“Bàtá drums in Atlantic perspective”

 

Bàtá ensemble in Ọ̀yọ́, Ọ̀yọ́ State, Nigeria, 2017. (I. Miller photo)

In the West African city-state of Ọ̀yọ́-Ilé, bi-membraned bàtá drums emerged as the supreme instrument for both the Òrìṣà Ṣàngó, deity of thunder and justice, and the Egúngún ‘ancestor’ masquerades.

With the collapse of Old-Ọ̀yọ́ in the 1830s, its dispersed refugees regrouped in New Ọ̀yọ́ (in present day Ọ̀yọ́ State), in Ibadan, Lagos, and other towns (Babayemi 1980). These images document a bàtá ensemble accompanying Egúngún performance during an important event in Ọ̀yọ́. Linguists have studied the phenomenon of ‘speech reproduction’ through instruments in West Africa and the bàtá have been a leading example, because during public performance proverbs are articulated through tonal drum patterns (Manfredi 2009; González & Oludare 2022). An example was performed by Làmídì Àyánkúnlé with his sons in the town of Èrìn-Òsun in present-day Òsun State, Nigeria in 2004.

 

Bàtás played for Egúngún, with Ayankunle Ayanlade on ìyá ìlù (‘mother 

drum’). Ọ̀yọ́, Ọ̀yọ́ State, Nigeria, 2017. (I. Miller photo)

Dispersed Old-Ọ̀yọ́ refugees also arrived in Cuba in the early 1800s as part of the forced migration of thousands of Yorùbá-speaking culture bearers. This report considers how the practice of bàtá playing was adapted to the Americas, specifically in the regions of Matanzas and Havana, Cuba, where bàtás were recreated in the decade of 1830s, according to oral tradition within the bàtá guild, as documented by sociologist Fernando Ortiz (1954 v4, 316).

How did bàtá drumming develop in Cuba? Any listener who compares a minute each of West African and Cuban bàtá cannot fail to identify the difference in sound: the thunderclaps of the Nigerian performance versus the more melodic playing of the Cubans. Bàtá practice was adapted in Cuba within an underground society of Africans and descendants who gradually assembled all their regional deities into a pantheon that coexisted in a shared space; in urban areas this was typically a canastillero (‘china curio cabinet’) from the colonial period. Culture bearer Nicolas Angarica referred to this phenomenon as the “Confederation of all the Saints”, meaning a Lucumí ritual system that included all the Orishas (Angarica 1955, 22). A nationalist interpretation of this process holds that during the Cuban colony, public aspects of ‘pure’ African heritage were coded or ‘masked’ within the folk Catholic system of Saints, to keep authorities ignorant of the African deities being served surreptitiously, as evidenced in this altar documented in a police report.

 

Bàtá drums and shekeré on Catholic style altar in Havana (Roche 1925).

But a scientific and historically informed narrative observes contact between Islam and Ọ̀yọ́ in the 1400s, if not earlier, making the Lucumi Yorùbá captives already syncretic, and therefore partly pre-adapted to life in the Catholic colony, where selective subsets of the ancestral African culture were either suppressed (those least compatible with colonial Catholic patriarchy) or amplified (those most compatible). The best example of this adaptation being the creation of Olodumare as the skygod compatible with monotheism (Verger 1966; Olúpọ̀nà 2016).

 

No musicological study has yet defined the differences between bàtá performance in Africa and Cuba in observational terms (tempo, pitch, sonic density and so on), making it difficult to articulate why Cuban bàtá performance developed in the ways that it did. Undoubtedly the loss of Yorùbá speaking knowledge is a part of the Cuban development, but merely identifying the absence or loss of language is an incomplete answer because when that was subtracted something else was added. This report offers a summary of some of the stages in the Cuban development, which will be discussed in detail in Miller’s forthcoming monograph, tentatively titled: “Bàtá drums and the Cuban Lukumí Confederation”, based on decades of interviews with disciples of bàtá maestro Jesús Pérez (1915-1985, Havana) (Miller 2003).

 

first stage – The formation of Lucumi cabildos (‘nation-groups’) with consolidation of songs and drummed ‘texts’ where gestures (in the broad sense) and other contextual cues of performance compensated for lost intelligibility (Wirtz 2007). As documented by historian María del Carmen Barcia, this period commenced in the early 1700s, extending to the late 1800s (Barcia 2009, 414-417), although some cabildo groups continued into the early twentieth century, even if not recognized by authorities: “The Lucumi [cabildo] ‘Chango Terdun’, that had its days of glory, sadly ended . . . as late as 1927 or 1928” (Cabrera 1979, 15). This and many other references to Changó (Ṣàngó) and Oyó (Ọ̀yọ́) in the cultural production of Cuban African descendants evidence a deeply engrained collective struggle to maintain historical memory of Africa, in the face of the genocidal project of enslaved labor and forced assimilation to Spanish colonial norms.

            Cabrera documented a relevant early Lukumí phrase “¡Eme madá agaga gagá, taní obiní!”, translated as, “When the taita Iño Oyó got upset in the cabildo because the others didn’t pay attention to the chant” (“Cuando el taita Iño Oyó se molestaba en el cabildo porque no atendían al canto . . .”) (Cabrera 1957/1986, 111). Cabrera reported many other references to Ọ̀yọ́ Yorùbá speakers in Cuba: “Ede oyó: language, speech of Oyó.” (“lengua, habla de Oyó”) (Cabrera 1957/1986, 100).

From her initiated teachers, Lydia Cabrera learned how ‘drum-speech’ was performed to evoke inter-generational consciousness and respect for rank as elders born in Africa would arrive to a bàtá ceremony:

 

“I noted as a curiosity — because there were still many who knew about this custom that had been abandoned some time ago — that it was customary in the gatherings of Santeros, in the Cabildos and on the ‘Día del Medio del Asiento’ [the Middle Day of the Seating/Initiation], to announce the arrival of a prominent Iyá or Babá with singular rhythms on a drum. They were honored with ‘drum speech’; the same honor was bestowed upon those who had been notables in their homeland and whose enslaved comrades continued to treat with the respect accorded to their rank. Calazán told me that these important persons, including his own mother, were called ‘Oloyé’; they were proud to be the children of princes and were rendered this honor in the Lukumí Cabildo.” (Cabrera 1974/1996, 178).

 

As in West Africa, bàtá events were key to community interactions by reproducing speech in recognition of rank or royal lineage. This phenomenon did not last long into the twentieth century, as native speakers passed away. 

second stage — The hegemonic status of Lucumí emerged in the 1800s for a variety of reasons, including stereotypes that placed African ethnic groups into an evolutionary hierarchy. While the Carabalí (Abakuá) and Kongo systems remained underground, the Lukumí became public, for example in the Lukumí cabildo processions in Regla to praise Yemayá/Virgen de Regla and Oshún/La caridad del Cobre. This process was initiated in the 1860s by babaláwo ‘Adechina’ [Adéṣínà] and continued by his daughter Echubí (d. 1947). The Regla procession with bàtá drums grew into a national festival, in the sense that Cubans from the entire island participated until its prohibition in 1961 by the new regime.

 

Annual processions in Regla, with bàtá drum ensembles accompanying 

each cabildo group. (Josefa Tarafa photo, Cabrera 1954).

third stage — The nationalization (trans-culturation) of Lucumí as the leading African-derived system informing Cuban identity across castes and classes. This process began in the colonial period with the diffusion of Lucumí practice into the homes of wealthy whites, for example a sugar factory owner in Orozco (rural Havana) became initiated to Changó and participated in annual harvest ceremonies to sacrifice a young bull to the mill machinery with the intention to protect the workers from harm. This mill owner, José Manuel Casanova, was a Senator of the Republic in 1940 who regularly visited the White House in Washington DC. (Cuba 1940, 1201; Ortiz 1955 v5, 151). Nationalization of Lucumí was directly promoted by the ‘vanguardista’ movement of the 1920s the work of Alejo Carpentier (text), Ernesto Lecuona (composer), Rita Montaner (singer), and many others including Cabrera and Ortiz (cf. Moore 1997).

“Danza Lucumi” by Ernesto Lecuona, first recorded in 1928 in Cuba. 

The image is from a later recording.

fourth stage — The presentation of bàtá as sacred music in university settings, led by Fernando Ortiz with the accompaniment of bàtá specialist Pablo Roche and his disciples, starting in 1936 (Ortiz 1937). 

Whereas bàtás had been persecuted as ‘fetish’ by police until then, Ortiz’s efforts were extended by composers Gilberto Valdes and Obdulio Morales using bàtá in symphonic settings. In the 1940s with the emergence of the nightclub industry in Havana, many bàtá and rumba players found work in the entertainment industry and began to record popular music compositions with their drums. The pioneering efforts of Ortiz, Roche and their colleagues was honored in a bàtá concert held at Harvard University in 2017: 

http://www.crossriverheritageafricandiaspora.com/2017/05/celebration-of-cuban-bata-percussion.html 

 

National Folklore Ensemble poster, Havana 1965

fifth stage — The State patronage of folkloric and modern dance ensembles to broadcast the Revolution’s narrative of a worker’s racial paradise, despite the critique of Carlos Moore (1986). The formation of Danza National (1962) and the Conjunto Folklorico Nacional (1964) included musical ensembles with an array of Cuban percussion including bàtá (Conjunto Nacional 1969; Martínez-Furé 1963). The several world tours of these groups exposed bàtá percussion to new audiences, leading to the teaching of bàtá to students around the globe.

Batacumbele group from Puerto Rico (1983); exemplifies the internationalization of Cuban bàtá.

sixth stage — In 1977 the Nigerian State hosted Festac, and Cuba’s Danza Nacional participated with an intentionally ‘multi-racial’ ensemble that performed modern dance to demonstrate their ‘modernity’, while the Brazilians sent an all-black ensemble that performed Orixa dances to demonstrate their West African heritage. In 1986, Professor ‘Wándé Abímbọ́lá organized the official visit of the Ooni of Ife to Havana, perhaps the first official contact between Nigeria and Cuba on heritage matters. In 1997 Professor Abímbọ́lá and Ivor Miller published a dialog comparing Cuban and Nigeria Yoruba initiation practices, entitled “Ifá will mend our broken world.”

In Havana, this text was translated by Olúo Frank Cabrera “Okambí”, initiating a debate comparing Ifá ‘africano’ and Ifá ‘criollo’ that continues into the present (https://www.afrocubaweb.com/iletuntun/iletuntun.htm). While Prof. Abímbọ́lá and other Nigerian babaláwos sought to “correct” Lukumí hybridity with “pure” Yorùbá, Frank Cabrera and Táíwò Abímbọ́lá (son of ‘Wándé) established Ilé Tuntun (Lucumi pronunciation, parsed by Cubans as 'the new land’) to promote the re-Africanization of Cuban Ifá; meanwhile some Cuban initiates responded by delving deep into the historic Cuban Ifá texts that remain unpublished and in the hands of initiates only.

Frank Cabrera “Okambí” leads a procession in Havana with a bàtá 

ensemble to announce the foundation of Ilé Tuntun, 1999.

seventh stage — In the post-Soviet Union economy, the Cuban State turned to tourism, with the revival of cabarets and hotels cashing in on the Buena Vista Social Club phenomenon that popularized pre-revolutionary popular music globally.  Meanwhile, during the Cuban Communist Party’s (CCP) official ban against members practicing religion openly, in 1988, the troubadour/rock group Síntesis brought Lucumí music into the public sphere, with the voice of Lázaro Ross, co-founder of the Cuban National Folklore Ensemble. This recording foretold the end of the CCP ban in 1991, and the emergence of a new generation of musicians who created the ‘Timba’ dance music phenomenon, often with Lucumí themes, including “Santa Palabra” (1993) by NG La Banda that evoked several major Orishas.

Post-Soviet Cuban cabaret performance with bàtás and Changó

<https://holiplus.com/es/tour/5222G/espectaculo-cabaret-parisien-gran-show-habana-de-fiesta>

eighth stage — The sustained impact of expatriated virtuosi from Cuba in the USA, like Lázaro Galarraga (Iroko, 1992; Caravana Cubana 1999, 2002), Long John Oliva (Buscando La Ortographia 2003), Román Díaz (L'ó Dá Fún Bàtá, 2016), Sandy Pérez (De aquí a Matanzas, 2013), and many others encouraging more innovation and less “folklorization” (i.e., the search for fake authenticity). In fact these artists continue a long line of ancestors who came to New York City to develop their ideas, innovating with the fusion of sacred percussion and popular music, like Mario Bauzá, ‘Machito’, Graciela Pérez, ‘Chano’ Pozo, Arsenio Rodríguez, Candido Camero, Julio Collazo, Mongo Santamaría, Silvestre Méndez, Carlos ‘Patato’ Valdés, Orlando Ríos ‘Puntilla’ and others.

 

L'ó Dá Fún Bàtá (2016)

 

Note to the reader: While bàtá percussion is both geographically and historically distant from the Cross River region of West Africa, the topic is relevant to this blog insofar as bàtá eventually became part of the national culture of Cuba, along the way coming into contact with Cuban heritage of the Cross River, since in the late 1800s it was common for an Abakuá initiate to also have expertise in bàtá drumming. Therefore, this post intends to contribute to the modern dialogue between Lucumi and Abakuá traditions of ritual performance, currently ongoing in Cuba and maybe someday also between the corresponding cultural communities in West Africa.

 

Special thanks: 

Victor Manfredi; Ned Sublette; 

and Táíwò Abímbọ́lá for hosting Miller in Ọ̀yọ́ on several occasions.

Táíwò Abímbọ́lá (left) with Egúngún in Ọ̀yọ́, Ọ̀yọ́ State, Nigeria, 2017.  

(I. Miller photo)

Sources

Angarica, Nicolas Valentin. 1955. Manual de orihate, religion Lucumí. Cuba: Self-published.

 

Babayemi, S.O. 1980.  Egungun among the Ọ̀yọ́ Yorùbá. Ibadan: Oyo State Council for Arts and Culture.

 

Barcia, María del Carmen. 2009. Los ilustres apellidos: negros en La Habana colonial. La Habana. 

 

Bastide, Roger. 1960. Les Religions Africaines au Brésil. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris.

 

Cabrera, Lydia. 1954/1992. El Monte. Miami: Colección del Chicherekú.

 

Cabrera, Lydia. 1957/1986. Anagó: vocabulario Lucumí (El Yoruba que se habla en Cuba). Miami: Colección del Chicherekú en el exilio.

 

Cabrera, Lydia. 1974/ 1996. Yemayá y Ochún: Kariocha, Iyalorichas y Olorichas. Miami.

 

Cabrera, Lydia. 1979. Reglas de Congo – Palo Monte Mayombe. Miami.

 

Conjunto Nacional de Danza Moderna Cuba. 1969. Programa. Consejo Nacional de Cultura.

 

Cuba en la mano: encyclopedia popular ilustrada. 1940. Esteban Roldán-Oliarte, Ed. La Habana.

 

González, Mariano and Olupemi Oludare. 2022. "The Speech Surrogacy Systems of the Yoruba Dùndún and Bàtá Drums. On the Interface Between Organology and Phonology". Frontiers in Communication. February v6 article 652542. 19 pages. 

Manfredi, Victor & Ọládiípọ̀ 2009. “Bàtá surrogate speech in the egúngún ritual amalgam” <https://people.bu.edu/manfredi/Mus351.pdf>

 

Martínez-Furé, Rogelio. 1963. Conjunto Folklórico Nacional. Consejo Nacional de Cultura.

 

Miller, Ivor. 2003. “Jesús Pérez and the transculturation of the Cuban bàtá drum.” Dialago. n. 7. DePaul University. Spring : 70-74.

 

Moore, Carlos. 1986. “Congo or Carabalí: Race relations in socialist Cuba.” Caribbean Review. 15, n2 (Spring) : 12-15, 43.

 

Moore, Robin D. 1997. Nationalizing Blackness: Afrocubanismo and Artistic Revolution in Havana, 1920-1940. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P.

 

Olúpọ̀nà, J. 2016. “Odù Ìmọ̀le; Islamic tradition in Ifá and the Yorùbá religious imagination”. Ifá Divination; knowledge, power & performance, edited by J. Olúpọ̀nà & R. Abíọ́dún, 168-78. Indiana U P, Bloomington.

 

Ortiz, Fernando. 1937. “La música sagrada de los negros yoruba en Cuba.” Revista Ultra. vol. 3, no. 13, July (La Habana) pp. 77-86.

 

Ortiz, Fernando. 1952-55. Los instrumentos de la música afrocubana. vols. 1-5. La Habana.

 

Roche y Monteagudo, Rafael. 1925. La policía y sus misterios en Cuba. 3a Edición. La Habana.

 

Verger, Pierre. 1966. “The Yoruba High God – a review of the sources.” Odu (Ife) v2, n2 : 19-40.

 

Wirtz, Kristina. 2007. “Divining the Past: The Linguistic Reconstruction of ‘African’ Roots in Diasporic Ritual Registers and Songs.” Journal of Religion in Africa. V. 37, Fasc. 2. Pp. 242-274.