Calenda: The Rise and Decline
 of a Cultural Image

 Peter Roberts
 University of the West Indies, Cave Hill


It is with the French Creole world, more so than the Spanish or the English,
 that the cultural image calenda came to be associated, in spite of the fact
 that from the earliest citations of the word it was deliberately identified
with the Spanish. Also, remarkably enough, in spite of geographical proximity
and constant migration, the cultural image calenda was never a feature of
those Caribbean islands that were English for most of their history. The
paradox in all of this is that the calenda was said to be African in origin. The
fact is, however, that one has to make a distinction between the cultural
feature itself, which no doubt had African roots, and the label it acquired in
the French Creole world, which was the work of French writers. In a 2004
article Roberts discusses the origin and associations of the word calenda;
here the cultural image will be examined.
 When Jean Labat introduced the word calenda to the French reading public
in 1722, he said that it referred to a specific dance apparently performed by a
specific ethnic group: "It comes from the Guinea coast and apparently from
the Kingdom of Arda." ([1722] 1724 2:51). Labat lived and worked in the smaller
French Caribbean islands from 1694 to 1705, but it was to the year 1698 and to
the slaves in Martinique that he was referring. Labat's tentative location of the
geographical origin of the calenda in Dahomey (modern-day Benin) was
substantially based on the fact that it is the place from where a great number
of the slaves on his plantation in Martinique came. Labat claimed that he learnt
their language and thus found out more about their culture.
 In his presentation of the dance, Labat described the movements of the
dancers together with the musical accompaniment. He also gives assessments
of and reactions to the dance. This is what he said about the formation and
the movements of the dancers:

 The dancers are in two lines, one facing the other, the men on one side and
 the women on the other. Those who are tired dancing and the spectators