Anguilla tourist office

In 1962 the British West Indies were on the verge of independence. With funding from the Rockefeller Foundation and sponsorship from the University of the West Indies in Jamaica, Alan Lomax arranged to record the music of the Lesser Antilles, the chain of islands that form the south-eastern edge of the Caribbean in order to document the musical and cultural commonalities that would support the Trinidadian and Jamaican plan for post-colonial Caribbean unity, which they hoped to realize through a West Indian Federation.

During his Caribbean fieldwork, Alan Lomax took photos and color slides to accompany his audio recordings. They focus on music and dance traditions of the Eastern Caribbean and Lesser Antilles: Martinique, Trinidad, Grenada, Dominica, Carriacou, Guadaloupe, Nevis, St. Barts, St. Kitts, St. Lucia and Anguilla. The collection includes images of schoolchildren singing and dancing at their games; stick fighting sequences and tug-of-war matches accompanied by drummers; chante-fable, or story-song performances; the Big Drum Dance of Carriacou; boat-pulling and sawing songs; Shango ceremonies; and the Shouter Baptist and East Indian communities of Trinidad.