Aurelia Martín Casares

Friday, 10 May 2013, 6.00-7.30pm, Room B06, Malet Street (Entrance via Torrington Place), Birkbeck, University of London

Black and North Africans that reached Spain or its colonies as slaves suffered the destruction of their own original culture and adopted their captors’. However, attempting to maintain and defend their identity as far as possible, they created associations from which the so called Black guilds arose. Moreover, in spite of being christened and having adopted Spanish traditions and costumes, they held a particular celebratory character in civil and religious ceremonies. This was due to the fact that they were allowed to keep on practicing, especially on public holidays, African dances and songs which drew the attention of the Spanish society because of their particular rhythm, vivacity and sensual character. The Church thought these traditions pagan and immoral, and facilitated their inclusion in religious celebrations, as the Corpus, to be approved by the Christians laws.

Numerous examples of African dances and songs appear in comedies and plays of Spanish literature of Renaissance and Seventeenth century Siglo de Oro, but we have traces of their presence in subsequent periods, basically in historic sources. Black Africans settled in Spain (slaves, servants or freed) developed a number of popular dances like zapateado (shoe clapping), minuetes de guineo (Guinean minuets) and cadena de Congo (Congo chain); African dances that became particularly popular in Spain and have left traces, such as in Andalusian folklore and music, including flamenco. In this Paper we will try to enlighten the memory of this forgotten population by studying their participation in public celebrations, whereby civil or religious.

Aurelia Martín Casares is Associate Professor in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Granada. She was Principal Investigator on the project on Anthropology of Slavery: Black Africans and theirs Descendants in Spain (1492-1866) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science. Her numerous publications include La esclavitud en la Granada del siglo XVI: género, raza y religión (Editorial UGR, 2000), La esclavitud negroafricana en la historia de España (Siglos XVI y XVII) (co-edited, Comares 2010) and ‘Free and freed black Africans in Granada in the time of the Spanish Renaissance’ in Black Africans in Renaissance Europe, edited by Earle & Lowe (Oxford, 2010).