<i>La Musique comme valeur sociale et symbole identitaire: L’exemple d’une communauté afro-anglaise en Colombie (île de Providence)</i> (review)

Marisol Rodríguez Manrique, a student of Monique Desroches (whose own research has concentrated on the French Antilles, specifi cally Martinique), received the doctorat in ethnomusicology in 2007 from University of Montréal. Throughout La Musique comme valeur sociale et symbole identitaire, Manrique discusses in analytical terms the musical tastes, choices, and practices on a small island, Providence, which is approximately 700 kilometers Northwest of Colombia and which has a population of 6,000 people, 70 percent of whom are of Afro-English origin. Culturally, Providence stands in stark contrast to its neighbor Colombia on at least two prominent counts: its English language practice and its pervasive Protestant religious beliefs. Early in the book Manrique makes an observation that processes of identity formation have been central in current ethnomusicological works. She evokes the need for a rethinking and redefi ning of “identity” itself, a result in large part of the worldwide eff ects of varied forces of globalization. She emphasizes that music must be viewed as a process rather than a product, that it comprises a vibrant symbolic social system. Manrique thus calls for an interdisciplinary ethnomusicology that draws, in a combining fashion, on the approaches, for example, of anthropology and sociology. As illustration of such a multidisciplinary schema, she employs in her introduction a Merriam-like diagram that she describes as “triangle en miroir,” in which “sound,” “society,” “memory,” “function,” and “values” are interspersed as varied geometric forms in apparent tangential relation to one another. Manrique then turns to an ethnographic observation that remains a central topic and interpretive feature of the book—on Providence living musical traditions are to be found primarily when performed as part of touristic displays at festivals. Prevalent throughout the island (and throughout its past) is a preference for, as well as consumption and reproduction of commercialized musics from outside of Providence, especially among the island’s youth. Chapter 1 is comprised of historical information about Providence and its relationship throughout the past in particular with Colombia and the United States. Manrique explains Providence islanders’ resistance to processes of “colombianisation” in the 1930s, embodied prominently in refusals to speak Spanish and to practice Catholicism (the islanders retaining, respectively, their English language and Protestant religious practice). In Chapter 2 Manrique discusses the musical traditions, genres, styles, and