Calinda

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Calinda is also an alternate spelling of Calynda, an ancient city in Asia Minor.

Calinda (Kalinda) is a kind of folk music and dance in the Caribbean which arose in the 1720s. Calinda is the French spelling, and the Spanish equivalent is calenda; it is a kind of stick-fighting dance tradition practiced during Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago.

Calinda is most closely associated with the music of the Lesser Antilles, but has spread elsewhere, perhaps most influentially to the music of Louisiana through Congo Square in New Orleans; calinda is also said to be part of the origin of rumba, a kind of Cuban music and dance. The calinda dance was energetic and lascivious, and was sometimes meant to satirize high society.

The well-known Cajun song "Allons dancer Colinda" — about a Cajun boy asking a girl named Colinda to do a risqué dance with him — probably derived from the Calinda dance, which was reported to have been performed in New Orleans by Afro-Caribbean slaves brought to Louisiana.^[1]

[edit] Sources

Footnotes

[edit] External links

• Streetswing