Martinican culture was born from a tragic and fertile mixture: French colonisation from 1635, slavery of Africans forcibly deported to work on sugar cane plantations (definitively abolished in 1848), arrival of Indian, Chinese and Levantine indentured workers after abolition, and progressive rooting of an original Creole society that developed its own language, music and mythologies. This Creoleness — theorised by Martinican writers Patrick Chamoiseau, Raphaël Confiant and Jean Bernabé in their manifesto In Praise of Creoleness (1989) — is the deep soul of the island.
The Martinican Creole language, derived from 17th-century French enriched with African, Carib and Indian words, is still widely spoken in daily life, in markets, in fishing villages and within families. French remains the official, administrative and school language, but Creole is the identity cement. Artists like Aimé Césaire (poet, playwright, politician, theorist of négritude, former mayor of Fort-de-France for 56 years), Frantz Fanon (psychiatrist and thinker of decolonisation), Édouard Glissant (poet and theorist of creolisation) carried the Martinican voice to the rank of major French-speaking intellectual voices of the 20th century.
Martinican music is one of the pillars of Creole identity. The biguine, born at the end of the 19th century in Saint-Pierre, was the first Caribbean music to conquer Paris in the 1930s. The zouk, created in 1979 by the group Kassav' (Martinican-Guadeloupean group), propelled the French Antilles onto the world stage and remains today one of the most popular musics in the French-speaking world. The bèlè, traditional music and dance of African origin, accompanied by the bèlè drum, is today in full revival in northern villages.
The yoles rondes constitute a singular living tradition. These sailing boats, derived from 19th-century fishermen's canoes, are propelled by wind power and stabilised by a crew of young men who move on long horizontal 'standing woods'. The Tour des Yoles Rondes de la Martinique, annual eight-day race around the island (mid-July to late August depending on years), is the most popular sporting and cultural event of the island.
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- South Martinique: beaches and seaside resort — Les Salines, Le Diamant, Trois-Îlets: the tourist south with emblematic white sand beaches.
- Central Martinique: Fort-de-France and Caravelle — The economic capital, the covered market, and the wild Caravelle peninsula classified as a Nature Reserve.
- North Martinique: Saint-Pierre and Mount Pelée — The former capital destroyed in 1902, the volcano hike and the wild north Caribbean coast.
- Sainte-Anne: Salines and Anse Trabaud — The southernmost tip of the island and its world-famous beaches of Les Salines and Anse Trabaud.
- Saint-Pierre: the former capital — The ruins of 1902, the Frank Perret Museum and the hike to the summit of Mount Pelée.