Hanna

Title: True-Born Maroons
Author: Kenneth M. Bilby
Publishers: Ian Randle Publishers, 2006. 514 pages
Reviewed By: Mary Hanna

Documenting the spiritual life of Jamaica's Maroons in words and photographs, Kenneth M. Bilby has made a significant contribution to the relatively meager store of knowledge about this fascinating cultural group. Bilby has added immeasurably to our understanding of Kromanti Play and the language that ensures secrecy and ancestral power to the Maroons who are trained in the ways of the fore-fathers. This text is composed of oral histories framed in wonder-fully salient essays that ensure comprehension despite the challenge of reading the oral texts. Bilby has done his work well and in doing it, he has presented enchanting evidence of his claims and of the ways of this ethnic group that maintains independence and sovereignty even to this day - an achievement not easily won and certainly to be honoured.

Kenneth Bilby began his study of Maroons and Maroon ways in the '70s as a postgraduate student. He was allowed training - the first time an outsider was admitted to knowledge that was held in secrecy by the Jamaican Maroons. He continued his studies years later, and in 2006 produced a thick volume of texts and commentary that pays tribute to his teachers and to the residents of the present-day Maroon communities that still possess an authentic, historically continuous culture of their own, despite the waning interest of the younger members in continuing the training that would reveal to them the secrets of the ancestors.

Maroon spirituality is not easily apprehended and is only taught to the select few who show dedication and talent.

Bilby's text begins with the story of his involvement with the Maroon communities of the island. He presents a delightful and eye-opening narrative of the meeting of two Maroon groups in an outsiders' village bar and the Kromanti greeting that ensues in words and actions. The two groups are shown to be culturally distinct from the ordinary Jamaican and the reader's appetite is whetted for further information. In 'Imagining Jamaica's Maroons', Bilby presents a cogent history of the communities along with an outline of the scholarly work that has been done with them over the centuries. Zora Neale Hurston came to Jamaica and studied the Maroons, but she was disappointed in her findings. Bilby points out the great secrecy which surrounds the Maroons' African retentions and the patience and trust that must devolve before Kromanti is shared with the interviewer and ethnographer.

In Part 2 of the text, Bilby divides his oral samples into groupings that fill 12 segments. He begins with 'Leaving and Recalling Africa', which deals directly with the difference between Maroon and Rastafarian bodies of knowledge. The Maroons do not claim descent from the Ethiopian King, but rather site their African origins in their own bodies that came across the Atlantic during slavery. There are four main lines of descent from African tribes and belief in the use of salt as a means of inhibiting the possibility of flying, or a return to Africa. In 'Captivity and Marronage', the oral texts reveal Maroon stories about slavery - 'mad bakra' (fierce white man) is seen to inflict humiliations and pain on 'slave Coolie' by a Maroon who passes on the story many years later. Many of the stories are passed from Maroon grandmothers and are traceable to actual events, or series of events, that took place in the late 18thcentury. Other groupings of oral texts fall under the headings 'Living by One's Wits', 'Prominent Presences: Memorable Persons, Places and Deeds', 'The Chosen People' and 'Underwritten with Blood'. The final sections group together to warn against outsiders: 'Maroons and the 'Other Side of People'', 'Ever Indomitable', 'Never to Forget: Secrecy, Trust, and Betrayal', and the Coda which discusses 'The Right to Persist'.

Bilby makes a comparison between the Red Indians of North America and Jamaica's Maroons as they search for a way to remain separate and independent and not be assimilated in an 'Out of Many One People' culture. The Maroons have their own culture, the Epilogue argues, that ethnologists can discern, and thus they are within their rights to remain unassimilated and to inherit their ancestral lands. It is an interesting argument that brings these issues to the fore and presents them for the general readership. Bilby is a first-rate scholar who writes lucidly and with verve. He is accessible to all readers though his text is organised for the scholar with copious notes, a glossary and index. This is a fine scholarly offering that nevertheless can be apprehended by the lay reader. For example, Bilby states: 'Kromanti Play constitutes the most powerful symbolic expression in Maroon life of the cosmological principle dividing inside from outside, yenkunkun (Maroon) from obroni (non-Maroon).' His writing is clear and lucid and his knowledge of Maroon ways is seemingly well-founded and eagerly shared.

The fete-man (shaman) is the significant person in the Kromanti dance. He 'throws'a Kromanti song for power:

O kumfu nyaba-ee, yo-ee

Poor nanabeti, yo-ee

Kumfu nyaba-ee, yo-ee

Bin a nyaba-ee, yo-ee

Poor nanabeti, yo-ee

Bilby describes the dance and translates the key words; the reader is rarely at a loss for meaning. 'Kon ye!' (Come here!) and, one by one, the Maroon companions come forward to be cleared of evil. These dances and songs in the powerful ancestral language are what are being lost as the young people in the communities show less and less interest in learning them. Bilby has done both scholarship and the Maroon communities a great service to have recorded these cultural moments before they disappear.

Kenneth Bilby is a research associate at the Smithsonian Institution. He is coauthor of Caribbean Currents: Caribbean Music from Rumba to Reggae, which received the Caribbean Studies Association's Gordon K. Lewis Award for Caribbean Scholarship in 1996.