Music in Martinique

Music is hugely important in Martinique. For many of my students, it is the one idea that dominates their lives. They listen to music, they dance and sing and a few play music. This causes me to think often about the role music plays in my own life and in the American experience as a whole. So much of American culture seems defined by music as there seems to be music for every occasion and every moment within an American’s life. Think about it, now that winter has arrived American airwaves are dominated by Christmas music and other songs of the season, in the summer we hear songs about sunshine, the beach and riding around with the windows down and the music blasting. Further, it seems abundantly apparent that music has the ability to define each individual and each sub-culture within the American culture. Country music is often associated with a rural lifestyle or conservative thinking while rap and hip-hop represent life in the urban metropolises. Further, rock ‘n’ roll is the music of rebellious teenagers in the suburbs. That’s just a look at the surface level of America culture. As one probes deeper and deeper into the cultural nuances of an individual or a sub-culture the influence of music becomes more and more apparent. Music has the ability to define generational gaps at the same time providing a common forum for bridging those same gaps. Music can give voice to the religious and meaning to the rebellious. It can allow for freedom of expression or it can create a monolithic set of ideals across a wide sample of the populous. Wherever I look in America, I see music as providing a sort of definition of the people and their experience or at the very least they’re perceived experience.

I think the same is true as I look around Martinique, maybe even more so at times. Talking with my students and experiencing life on the island has opened my eyes to the importance of music. It seems that music plays a vital role in life here. Every single student I have enjoys music, most often dancehall, reggae, rap and the local music zouk as well as other Caribbean styles. Every student seems to spend a lot of time singing, listening, dancing to music. Almost every car that drives seems to have music blasting from inside especially with the youth. The weekends are defined by going out and dancing. Dance is huge here. Further, I had the privilege to go to a couple of birthday parties for the friends of my friend Jean-Michel. Most everyone has twice my age, but nearly everyone was up on their feet and dancing to live bands at both parties. At one point during the second of the two parties before the live music had started, a group of mostly middle-aged woman had gathered around a picnic table on the beach and burst into chorus to the rhythm of their hands clapping. At both parties the evening ended with the singing to Christmas songs. Christmas songs in Martinique are much different than in the States. Though, the lyrics and the messages are not entirely different, their presentation is. The tempo is fast while everyone’s hips swing and sway with the rhythm. It’s always sung in Creole and the music incorporates a lot of repletion is sound and lyrics. Further, there is a relative amount of call and response too. This creates for a festive atmosphere as the rum flows throughout the crowd. It’s a much different scene for Christmas songs than what most Americans may be used to. Another example of the importance of music is a scene in the library of one of my schools where I was being shown the library by a couple of teachers and the librarian. Someone happened to pick up a book containing the words and music to traditional songs in Martinique and the three women all joined in chorus together without hesitation. It was during this moment that I realized the power of music to give voice to a common experience or to a common culture.

As I thought about music more and more, I came to realize the commonality of the Caribbean experience. I had studied Caribbean culture quite a bit did college and was familiar with much of the history and the specific cultures of a select few islands as it pertained to the diasporic experience of African peoples. Already being intimately familiar with reggae and somewhat with dancehall, I had a sense of the common culture throughout the islands. Hearing the artists that my students listen to and hearing the songs I hear going out and about in Martinique, it becomes apparent that there is a strong cross cultural dialogue going on between the islands culture of the Caribbean. Though each island faces its own challenges and has its own cultural traditions, music manages to transcend and unite the experiences in the Caribbean. At the same time, each island has its own music that lends to the individuality of its culture. It seems that music has the power of give and take maybe explaining the importance of call and response. Music reveals much of a culture and shares that with others while at the same time helping to define culture.

Frustration and Patience

I've come to know two ideas very well since I've been in Martinique. The first is frustration, and, to cope with that, I've become very familiar with patience. I've experienced frustration for many reasons. First, my paperwork has been screwed up ever since I got here. Somehow my response of "I'm coming to Martinique" never made it to the people that it was supposed to so on the first day of orientation the administrators for the program were a bit surprised that I showed up. My teaching tutor had been in contact with the program and she to let them know that I was coming so it's strange that they didn't know I was still planning on working. Thankfully that didn't affect my job and I was still able to work without a problem. However, since the proper people did not receive my response about work, I didn't receive all of the paperwork that I was supposed to have. Thus, I managed to get my visa without what turned out to be a somewhat important piece of immigration paperwork. I received my vise no problem while I was still in the States, but when I was completing my paperwork to receive my salary I was missing this immigration document. After much waiting it turned out that it wasn't as important as the administrators made it out to be because I received my salary eventually. I had a torrid time getting my salary set up. We had orientation on a Friday shortly after I got there and we were told to have a bank account set up and our paperwork in order for the following Friday in order to receive our salaries on time at the end of October. Of course everything that could have gone wrong at the bank did. I had an appointment the Tuesday following orientation in which I arrived in the meeting with all of the paperwork I could have possibly needed. The lady who helped my was extremely nice but she made the wrong copy of my visa using my visa for the time that I studied in Grenoble. Then she failed to ask me for my work contract which I didn't find out until the day my paperwork was due for receiving my salary. Finally after a week, almost two I received to my bank account and went to the administrators in charge of Teaching Assistants only to discover that I was missing my that immigration document I mentioned earlier. That slowed up the process of receiving my salary further. Finally almost two months in I got paid. Unfortunately, it's still been a month and a half since I opened my bank account and I still don't have a working debit card. I have the card but no pin number because the bank used an imaginary address to try to send me my pin number. The address was some sort of combination of numbers, streets and cities in the United States and Martinique. Thankfully the address was so screwed up that no one else could have possibly received my pin number because it would have been impossible to mail anything to the address they had. The last line had both Martinique and the United States listed as the country.

On top of frustration with the paperwork and financial situation in Martinique, school has been frustrating up until the last week or so. Two months in I will have finally met all of the classes I will be working with. This has been incredibly frustrating because I've only been able to cover at most two subjects in my classes. The first being class introductions where the students get to meet me and I get to meet them. Everyone answers five simple questions and the students get an image of me as I get a small glimpse of who they are. This is often fun and it's nice to have every student talk and give them some confidence that they can speak English. Unfortunately this gets old after the first month of doing introductions. The second month of introductions really drags on. Fortunately, with a couple of classes I've been able to talk about High School life in the United States. Unfortunately that's been only in two or three of my eighteen classes. Again, thankfully, I've been able to talk about Thanksgiving this week with a couple more of my classes which has allowed me to do lesson work now with roughly one third of my classes. The other two thirds I haven't seen but more than once since I arrived. Further, I am disappointed with the level of students speaking ability and the reluctance of many students to try speaking. Every class has a handful of good students and a couple of classes everyone is good speakers and is willing to speak. Unfortunately many students are teenagers (I forgot what it was like to be 16, 17, 18) and school is not there favorite subject. Thus, they could learn more if they tried harder but that's always the case with this age group no matter where you are in the world. By and large though, the kids are good and most, when called upon, do try. There are a couple of students that could be better if they wanted to be and there a couple of classes as a whole could be better if they tried harder.

Transportation stinks here to if you don't have a car. I won't say more because I'm making myself frustrated by talking about my frustrations.

I have come to know patience very well since being Martinique. I can attribute that to coping with the frustrations that I have mentioned above. In the end, everything works out and so I've become patient reminding myself that the frustration is only temporary. The lack of work and lesson planning has afforded me the time to read and watch a lot of soccer which I have been thankful for. It's been a drastic change from life in Seattle where I was living in the heart of a major American city where I had everything at my fingertips. The slowness of life in Martinique has been a welcome change and has aided my furthering understanding of patience. In Seattle as well as the rest of the country it is easy to get what you want when you want it. Groceries are open 24 hours, most shops and restaurants are open 7 days a week. That's not the case on an island and especially not the case on a French island. Ironically enough, I have to plan further in advance to get the things that I need to get done in Martinique because I can only accomplish a couple of tasks each day. Because I am traveling most places by foot or unreliable buses there is a limited amount of time in which I can do things. It's a nice change from American life where I was scrambling to cram as many things as I could in a single day. Every minute hear seems to be an exercise in patience. I think that is healthy for the mind especially coming from an American generation that was one of the first to know instant gratification throughout our lives. I hope that I will be able a more humble and patient person when I come back to the states. Frustration has not been fun but patience has become rewarding and calming. Although I could do without the frustrations, I am glad they are there so that I can continue to learn patience.

More Flowers!

Martinique is renowned for its birds and flowers. The flowers are much easier to find and take pictures of though I see many wonderful birds flying around sometimes even into my house. Flowers are everywhere here, in everyone's yard, on the side of the road and anywhere else you could imagine. It seems like each flower that I see is different, never the same things twice.

Sometimes the protection for the flower is bigger than the flower itself like the plant below with huge thorns and tiny flowers.

I played around with black and white and my ability to highlight certain colors on my camera at times with very cool results.

I really like this photo. I never thought bird doo-doo could look so cool.

Flowers from my house

These photos are of flowers in my yard. It's extremely soothing to start your day looking at these wonders of nature especially when the birds come calling and are searching for a sweet treat of nectar.

Much to my surprise there are many cacti in Martinique.

Hurricane Tomas

So I got to experience my first hurricane a week ago. It was pretty exciting to say the least. I was unaware that a tropical storm was fast approaching the island but did notice that it was becoming extremely windy as the evening was winding down the night before the storm hit. By morning it had arrived. I woke up with the wind still whipping around and rain soon accompanying it shortly after I had woken up. I thought to myself that this some strange weather we're having so I jumped on the internet and checked the weather as I was making breakfast. Much to my surprise everywhere was reporting that a tropical storm was sweeping through the Eastern Caribbean. By the time I had finished my breakfast, tropical storm Tomas had become hurricane Tomas. I knew that my house was going to be safe; the wind was not strong enough and every window was equipped with hurricane-ready shutters. My big concern was losing power and losing much of the food I had recently purchased and of course not have power for internet access which would have prevented me from watching the Arsenal match that morning. Thankfully, the electricity remained throughout the day and night. It became a true rainy day, sitting watching sports and movies and reading. There wasn't much else I could do. I occasionally would open one of the windows and peak my head out when I could hear strong gusts of wind so I could witness the power of the storm. It was an awesome thing to behold. Every living creature and plant was forced to humble itself before the hurricane and accept the coming conditions. When I looked out, trees were bending to the will of the wind. Everything was in constant motion, the leaf rested still. The rain was almost coming down horizontal at times. I felt like a little kid, giddy with excitement watching the power of the storm. It was never powerful enough to do any type of serious damage the area where I was living, but it did hit other parts of the island hard. Many areas were without power for the day while others had to cope with flooding. I'm high up on top of a hill allowing of the rain water to run downhill. Though that did cause a small amount of flooding in the valley below, but nothing life threatening for anyone. Other parts of the island some flood damage rendering homes inhabitable. The concern for many during the storm was how the weather would affect industry, mainly fishing and agricultural. Though not as powerful as Hurricane Dean three years ago who wiped out the islands banana plantations, Tomas did damage to the banana fields. I drove some plantations a day or two later and saw that many trees did snap and fall over under the force of the winds doing a fair amount of damage some of the plantations. Sugar cane fields, Martinique's other huge agricultural product, received damage too. Further, fishing was disrupted for several days as the sea was violent during the hurricane and the waters had been stirred disrupting both fish and fisherman's way of life. All in all, it was a unique experience, a cool experience, and an experience that thankfully did not do harm to my area though it did impact others on the island. St. Lucia to the east of us was hit much harder as was Haiti in the days following. Unfortunately for the people and other living beings there, they've had to endure more hardship than us in Martinique. In the end I am glad that I could sit comfortably in my residence and observe the power without being subject to the damage that came with Tomas's power.

Last set of the photos from the north

Standing on top of a waterfall with, from left to right, myself, Ian, and Stan, from New Jersey.

The lushness of the rain forest.

From the north and the rain Forest area

My friend Ian, from Massachusetts, on the left and Irene, from Barcelona. We're at a park in the north.