Reveling as Resistance
On plantations and in cities, enslaved people found time and spaces to revel, with or without the permission of their owners. Bondspeople participated in religious feasts and pagan festivals associated with the Christian calendar and African traditions.
Whether celebrating a patron saint or Christmas, enslaved people created and re-created dance and musical traditions brought from Africa. Combining these practices with European and Native American dance and music styles, they passed down these traditions during the era of the Atlantic slave trade, even though some of these festivities were gradually dissociated from their initial religious dimension. Drumming, dancing, and singing were integral parts of festivities and were also present in other informal gatherings held in slave quarters, as well as streets and squares of various cities in the Americas. Knowing about the subversive potential of these meetings, slave owners and overseers carefully watched these meetings and on several occasions unsuccessfully attempted to prohibit them. But despite any attempts to repress these gatherings, as we will see in chapters 15 and 16, formal and informal Black organizations persisted during the nineteenth century and were crucial tools in the fight for emancipation.