Sino Caribbean Performance and Music
Studying Sino Caribbean participation in the two cultural juggernauts of Caribbean cultural production, music and Carnival, reveals the vexed position of these modes of performance in relation to conventional historical narratives of colonialism, as well as struggles related to multiple and resilient essentialist discourses of nationalism and identity formation. The complex diasporic histories of music and Carnival are tied to violent exploitive labor formations at the core of colonial capitalism. Sino Caribbean experiences are marked by marginalization, conflict, and rebellion as well as acclimation, inclusion, and challenge to diasporic theories and critical praxis. This labor history is frequently ignored by cultural chauvinists whose critical lenses do not engage beyond the Anglo-American academic bastions. Outside of music aficionados and Caribbean communities, very few are familiar with the integral role of Sino Caribbean peoples in the production and dissemination of reggae, jazz, and by extension, hip-hop music. This historical and critical lacuna can be addressed by shifting away from Atlantic- and Pacific Rim–bound ideological articulations of diaspora that ignore the contiguities of African, Caribbean, and Asian experiences in the Caribbean, and by focusing on this history as integral to a greater understanding of colonial and neocolonial political and economic formations.