Title: Caribbean Culture

Sub-Title: Soundings on Kamau Brathwaite

Author: Kamau Brathwaite

Reviewer: Billy Hall

Although not the title of this book, the African word 'golokwati' sums up very well the essence of the 22 select essays in this book, which suggests the subtitle is about sharing 'soundings', insights and influences in the marketplace of life.

What is the meaning of golokwati? Nadi Edwards, senior lecturer in the Department of Literatures in English at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, closes his nuanced introduction with an explanatory reference to the term. The contextual occasion is to the second conference on Caribbean culture, held at UWI in January 2002, in honour of Brathwaite (spelled with only one 'i' and so not Braithwaite), who in delivering the keynote address, "urged participants to think of the event as a golokwati, a meeting place of ideas, a crossroads of difference, debate and exchange" (p. 32).

Additionally, Edwards comments perceptively: "Like so many of Brathwaite's terms, the word is both old and new; it is the name of a Ghanaian market town, but in his redeployment it assumes an ecumenism of thought and intellectual inquiry that is present in these essays. In their scholarship and their concerns, they constitute a fitting tribute to one of the intellectual giants of the Caribbean. This book is a golokwati for Kamau Brathwaite, and it enjoins you to enter, sit down and join the reasoning" (p. 32).

But, who exactly is likely to enjoin and possibly endure, much more enjoy this 'Festival of the Word'? The promo on the outside back cover states: "The primary target audience is academics and students working in the field of Caribbean and cultural studies, while the secondary audience includes researchers working on Kamau Brathwaite's creative and critical work."

Confidently asserted

All such readers, it may be confidently asserted, would see benefit in this kind of work having a glossary and annotated bibliography, especially of the significant works of Kamau Brathwaite, not to mention biographical details, as well as at least a good recent profile photograph, and perhaps photos of the event that occasioned the essays, and photos of the writers of the essays. But all such supporting details and documentation are lacking, and because they are, the invitation to "enter, sit down and join the reasoning" although warm, the lack of such enhancing items makes the entry to this work 'cold'.

However, for any but the most specialist and elite of readers more deterring realities have to be faced, for on entering the 'marketplace' the major symbol at the entrance has to be encountered and that symbol is disturbing, even forbidding. The black (dark brown?) visage on the book cover evokes or conjures up the dead and the occult. The faintly drawn map on the forehead of the zombie-looking male head significantly omits representation of North America, but with Africa askance and not central, as the book makes central to critique.

But, if one can get past the cover and graduate to the substance of the reasoning, a special vocabulary will be needed to interpret or understand these 22 essays.

These essays, to varying degrees, present a formidable barrier to acolytes and even advanced disciples of their disciplines. Here is a list of some of the terms one will need to know, even master, to engage in intelligent discourse: 'alterites', 'autochthonous centers', 'acculturation and interacculturation', 'regulatory metaphysics', 'Rasta groundation rhythms', 'nationalist zeitgeist', 'submerged mother', 'tidalectics', 'Calibanic opposite of Hegel's dialectics', 'discursive archive', 'cultural ideology', 'heterodox line breaks', 'luminal spaces'. 'occultation and opacity', 'subalternity', 'hybridity', 'inferiorise' and, 'debris of conquistadorial cannibalizing'.

But, such shortcomings apart in regard to presentation, the book is in substance the likely foremost single text for analytic study of African cultural retention and configurations in the Caribbean. Here, the word Caribbean is used as a convenient reference for an ill-defined region, and so is meant for wide application as a culture sphere, principally, but not excluding the Francophone Caribbean. Further, the emphasis is on Caribbean people of ancestral origin in the continent of Africa, even though there might be some few and scattered reference to subsequent 'arrivants', notably from India and China.

Creolisation

Therefore, as the dominant motif of 'Creole' or creolisation is discussed, the critical word is 'culture'. This focus, as the essays reveal, is understood through academic prisms such as history, sociology, philosophy, economics, linguistics, orature, gender studies, aesthetics, poetry, music, song and film.

It is this inter-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary range and scope of subject matter that make the substance of the essays difficult to always comprehend because of vocabulary initially, combined with Brathwaite's penchant for neologisms. "Naming and taxonomy are defining features of Brathwaite's second phase criticism. And the African Presence introduces some of his primary concepts, such as hounfort, nommo, nam, loa, marronage, nation language, and groundation" (p. 12).

But Brathwaite's creativity with words must not overshadow his perceptivity. He projects his understanding of 'Creole' as "a possible alternative to the European cultural tradition which has been imposed upon us and which we have more or less accepted and absorbed , for obvious historical reasons, as the only way of going about our business" (Kamau Brathwaite: Jazz and the West Indian Novel, 1967-68.

But Gutzmore, for example, in discussing Brathwaite's ideas pro-jects notions of cultural comparison that would seem to suggest 'superior' for 'alternative'. Consequently, Gutzmore speaks of Creole culture as 'philosophically richer' (p. 12). Thereby, Gutzmore makes an assumption, unsubstantiated, concerning the works of Brathwaite, whose 'alternative' concept of culture is different from Gutzmore's interpretation of a concept of one culture been 'richer'.

Alternative

But Gutzmore does raise the sensitive issue 'Whose World View Rules?', for even Brathwaite's alternative is affirmed, the issue remains of whether the clearly to be differentiated gods of each culture can be equally accommodated, especially when the God of one declares all other false - which Christianity does - without approving any culture but by declaring standards for judging every culture.

What Brathwaite has undoubtedly achieved, with all his writings, is a revolution in perception regarding Christianisation and creolisation that has set the stage for all social forces to contend intellectually and symbolically, philosophically and sociologically, musically and poetically, linguistically and artistically, and generally and regionally, even universally, in a gologwati.