Jamaica’s Troubled Past
‘The Maroons’
Jamaica’s fighting spirit can be seen even in its early days with the Maroons. The fighting spirit is not uncommon with people who are oppressed or forced against their will. The Maroons came in two waves, the first are slaves that fled during the Spanish rule, the second wave was during British control. The Maroons used the highlands of Jamaica to seek refuge, establish colonies and attack plantations when needed. Even today the beliefs and herbal practices of the Maroons are still evident in Jamaican culture. Their trouble past has made their life difficult but even today they are a presence in Jamaica.
The First Deserters
The idea of runaways did not take long in the Caribbean islands. Jamaica was not the only island experiencing runaways, Haiti, Cuba, and many Latin American countries were all falling victim to these guerilla style warfare tribes. During the first years of Spanish control the island of Hispaniola (Spanish Jamaica) experienced many problems with slaves. Columbus suggested to King Ferdinand in the first letter from his voyage of discovery, "I can bring slaves that are captured people, as many as are wanted." Disease and overwork killed many of the peaceable, indigenous Arawaks. Others hanged themselves, drank poisonous cassava juice, murdered and aborted their children rather than be enslaved. A few, the first Maroons, escaped into the craggy hills. (Olson, pg.234) Recent excavations at Nanny Town, the most important early Maroon settlement, support Maroon oral traditions that the first African refugees found accommodation among the Arawak. (Olson, pg.234) Correspondence from the last decade of the sixteenth century also suggests that Spanish colonial officials w...
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“Jamaica’s a country of great dichotomy. On the one hand you have a tourist industry with great beaches and resorts, but on the other you have such great poverty and the violence that goes along with that.”(Michael Franti) In this paper, I will talk about the geography, the history of Jamaica, the people that live there now and that lived there in the past, the lifestyle of the society, and the society, like the government and economy.
Petite maroonage occurred when a slave often in a large sugar plantation would runaway for period of days. The slave running away may have been triggered to leave by a particularly brutal beating, the sale of spouse or children, or some unbearable humiliation. Grand maroonage occurred when the slave did not return but instead stayed in a maroon community of other runaway slaves. Grand maroonage was a central feature of Cuban slavery and resulted in the formation of palenques or cumbes. 4 However creating and maintain a maroon community free of colonial interference was very difficult. Colonies would often enlist the help of maroons to put down slave revolts in exchange for their freedom to live in their community without threat of a colonial intervention. Asserting the quote by journalist Jerry Pournelle “Freedom is Not
...to be able to take effective action unless I first finish my education in this field. Along with completing my education, I also plan to continue growing in my personal relationship with Jesus Christ. It would be impossible for me to effectively integrate both psychology and my Christian faith if these two are not in line. Enwistle focuses a great deal on people’s worldview. After reading this text, I saw the importance of being open to others worldviews. As a counselor I will be coming in contact with people from all different walks of life. If a client comes to see me, I cannot expect them to have the same perspective as I do. If I am not open to their perspective then I will not be able to help them move past whatever their situation maybe. By recognizing that everyone has a different worldview, it will allow me to be open and more understanding towards them.
...t Entwisle is not attempting to force viewpoints on his readers but merely educating them on what beliefs and views are out there. He challenges the audience to take their thought process and emotions that the book may bring to the surface. Ask themselves why does this chapter affect me the way it does? What can I do to broaden my knowledge so if I am confronted in the future with a challenging question I am well versed and my opinion and belief is validated? How can I use this book to help people who are trying to mature in their Spirituality? Which approach should I use? I am striving for my Ph D in psychology and I am a Christian. I believe integrating psychology and Christianity is vital to developing my education as well as my spiritual growth. I do not however agree that it is my right to judge those who do not share my views or try to sway their beliefs.
The nature of aesthetics has puzzled many, where questions and reflections about art, beauty, and taste have intersected with our understanding of what a real art experience truly is. The notion of the aesthetic experience, an experience that differs from the everyday experiences, has been given great consideration by English art critic Clive Bell and American philosopher John Dewey since the beginning of the 20th century. Both have spent much deliberation on the distinctive character of aesthetic experience; yet have complete opposing ideas on how to go about understanding aesthetic experience’s ecosystem. Bell takes a formalist approach, as he thinks that to understand everything about a work of art, one has to only look at the work of art.
The guitar is hard to trace back beyond the Renaissance period but it is known the guitar has roots in Spain. The first known guitar was small with four sets of strings; each set called a course. Later a fifth course was added. At the end of the Baroque period, single strings replaced the double strings and a sixth was added. Since then, the guitar was changed little until Manuel Torres worked with the design and body. First, he increased the overall size. Making the body bigger and the neck longer added more notes
There is beauty and there is beauty. The two are not mutually exclusive, but rather represent two poles on a continuum. At one pole is the beauty that is associated with a sense of lightness and balanced order. It has a faintly decorative quality to it. At the other extreme is the much darker form of beauty that we associate with profundity and truth. This latter form of beauty I will analyze in terms of the containment of the sublime. The distinction between these two extremes of beauty has less to do with the objects under consideration, whether a flower, a sunset, a poem, a painting, or a piece of music, than it does with the attitude of the considerer of the object. That is, anything that possesses beauty of the first kind can also be viewed as possessing beauty of the second kind, if the attention of the viewer is directed appropriately. The differential across the continuum is constituted by the degree of awareness of the element of the sublime in the beautiful.
The new era in plectral instruments began in Iberia, Spain in the mid 15th century with the creation of the vihuela (Bellow). The vihuela was practically a flat backed lute with six paired strings, which were most commonly plucked at the same time. Since there was no machined production at the time, many vihuelas were unique to whoever built them, the number of sound ports, shape, or neck varied. However, a majority of them had the same build and concept of a modern guitar. These were the one of the first instrument to feature...
The story Dr. Carr told of the lineage of Benjamin Banneker really exemplified what maroonage really is and how it stands as a focal point in the interconnection, or lack thereof, between Africans and “African American” people today. Benjamin Banneker’s grandfather was captured and physically sold into slavery. I emphasize physically because he could never mentally or spiritually be a slave due to his self-knowledge and his genealogy, which stood as his interconnection with Africa. He knew he could never be someone’s slave when, in fact, he was royalty. He eradicated the possibility of him being conditioned and demanded his freedom and married the woman who attempted to enslave him.
"The Rastafarians emerge as a loosely organized inspirational group (or groups?) of men and women concerned at the plight of black people, especially the plight of those whose ancestors were forcibly removed from Africa to become the slaves of the white man on his plantations in the islands of the Caribbean"(Cashmore, 1). The English takeover of Jamaica in 1660 started the terrible beginning of the African Diaspora. Millions of Africans were stolen off of their continent and were shipped over to the Caribbean where they were fashioned to do slave labor so the Europeans could make money. Over 80 million Africans died in the process of departing to the islands. The slaves were denied any form of religion and were treated like animals. They were also denied food and were made to grow their own food so they could feed themselves. Many years went by till the slaves started to rebel. The 'Maroons' were a group of runaway slaves who started a powerful group of guerrilla warriors who lived in the most dangerous woods in Jamaica. But the Maroons gave in and signed a peace treaty in 1738 and were paid to catch the runaway slaves and became supporters of slavery.
Living in two different places is an experience that opens people’s mind to a new way of thinking. The diversities of each country has its own appeal and often times, we find ourselves comparing and contrasting these nations based a variety of aspects. Despite bearing some minor similarities, the differences in geography, climate, tradition, and economy between the two countries, Jamaica and the United States of America are extensive.
United States and Jamaica have many similarities such as they were both under British rule for several years, and they both elect officials to govern the country. However the differences between the two are quite vast when it comes to the quality of education, government, and healthcare. When the three are compared it is clear to see that in terms of where is a better place for a child to grow up the United States is a better place to be.
When guitar was first invented, it looked nothing like the guitars that we know. The first guitars were lutes. Lutes evolved into vihuelas, and later became the guitar in the fifteenth century. The first guitar was called the four-coarse guitar. It was called the four-course guitar because it only had four strings. It also had a strange tuning rather than the usual D-G-B-E tuning it was tuned to C-F-A-D which is a tone lower. Later, in the sixteenth century the five course guitar. Although the five-course is basically a four-course with an extra string, that string (low E) becomes very important in today’s style of playing. Also it had frets, frets are the lines on the guitar that make the different notes. It was believed to be invented in Spain. Early music sheets were written in tablature, similar to today.
Is artistic expression intertwined with the inner workings of the brain more than we would ever have imagined? Author and cognitive neuroscientist Semir Zeki certainly thinks so. Zeki is a leading authority on the research surrounding the "visual brain". In his book Inner Vision, he ventures to explain to the reader how our brain actually perceives different works of art, and seeks to provide a biological basis for the theory of aesthetics. With careful attention to details and organization, he manages to explain the brain anatomy and physiology involved when viewing different works of art without sounding impossibly complicated – a definite plus for scientists and non-scientists alike who are interested in the topic of art and the brain. Throughout the book, Zeki supports his arguments by presenting various research experiments, brain image scans, and plenty of relevant artwork to clarify everything described in the text. By mostly focusing on modern masterpieces (which include Vermeer, Michelangelo, Mondrian, kinetic, abstract, and representational art), he convincingly explains how the color, motion, boundaries, and shapes of these unique works of art are each received by specific pathways and systems in the brain that are specially designed to interpret each of these particular aspects of the art, as opposed to a single pathway interpreting all of the visual input.
At an essential human level there is recognition of beauty and creation, as Plotinus believed. There is potential for subjectivity in art and personal preference, but the principles of universality and the ability to incite emotion set apart fine art. Beauty, in the traditional concept, is irrelevant to fine art. What is beautiful changes and is subjective, so the artist does not have to capture what is beautiful in the traditional sense, but rather an idea or concept that possesses merit. Art may not be beautiful but can still possess meaning, such as Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa.” Though the subject itself may not be objectively pretty, capturing the expression and mystery makes the painting itself valuable and meaningful. Beauty in fine art is not a matter of the physical image as much as the expression, message, or emotion it incites. For that reason, beauty can be frightening or sad, as well as happy and peaceful. In fine art, the artist seeks not to capture the beauty of an object or item, but the feeling that viewing this brings. This is the concept of experiencing what the artist feels and thinks, beyond the physical work