Dance from Barlovento

Una Sola Voz

A world music theatre festival brought the Venezolan music-theatre group Teatro Negro de Barlovento performed in Amsterdam this week. I visited it with friends and of course we were amazed and by the performance. The group perform Afro Caribbean dance from the region Barlovento, were one f the biggest population of African descent resides in Venezuela. Even though we are aware of the Pan African Caribbean connection which exists in most countries in the Caribbean and Americas, it is always nice to see similarities and so on. The great thing with Venezuela is the fact that it’s a neighbour country of my island Curacao. Enslaved Africans that succeed in escaping from the slavery system in Curacao, had to flew to Venezuela. That means that those young people there performing were family, our people. We talked to them about the dances and similarities. It was amazing to see them using a seashell as a instrument, something that’s also done on Bonaire and sometimes Curacao in the harvest celebration the simadan or seú.


Here a video clip of the performance on You Tube.