Music in the Caribbean of the 18th and early 19th centuries - a postcolonial study

In the Caribbean of the 18th and early 19th centuries, music could be heard in many contexts: at dances, in church, in private rooms, on plantations, in the theatre, in taverns or even on ships. Listening to and playing music, dancing to and writing about music took place against the backdrop of the political developments of the time and was characterised by the colonial mindset that developed in the 18th century. Who was allowed to participate in which musical practices, for example, was subject to a strict racist order. The habilitation project aims to analyse musical life in this complex, politically charged space: What did the everyday musical world of the Caribbean sound like? Who was involved in which musical practices? How was music adapted and received depending on (political) contexts and spaces? Travelogues, journals, administrative files, letters, libretti and the like are used in the analysis, whereby an important claim of the project is a critical methodological examination of this almost exclusively colonial source material.