This essay delves into the interconnections between Anglophone postcolonial fiction and music, seen as a formal principle and motif as well as a driving cultural force. In particular, it examines Olive Senior’s “Dancing Lessons” (2011) through the lens of iconic analogies and from the standpoint of an ethnic and personal identity-construction process. In this Jamaican writer’s debut novel, 20th- and 21st-century music (with jazz in the front line) constitutes a sort of soundtrack accompanying the human and epistemic growth of Gertrude Richards Samphire. An elderly, brown-skinned Caribbean woman, Gertrude manages to interweave her recollections of a traumatic past with the events and relationships established in the present, in a fluid palimpsest where life’s hard lessons are positively assimilated to the vital rhythm and sensual flow of a dance, finally allowing her to experience a sense of belonging. My paper focuses on the ways the energizing force of music, especially ethnically-connoted jazz songs and performance, can inspire exploited or displaced subjects throughout their emancipation process, helping them to build more authentic modes of expression and of synergistic communication beyond the bulwarks of race, gender and generation gaps.
Il contributo indaga il rapporto tra la narrativa postcoloniale anglofona e la musica in quanto principio formale, tema ed elemento di dinamismo culturale. In particolare, analizza “Dancing Lessons” (2011) di Olive Senior sia dal punto di vista delle analogie iconiche, sia alla luce di un processo individuale ed etnico di costruzione identitaria. Nel romanzo d’esordio di quest’autrice giamaicana, la musica contemporanea (il jazz in primis) costituisce una sorta di accompagnamento al percorso di crescita umana ed epistemica di Gertrude Richards Samphire, la protagonista. Un’anziana donna di colore caraibica, Gertrude riuscirà gradualmente a innestare una serie di ricordi traumatici nella trama degli eventi e delle relazioni che informano il suo presente. Di conseguenza, nel testo si profila un palinsesto fluido dove anche le esperienze esistenziali più amare finiscono per confluire in un percorso animato dal ritmo vitale e sensuoso di una danza in cui si consolida il senso dell’appartenenza. Nel saggio ricostruisco l’iter attraverso il quale la forza dirompente della musica, specialmente un jazz etnicamente connotato, può guidare il soggetto sfruttato o emarginato verso l’emancipazione e modi di espressione autentica, oltre i confini generazionali, di razza e genere.
Olive Senior’s "Dancing Lessons": On the Rhythm and Flow of Life
Laura Giovannelli
2018-01-01
Abstract
This essay delves into the interconnections between Anglophone postcolonial fiction and music, seen as a formal principle and motif as well as a driving cultural force. In particular, it examines Olive Senior’s “Dancing Lessons” (2011) through the lens of iconic analogies and from the standpoint of an ethnic and personal identity-construction process. In this Jamaican writer’s debut novel, 20th- and 21st-century music (with jazz in the front line) constitutes a sort of soundtrack accompanying the human and epistemic growth of Gertrude Richards Samphire. An elderly, brown-skinned Caribbean woman, Gertrude manages to interweave her recollections of a traumatic past with the events and relationships established in the present, in a fluid palimpsest where life’s hard lessons are positively assimilated to the vital rhythm and sensual flow of a dance, finally allowing her to experience a sense of belonging. My paper focuses on the ways the energizing force of music, especially ethnically-connoted jazz songs and performance, can inspire exploited or displaced subjects throughout their emancipation process, helping them to build more authentic modes of expression and of synergistic communication beyond the bulwarks of race, gender and generation gaps.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
