In Chocolate Surrealism, Njoroge M. Njoroge highlights connections
among the production, performance, and reception of popular music at
critical historical junctures in the late nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. The author sifts different origins and styles to place
socio-musical movements into a larger historical framework.
Calypso reigned during the turbulent interwar period and the ensuing
crises of capitalism. The Cuban rumba/son complex enlivened the postwar
era of American empire. Jazz exploded in the Bandung period and the rise
of decolonization. And, lastly, Nuyorican Salsa coincided with the
period of the civil rights movement and the beginnings of black/brown
power. Njoroge illuminates musics of the circum-Caribbean as culturally
and conceptually integrated within the larger history of the region. He
pays close attention to the fractures, fragmentations, and historical
particularities that both unite and divide the region's sounds. At the
same time, he engages with a larger discussion of the Atlantic world.
Njoroge examines the deep interrelations between music, movement,
memory, and history in the African diaspora. He finds the music both a
theoretical anchor and a mode of expression and representation of black
identities and political cultures. Music and performance offer ways for
the author to re-theorize the intersections of race, nationalism and
musical practice, and geopolitical connections. Further music allows
Njoroge a reassessment of the development of the modern world system in
the context of local, popular responses to the global age. The book
analyzes different styles, times, and politics to render a brief history
of Black Atlantic sound.
