The term “creole” has a number of associations, many of which are linguistic in nature. Language, however, is not the term’s only domain. During colonization it was used in part to describe those born in the New World, regardless of race or ethnicity (although it certainly has also been used as an ethnic designation). Creole can refer to cultural forms of expression and production as well as to whole societies, particularly ones within the Caribbean and Latin America. Creolization as a theoretical concept, then, is intriguing if not a bit muddy in light of these associations. This is perhaps why coeditors, Robert Baron and Ana C. Cara, take pains to define it immediately in their introduction as “cultural creativity in process” (3).

The text is comprised of a series of eleven essays (including the introductory chapter) concerning several perspectives on different kinds of cultural creativity penned by folklorists, ethnomusicologists, cultural anthropologists, and literary scholars. While some of these essays were revised from the winter 2003 special issue of the Journal of American Folklore, a few others were written solely for this book. Creolization as Cultural Creativity provides a number of multi-faceted perspectives on the nature of creolization and its relationship to folklore research.

Baron’s and Cara’s introductory chapter briefly outlines both historical and contemporary uses of the terms creole and creolization, noting that they were “first formulated through the study of languages in colonial situations--especially in the Americas--where people who met speaking mutually unintelligible tongues developed a linguistic medium to communicate among themselves” (3). Creole eventually came to also refer to new expressive forms, and because artistic creation and expressive forms are often the domain of folklore, Baron and Cara highlight the relationship between creolization and folkloristics and the benefits of understanding one through the lens of the other. The introduction also provides a look at some of the criticism levied against the theoretical concept, including the problematic use of the linguistic model of creolization to theorize broadly about cultural creolization. Lastly, in the introduction Baron and Cara note that while some academics contend that creolization can be a useful tool to understand parallel processes of cultural interaction and creative expression around the world, others assert that the concept should apply strictly to self-ascribed Creole societies such as those in the Caribbean and Latin America in order to give credence to the political and socio-cultural interaction in these areas that ultimately gave rise to creole expressive forms. These divergent perspectives are presented in some of the essays in this text.

Nick Spitzer’s “Monde Créole,” for instance, focuses partly on the local iterations of creolization in rural French Louisiana, which boasts a very complex and influential culture born primarily through contact between African and French peoples. Spitzer also writes, however, that this process of cultural contact in French Louisiana “stands as a microcosm of parallel processes of cultural creolization worldwide” (33). He asserts that all societies have a certain amount of creole expression and that “cultural creolization is a useful way to address traditional creativity in many forms, variations, and places in the world” (65). Roger Abrahams, on the other hand, focuses primarily on the power relationship between dominant and subordinated groups and the resultant expressive forms of formerly colonized peoples in a post-colonial world. He argues that the term creole “has undergone a transvaluation, which has caused it to gravitate away from a sociopolitical set of meanings toward a more neutral, global term without any connotations of power manipulation, surveillance, or control” (303).

Other authors focus on the manifestation of creolization in specific expressive forms. Racquel Romberg, for example, discusses creolized belief systems. Specifically, her essay outlines the extent to which Puerto Rican brujos or witch-healers participate in what Romberg terms “ritual piracy” or the mixing of traditional Roman Catholic symbols and rituals with African-based symbols and rituals. Kenneth Bilby’s essay details the creolization of the Gumbe drum, which traveled with Jamaican Maroons to Sierra Leone and eventually to the rest of the African continent and became an indelible part of African culture. The remaining essays address broad historical perspectives on creolization, how specific objects like stuffed animals can be creolized and what that means in light of the politics inherent in creolization, and and creolization in written literature.

Ultimately, this text is pertinent to folklore research and those generally interested in artistic production because it addresses issues concerning globalization and its relationship to cultural creativity. Baron and Cara write that “there is no one creolity or single way of being Creole” (5), and indeed the essays in this volume exemplify this very assertion. The range of the articles demonstrates the potential for creolization to serve as a critical lens with which to examine various forms of expressive culture.

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[Review length: 789 words • Review posted on September 26, 2012]