Folklore Dissertations and Theses
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Browsing Folklore Dissertations and Theses by Subject "Caribbean"
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Item Guerrilla queens and percussive poets there where our paths cross : in search of dub poetry scholarship and practitioners(Indiana University, 2000) Galuska, John D.At its core, dub poetry involves the process of creating and presenting a fusion of words and sounds (or "word-sounds") with musical and dramatic components. The genre has deep roots in the long-standing oral, musical, and dramatic traditions practiced in Jamaica, and a significant body of printed information exists regarding pioneering dub poets who first gained notoriety in the late 1970s in Jamaica and England. My own fieldwork and artistic history interviews in Kingston in 1996, revealed that alongside the pioneering figures of the dub poetry movement an array of talented, less internationally recognized poets existed in Jamaica. While the body of dub poetry scholarship successfully documents the history and development of the dub poetry tradition and its pioneering poets, it does not represent the complete range of dub poetry practitioners. This study presents the artistic histories of two established Jamaican poets, Cherry Natural (b. 1960) the "guerrilla queen" and Mbala (b. 1953) the "percussive poet," as a tool for the reevaluation of both the development of dub poetry and the creative and social dynamics of the genre. I argue that the documentation and examination of the creative contributions of a fuller range of poets enriches our understanding of the poetic culture among dub poetry practitioners. The artistic history case studies of Cherry and Mbala highlight their personal and creative backgrounds and key events in their careers as poets, and emphasize the centrality of the creative processes that shape their live poetry performances within the Jamaican context. Part One of the study discusses how my encounters with members of the Poetry Society of Jamaica and the concepts of the poetic "pathway" (Jackson 1989), the personal experience narrative (Stahl 1989), and the mediaization of music (Wallis and Malm 1984) guided my research process and analytical critique of the "textual terrain" of dub poetry scholarship. Part Two of the thesis begins with a description of the ways in which dub poetry and dub poets have been represented in the mass media The artistic history case studies that follow focus on Cherry's and Mbala's place within the fraternity of Jamaican poets and the artistic and social contributions they have offered to the poetic culture in Kingston, Jamaica. I end the study by suggesting that further research be conducted on the dynamics of the social networking that occurs among dub poets in Jamaica and on the ways in which new communication and recording technologies have influenced dub poetry practitioners.Item Mapping creative interiors: Creative process narratives and individualized workscapes in the Jamaican dub poetry context(Indiana University, 2007) Galuska, John D.Dub poetry, or reggae poetry, developed in the 1970s as a synthesis of oral, musical, and dramatic traditions practiced in Jamaica. Scholars have focused attention on the published texts and the public performances, the creative fruits, of the genre’s pioneering poets. Dub poetry’s textual and performative components represent only two spheres in which poets’ creativity flourishes. Recently, scholars have called for a deeper exploration of the creative processes, the creative roots, associated with verbal, musical, and dramatic traditions. This dissertation focuses on the creative processes, of two dub poets, Cherry Natural (b. 1960) and Mbala (b. 1953), as practiced in the non-public “preperformance” realm. During my 1996 and 2001 fieldwork sessions I mapped the geography of two of these non-public realms—what I refer to jointly as creative interiors. Observation of the poets’ workscapes, specially engineered spaces for creating, revealed that “poeming” (poem-making) is intimately linked with the patterns and practices of everyday life. The poets rely on their workscapes for inspiration as well as for supplying resources that are commonly used in the creating, editing, and maintaining of poems. Analysis of the Jamaicans’ creative process narratives revealed the existence of unique poemscapes, tangible patterns associated with the life-cycles and development of poems. By exploring these two creative interiors it was possible to document key dimensions of the poets’ creative processes, their relationships with poems, and their patterns of daily life. Part One contextualizes my research with the body of scholarship on reggae, Rastafari, and dub poetry. Part Two provides an historic overview of the notion of poetic composition and key processual models associated with the study of creativity. My methodological practices for “coaxing and capturing” creativity are also described. Part Three documents Cherry and Mbala’s workscape environments and the daily routines they follow. Part Four examines the ways in which the Jamaicans speak of the progressive cycles of birthing, building, editing, working/driving, and parking poems. I conclude by suggesting that the field of “preperformance studies,” should play a vital role in making linkages between the creative processes and the creative products associated with verbal, musical, and dramatic genres.