7427: RE: 7392: RE: 7377: RE: 7368: Help wanted (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

[Note from Corbett:  Folks, I am accepting this post as a last
one of the subject.  Any wishing to repond please do so
directly to Horace at the address below.  I want the list to
stick with Haiti.]

From: Horace Grant <horace.grant@yale.edu>

I know that a discussion of Jamaica popular dance has no place on a Haitian
list but I had to make a few factual corrections. The "Bogle" dance of which
you speak was not named for Paul Bogle but rather the inventor of the dance
(a guy from downtown Kingston-can't remember exactly where) whose name is
Bogle. He is in fact regarded as one of the pre-eminent innovators of
popular dance in Jamaica (he did the Pelpa, the Tatty, the butterfly, etc.).
The imitation shooting (which may have been overemphasised) is most likely a
manifestation of the fact that the dance came from some of the less safe
areas of downtown Kingston.
As for Paul Bogle and the Maroons. The march from Stony Gut to Spanish Town
(which Bogle lead, the Morant Bay Rebellion was relatively spontaneous) was
not about autonomy over land. Needless to say, the English had little
interest in a place called Stony Gut (less than ideal land). The march was
actually simply a protest on the lack of the British government to the
prevailing hardships that afflicted the region at the time (droughts and
what not). Basically the British manifested the same sort of attitude that
exacerbated the Great potato Famine in Ireland twenty years earlier. After
the march attempts were made to arrest Bogle and then all hell broke loose.

In response to Mr Stewart. It happens that Paul Bogle was not captured by
the Maroons. The Maroon treaty did not properly cover free persons
(emancipation was in 1834 and Bogle was arrested & executed in 1865). Bogle
was actually arrested by the police force that was then in existence (a new
Police/paramilitary force, the still active Jamaica Constabulary Force was
formed after the rebellion to deal with such uprisings).
Also, in a most stunning example of how an elite can manipulate group/ethnic
relations for good (the bad is not contended), the Maroons are commonly
lauded as the most Jamaican of Jamaican people although they are most
specifically a nation onto themselves. By the way, there are few if any
Maroons in St Thomas as a consequence of the Second Maroon War of (you would
not believe this) 1795 in which eastern Maroon communities were all but
wiped out. The Maroons have been integrated into the Jamaica body politic as
symbols of slave resistance and as part of the "Out of Many, One people"
ethic. The less favourable aspects of their history are ignored in the
popular memory.

Horace C Grant