64 PETER ROBERTS

 village gatherings, when the blood becomes overheated by tafia-the mock
 fight may become a real one; and then cutlasses are brought into play. ([ 1890]
 2001: 113)

 From Hearn's description it would seem as if the calenda had evolved
quite significantly. Yet, there was a connection between what Hearn described
as the caleinda and what had been given as part of the pre-Caribbean scribal
record of the calenda. The element of stickfighting, which had now become
central, is related to what Jobson described in the first quarter of the
seventeenth century for the Guinea Coast: "And when the men dance they
doe it w ith their swords naked in their hands, with which they use some
action ..." (1623: 107). It is also related to what Jean Barbot said he witnessed
and described: "Meanwhile the Moors began to wrestle and fight one another,
occasionally breaking into a sort of dance, in which they struck their shields
with their cutlasses in cadence" (Barbot [Hair 1992: 565]). There is also a
connection between Hearn's description of the caleinda and that of Max-
Radiguet. In the latter the man was the dominant figure; there was a
competitive element; there was an advance and retreat, as in the stick fight;
and there was a performance element. Is it that the old calenda had split into
two, or is it that the dance had reverted to an earlier stage, or is it that the
advance and retreat and the movements had always remained central for
the dancers themselves, in contrast to writers who described the dance?
 The answers to these questions may be provided in part by Morton Kahn's
1931 book on Suriname in which there is a description of a dance event. It is a
description that at one and the same time elucidates and confounds. Chapter
Four in the book is titled 'The Dance' and it describes a night of serious dancing
among one of the maroon or 'Bush Negro' communities. The maroon
communities in the interior of Suriname are generally considered as having
the greatest level of retention of African culture in the New World because
they not only moved away from European influence from very early in the
colonisation period, but also because they remained substantially cut off from
it until the twentieth century. What Kahn describes for the specific community
is therefore paradoxically most African and most creolised, in the sense of
having evolved on its own for over 200 years in isolation in the Americas.
 Kahn describes a sequence of dances the bandamba dance, the awasa
dance, the sacatee dance, a special Apuku dance, the Cromanti dance and
the obeiah dance but it is the instruments described that immediately
establish the link with Labat in 1722. Kahn 1931 says:

 The big tomtom, elaborately carved on the outside, is the apenti, or signal
 drum. The smaller nanda and the baby baboula (an African word meaning
 'to make a hollow sound') are dance drums. ... the little boy who will not
 relinquish his hold on the baboula. The child is finally allowed to remain.
 He can keep time well enough and that is what the baboula is for. (53-5) The
 little baboula keeps steady time, throbbing like a heart-beat. (59)