Publisher's Synopsis
This volume examines the problem of the relationship between the written work and orality in Jamaican society and culture. Jamaica's oral tradition is exemplified in the contemporary explosion of performance poetry and the popularity of reggae music. In the development of a national consciousness and the accompanying search for identity, it is not only the bonds of economic dependence which need to be broken, but the iron hoops of cultural dependence. This has proved a difficult task, as the colonial educational legacy stressed the importance of the written word and literary text.;This book illustrates the paradox that although technology can enslave by exposing dependent cultures to foreign models, it can also liberate by enabling the sounds of the spoken word to ripple through the airwaves. This can be an exhilerating experience for those to whom the written word is a closed book.;This study is subversive - it inverts the accepted categories of high-culture and, in doing so, reformulates the terms of nationalist discourse, making a forceful contribution towards the revindication of a submerged and for long a neglected, if not despised, popular culture.
