La tumba francesa à Cuba : quelques lumières sur les caractéristiques linguistiques du créole de Saint-Domingue à l’époque de la Révolution

The tumba francesa is a Cuban musical tradition performed in Haitian Creole and Spanish. It originated from the immigration of settlers and enslaved people from Saint-Domingue, who sought refuge in the eastern region of the island of Cuba after the revolt of 1791 and the subsequent events. Based on a corpus of 30 songs published by Unesco (2008), on the occasion of the tumba francesa being recognized as a world heritage site, our objective is to identify the sociocultural, geographical and, most importantly, historical landmarks in which the linguistic repertoire of this tradition is embedded. For this purpose, we will draw on the notion of indexicality, as outlined by Silverstein 2003 and Spitzmüller 2016. When interpreted in terms of their connections to other manifestations of Creole that emerged due to the mobility of Creole speakers during the Haitian Revolution (in today’s Louisiana and the Dominican Republic), the linguistic features of this repertoire provide new insights into the evolution of Creole during that period.