Richard Price 
West African ketite cloth became popu- 
lar only during the present century, as a 
replacement for a very different textile 
art of embroidered designs that earlier 
Maroons executed in red, white, and ei- 
ther black or navy. Paints, introduced 
in a few conservative colors less than 
100 years ago, have since come to play a 
central role in the arts of the eastern 
Maroons. And calabashes, which until 
the mid-nineteenth century were deco- 
rated only on the outside surfaces by 
men, began to be carved on the insides 
by women in an entirely new decorative 
style executed with bits of broken glass. 
In light of this history of develop- 
ment and change, one of the main puz- 
zles in the study of Maroon art is how 
to explain visible resemblances between 
the arts of the Maroons and those of 
West and Central Africa. Given the sty- 
listic developments that have repeated- 
ly led Maroon arts in new directions, 
how has the cultural legacy of Africa 
been expressed over the centuries? The 
answer lies more in the continuity of 
aesthetic ideas than in the direct trans- 
mission of African forms from one gen- 
eration to the next. The present-day 
Maroons are the descendants of people 
who were separated from family and 
friends, stripped of personal posses- 
sions, overworked, and tortured. The 
first Maroons were challenged to form 
new ways of life in an unfamiliar envi- 
ronment and in cooperation with other 
Africans who spoke languages different 
from their own. The survival of their 
communities is, in itself, evidence of 
their remarkable inner resources. And 
the rich traditions of music, dance, 
folklore, and the visual arts that have 
Enjoying a snack of oranges, two 
Saramaka boys turn the peels into 
fanciful face masks. Children are 
drawn into the world of artistic 
production, performance, and 
connoisseurship at an early age. 
evolved in their lives reflect the special 
strength of their aesthetic and spiritual 
sensitivities and interests. The Maroons 
were not in a position to continue such 
African traditions as sculpture, carving 
in ivory, and weaving. But they did suc- 
ceed in carrying on many of the funda- 
mental ideas that had contributed to 
the character and meaning of those arts 
in Africa — ideas about symmetry, col- 
or contrast, and syncopation, and 
above all, the understanding that art 
has a place in all aspects of daily life. 
Even under the harshly repressive 
conditions of slavery in Suriname and 
during the century-long period of guer- 
rilla warfare against the Dutch colo- 
nists, these people still made use of 
opportunities for storytelling, dancing, 
drumming, and singing. They made 
choices about the way they walked, car- 
ried their babies, and wore their hair. 
They expressed preferences in the ar- 
rangement of their house furnishings, 
the mending of their clothes, the serv- 
ing of their meals, the layout of their 
gardens, and countless other aspects of 
daily life that did not require the spe- 
cific resources of more formally elabo- 
rated artistic media. In this way, 
aesthetic ideas were passed on and ap- 
plied inventively to the changing artis- 
tic materials of each generation. Forged 
in an inhospitable rain forest by people 
under constant threat of annihilation, 
the arts of the Suriname Maroons stand 
as enduring testimony to Afro-Ameri- 
can resilience and creativity. They re- 
flect the remarkable exuberance of the 
Maroon artistic imagination, express- 
ing itself within the rich and broad 
framework of African cultural ideas. □ 
Carved between 1915 and 1920, 
this Saramaka stool was 
embellished with brass tacks, 
a popular ornamentation at the 
time. Woodcarving, the most 
widely acclaimed Maroon art, is 
practiced by all the men. 
62 
Antonia Graeber 
