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How so? Cape Verde and the Hispanic Caribbean are both predominantly Mulatto (with the latter having a small native admixture). They both have a mixed West African and Iberian (Spanish/Portuguese) culture.
What I have put in red is the crux of the disagreement, I believe.
There is no blanket Iberian culture, and the differences between how the cultures of Portugal and Spain worked out in their various colonies is considerable.
As a rule of thumb, the closer 2 countries are the closer they are. Cape Verde is African and has nothing to do with Cuba, Dominican Republic, Jamaica etc
Right. Which is why Australians have more in common with New Guinea than Britain. /s
Yeah, I was thinking that I'd classify them to SALVADOR in Brazil...which is the heart of African-Brazilian, but you still have every shade in Salvador too, it is just more darker shades than the rest of Brazil which can be quite European or Indigenous in parts.
There are differences also among the Cape Verdean islands and even within each island some Cape Verdeans are very culturally similar to Portuguese people. Some don't feel foreign at all to me.
Overall I don't find similarity with the Portuguese music I know, so I wonder if the commonality is not from being Portuguese colonies but from the movements/travels of the local people of these places and the influences they absorbed from each other. Or perhaps the music reflects a type of Portuguese music from the past which has simply died off in Portugal itself.
Here is some information on the Guinea-Bissau Creole language. I can't find an academic link but it's very similar to Cape Verdean Creole and it expanded into Senegal.
It sounds African because most Caribbean music is African. This music sounds very much like that of the Afro French creole islands of the Eastern Caribbean. Even the tone of the female voice, even as she sings a different language.
Put humans under similar circumstances and the result is similar. Cabo Verde has much in common with the Caribbean, parts of Brazil, but also the Indian Ocean islands of Mauritius, Reunion and Seychelles. These latter islands are pieces of the Caribbean stuck in the Indian Ocean.
Yes Cabo Verde has African influences because the Caribbean has. However it is a colonial "constructed" culture and not one with deep indigenous roots as one would find in Guinea Bissau.
if you listen to music from Cape Verde you can perceive typically African beats that find in nearby Senegal for instance.
All of the modern Cabo Verde music I have heard can fit right into the Caribbean. Folks need to know that in its music and dance the Caribbean remains very African, even if cultural influences have been greatly reduced overall. So much so that Africans are "reincorporating" Caribbean influences into their music because it works.
I think that Sao Tome is more "African" in scope probably due to the composition of its population. It has peoples who arrived from mainland Africa long after slavery ended. Maybe Cabo Verde exists in a continuum that begins in Sao Tome and ends in Brazil.
I actually found a comparative analysis which of course I cannot find now. But in summary Cabo Verde's population was more mulatto with a larger Portuguese component. Due to proximity it returned closer ties to Portugal. Sao Tome's population more closely resembles that of islands like Martinique where there was a clear dichotomy between the enslaved peoples and the slave owners, so relationships differed when compared to the more socially integrated Cabo Verde. So deeper pockets of fully African identity exist in Sao Tome.
Last edited by caribny; 10-04-2018 at 07:50 PM..
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