benna music- not recorded?

[Grant Barrett]

Richard Alsop's "Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage" (Oxford Univ.
Press, 1996) has it; Cassidy and LePage's "Dictionary of Jamaican
English" does not:

benna, benna song n. (phr.) (Antigua and Barbuda, Monserrat) A type
of two or three-line folk song repeated over and over; in former
times it was considered inappropriate for Sundays or for children;
there was a dance to it. Cp BANJA 3, (Barbados).

banja^2 n. (Barbados) A song or tune for dancing that evidently used
to be accompanied by the banjo. [< _banjo_ pronounced [banjuh] in
_Barbados_]


I extended a few abbreviations and made light style changes for
clarification. Although the "benna" entry cross-references a third
sense of "banja," it's actually listed separately as a second
homonym, making it the third sense of the two "benna" entries.

Grant Barrett
gbarrett at worldnewyork.org

On May 23, 2005, at 09:14, Dale Coye wrote:

> One of my students, a native of Antigua, writing on the 60s
> referred to benna
> music.  I couldn'f find it in the OED and I wondered about the
> etymology.
> She wrote: "The Caribbean music was the popular calypso earlier
> known as “benna
> music,” and many churches, established and new evangelical, branded
> the “
> benna music” bad and unwholesome."
>
> Dale Coye
> Wilton, NH
>
>