Simple stool
Maroon communities created by escaped slaves have been a widespread association of plantation life in the Americas for more than four centuries. Although formed under broadly similar historical and ecological conditions, these societies display significant variations in everything, from language, diet, and dress patterns of marriage to residence and migratory wage labour.
With the kind compliments of the Museum of African Heritage, Guyana Times International Sunday Magazine features various aspects of this culture.
Calabash decorations
Wood carvings are of cultural and aesthetic importance to Maroons. It also involves ornamentation and calabash carvings. Maroon textile arts are almost completely unknown among outsiders.
Combs
Due to the frequency and ease with which they are sold to outsiders, these combs are considered to be among the best known forms of Maroon wood carving. They primarily serve as gifts for lovers or wives. Some combs, especially when made for a girl by her first husband, are embellished with multi-coloured yarn woven through the upper portion of the ties and ending in a fluffy tassel.
Djuka stools
Along with hammocks, stools constitute the most essential furniture of maroon houses. They are usually used at counsel meetings, oracle secessions and ancestral rites, just to name a few. Older signatures of the use of stools surround the fact that ancestors originally owned them as a symbol of their official position, such as head man, priest and so on.
There are basically five main types of Maroon stools: One-piece squat stool, which is the simplest, and is usually undecorated. (The Saramaka tribe claimed that this type of stool was copied by the original runaway slaves from a common Amerindian stool form: a one-piece usually carved in a crescent- shaped form.) The composite stools have thick, round, concave seats. Those which are carved with rectangular tops can either have a flat or curved seat. The folding stools are made from interlocked pieces and have developed from simpler, two-plank models to elaborations of western reclining chairs made for sale to outsiders.
Serving Trays
Round trays are used mainly for winnowing rice, but also as carrying trays and for presentation of ritual food offerings to their ancestors. Rectangular trays, less common than round trays, are used to carry food for men’s meals. Trays in general, however, have served as a popular form for some of the most elaborate artistry produced by Maroon men for their wives. These are highly prized by the women who own them, and serve as crucial ritual props in presenting food offerings to their ancestors.
Canoes
Canoes, painstakingly dug out and then “opened” by fire, represent one of the most striking triumphs of Maroons art and technology. Canoes are decoratively carved at both ends and often on the plank seats as well; eastern Maroons embellish their canoes with colourfully painted designs, and Saramakas have recently begun painting the gunwale of some canoes with a single colour.
Paddle
Paddle size, shape, and decoration vary greatly according to ownership, function and region. Paddles used for large canoes were traditionally very broad, but these have become rare in the last several decades due to widespread use of outboard motors on large canoes.
- Women’s paddle
Women’s paddles are often half the length of those of men, and are more elaborately decorated. The difference in size is related to the notion about proper paddling techniques. Men are supposed to paddle with long, low, smooth strokes, while women’s strokes should be short and brisk. Among the eastern Maroons, paddles are often lavishly embellished with carving and colourfully painted designs on both blade and handle.
Drums
- Drum
Comments are closed.