#890: Ginen questions: Averill replies to Bell

[Robert Corbett <bcorbett@netcom.com>]

From: Gage Averill <gage.averill@nyu.edu>

Hi Madison

If you're wondering whether the idea of Ginen as a "movement" is older than
the late '70s, I don't know, but that's a very good question.  The term has
been in Kreyol use as a name for Africa, I presume, from the colonial
period.   "Depi Ginen, neg rayi neg."  And I believe it has an old
liturgical function in Vodou songs.

It would be interesting to confirm a shift from the term Rada (which after
all is named after for the slave port Alladah) to Ginen, named for the
Guinea Coast (not the country of Guinea!).  Guinea was often used by the
Europeans as a general term for West Africa (as in guinea fowl or the coin
made of gold called a guinea).  Does anyone on the list know where the word
originally came from?

Gage