Jamaican Song And Story

The trickster hero is a familiar character in folklore, and Jamaica's national folk hero is Annancy, an animal trickster noted for his unmitigated greed, treachery, and cruelty. A magic spider with a speech defect, Annancy is the perfect picaresque rogue: he is sneaky, lazy, dishonest, and totally without remorse--yet his geniality endears him to friend and foe alike. Annancy stories are an enduringly popular part of Jamaica’s cultural heritage, where the spider’s knavery finds expression in dance, theatre, and other creative arts. This delightful, compilation features some of the best-known, most-loved Annancy stories--faithfully reproduced, exactly as told to author Walter Jekyll by islanders. In addition to these tales, drawn largely from African sources but occasionally mixed with European strands and local innovations, the book contains digging sings (work songs used to liven up field labor), ring tunes (informal dances), and dancing tunes (mainly the Valse, Polka, Schottische, and Quadrilles). The author’s notes explain the dialect, and an extensive introduction discusses African folklore and its connections with Jamaican stories. Brief appendices note African and European musical influences on Jamaican tunes, and three essays appraise the importance of Annancy stories and the significance of this collection. The finest source of Annancy stories and other Jamaican folk tales and songs, this volume is an invaluable resource for anthropologists and a treat for anyone interested in Jamaican cultural history.

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Excerpt from Jamaican Song and Story: Annancy Stories, Digging Sings, Ring Tunes, and Dancing Tunes The exact relationship between'the Negro and Bantu races, which of them is the original and which the adulterated stock (in other words, whether the adulteration was an improvement or the reverse), - is a subject quite beyond my competence to discuss. It seems certain that the Negro languages (as yet only tentatively classified) are as distinct from the singularly homogeneous and well-defined Bantu family, as Aryan from Semitic. Ibo, at one end of the area, has possible Bantu affinities, which await fuller investigation; the same thing has been conjectured of Bullom and Temne at the other end (sierra Leone); but these are so-slight and as yet so doubtful that they scarcely affect the above estimate. The difference in West Coast and Bantu folk-tales is not so marked as that between the languages; yet here, too, along with a great deal which the two have in common, we can pick out some features peculiar to each. And Mr. Jekyll's tales, so far as they can be supposed to come from Africa at all, are not Bantu. The name of Annancy alone is enough to tell us that. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.