Category Archives: Guadeloupe

Voukoum

On Tuesday we’ll be exploring the history of the French Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique with a little help from the Guadeloupean musical group and “cultural movement” Voukoum, which you can read about here.

You can see Voukoum rocking the streets of Guadeloupe during March of last year at the video below. This particular period was one of particular intensity, since it took place in the midst of a massive island-wide strike that lasted 49 days. The banners of the collective of unions, civic groups, and cultural organizations that organized the strike, the LKP, is visible at one point in the video, and the group is decked out in the red color of the movement.

You can read a good analysis of this event, by UVA Anthropologist Yarimar Bonilla, here. A group of us (including Ned Sublette) discussed the role of music in the strike on this New Yorker roundtable from last year, which we discussed two weeks ago in preparation for Ned’s visit.

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