Cover not available

Article In: English Text Construction: Online-First Articles

Black experience, bajan, and musico-literary intermediality in Austin Clarke’s They never told me

And other stories

 | Vrije Universiteit Brussel
 | Vrije Universiteit Brussel
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
Abstract
This paper explores the use of Bajan, a spoken language of Barbados, and musico-literary intermediality in the depiction of black diasporic experiences in Austin Clarke’s short story collection They Never Told Me: And Other Stories, arguing that these strategies infuse English with localised, embodied and affective dimensions. Relying on Edward Kamau Brathwaite’s work on West Indian aesthetics and on Werner Wolf’s theorisation of musical intermediality, the paper demonstrates how Clarke uses Bajan to resist colonial ideas of a bounded Standard language. In addition, it shows how Clarke questions the privileged position of English and the English canon through intertextual appropriation. It further investigates how references to African diasporic music genres such as calypso, folk song and tap music in the stories gesture towards black characters’ shared cultural memory as well as intergenerational and cross-ethnic understanding. Together, these strategies point to the emergence of de-centred and layered forms of expression through which Anglophone black Canadian literature contributes to configuring English as a plural, relational language of encounter.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Embodied and affective dimensions of Clarke’s use of Bajan in They Never Told Me
    • 2.1Orality and onomatopoeia in “Galaxie” and “For All I Care”
    • 2.2Intertextual appropriation in “On the Midnight Train”
  • 3.Musico-literary intermediality and Bajan
    • 3.1Musico-literary allusions to a shared past of black experience
    • 3.2Musico-literary evocations of a collective black consciousness in the present
    • 3.3The connection between musico-literary references and Bajan
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Author queries
  • References
References (37)
References
Algoo-Baksh, Stella. 2004. Austin C. Clarke’s short fiction. Journal of West Indian Literature 12 (1/2). 90–103.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Allsopp, Richard. 2003. Caribbean English. In Jeannette Allsopp & Richard Allsopp (eds.), Dictionary of Caribbean English usage, xxxix–lvii. Kingston: U of the West Indies P. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths & Helen Tiffin. 2002. The empire writes back: Theory and practice in post-colonial literatures, 2nd edn. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Austerlitz, Paul. 2026. Caribbean and Latin connections in jazz. In Portia K. Maultsby (ed.), Timeline of African American Music, Carnegie Hall, [URL]. Accessed 12 Feb 2026.
“Austin Clarke fonds”. McMaster University Libraries. [URL]. Accessed 24 April 2026.
Barrett, Paul. 2015a. Blackening Canada: Diaspora, race, multiculturalism. Toronto: U of Toronto P. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2015b. “Our words spoken among us, in fragments”: Austin Clarke’s aesthetics of crossing. Journal of West Indian Literature 23(1–2). 89–105.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2021. Austin Clarke’s digital crossings. In Kelly Baker Josephs & Roopika Risam (eds.), The digital Black Atlantic, 84–94. Minneapolis, MN: U of Minnesota P. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blake, Renée. 2008. Bajan: Phonology. In Bernd Kortmann & Edgar W. Schneider (eds.), Varieties of English 2: The Americas and the Caribbean, 312–319. Berlin: Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brathwaite, Kamau. 1993. Roots, 1st edn. Ann Arbor, MI: U of Michigan P.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Garvey, Marcus. 1838. Marcus Garvey speaking in Menelik Hall, Sydney, Nova Scotia. The Black Man III (10). 7–11.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cassidy, Frederic G. 1986. Barbadian Creole: Possibility and probability. American Speech 61 (3). 195–205. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clarke, Austin. 2013. They never told me: And other stories. Holstein, ON: Exile Editions.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goldman, Vivien. 2018. Mighty Sparrow: The king of calypso on freedom, Windrush and oral sex. The Guardian, 16 Nov, [URL]. Accessed 15 Mar 2025.
Goodby, John. 2017a. Discovering Dylan Thomas: A companion to the collected poems and notebook poems, kindle edn. Cardiff: U of Wales P. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2017b. The poems of Dylan Thomas. New York, NY: New Directions.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lerer, Seth. 2015. Inventing English: A portable history of the language, revised and expanded edn. New York, NY: Columbia UP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Marley, Bob. 1980. Redemption song. Genius, [URL]. Accessed 14 Feb 2026.
McArthur, Tom. 1998. The English languages. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McCarthy, Cormac. 1994. The crossing. New York, NY: Knopf.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Neumann, Birgit. 2015. Intermedial negotiations: Postcolonial literatures. In Gabriele Rippl (ed.), 512–529.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2026. Post-monolingual Anglophone novels: Writing beyond English. New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. 1993. Moving the centre: The struggle for cultural freedoms. London: James Currey.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Patterson, Jeremy. 2019. Edouard Glissant’s and Edward Brathwaite’s appropriations of colonial languages. Postcolonial Interventions: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Postcolonial Studies IV (1). 111–137.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pennycook, Alastair. 2007. Global Englishes and transcultural flows. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Philip, Marlene Nourbese. 1994. She tries her tongue, her silence softly breaks. In Carol Morrell (ed.), Grammar of dissent: Poetry and prose, 103–104. Fredericton, NB: Goose Lane.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Prestholdt, Jeremy. 2019. Icons of dissent: The global resonance of Che, Marley, Tupac, and Bin Laden. New York, NY: Oxford UP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rippl, Gabriele (ed.). 2015. Handbook of intermediality: Literature — image — sound — music. Berlin: De Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rohlehr, Gordon. 2005. Carnival cannibalized or cannibal carnivalized: Contextualizing the “Cannibal Joke” in calypso and literature. Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal 3 (2). 1–33. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sparrow, Mighty. 1965. Congo man. Genius, [URL]. Accessed 14 Feb 2026.
Stewart, Charles. 2007. Creolization: History, ethnography, theory. In Charles Stewart (ed.), Creolization: History, ethnography, theory, 1–25. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tattrie, Jon. 2016. Redemption songs: How Bob Marley’s Nova Scotia song lights the way past racism. Lawrencetown Beach, NS: Pottersfield P.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2017. The African Nova Scotian roots of Bob Marley’s “Redemption song”. The Canadian Encyclopedia, Historica Canada, 3 Feb, [URL]. Accessed 25 Oct 2025.
Walcott, Rinaldo. 2018. Black like who? Writing Black Canada, 20th anniversary edn. London: Insomniac P.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Washburne, Christopher. 1997. The clave of jazz: A Caribbean contribution to the rhythmic foundation of an African-American music. Black Music Research Journal 17 (1). 59–80. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wolf, Werner. 1999. The musicalization of fiction: A study in the theory and history of intermediality. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2015. Literature and music: Theory. In Gabriele Rippl (ed.), 459–474.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue