A NIGHT IN WINTI WAI: YOUNG MAROON DANCE BANDS, LIVE & DIRECT IN THE SURINAMESE CAPITAL (PARAMARIBO, SURINAME - NOVEMBER 3-4, 1995)

The 1990s were a special time for music in Suriname. The country had just come out of a punishing civil war pitting insurgent Maroon forces from the interior rainforest against the national army.  Unprecedented numbers of young Maroons of various ethnicities (Okanisi, Saamaka, Aluku, Pamaka) were pouring into the capital of Paramaribo in search of economic relief and excitement.  Their African ancestors had escaped from coastal slave plantations more than two centuries before, creating free societies and cultures of their own deep in the forest.  Now, in Paramaribo’s growing urban periphery, they were fashioning a new youth-oriented musical tradition blending old ancestral musics with kaseko, the contemporary Surinamese national popular style, together with influences from Jamaican reggae and dancehall, other Caribbean popular music, and African “loketo” (soukous). Suddenly, Suriname’s local popular music industry was dominated by these urban Maroon youths (mostly in their late teens or early twenties).  The new styles they originated, like aleke-kaseko and ragga-kaseko, quickly took over the city and the rest of the country.  On the scene investigating this musical explosion in 1995, ethnomusicologist Kenneth Bilby decided to document a single night of music making by young Maroons out on the town.  It began around dusk with a visit to radio station SRS for a broadcast of a Maroon-oriented program known as Koyeba (named after a cassette label, Koyeba Sound) and continued through the night at a crowded dance hall in an urban neighborhood known to Maroons as Winti Wai (“wind blows”), with side trips to adjacent musical events, such as a wake (with drum-based aleke music) for a recently deceased woman.  Highlighting the night were performances by leading Okanisi and Saamaka dance bands of the moment, including Kriss Kross Deki Strepi, Aphiong Boys, and Big City Maraniau, as well as a well-known aleke band, Clemencia, all captured here. An unforgettable night!