Do You Know Anything About:?

1) Bele (dance also know as belair)

2) Revival

3) Quadrille

4) La Marguerite %26amp; La Rose

5) Stick-fighting (also known as stick-licking)

6) Hosay (a muslim festival)

7) Landship



Please, if you have any information or know any sites i can get information on any of the above please please reply.. thank u
Do You Know Anything About:?
1. A bélé is a folk song and dance from Dominica, performed most commonly during full moon evenings, or sometimes during funeral wakes (Antillean Creole: lavèyé). It may be the oldest Creole dance from Dominica, and strongly reflects influences from African fertility dances. The term bélé refers to a kind of drum both on Dominica and Martinique.



All bélé are accompanied by an eponymous drum, the tanbou bélé, along with the tingting (triangle) and chakchak (maracas). Bélés start with a lead vocalist, who is followed by the responsorial chorus (lavwa), then a drummer and dancers. Traditional dances revolve around stylized courtship between a male and female dancer, known as the kavalyé (cavalier) and danm (dam) respectively. The bélé song-dances include the bélé soté, bélé priòrité, bélé djouba, bélé contredanse, bélé rickety and bélé pitjé.



On modern Dominica the nature isle of the Caribbean, bélé are primarily performed for holidays and other celebrations, such as Easter, Independence Day, Christmas, Jounen Kwéyòl and patron saint festivals held annually in the Parishes of Dominica, especially in the Fèt St.-Pierre and the Fèt St.-Isidore for fishermen and workers respectively.



The kavalyé and danm take turns dancing. The kavalyé first demonstrates his prowess, then the danm reacts. The kavalyé again courts with the danm, and the both dance in the wildest part of the bélé.



The name bélé may derive from the French belle aire', or the old French aire (meaning threshing platform), or it may derive from an African word.



2.



3. Quadrille is a historic dance performed by four couples in a square formation, a precursor to traditional square dancing. It is also a style of music. A derivative found in the Francophone Lesser Antilles is known in the local Creole as kwadril.



4. La Rose and La Marguerite are societies on the island of Saint Lucia. Ostensibly based around singing the virtues of the rose and marguerite flowers, the societies are intense rivals, and their membership includes most of the population of the island.



The Structure of the Societies

The Roses and the Marguerites are really floral societies into which members of the St. Lucian community divide themselves. Both groups are hierarchically structured with a king and a queen as head of the society and other dignitaries patterned upon the socio-economic structure of colonial society. There are also princes, princesses and other pseudo legal, military and professional personnel, including judges, policemen, nurses, soldiers. The element of role performance or masquerading is evident from this internal structure.



The Festivals

Preparations for the festivals begin several months before the actual feast day. August 30th for the "Roses" and October 17th for the "Marguerites". Each group holds "seances". These consist of all night singing and dancing sessions where drinks are sold and games are played.



The central figure at the "seances" is the "Shatwel" or leadsinger who sustains the spirit and tenor of the entertainment. Most groups have one outstanding "shatwel". They are usually female. On the actual day of the festival all members of the society dress in the finery of their respective roles and march to Church for a service which precedes their parade through the streets before returning to the hall for their feasting or "grande fete"



Today the flower festivals which are unique to St. Lucia assume a preeminent place in the cultural life and history of the country



5. Stick fighting is a generic term for martial arts which utilize simple long slender, blunt, hand-held, generally wooden 'sticks' for fighting such as a staff, cane, walking stick, baton or similar.



Some techniques can also be used with a sturdy umbrella or even a sword in its scabbard, but thicker and/or heavier blunt weapons such as clubs or the mace are outside the scope of 'stick fighting' (since they cannot be wielded with such precision, so sheer force of impact is more important) as are more formed weapons such as the taiaha.



Although many systems are defensive combat techniques, intended for use if attacked whilst lightly armed, others such as kendo (a Japanese discipline using a bamboo 'sword', the shinai) were developed as safe training methods for dangerous weapons. Whatever their history, many lend themselves to being treated as sports.



In addition to martial arts specifically devoted to stick fighting, certain other disciplines include it, either in its own right, as in kung fu (various variations are part of the traditional Chinese weapons), or merely as part of a polyvalent training including other weapons and/or bare hand fighting, e.g. using the Kettukari (staff), Cheruvadi or Muchan (a shorter, also straight stick) and otta (curved stick) in Kerala's Kalarippayattu tradition, where these wooden weapons serve as preliminary training before practice of the more dangerous metal weapons.





6. Hosay or Tadjah is a West Indian street festival, in which multi-colored model mausoleums are paraded, then ritually offered up to the sea, or any body of water. Some contemporary writers equate the multi-colored mausoleums with "mosques." In British Guiana, now Guyana, the festival was called Taziya or creolized into Tadjah in reference to these floats, the most visible and decorative element of this festival. In nineteeenth-century Trinidad newspapers as well as government reports called Hosay the "Coolie Carnival."[1]



The Hosay celebration is a Caribbean manifestation of the Shia Muslim Remembrance of Muharram in Trinidad and Tobago[2] and Jamaica[3] (where is it spelled Hussay). The name Hosay comes from "Husayn" (also spelled "Hussein", the grandson of Muhammad) who was assassinated by Yazid in Karbala. This marytrdom is commemorated in the festival. In Trinidad and Tobago it is primarily celebrated in Saint James, in northwestern Trinidad and in Cedros in southwestern Trinidad. Recently it has been revived elsewhere.



In the 1950s, very elaborately decorated models of mosques made of paper and tinsel called "tadjahs" were carried through the streets to the accompaniment of constant drumming. Small fires were lit in the gutters beside the streets over which the drumskins were heated to tighten the drumskins of the tassa. Mock stick fights celebrate the martyrdom of Husayn ibn Ali. The festival lasts three days ending with the throwing of the tadjahs into the sea at sunset on the third day. Although Hosay is a religious event for Shias, all of Trinidad's religious and ethnic communities participate in it, and it has become accepted as part of the national culture.



The Remembrance of Muharram was brought to the Caribbean by Shia Muslim indentured labourers and other migrant laborers from India. Hindu and Muslim Indians, who emphasized their common culture and celebration over religion, namely from the provinces of Oudh and City of Lucknow, are essential to this story. These people entered Guyana in 1838, and Trinidad after 1845, from colonial India under British auspices (see Indo-Caribbean people). The first observance of Hosay in Trinidad has been traced back to 1854, eleven years after the first indentured laborers arrived from India.



In the 1880s the British colonial authorities became increasingly concerned about public gatherings, and in 1884 issued an ordinance to prevent the public Hosay commemorations. Thousands of workers, who had spent the year building their tadjahs joined a Hindu named Sookhoo, in petitioning the government to allow the festival per their agreement with the Governor, who was visiting London during this episode. When all appeals were ignored by the Protector of Immigrants, through ignorance of the new July 1884 prohibition, defiance, or both, the tadjahs were taken onto the streets at the appointed time, and in order of the estates. The first estate that took its tadjah onto the street had earned that right over the past months, and in some towns, Hosay went ahead. In Port-of-Spain (St. James) the police did not interfere, but in Mon Repos, San Fernando, on Thursday, October 30, 1884, buckshot was fired into the crowds of women, children and men.. After shots were fired by the police to disperse the procession, 22 "Indians" were killed immediately. Later, 120 were found with injuries, some of whom had run into the cane fields, to hide during the police attack. That day is commonly referred to in Trinidad history as the Muhurram Massacre[4] by Indians and as the Hosay Riots in British and colonial records.



The North Indian city of Lucknow and the Indian State of Oudh are more important than the Middle East in understanding this Trinidad public celebration. The Caribbean East Indian festival, "Hosay" (or "Muhurram") came to the Americas from India in the early nineteenth century. It remained a pan-Indian phenomenon (meaning crossing religious, racial and lingusitic lines). Hosay reached out to also include other Trinidadians, African and Creoles. The origins of Muhurram in Persia (Iran) are important, but in Trinidad, Guyana and Jamaica, the street festival is broader than a Shi'a Muslim (or sectarian) commemoration of the lives and deaths of Islamic prophet Muhammad's grandsons, Hussein and Hasan. The pious shouting out of these names, "Hussein" and "Hasan" allowed the conflation of the Indian names with that of the festival, but provided a direct connection to these role-models for ordinary (and downtrodden) Trinidadians.



In Trinidad, Indian Muslims and Hindus, and African co-workers, joined in the street parade that was open to white spectators also. Many revelers and spectators failed to see the spiritual side of this ten-day observan
Reply:Can't really be sure but all except #6 appear to have something to do Louisiana especially of the 1600-1800s.



#1-4 are dances. #5 could refer to a little known technique of fighting using gentleman's walking sticks or canes. #7 seems to refer to inheritances.



This is only a guess.