12 - The Moore Town Maroons of Jamaica - Maroon Kromanti Language

Mr Isaac Bernard, a Maroon elder from Moore Town Jamaica, speaks and sings in Kromanti and Maroon Creole, while Hubert Devonish attempts to understand what is being said.

BACKGROUND

The Maroon Heritage of Moore Town in Jamaica was inscribed in 2008 on the Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Before that, it had, in 2003, been proclaimed as one of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. A group of University of the West Indies students and linguists, led by Hubert Devonish, Professor of Linguistics, went on a field trip to Moore Town to research Maroon Spirit Language which, up until then, had only been documented by Kenneth Bilby (1983) in this 'How the Older Heads Talk' article. Another language variety associated with the ritual life of the community, Kromanti, became part of the research interest of the group. Coming out of this visit was a series of research trips during which recordings of stories, songs and traditions were recorded extensively. A critical participant in this process was Audene Henry, whose post-graduate research project came to focus on the Kromanti speech of Moore Town.

THE LECTURE/DEMONSTRATION

By 2012, many of the elders interviewed had died. We, the visiting researchers, wanted to make sure that the traditions of the community were fully documented before all of the tradition bearers had died. In February, 2012, after some considerable negotiations with the Maroon Council, permission was granted for a lecture demonstration of the songs, stories and traditions of the Moore Town Maroons to be recorded for posterity. In the video above, Hubert Devonish explains the background to the lecture/demonstration event.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The organization and funding of the project was done by the Jamaican Language Unit, a unit within the Department of Language, Linguistics and Philosophy at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, and the International Centre for Caribbean Language Research, also of the the University of the West Indies.

The video was footage was filmed under the supervision of Abidan Campbell,. The editing of the footage was done by Eric Rosenfeld, and the translations/annotations by Francis Tavares.