There Is No One Culture but Many Culture

There Is No One Culture but Many Culture

“There is no one Caribbean culture but many culture”

I strongly concur with the statement, “there is no one Caribbean culture but many culture.” Caribbean culture, put simply, is as a mixture i.e. “a boiling pot". Culture is widely regarded as the way of living, a shared belief, learned values and attitude that shape our influences of perception and form of behaviour. Most often, culture will manifest in terms of language, religion and music. This essay will focus on cultural influences and the different languages, religion, food and music originating in the Caribbean.

While conducting the research, it was noted that there were no diverse or distinct cultures found anywhere in the world as there are in the Caribbean, all of which were merged from the original Ciboney, Tainos, Caribs and Europeans who settled in these islands way back to the early century. For this reason, each island has its unique cultural identity influenced by the European colonialist, African heritage of slavery and inheritance of the native Indian tribes. The distinctive languages, religions or beliefs, history, music and dance in these individual islands answer part of my agreement to the statement above.

Nevertheless, what influences culture? Initially, language, music and religion must be taught in order for them to be meaningful to individuals, therefore depicting that culture is learned. People who live together, develop symbols that must be learnt because they represent something meaningful to them. For example, if a mother teaches her child that is important to worship God (Selassie), the child will grow up with this belief. No individual is born with a sense of his/her culture. Every family, in each Caribbean Island has their own way of teaching which creates different cultural backgrounds that prove why culture should not be viewed as one. For instance, not because the twin island states of St. Kitts and Nevis have similar cultural practices of African origin makes it...

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