Tracking the Caribbean sound: three current hits

1997 ◽  
Vol 71 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 69-77
Author(s):  
Kenneth M. Bilby
Keyword(s):  
World Music ◽  
New Music ◽  
Lesser Antilles ◽  
French Caribbean ◽  
University Of Chicago ◽  
Compact Disk ◽  
The West ◽  
The North ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
University Of Chicago Press

[First paragraph]Zouk: World Music in the West lndies. JOCELYNE GuiLBAULT (with GAGE AVERILL, ÉDOUARD BENOIT & GREGORY RABESS). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. xxv + 279 pp. and compact disk. (Cloth US$ 55.00, Paper US$ 27.75) Calypso Calaloo: Early Carnival Music in Trinidad. DONALD R. HlLL. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993. xvi + 344 pp. and compact disk. (Cloth US$ 49.95, Paper US$ 24.95) Calypso & Society in Pre-Independence Trinidad. GORDON ROHLEHR. Port of Spain: Gordon Rohlehr, 1990. x + 613 pp. (Paper US$ 40.00)In 1983, from my Hstening post in Cayenne, the southernmost extension of the French Caribbean, I reported that "popular musicians in the Lesser Antilles are in the process of breathing life into new musical varieties blending soka, cadence, and reggae" (Bilby 1985:211). Little did I know that what I was describing was the sudden emergence, at that very moment, of an entirely new music in French Guiana's fellow Départements d'Outre-Mer to the north, Martinique and Guadeloupe. Down in Cayenne, which has always had close ties to the French Antilles, there was a feeling in the air that some fresh and invigorating cultural trend was about to burst forth. Even in the Maroon villages of the French Guianese interior, where I relocated in early 1984, the excitement was palpable.

Monitoring Agricultural Drought in the West Indies

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abraham Anthony Chen ◽  
Trevor Falloon
Keyword(s):  
West Indies ◽  
West Indian ◽  
Caribbean Sea ◽  
Lesser Antilles ◽  
Greater Antilles ◽  
The West ◽  
Blue Mountains ◽  
The North ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Azores High

The core of the West Indies consists of the archipelago of islands that stretches southeast from the Yucatan and Florida peninsulas to Venezuela. Generally the term “West Indies” is synonymous with the “Antilles” and is therefore often used to refer to the islands that compose the Greater and Lesser Antilles. The islands of the Greater Antilles include Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica—all located in the north Caribbean Sea—while the Lesser Antilles encompasses the smaller islands found to the south and east. In total, the West Indies embraces about 25 island territories. There are complex mountain ranges in the Greater Antilles, such as the Blue Mountains (2257 m) in central Jamaica and the Pico Duarte (3175 m) in the Dominican Republic, smaller volcanic peaks in the northeast island arc, and low-lying islands composing the remainder of the Lesser Antilles. The variation in local topography contributes significantly to the general rainfall pattern across the West Indian islands, as the windward sides of the larger and more mountainous islands are rainy and windswept, while the leeward sides are drier. In comparison, the low-lying eastern islands receive much less rainfall due to their lack of topographic relief and are much more dependent on seasonal rains. It is, however, the location of the West Indian islands between the permanent high pressure zone of the subtropical north Atlantic (the Azores high) and the equatorial trough of low pressure that gives rise to the mean monthly West Indian rainfall depicted in figure 11.2. Early in the year (December through March) and for a brief period in July, the Caribbean is dominated by subsidence from the inner zone of the Azores high and is at its driest. Rainfall during this period (barring July) is largely from the intrusion of fronts from North America. By the onset of the rainy season, however, the Azores high drifts farther north, resulting in weakened trade winds. At the same time, the Caribbean Sea warms up.

Evolution of Caribbean subduction from P-wave tomography and plate reconstruction

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Allen ◽  
Benedikt Braszus ◽  
Saskia Goes ◽  
Andreas Rietbrock ◽  
Jenny Collier ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Subduction Zones ◽  
Plate Boundary ◽  
P Wave ◽  
Lesser Antilles ◽  
Ocean Bottom ◽  
Ocean Bottom Seismometer ◽  
Equatorial Atlantic ◽  
The North ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Plate Reconstruction

<p>The Caribbean plate has a complex tectonic history, which makes it  particularly challenging to establish the evolution of the subduction zones at its margins. Here we present a new teleseismic P-wave tomographic model under the Antillean arc that benefits from ocean-bottom seismometer data collected in our recent VoiLA (Volatile Recycling in the Lesser Antilles) project. We combine this imagery with a new plate reconstruction that we use to predict possible slab positions in the mantle today. We find that upper mantle anomalies below the eastern Caribbean correspond to a stack of material that was subducted at different trenches at different times, but ended up in a similar part of the mantle due to the large northwestward motion of the Americas. This stack comprises: in the mantle transition zone, slab fragments that were subducted between 70 and 55 Ma below the Cuban and Aves segments of the Greater Arc of the Caribbean; at 450-250 km depth, material subducted between 55 and 35 Ma below the older Lesser Antilles (including the Limestone Caribees and Virgin Islands);  and above 250 km, slab from subduction between 30 and 0 Ma below the present Lesser Antilles to Hispaniola Arc. Subdued high velocity anomalies in the slab above 200 km depth coincide with where the boundary between the equatorial Atlantic and proto-Caribbean subducted, rather than as previously proposed, with the North-South American plate boundary. The different phases of subduction can be linked to changes in the age, and hence buoyancy structure, of the subducting plate.</p>

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