African Instruments

by Luis Rumbaut

The Mother Lands

Like so many things in Cuba, the music of that island derives mainly from Spain and Africa: from the colonizers and from the slaves whom the former imported until well into the 19th Century. The indigenous people, having been mostly killed off by the 16th Century, left little mark on the musical culture. In a small island country where the African population at times has exceeded the European population and where customs, food, and language have been profoundly influenced by Africans, it is no surprise that Cuban popular music, and even academic music, carries with it today the sounds of Africa in its rhythms, melodies, structure, and language.

The Spanish brought with them a number of regional cultures, such as from Galicia, Andalucia, Catalonia, and the Basque country. They all spoke Spanish, however, and mostly followed the Catholic religion. The year 1492 marked not only Columbus' crossing of the Atlantic but also, in Spain, the end of the Moorish presence and the consolidation of the Catholic hegemony established through the Inquisition. The Africans, for their part, contributed a variety of cultures from the multiple tribes, nations, religions, and languages that the slave trade caught with the sweep of its net across the Western coast of Africa. The slaves were collected from different places but were boarded at major ports. From there, beginning on shipboard, the several naciones ("nations") would have to learn each other's languages, and their cultural expressions would mix over time in some ways, or retain their characteristics in other ways.

Points of Origin

The music best known outside Cuba comes principally from what is now Nigeria, in particular from the Yoruba people. That music was inseparable from the religion of the Yorubas and from the ceremonies dedicated to their many deities, or orishas. The Yoruba, frequently subsumed under the category of lucumí, brought the Regla de Ocha, or what is now called Santería after the former's melding with Catholic iconography. But Africans also came from farther North and South along the Atlantic coast. Because records of the slave trade were kept by point of departure, it is hard to say exactly who came from where, but some major groupings are now accepted. The Arará, from what is today Benin (Dahomey), were numerically smaller than the other groups, but were respected for the power of their gods. They are known especially in Matanzas province, although tending to disappear as a culture. From today's Angola and the republics of the Congo came a second group, called congo or bantú, whose beliefs, with the associated ceremonies, came to be known as the Regla Mayombe, or Regla de Palo (palo monte). They were the most significant group after the Yoruba. Also from what is today Nigeria, from the sacred lands around the river Calabar, came the abacuá (Abakwa), or ñáñigos. There is some discussion over whether the Abakwa represent the observance of a set of religious beliefs or whether they have more of the character of a secret society, or both. Their ceremonies trace back to when the woman Sikán, or Sikaneka, picked up the fish-god Tanze in a basket and, while carrying him on her head, spilled the god upon the ground. She expiates her misdeed through the sound of the sacred drum, the skin of which is Sikán's skin.

The Yoruba had the largest and most diverse cosmogony. As a people of the forest, of the trees, the waters, and the wind, the Yoruba associated their gods with natural phenomena like water, fire, thunder, seashells, and iron. However, their gods were also very human, remarkably like the Greco-Roman gods of antiquity. These gods could be magnanimous, fearful, lustful, jealous, playful, devious, power-hungry, and compassionate. They were associated, too, with human instruments such as axes and bows and arrows, and with human emotions and activities like love and war. They had complex and conflicting personalities, and their intervention in human affairs could be obtained by means of invocations and sacrificial offerings. They still are today, in Santería. The Regla de palo, on the other hand, had more to do with the power of natural things, especially when collected in bowls or baskets called nganga. In these could be found pieces of iron, animal and human bones and organs, feathers, animal skins, herbs, and magical stones. A different sort of influence made itself known in Oriente, the eastern end of the island and the closest to Haiti. French colonists on the island of Hispaniola fled Haiti as a result of the Revolution, in which the former slaves took power. The nearness of Cuba to Haiti and the similarities between the sugar plantation economies of the two countries made Cuba a natural place for the evacuating French to go. They arrived with the slaves they had managed to keep, who in turn brought their music with them. In more modern times there would also come Jamaicans, not as slaves but as salaried workers for the cane fields.

Instrumentation

The different groups had different purposes for their ceremonies. The Abakwa, for example, still today do not perform their sacred rites in public, but they do on special days venture forth in costumes that reflect the rank and functions of the officers and members of each local association. On the other hand, santeros of the Regla de ocha invoke their gods in celebration and to ask them for favors, in rites where the gods may take possession of those in attendance. Just as the purpose and language of the ceremonies vary, so do the instruments used, although there is commonality in the use of drums, gourd shakers, and wooden or metallic percussion (strikers). The drums are not just any drums, of course. They are particularized by size, construction, and function, and are given specific names. The basic groupings of the drums used for lucumí and congo music have evolved for use in modern music, but persist in the traditional ceremonies.

The music of Santería, or the songs to the gods, involves the batá drums. These are three in number, hourglass-shaped with skins on both ends, and played horizontally with both hands on the laps of the sitting musicians. From large to small, they are called iyá, itótele, and okónkolo or omelé. Contrary to practice with modern rumba groups, in which the highest-pitched drum improvises and serves as lead instrument, it is on the iyá that the most diverse sound combinations are played, reflecting the rhythms of the spoken Yoruba language; the itótele and okónkolo carry the more repetitive patterns. There are also three güiros, or shakers, called the caja, mula, and cachimbo, or the caja, dos golpes, and salidor. In addition, there may be from one to three conga drums, and a metal striker.

Among the Congolese the drums most used were made of hollowed-out tree trunks and skins that were nailed on, but later came to be made also from staves and with tuning keys. These drums gave conga drums their name. They were played accompanied by a metallic striker such as a hoe or cowbell. In the yuka, a dance now found only at the western-most end of the island, three drums were used, named like the guïros mentioned above: caja, mula, and cachimbo. Other dances of a ritual character which now are seldom observed are the maní, a martial dance for men, the makuta, and the kinfuiti, which is also the name of the drum used for the ritual.

The Abakwa make use of two kinds of instruments, The first are symbolic, and include the empego, the ekweñón, the enkríkamo, and the seseribó, besides the ékwe, which is used for the central and most private ceremony at which the sound of the god is evoked. The second group includes the drums used to play music, in a set called the biankomeko. There are four drums, not three: the bonkoechemillá, biankomé, obiapá, and kuchiyeremá, played together with a bell (ekón), two shakers (erikundi), and two wooden strikers (itones). The drum skins are tuned with wooden blocks that are driven sideways under strips or ropes that pull vertically on the skins.

The Haitians who arrived at Cuba's eastern end reproduced a music that combined their African roots with French salon dances. They organized into social and mutual-aid clubs that lacked the religious purpose of other groups, and instead sponsored fanciful social events that featured the dance called the tumba francesa. The drum ensembles used for their music are called tumbas. The largest drum in the set is the premier and the rest are called bulá. The beat is carried with sticks on a wooden soundbox called the catá.

These instruments evolved into modern versions that are used today in non-ritual settings, even the sacred batá drums having been incorporated into popular and symphonic music. Along the way they took also the form of, or were accompanied by, simpler versions that could be adapted from household instruments as needed, such as cajones (drawers), or plain wooden boxes, spoons, and bottles.

Inspiration and information for this article came in part from the monumental work of Lydia Cabrera, El Monte (Ultra Graphics Corporation, Miami 1983), and from Rodríguez and García, Haciendo Música Cubana (Editorial Pueblo y Educación, Havana 1989).