The Cultures Of The Caribbean Have A Very Visible Identity On The World Stage. How Has This Affected The Notion Of A Caribbean Identity In The Region.

The cultures of the Caribbean have a very visible identity on the world stage. How has this affected the notion of a Caribbean identity in the region.

The Caribbean is a multicultural region with each country and its people sharing a culture that has evolved through a creolization of its historical past. Our predecessors came from all parts of the "Old World" with their way of life, traditions, and way of thinking and a social legacy. Yet that culture has been transformed and adapted to a phenomenon that is neither of the "oppressed" or the "oppressor" but has produced a cultural distinctiveness. From one Diaspora to another, Caribbean nationals have been our ambassadors in the world stage as they display their cultural identity. Be it music or cuisine, the Caribbean people have placed among other things, aspects of its material culture in the international arena. I believe therefore that while each island may be separated geographically, as a group the commonalties of our past and present experiences have helped forged a Caribbean identity in the region.

Among the different psychoanalytical theories that deals with identity is one which recognises the relationship with the individual to the group that he or she belongs to. Volkan ( 2004, cited in Russell, 2006) posits that among the seven main threads of group identity is one that deals with shared identification. At the heart of this theory, individuals often base their identity on the group that he or she belongs to. It is one that therefore explains why someone might say, "I am Caribbean." While we all may belong to different Caribbean islands, it is the common experience of the past and the present which we share that gives us our identity. Furthermore the research states that our identification with a group may be to such an extent that people often akin themselves to belonging to a group first and having an individual identity second (Forsyth, 2010). More so when something remarkable happens as a group, the self shifts from the "me" to the "we".

As identified earlier, music has and will always one way of identifying and contributing to the Caribbean identity. For the purpose of this discussion, I will focus on the Calypso which is a musical genre of the Caribbean. First of all the Calypso is a genre that has been popularized throughout the islands such as Trinidad, Barbados and Jamaica. Legendary stalwarts in the field such as Byron Lee and the Dragonaires (Jamaican) have been successfully popularising Calypso throughout the region. In itself the calypso music has undergone so much of transformation from expressing the need of one group to becoming accepted and more "ethnically and nationally representative". Therefore it is correct to say that the Calypso has become a reflection and representation of our cosmopolitan people. Today, the genre includes chutney-calypso (Indian music and calypso mixed together) and calypso-parang (a Spanish creole music). Additionally the music has been integrated into other Caribbean cultures to become soca-dub, ragga-soca and even have blends of Zouk (French Caribbean music) (Rohlehr, n.d). All in all, calypso has been one of the means by which the notion of a Caribbean identity