Calinda
Calinda, dance of the Negroes in America, watercolour by François Aimé Louis Dumoulin
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| Also known as | Kalinda, kalenda |
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| Focus | Stick Fighting |
| Country of origin |
 Trinidad and Tobago
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Calinda (also spelled kalinda or kalenda) is a martial art, as well as 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.
Calinda is a kind of stick-fighting commonly seen practiced during Trinidad & Tobago Carnival. French planters with their slaves, free coloreds and mulattos from neighboring islands of Grenada, Guadeloupe, Martinique and Dominica migrated to Trinidad during the Cedula of Population. Carnival had arrived with the French; slaves who could not participate formed a parallel celebration called canboulay, the precursor for Trinidad's Carnival. After Emancipation of slavery, a lead vocalist or chantwell (chantuelle) would sing call-and-response chants called lavways lionizing and cheering on champion stickfighters. There, Carnival songs are considered to be derived from calinda chants and "lavways". This form of music gradually evolved into the modern calypso.
Though it is more commonly practiced as a dance because of the violent outcome of stick-fighting, its roots are still that of a martial art originating from Kingdom of Kongo, and stick-fights still occur in Trinidad. They also have been formalised into annual Carnival competitions.
It s also practiced in other parts of the Caribbean, such as Martinique. or Guadeloupe (under various names such as l'agya, damaye and mayolé).
Kalenda is one name assigned to an Afro-Caribbean form of stick fighting as practiced in Haiti and entering the United States through the port city of New Orleans.
Similar forms of this martial art exist elsewhere in the Caribbean. For example, in Barbados it is commonly referred to as "stick-licking" or "stick science."
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