ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the musical past or perceptions of the traditional with Marie-Galantais, the name of a particular Marie-Galantais man, Lin Kanfrin, often comes up. Lin Kanfrin is aware of the large number of indentured servants brought by Europeans from India to the West Indies. His perception that there is a historical link between mayoleur and India suggests that his mayoleur practice forms a conceptual connection to even more vary past experiences of European forced servitude throughout the world. Lin Kanfrin stages for festival audiences a history that suits his own possibly erratic memory. Rastafarian beliefs and practices outside of Jamaica tend to be more collectively pervasive in the Caribbean on anglophone islands than on francophone ones. Rastafarianism facilitates an inherent link to a more natural, organic Marie-Galantais past, embodied for example in refusals by Marie-Galantais to use pesticides, processed feeds, and industrial modes of production.
