out because in this century one does not find much evidence of it, but it was here and it did exist during the slave period. So the materials arts were well represented and were continued. As I said pottery is the longest-standing in Barbados and the most evident of a strong and almost exclusive African tradition. Turning to other areas, when we talk about pottery we must talk about culinary arts and practices. Barbadian culinary tradition is African. Those of you who come here to find Yorkshire pudding, fish and chips or the roast beef tradition of England, will not find that. You will find that there is a tea-drinking tradition, but not just the English tea, which came from India, but the black Barbadians knew and called all brewed beverages "tea", therefore there is a tradition of "bush teas", the bush being the vegetation, the flowering and non flowering vegetation around the areas which had either medicinal qualities or nutritious qualities; and this they knew from Africa, therefore the beverage tradition of Barbados is essentially African. The patented teas were brought from England for the plantation management personnel, but the average black Barbadian drank bush teas, and Alfred is a great singer and he will probably sing for you the song about the 49 different bushes, flowering and non flowering plants from which black Barbadians made brewed beverages, not only for nutritive purposes but for medicinal purposes as well, both during the slave period and afterwards.
-- © Trevor G Marshall, 2000. This document is the property of the author. Quotation or reproduction without the permission of the author is expressly prohibited. |
