Gabri Christa, "ANOTHER BUILDING dancing: Making Quarantine and Savoneta"
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In all, the first two films in the series have given me a chance to create an interpretation of place and history, documenting in an artistic way these two magnificent buildings before they transition to something else. The quarantine building will be converted to a hotel, and the 17th-century plantation house, "Landhuis Savonet," will open in 2010 as "Museum Savonet: A Museum for Nature and Culture." My film Savoneta will remain on permanent exhibition in one of the rooms in the plantation house.

Glossary

Benta: A one snared instrument from Curaçao, played with the mouth and a stick.

Birimbau: A Brasilian one snared instrument with a resonating sound that comes from an attached calabash. Also played with a stick.

Chapi: Percussion instrument in Curacao music. It is a hoe.

Muzik di Zumbi: Music form of Curaçao lit: music of the spirits.

Papiamentu: Language spoken in Curaçao, Aruba, Bonaire, and Dutch St. Maarten.

Seu: Music and dance from Curaçao. Original word means harvest in Bantu.

Tambu: African-Curaçao's music and dance, also the name of a drum.

Works Cited

Christa, Gabri. "Tambu: Afro Curaçao's Music and Dance of Resistance" in Caribbean Dance from Abekua to Zouk, Susanna Sloat ed. University of Florida Press, 2002.

Martinus, Frank Efraim. The Kiss of a Slave: Papiamentu's West-African Connections. Willemstad: Drukkerij De Curaçaose Courant, 1997.

Kristensen, Ingvar. Plantage Savonet. Verleden en Toekomst. Willemstad: STINAPA no.35, 1993.

Oostindie, Gert. Paradise Overseas: The Dutch Caribbean: Colonialism and its Transatlantic Legacies. Oxford: Warwick University Caribbean Studies, 2005.

Endnotes

1. Translates as hanging rope or whip. [Return to text]

2. Papiamentu is an Afro-Portuguese Creole with many links to West-African languages, such as Guene and the language spoken in Cape Verdia. Curaçao writer and scholar Frank Martinus Arion traced the language back to its African connections in The Kiss of a Slave: Papiamentu's West-African Connections. Martinus found that the name Papiamentu itself could be derived from different origins in Saramaccan, a group of maroons from Suriname. There, papia-papia means small talk. In Portuguese papear means to chatter. (Martinus 1997, 6). [Return to text]

3. Suriname was the only Dutch colony with a traditional plantation system. [Return to text]

4. A syncretic African diaspora religion from Suriname. [Return to text]

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