Rediasporization

African-Guyanese Kweh-Kweh

Gillian Richards-Greaves

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781496831170
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Latin American & Caribbean History
• Index: History

Rediasporization: African-Guyanese Kweh-Kweh examines how African-Guyanese in New York City participate in the Come to My Kwe-Kwe ritual to facilitate rediasporization, that is, the creation of a newer diaspora from an existing one. Since the fall of 2005, African-Guyanese in New York City have celebrated Come to My Kwe-Kwe (more recently called Kwe-Kwe Night ) on the Friday evening before Labor Day. Come to My Kwe-Kwe is a reenactment of a uniquely African-Guyanese pre-wedding ritual called kweh-kweh, and sometimes referred to as karkalay, mayan, kweh-keh, and pele. A typical traditional (wedding-based) kweh-kweh has approximately ten ritual segments, which include the pouring of libation to welcome or appease the ancestors; a procession from the groom's residence to the bride's residence or central kweh-kweh venue; the hiding of the bride; and the negotiation of bride price. Each ritual segment is executed with music and dance, which allow for commentary on conjugal matters, such as sex, domestication, submissiveness, and hard work. Come to My Kwe-Kwe replicates the overarching segments of the traditional kweh-kweh, but a couple (male and female) from the audience acts as the bride and groom, and props simulate the boundaries of the traditional performance space, such as the gate and the bride's home. This book draws on more than a decade of ethnographic research data and demonstrates how Come to My Kwe-Kwe allows African-Guyanese-Americans to negotiate complex, overlapping identities in their new homeland, by combining elements from the past and present and reinterpreting them to facilitate rediasporization and ensure group survival.

1

Introduction: “Who Karkalay?”

From Wedding-Based Kweh-Kweh to Cultural Reenactment

Introduction

Since the fall of 2005, African-Guyanese in New York City have celebrated a ritual called Come to My Kwe-Kwe (more recently, Kwe-Kwe Nite) on the Friday evening before Labor Day. Come to My Kwe-Kwe is a reenactment of a uniquely African-Guyanese prewedding ritual called kweh-kweh, also known as karkalay, mayan, kweh-keh, and pele (fig. 1.1).¹ A typical traditional (wedding-based) kweh-kweh has approximately ten ritual segments, which include the pouring of libation to welcome or appease the ancestors; a procession from the groom’s residence to the bride’s residence or central kweh-kweh venue; the hiding of the bride; and the negotiation of the bride price.² Each ritual segment is executed with singing and dancing, which enable participants to chide, praise, and tease the bride and groom and their respective “nations” (relatives, friends, and representatives) on conjugal matters such as sex, domestication, submissiveness, and hard work.³ Come to My Kwe-Kwe replicates the overarching segments of the wedding-based kweh-kweh, which I will discuss in greater detail later, but a couple (male and female) is chosen from the audience to act as the bride and groom, and props simulate the boundaries of the traditional kweh-kweh performance space, such as a gate and the bride’s home. However, unlike traditional kweh-kweh, which focuses exclusively on the nations of the bride and groom, Come to My Kwe-Kwe engages the larger Guyanese community, albeit for an entry fee.

When the Folk Festival Committee of the Guyana Cultural Association (GCA) in New York City first sponsored Come to My Kwe-Kwe in 2005, they envisioned it as a one-time event that would contribute to the year’s theme, “Celebrating Guyanese Dance.” However, at the end of the event, the overwhelmingly positive feedback from the audience inspired the GCA to make Come to My Kwe-Kwe a fixture of the annual Folk Festival (fig. 1.2). Thus, every year on the Friday before Labor Day, Guyanese from all over the world convene in Brooklyn to celebrate the accidental tradition of Come to My Kwe-Kwe and to connect or reconnect with other Guyanese. Consequently, Come to My Kwe-Kwe has increasingly become a symbol of African-Guyaneseness, which participants manipulate to facilitate group solidarity and to distinguish themselves from other ethnic groups.

This book examines the role of Come to My Kwe-Kwe in the construction of a secondary African-Guyanese diaspora (rediasporization) in New York City by exploring how African-Guyanese in the United States draw on the ritual to articulate their tricultural (African-Guyanese-American) identities. This work also interrogates the factors that affect African-Guyanese perceptions of their racial and gendered selves, and how these perceptions in turn impact their engagement with African-influenced cultural performances like Come to My Kwe-Kwe. By drawing on longitudinal research data, this work demonstrates how the malleability of Come to My Kwe-Kwe allows African-Guyanese to negotiate, highlight, conceal, and even reject complex, shifting, overlapping, and contextual identities. Ultimately, this work demonstrates how Come to My Kwe-Kwe performances in the United States facilitate African-Guyanese transformation from an imagined community to a tangible community that does the same things with each other, at the same time, and in the same physical space.

Figure 1.1: Deconstructing traditional kweh-kweh.

Ethnographic Data

As a young girl growing up in Guyana, I only observed the kweh-kweh ritual from a distance because it was considered “grown folk business” (adult matters) and African (pagan, ungodly, taboo). However, I became interested in kweh-kweh as a research topic in 2002 while gathering data to write an end-of-term paper on the ritual. Due to the paucity of literature on kweh-kweh, I decided to interview older African-Guyanese who were knowledgeable about the ritual. However, instead of gaining a wealth of information from them, I was met with resounding silence, shunning, and statements such as “we don’t do that thing anymore,” “kweh-kweh is vulgar,” and “kweh-kweh is dead.” Only a few individuals I spoke with at the time regarded kweh-kweh as an important facet of African-Guyanese culture and identity, but some argued that the ritual was dead or dying. What I found particularly interesting about their responses, however, was the fact that each time there was an impending wedding these very individuals actively celebrated kweh-kweh. For example, “Patsy,” a deaconess in a local church in Brooklyn, refused to discuss kweh-kweh with me because she perceived it as pagan and vulgar. However, months later, in an unguarded moment, this church mother informed me that she was getting ready to throw (sponsor) a kweh-kweh in her daughter’s honor. Annoyed and confused, I said, “I thought you didn’t celebrate kweh-kweh!” Patsy responded almost apologetically: “Girl, you can’t have a wedding without a kweh-kweh, but not everybody would understand.” During subsequent discussions with other African-Guyanese I discovered that, like Patsy, they held views on kweh-kweh that were contradictory to their actual engagement with the ritual. Their inconsistent behavior piqued my interest and inspired me to conduct further research on the ritual.

Although I am a native Guyanese, gaining research access to African-Guyanese communities in Guyana and New York City was a slow, painstaking process because I occupy a liminal state of existence in each community. I am both Guyanese and American. To Guyanese in Guyana, I am a “foreigner”; to older, more seasoned kweh-kweh performers, I am young, and thus a novice; to older Guyanese women I am too mannish to be considered a proper woman; to Africanist Guyanese who embrace kweh-kweh, I am a Christian and therefore a potential threat to the ritual; and to many Guyanese I am an academic voyeur, lurking with cameras and the pen, waiting to capture their most awkward, intimate moments to publicize them to strangers. My “halfie” status, to cite Lila Abu-Lughod (1993), rendered me simultaneously “insider” and “outsider” to the Guyanese community. Nevertheless, with the help of some well-placed and respectable contacts in the community, I was able to successfully execute my research.

Figure 1.2: Guyana Folk Festival flyer, 2015.

I later conducted multisited, transnational, and comparative dissertation research on kweh-kweh performance in New York City (2005–2008) and Guyana (2008–2010), where I examined the role of traditional kweh-kweh and its reenactment in Come to My Kwe-Kwe in African-Guyanese identity negotiations. I also started preliminary investigations into the processes of rediasporization in New York City. In addition to archival research, I conducted more than sixty interviews with current and former participants of traditional kweh-kweh and Come to My Kwe-Kwe. I also attended several rituals, where I participated in kweh-kweh music, dance, and verbal art as well as the daily activities pertinent to the execution of the ritual. By using diverse research methods, I was able to compare what people said about kweh-kweh and Come to My Kwe-Kwe with what they actually did and, in the process, gained a better understanding of the role of the ritual in the larger community.

Since its inception in 2005, Come to My Kwe-Kwe has quickly eclipsed the traditional wedding-based kweh-kweh in performance frequency and significance in the African-Guyanese community in New York City. In fact, Come to My Kwe-Kwe has become such a significant symbol of African-Guyaneseness that it has influenced the rise of similar expressions in Guyana and in other urban areas in the United States such as Atlanta. Each year when African-Guyanese from all over the world convene in Brooklyn to celebrate Come to My Kwe-Kwe, they refine ritual performances and through food, music, dance, and other cultural expressions reaffirm and display multifaceted Guyanese identities.

In the fall of 2013, I embarked on a new longitudinal research project (fall 2013–fall 2018) that exclusively examined the role of Come to My Kwe-Kwe in the African-Guyanese community in the United States. By drawing on research data I obtained through participant observation, archival research, and interviews, I was able to examine the ways that African-Guyanese in the United States perform Come to My Kwe-Kwe to negotiate African-Guyanese-American identities during the process of creating a new, secondary African diaspora (rediasporization).

Overview of the Traditional (Wedding-Based) Kweh-Kweh

Traditional kweh-kweh emerged among African slaves in Guyana and historically functioned as a medium for matrimonial instruction for soon-to-be-married couples. Although African-Guyanese argue that kweh-kweh is their African heritage, there is no known African ritual by the name of kweh-kweh; however, as an entity, kweh-kweh is strikingly similar to indigenous African marriage ceremonies such as the “black (indigenous) wedding” among the Yoruba; Ïgba Nkwü, a wine-carrying ceremony practiced by the Igbo of Nigeria (Smith 2001, 129–51); and the Zambian Kitchen Party, a women-only celebration that resembles a synthesis of a bridal shower, a kweh-kweh ritual, and a bachelorette party. Also, individual kweh-kweh ritual practices—such as the procession from the groom’s residence to the bride’s home or kweh-kweh venue (Bassir 1954; Ottenberg 1988), the negotiation of the bride price (Ogbu 1978; Mbiti 1999, 137; Ikwuagwu 2007, 88), and the pouring of libation (Ikwuagwu 2007, 43)—mirror indigenous African marriage rituals. However, the most striking similarities between indigenous African marriage rituals and kweh-kweh unfold during music performance, particularly in the connectedness of music and dance: pervasive call-and-response singing (Pitts 1989, 137–49; Weaver 1991, 53–61; Hinson 2000, 163–88); the use of percussive timbres in singing (Hurston 1981; Burnim 1985a; Burnim 1988); the use of percussive instruments such as drums, and found sounds (Borde 1973, 45; Johnson 1998, 64; Dudley 2002, 18); the expression of social commentary through music (Epstein 2015, 36); and the counterclockwise movement of the ritual dance (Rosenbaum 1998; Henderson 2009). For diverse reasons, kweh-kweh continues to be practiced by African-Guyanese in Guyana and abroad, and it generally unfolds in two overarching stages: (1) a preparatory stage, and (2) the kweh-kweh proper.

The preparatory stage of kweh-kweh can last anywhere from a few days to several weeks, depending on the financial capabilities of the families involved, the expected size of the kweh-kweh, the locations of the residences of relatives, and other factors. This stage is crucial to the successful execution of kweh-kweh because it is the period during which every member of the community has an opportunity to be directly or indirectly involved with various aspects of the ritual. For example, men often erect the canvas or tarpaulin tent in the yard for the kweh-kweh ritual, cut palm branches for the procession, slaughter animals for meat, or assist with procuring copious quantities of alcohol and foodstuffs such as rice, sugar, and ground provisions (plantain, cassava, and other tubers); women generally control the preparation of large quantities of food; while youngsters provide assistance with cleaning, food preparation, and various aspects of ritual preparations. However, young children are generally excluded from the actual kweh-kweh proper, as the ritual content is overwhelmingly risqué in nature.

A typical kweh-kweh begins around ten in the evening and often lasts until dawn. The ritual may take place in a house (ideally with wooden floors), a “bottom house,” or a tent in the yard built specifically for the ritual. Kweh-kweh is led by a captain, tutor, or raconteur who is generally male and assumed to be an expert in kweh-kweh music and Guyanese culture.⁴ The ritual begins with a procession, followed by the meeting of the nations at the bride’s gate, the hiding of the bride, and the negotiation of the bride price. Each ritual segment of kweh-kweh constitutes a physical or symbolic obstacle that the groom and his nation must overcome before gaining access to the bride (table 1.1). After the successful completion of all obstacle courses, the kweh-kweh celebration takes on a more communal tone, as the nations of the bride and groom move closer to becoming one unified nation. After the nations agree upon a bride price, the third major obstacle, they continue the ritual with communal singing and the choreographed kweh-kweh ritual dance, which is executed in a circle called a ganda (GHAN-dah). In addition to the wedding-based kweh-kweh dance, the bride and groom are also expected to “show yuh science,” or demonstrate sexual prowess.⁵

In New York City, the traditional wedding-based kweh-kweh is celebrated in similar ways as in Guyana. However, in instances when the bride’s and groom’s nations are from different regions of Guyana, there may be slight variations in performance practices or major disagreements regarding the nature or sequence of ritual segments. Constraints surrounding the availability or suitability of performance spaces in New York City also provide impediments to the smooth execution of kweh-kweh. When space is an issue, performers often improvise. I have observed several instances in which families drove to the central kweh-kweh venue, and then started their procession a few houses or blocks away from the actual site. Although the wedding-based kw...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abstract
• 1 Introduction: “Who Karkalay?”
• 2 “Where’s the Cookup Rice?”
• 3 Wipin’, Winin’, and Wukkin’
• 4 Music, Dance, and Authenticity in Rediasporization
• 5 “Borrow a Day from God”
• 6 Conclusion: Wholly Fractured, Wholly Whole
• Epilogue
• Glossary
• Notes
• Bibliography
• About the Author