The bélé is a folk dance, drum and music from Dominica, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Martinique, Saint Lucia, and Trinidad and Tobago. == As a dance == The bélé dance formed from a combination of traditional African dance styles and Caribbean influences due to the changed landscape, musical instruments, and tumultuous lifestyle. It may be the oldest Creole dance of the creole French West Indian Islands, and it strongly reflects influences from African fertility dances. It is performed most commonly during full moon evenings, or sometimes during funeral wakes (Antillean Creole: lavèyé). In Tobag
The bélé is a folk dance, drum and music from Dominica, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Martinique, Saint Lucia, and Trinidad and Tobago. == As a dance == The bélé dance formed from a combination of traditional African dance styles and Caribbean influences due to the changed landscape, musical instruments, and tumultuous lifestyle. It may be the oldest Creole dance of the creole French West Indian Islands, and it strongly reflects influences from African fertility dances. It is performed most commonly during full moon evenings, or sometimes during funeral wakes (Antillean Creole: lavèyé). In Tobago, it is thought to have been performed by women of the planter class at social events in the planters' great houses, and the dress and dance style copied by the enslaved people who worked in or around these houses == As a drum == The term bélé also refers to a kind of drum used in some forms of music of Caribbean countries and islands like Dominica, Haiti, Martinique and Saint Lucia.
==Etymology== The word bélé may derive from French belle aire, meaning "good air", or from French aire, meaning "threshing platform", or it may further derive from a West African language word.
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