Percussion instrument | |
---|---|
Classification | Membranophone |
Hornbostel–Sachs classification | 211.212.1 (Cylindrical drums) |
A bamboula is a type of drum made from a rum barrel with skin stretched over one end. [1] It is also a dance accompanied by music from these drums.
Originating in Africa, the bamboula form appears in a Haitian song in 1757 and bamboula became a dance syncopation performed to the rhythm of the drum during festivals and ceremonies in Haiti (then Saint-Domingue). It was then exported to the United States (notably Mobile, Alabama, and the Virgin Islands) through Louisiana, by the slaves who were deported to New Orleans [2] [3] [4] during the 18th century with the arrival of the displaced French settlers of the island of San Domingo especially after the Haitian Revolution. The slaves congregated on the Congo Square to the edge of the area of the French Quarter of New Orleans to dance the bamboula.
In 1848, the American composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk, born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and whose maternal grandmother was a native of Saint-Domingue, composed a piece entitled Bamboula, the first of four Creole inspired piano works known as his Louisiana Quartet.
In the present-day French language, the word bamboula has become an ethnic slur, directed at black people. [5] [6] [7]
Creole peoples are ethnic groups formed during the European colonial era, from the mass displacement of peoples brought into sustained contact with others from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, who converged onto a colonial territory to which they had not previously belonged.
Saint-Domingue was a French colony in the western portion of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, in the area of modern-day Haiti, from 1659 to 1804. The name derives from the Spanish main city on the island, Santo Domingo, which came to refer specifically to the Spanish-held Captaincy General of Santo Domingo, now the Dominican Republic. The borders between the two were fluid and changed over time until they were finally solidified in the Dominican War of Independence in 1844.
Louis Moreau Gottschalk was an American composer and pianist, best known as a virtuoso performer of his own romantic piano works. He spent most of his working career outside the United States.
In the context of the history of slavery in the Americas, free people of color were primarily people of mixed African, European, and Native American descent who were not enslaved. However, the term also applied to people born free who were primarily of black African descent with little mixture. They were a distinct group of free people of color in the French colonies, including Louisiana and in settlements on Caribbean islands, such as Saint-Domingue (Haiti), St. Lucia, Dominica, Guadeloupe, and Martinique. In these territories and major cities, particularly New Orleans, and those cities held by the Spanish, a substantial third class of primarily mixed-race, free people developed. These colonial societies classified mixed-race people in a variety of ways, generally related to visible features and to the proportion of African ancestry. Racial classifications were numerous in Latin America.
The Haitian Revolution was a successful insurrection by self-liberated slaves against French colonial rule in Saint-Domingue, now the sovereign state of Haiti. The revolt began on 22 August 1791, and ended in 1804 with the former colony's independence. It involved black, biracial, French, Spanish, British, and Polish participants—with the ex-slave Toussaint Louverture emerging as Haiti's most prominent general. The revolution was the only slave uprising that led to the founding of a state which was both free from slavery and ruled by non-whites and former captives. The successful revolution was a defining moment in the history of the Atlantic World and the revolution's effects on the institution of slavery were felt throughout the Americas. The end of French rule and the abolition of slavery in the former colony was followed by a successful defense of the freedoms the former slaves had won, and with the collaboration of already free people of color, of their independence from white Europeans.
Plaçage was a recognized extralegal system in French and Spanish slave colonies of North America by which ethnic European men entered into civil unions with non-Europeans of African, Native American and mixed-race descent. The term comes from the French placer meaning "to place with". The women were not legally recognized as wives but were known as placées; their relationships were recognized among the free people of color as mariages de la main gauche or left-handed marriages. They became institutionalized with contracts or negotiations that settled property on the woman and her children and, in some cases, gave them freedom if they were enslaved. The system flourished throughout the French and Spanish colonial periods, reaching its zenith during the latter, between 1769 and 1803.
Louisiana Creoles are people descended from the inhabitants of colonial Louisiana before it became a part of the United States during the period of both French and Spanish rule. As an ethnic group, their ancestry is mainly of Louisiana French, West African, Spanish and Native American origin. Louisiana Creoles share cultural ties such as the traditional use of the French, Spanish, and Creole languages and predominant practice of Catholicism.
Congo Square is an open space, now within Louis Armstrong Park, which is located in the Tremé neighborhood of New Orleans, Louisiana, just across Rampart Street north of the French Quarter. The square is famous for its influence on the history of African American music, especially jazz.
A casquette girl but also known historically as a casket girl or a Pelican girl, was a woman brought from France to the French colonies of Louisiana to marry. The name derives from the small chests, known as casquettes, in which they carried their clothes.
The term Creole music is used to describe both the early folk or roots music traditions of rural Creoles of Louisiana.
Louisiana Voodoo, also known as New Orleans Voodoo, is an African diasporic religion which originated in Louisiana, now in the southern United States. It arose through a process of syncretism between the traditional religions of West Africa, the Roman Catholic form of Christianity, and Haitian Vodou. No central authority is in control of Louisiana Voodoo, which is organized through autonomous groups.
Pierre Lafitte (1770–1821) was a pirate in the Gulf of Mexico and smuggler in the early 19th century. He also ran a blacksmith shop in New Orleans, his legitimate business. Pierre was historically less well known than his younger brother, Jean Lafitte. While not as much of a sailor as Jean, Pierre was the public face of the Lafitte operation, and was known for his wit and charm, in addition to his handling of the sale of smuggled goods.
Louisiana is a South Central U.S. state, with a 2020 U.S. census resident population of 4,657,757, and apportioned population of 4,661,468. Much of the state's population is concentrated in southern Louisiana in the Greater New Orleans, Florida Parishes, and Acadiana regions, with the remainder in North and Central Louisiana's major metropolitan areas. The center of population of Louisiana is located in Pointe Coupee Parish, in the city of New Roads.
Theatre de la Rue Saint Pierre or Le Spectacle de la Rue Saint Pierre, was the first (French-speaking) theatre in New Orleans in Louisiana, active in 1792-1810. It opened in 1792 and was known to the Spanish-speaking citizens as El Coliseo and to the French-speaking citizens, La Salle Comedie. It was described as a small building of native lumber near the center of the city. It was located on the uptown side of St. Peter Street between Royal and Bourbon Streets, in what is now called the French Quarter.
Bamboula, Op. 2, is a fantasy composition for piano written by American composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk during a delirium of typhoid fever in the French town of Clermont-sur-l'Oise in the summer of 1848. Dedicated "à sa Majesté Isabelle II, Reine des Espagnes", it is the first of the so-called set of four "Louisiana Creole pieces" that Gottschalk composed between 1848 and 1851.
Slavery in Haiti began after the arrival of Christopher Columbus on the island in 1492 with the European colonists that followed from Portugal, Spain and France. The practice was devastating to the native population. Following the indigenous Tainos' near decimation from forced labor, disease and war, the Spanish, under initial advisement of the Catholic priest Bartolomé de las Casas and with the blessing of the Catholic church, began engaging in earnest during the 17th century in the forced labor of enslaved Africans. During the French colonial period, beginning in 1625, the economy of Saint-Domingue, was based on slavery; conditions on Saint-Domingue became notoriously bad even compared to chattel slavery conditions elsewhere.
Kontradans or the French-Haitian Contredanse, is creolized dance music formed in the 18th century in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (Haiti) that evolved from the English contra dance, or, which eventually spread throughout the Caribbean, Louisiana, Europe and the rest of the New World from the Creoles of Saint-Domingue.
Saint Dominicans, or simply Dominicans, also known as Saint Dominguans, or Dominguans, are the people who lived in the French colony of Saint-Domingue before the Haitian Revolution. Dominican Creoles formed an ethnic group native to Saint-Domingue, they were all of the people who were born in Saint Domingue. The Creoles were well educated, and they created much art, such as the famed St. Dominican French Opera; their society prized manners, good breeding, tradition, and honor. During and after the Haitian Revolution, many St. Dominicans fled to locations in the United States, other Antilles islands, New York City, Cuba, France, Jamaica, and especially New Orleans in Louisiana, where they made an enormous impact on Louisiana Creole culture.
Malvina Latour was an American Voodoo practitioner and disciple of Marie Laveau in New Orleans.