The Bata Drums and Cuban Religion
Thank you so much for letting us visit your house and listen to your marvellous playing on the pianos and organs, as well for the stimulating and interesting conversation we had.
You asked me to write something concerning what I know of Afro-Cuban religions and their music, because we were talking so much about how music affects the soul with its resonances.
I should first of all say that I can only write for you what I have learnt from living in Cuba over a period of ten years or so and studying the Bata drums with a Cuban musician who has a profound knowledge of their rhythms, songs and dances.
I have also read something and seen some religious rites or celebrations. I find there is quite a problem with what is written because most of it comes from observers outside the practice which means they tend to translate it in terms they themselves understand and miss, perhaps, the original sense of it. Then again we are dealing with metaphysical matters which do not translate well into human words. So I can only pass on one person's experience with the caveat that others will say different things, but that it is certainly a very fascinating field to explore.
When the slaves were brought from Africa they very quickly started to die off due to the cruel conditions in which they were kept and the terrible work they had to undertake –
working on the sugar plantations which brought enormous wealth to Cuba.
Given the appalling journey they had to suffer to get to Cuba – the slaves packed into boats in the most inhuman of conditions – and the high mortality that occurred - it is extraordinary that they managed to conserve so much of their religious culture.
They brought with them from Africa a hugely complex and sophisticated system of music which dates back, I can only say, since time immemorial. It certainly strikes me as extremely ancient in its roots.
Different slaves came from different places with different religions. There is the sense that their gods – orishas – cosmologies - or incarnations of the divine represent the different environments from which they came - thus people from a group living in a hard, stony land, difficult to cultivate might develop as fighters and warriors and favour the severer incarnations of divinity, whereas people living in lush green meadowlands with rivers and springs cultivated the softer, gentler aspects of divinity.
Having visited Lake Galilee and seen its gentle softness and knowing the mountains and severity of Switzerland and Scotland I would make a comparison between the religious understanding of Jesus Christ and that of Calvin and Knox in thinking about this.
The slaves brought to Cuba an enormous variety of different cults or religions. They also brought a faith which must have been immensely strong to sustain them in some of the most terrible conditions humans have been forced to live.
It is therefore interesting to look at how this faith was sustained.
The Christian churches have at various times banned the use of the drum and percussive music, indeed men like John Knox banned all music and dance. I understand that they did this because they believed music and dance to be dangerous to the maintenance of their religious control over their adherents. Music and dance inspires people individually and such imspiration may lead them out of the set paths ordained by their leaders or groups.
However other religious traditions such as Buddhism and Sufism have used music and dance precisely for its inspirational qualities – and music which leads a person to resonate to its vibrations is especially powerful. Such is the drum.
The Bata drums are a set of three, a large one, Iya, a middle-sized one, Itotele, and a small one called Okonkolo. They are made from wood with the percussive surfaces at either end
being of cowhide. In the past they were hollowed out of tree trunks by using fire and the hide was secured with the trailers of a flexible and very strong plant. There are still some people making drums in this traditional way but I am afraid this tradition is dying out. Now they are made by fixing individual pieces of wood between the two hides which are each secured with a metal band which can be tightened or loosened by screwing the metal pegs which attach it to the wood. The drums are relatively narrow at one end and wider at the other enabling the drummer to produce three principal sounds – the chapa at one end and the shut and the open slap at the other. The three drums are played together in interweaving, different rhythms of extreme complexity.
The survival of the religious traditions - in which the drum and its music plays such an important part - has been said to have been due in part at least to the very high mortality rate of the slaves first coming from Africa. As a result their owners realised they had to do something to ameliorate their conditions. They allowed their slaves therefore to form into what they thought were purely social groups or societies and to play their music and to dance. The groups were of course social but they also were used to maintain the slaves' religions, and in this way the very multi-form cults of Cuba were nurtured.
The slaves' owners were satisfied because the mortality rate fell and they understood that their slaves were honouring and worshipping Christian saints and the Trinity according to their own Roman Catholic practices because the slaves disguised their religions by equating their orishas with the Christian deity and the saints.
In this way – the permission given to form these groups and the misunderstanding of the Catholic owners of the success of their proselytising enabled the slaves' religions to flourish.
People talk about Santeria as the religion of Cuba as a syncretism of Catholicism and Afro-Cuban religions but it is not therefore quite an accurate description.
So what were these extremely tenacious religious forms ?
The orishas, the ones I have encountered, have very striking parallels to the Gods of Mount Olympus or the Jungian archetypes. There are, to take some examples, Chango, the god of thunder, Ochun the goddess of love and beauty, Gemaya the goddess of the sea, Osain the god of the hunt and the rather terrifying Oya a goddess associated with cemeteries and one might say Jung's idea of the female animus. There is also an orisha known as Olocun who normally lies bound and chained to the bottom of the ocean bed - when this orisha escapes the tsunami arises.
The wemilere is usually described as a feast of the orishas - an act of devotion and calling down or connection with the orishas. There are drummers, dancers and singers to assist this with an attending public. The drummers play different rhythms which are each connected to different orishas. The rhythms connect with the idea of these orishas so for example there are different rhythms for Gemaya which recall the sounds of the waters of the sea – sometimes calm and soothing, sometimes rising to a furore with lashing waves, water spouts and whirlpools.
The divinity associated with this power of which the sea waters are a manifestation is drawn by the sounds to the wemilere. In front of the drummers is a dancer who knows the steps of the divinity and is dressed in his/ her costume. So Gemaya wears blue and white for the waves and foam and the dancer, in the religious rite, is possessed by her. Thus is the connection, which humans are always searching for in their religions, made with the divine.
Drummers and dancers compete with each other : one moment the dancer is leading the drummers in ever faster rhythms another moment the drummers are leading the dancer in the resonances of Gemaya. The inspiration of the moment comes from the vibrations of the drums to which resonate the dancer and the accompanying singers.
After the Revolution in Cuba in 1959 a great effort was made to integrate the black, white-skinned and mixed or mulatto society. As part of this a much greater value was placed on the cultural manifestations of the people of Afro-Cuban origin and their music and dance brought into the cultural mainstream and performed in theatres and on other stages.
I have therefore seen this wemilere many, many times in this cultural context, rather than in a strictly religious comtext. It may begin with a ceremony of blessing for the dancers, the drums and the musicians and singers by an Afro-Cuban priest, but the drums used themselves are not sacred drums which must go through a religious initiation process.
However the orishas themselves do not make our strict human rules about religion. When my husband's dance company came to England in 2001 they were staying in a rented house in Norfolk. They decided to have a wemilere for themselves in the garden. During it one of the dancers became possessed. No-one was expecting that.
The music of the drums certainly touches very profound parts of the human soul.
Thank you so much for letting us visit your house and listen to your marvellous playing on the pianos and organs, as well for the stimulating and interesting conversation we had.
You asked me to write something concerning what I know of Afro-Cuban religions and their music, because we were talking so much about how music affects the soul with its resonances.
I should first of all say that I can only write for you what I have learnt from living in Cuba over a period of ten years or so and studying the Bata drums with a Cuban musician who has a profound knowledge of their rhythms, songs and dances.
I have also read something and seen some religious rites or celebrations. I find there is quite a problem with what is written because most of it comes from observers outside the practice which means they tend to translate it in terms they themselves understand and miss, perhaps, the original sense of it. Then again we are dealing with metaphysical matters which do not translate well into human words. So I can only pass on one person's experience with the caveat that others will say different things, but that it is certainly a very fascinating field to explore.
When the slaves were brought from Africa they very quickly started to die off due to the cruel conditions in which they were kept and the terrible work they had to undertake –
working on the sugar plantations which brought enormous wealth to Cuba.
Given the appalling journey they had to suffer to get to Cuba – the slaves packed into boats in the most inhuman of conditions – and the high mortality that occurred - it is extraordinary that they managed to conserve so much of their religious culture.
They brought with them from Africa a hugely complex and sophisticated system of music which dates back, I can only say, since time immemorial. It certainly strikes me as extremely ancient in its roots.
Different slaves came from different places with different religions. There is the sense that their gods – orishas – cosmologies - or incarnations of the divine represent the different environments from which they came - thus people from a group living in a hard, stony land, difficult to cultivate might develop as fighters and warriors and favour the severer incarnations of divinity, whereas people living in lush green meadowlands with rivers and springs cultivated the softer, gentler aspects of divinity.
Having visited Lake Galilee and seen its gentle softness and knowing the mountains and severity of Switzerland and Scotland I would make a comparison between the religious understanding of Jesus Christ and that of Calvin and Knox in thinking about this.
The slaves brought to Cuba an enormous variety of different cults or religions. They also brought a faith which must have been immensely strong to sustain them in some of the most terrible conditions humans have been forced to live.
It is therefore interesting to look at how this faith was sustained.
The Christian churches have at various times banned the use of the drum and percussive music, indeed men like John Knox banned all music and dance. I understand that they did this because they believed music and dance to be dangerous to the maintenance of their religious control over their adherents. Music and dance inspires people individually and such imspiration may lead them out of the set paths ordained by their leaders or groups.
However other religious traditions such as Buddhism and Sufism have used music and dance precisely for its inspirational qualities – and music which leads a person to resonate to its vibrations is especially powerful. Such is the drum.
The Bata drums are a set of three, a large one, Iya, a middle-sized one, Itotele, and a small one called Okonkolo. They are made from wood with the percussive surfaces at either end
being of cowhide. In the past they were hollowed out of tree trunks by using fire and the hide was secured with the trailers of a flexible and very strong plant. There are still some people making drums in this traditional way but I am afraid this tradition is dying out. Now they are made by fixing individual pieces of wood between the two hides which are each secured with a metal band which can be tightened or loosened by screwing the metal pegs which attach it to the wood. The drums are relatively narrow at one end and wider at the other enabling the drummer to produce three principal sounds – the chapa at one end and the shut and the open slap at the other. The three drums are played together in interweaving, different rhythms of extreme complexity.
The survival of the religious traditions - in which the drum and its music plays such an important part - has been said to have been due in part at least to the very high mortality rate of the slaves first coming from Africa. As a result their owners realised they had to do something to ameliorate their conditions. They allowed their slaves therefore to form into what they thought were purely social groups or societies and to play their music and to dance. The groups were of course social but they also were used to maintain the slaves' religions, and in this way the very multi-form cults of Cuba were nurtured.
The slaves' owners were satisfied because the mortality rate fell and they understood that their slaves were honouring and worshipping Christian saints and the Trinity according to their own Roman Catholic practices because the slaves disguised their religions by equating their orishas with the Christian deity and the saints.
In this way – the permission given to form these groups and the misunderstanding of the Catholic owners of the success of their proselytising enabled the slaves' religions to flourish.
People talk about Santeria as the religion of Cuba as a syncretism of Catholicism and Afro-Cuban religions but it is not therefore quite an accurate description.
So what were these extremely tenacious religious forms ?
The orishas, the ones I have encountered, have very striking parallels to the Gods of Mount Olympus or the Jungian archetypes. There are, to take some examples, Chango, the god of thunder, Ochun the goddess of love and beauty, Gemaya the goddess of the sea, Osain the god of the hunt and the rather terrifying Oya a goddess associated with cemeteries and one might say Jung's idea of the female animus. There is also an orisha known as Olocun who normally lies bound and chained to the bottom of the ocean bed - when this orisha escapes the tsunami arises.
The wemilere is usually described as a feast of the orishas - an act of devotion and calling down or connection with the orishas. There are drummers, dancers and singers to assist this with an attending public. The drummers play different rhythms which are each connected to different orishas. The rhythms connect with the idea of these orishas so for example there are different rhythms for Gemaya which recall the sounds of the waters of the sea – sometimes calm and soothing, sometimes rising to a furore with lashing waves, water spouts and whirlpools.
The divinity associated with this power of which the sea waters are a manifestation is drawn by the sounds to the wemilere. In front of the drummers is a dancer who knows the steps of the divinity and is dressed in his/ her costume. So Gemaya wears blue and white for the waves and foam and the dancer, in the religious rite, is possessed by her. Thus is the connection, which humans are always searching for in their religions, made with the divine.
Drummers and dancers compete with each other : one moment the dancer is leading the drummers in ever faster rhythms another moment the drummers are leading the dancer in the resonances of Gemaya. The inspiration of the moment comes from the vibrations of the drums to which resonate the dancer and the accompanying singers.
After the Revolution in Cuba in 1959 a great effort was made to integrate the black, white-skinned and mixed or mulatto society. As part of this a much greater value was placed on the cultural manifestations of the people of Afro-Cuban origin and their music and dance brought into the cultural mainstream and performed in theatres and on other stages.
I have therefore seen this wemilere many, many times in this cultural context, rather than in a strictly religious comtext. It may begin with a ceremony of blessing for the dancers, the drums and the musicians and singers by an Afro-Cuban priest, but the drums used themselves are not sacred drums which must go through a religious initiation process.
However the orishas themselves do not make our strict human rules about religion. When my husband's dance company came to England in 2001 they were staying in a rented house in Norfolk. They decided to have a wemilere for themselves in the garden. During it one of the dancers became possessed. No-one was expecting that.
The music of the drums certainly touches very profound parts of the human soul.