Tambú and the Arawak Princess Diyani: The performance of history, myth, and ritual

De, Jong, N

doi:10.1163/9789004690882

Tambú and the Arawak Princess Diyani: The performance of history, myth, and ritual

Lookup NU author(s): Professor Nanette De Jong

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This is the authors' accepted manuscript of a book chapter that has been published in its final definitive form by Brill , 2023.

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Abstract

Tambú is a music and dance ritual that emerged during slavery on the Dutch island of Curaçao. Weaving together African cultural retentions and New World realities, Tambú serves as a powerful site through which to reinterpret the past to meet present—and future—needs, creating instant mythologies that rewrite who the Curaçaoans were, and are. This chapter uses the Tambú and the ritual’s deity Princess Diyani to investigate the multifaceted relationship between history and myth. As we shall see, Diyani represents not only a heroine and symbol of that complex history-myth partnership, she is also a gateway for women followers to destabilise the masculine narratives surrounding Tambú, thereby enabling opportunities to assume divine places within Curaçao’s slave and colonial history.