Introduction: Creolization and Folklore--Cultural Creativity in Process

CREOLIZATION IS CULTURAL CREATIVITY in process. When cultures come into contact, expressive forms and performances emerge from their encounter, embodying the sources that shape them, yet constituting new and different entities. Fluid in their adaptation to changing circumstances and open to multiple meanings, creole forms are expressions of culture in transition and transformation. Traditionally associated with the new New World cultures of Caribbean and Latin American creole societies, creolization is now increasingly viewed as a universal process that could occur anywhere cultures encounter one another.