³ ~p-c_docs º UP: <[LINK] -<[LINK]> ³

³`Historical study of pidgin and º NEXT: <[LINK]> ³

³creole languages and cultures `º <[LINK] -<[LINK]> ³

Documentation of pidgins and creoles has been sparse until

recently. What can be inferred from these documents is often

ambiguous or open to conflicting interpretations under the most

careful circumstances. Historical documentation of pidgins and

creoles--and the sociocultural context in which they arose--is

most valuable for limiting (or supporting) what can be concluded

in conjunction with other sources rather than establishing some

sort of "factual" base for or critique of, theoretical forays.

With this in mind, interesting examples of the historical

documentation of pidgins and creoles (including the first

recorded pidgin) are discussed <[LINK]> and a guide to

primary source materials has been compiled. <[LINK]>

early documentation

20) Dearth of early evidence of African culture in the Americas

21) Sloane docs: glimpse into 1st gens. of known ethnicity

69) John Newton-Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade,

20) Dearth of early evidence of African culture in the Americas

Early evidence of African culture formation in the Americas is fragmentary. Kenneth Bilby, an anthropologist who has studied the cultural origins of the Jamaican Maroons, maintains that the "sketchy" nature of the historical literature generally precludes the recovery of the earliest workings of creolization among enslaved Africans, especially "at the individual level, where conscious creative decisions (as well as unconscious adjustments) were made." Bilby rightly asserts that although the beginnings of the process have been obscured, "the concrete results are nonetheless visible everywhere, both in the documented music and dance of the past and in the many continuities in context, style and form displayed by their present-day musical descendants." Brathwaite also points to the renaissance in African aspects of Jamaican culture which took place after abolition as evidence in support of the lasting African contribution to creole culture--but he too leaves unanswered the question of how the first generations of Africans in Jamaica began the process.{ {<[LINK]> (Bilby (1985) 186; Brathwaite, 245-95)}

21) Sloane docs: glimpse into 1st gens. of known ethnicity

The musical descriptions in Hans Sloane's _Voyages_ provide a rare glimpse into the beginnings of creolization among enslaved Africans of known ethnicity. Baptiste unintentionally rendered a number of distinctly African features which were not yet recognized or employed in the seventeenth-century European music with which he would have been familiar. {I am not claiming any special objectivity on Baptiste's part. Nor am I contending that his transcriptions are more accurate (or even nearly as accurate) as those of modern ethnomusicologists. Western musical notation is unable to capture many features of non-European musics, and I have no evidence that Baptiste's recording has circumvented any of these limits. However, the interpretation below accounts for the many non-European features which are captured in his transcriptions, features also found in the modern ethnomusicological studies of West Africa, Central Africa and Jamaica. } Sloane supplies an impression not only of diverse first-generation forms, but also of the ways in which these forms were selected, combined, and changed in the creative decision-making process. The problem is in unpacking this process--Sloane does not leave record of a creole community, but rather of a group of enslaved men and women from various African cultures negotiating a new community--however tenuous--under the most severe constraints.

69) John Newton-Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade, 1788)--trader, later reformer-- learned no foreign language, but lived among the africans, captured and held as a slave for a year spking only Eng. (xiv)

Sutcliffe, David, M. Ed. _System in black language_.