Caribbean Maroons hope tourism can save cultureReported by SeattlePI.com on Thursday, 19 July 2012 (on July 19, 2012)
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Caribbean Maroons hope tourism can save culture
Associated Press
Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Updated 01:48 p.m., Monday, July 9, 2012
[...] on this day, descendants of those 18th century fugitives are performing for tourists, academics, filmmakers and other curious outsiders in a fenced "Asafu" dancing yard in Charles Town, a once-moribund Maroon settlement in eastern Jamaica that seemed destined to lose its traditions until revivalists gradually brought it back. Maroons in the Caribbean are increasingly showcasing their unique culture for visitors in hopes that heritage tourism will guarantee jobs for the young generation and preserve what remains of their centuries-old practices in mostly remote settlements. Trying to counter the endless tide of migration and assimilation, long secretive Maroons are more and more going public with the old ways — singing sacred songs, drumming, making herbal medicine, talking to ancestral spirits, woodcarving, hunting and "jerking" wild pigs. Maroons are credited with inventing Jamaica's "jerk" style of cooking, in which aromatic spices are rubbed or stuffed into meat before it is roasted on an open fire. [...] we can train tour guides and our people can sell their crafts, their banana and coconuts, said Fearon Williams, the colonel of Accompong. Prehay said devotion to clandestine spiritual rituals is strong among the town's ever-dwindling number of elderly residents, as is their knowledge of the Maroon's Kromanti language, which is closely related to the Twi spoken in parts of the West African nation of Ghana. [...] the continual migration to Kingston, to London, to Canada is difficult, the 70-year-old Prehay said, pointing to surrounding slopes that were farms when he was a young man but are now overgrown with bamboo. Settlements of escaped slaves emerged in many places in the Western Hemisphere, including the U.S., but the Maroons' biggest success came in Jamaica, where they helped the British expel the Spanish and then turned on the new rulers, wreaking havoc across an island that was then one of the world's largest sugar producers. Some experts fear that cultural tourism can introduce harmful influences or can make communities into parodies of themselves.
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