CALENDA: THE RISE AND DECLINE OF A CULTURAL IMAGE


 While the name baboula is exactly as Labat gave it, its role in the band is
the complete opposite. While writers after Labat distorted the word to make
it relate to 'bamboo,' Kahn identifies it as an African word with a different
meaning. Like writers after Labat, Kahn identifies the saka-sake (rattle) as
one of the instruments in the band. As far as the dance space is concerned,
the description is the same: "the crowd has arranged itself in a circle, with a
bare space in the centre" (Kahn 1931: 55).
 The sequence of dances starts slowly with a woman and then girls dancing
and builds up to a climax later in the night with what Kahn calls "the wild,
mad dance of the evil spirit" (61). Several of the features described by writers
elsewhere are given in one or another of the dances described by Kahn. The
awasa dance, which takes place after the females dance alone, is basically a
courtship dance which contains the features that in other descriptions are
identified as pirouetting, jumping in the air and bumping thighs/bellies. Kahn's
description restricts these movements to the male and compares them to
those of birds of prey flying and circling their victim, the fowl. The bumping
is not presented as reciprocal but as the action of the male who mimics coitus
(58), which the female evades. Other dances are done and then the climax of
the night's performance comes with the obeiah dance. About this Kahn says:

 The three religious dancers whirl like furies. One dances with a wicked-
 looking machete; he makes it whistle through the air A second dancer dashes
 into the bahkra's hut with his whirling bush-knife, hacking at everything in
 sight. The remaining obeiah dancers have a sham battle, fencing skilfully
 and dangerously with their bush-knives. First they stalk an imaginary enemy
 with poised machetes. Then two such blacks, with glazed eyes, slashing at
 each other with yard-long knives. This is the obeiah dance. (61-2)

In his analysis Kahn states that "The awasa dance of the Saramaccaners was
borrowed from the Aucaners, among whom it is a direct West African survival"
(1931:191). At the same time it resembles the stickfighting kalenda described
by Hearn and others.
 Even though the entire Suriname 'performance' contains what seem to
be more African features, there is no way of showing that as a whole it is
nearer to any single event in any part of West Africa than what is described
for Martinique, Saint Domingue, or elsewhere. Evolution of cultural
performances is part of all human communities and in fact the bigger and
more homogeneous the community, the less likely it is to want to hold on
tenaciously to the past. In addition, the more viable the community as a
politically independent unit, the more likely it is that it would want to have
its own cultural identity. In other words, the Suriname performance would
have been reflective of Bush Negro experience and aspirations over a
two hundred year period. Consequently, it cannot be regarded as a West
African template for tracing the source of African features in other
Caribbean countries.