The Voyage of the Drums: From Africa to the Americas

Music plays a special role in Brazil, and drums are surely regarded as the most significant instruments of Bahian—and even Brazilian—musical culture. Furthermore, drums have a strong relationship with bodily expression in countless ritual and non-ritual dance contexts. But how might we explain the ubiquity of drums, and what is a drum anyway? These are the questions we strive to answer in the voyage through the photographs of this virtual exhibit, which is further served by its accompanying text.

Here we will consider the drum to be a musical instrument of any material over which a skin, or membrane, can be stretched. For it to produce sound, the drum can either be struck with bare hands or drumsticks, and in some cases indirect friction can be used. Given that the vibrations in the membrane produce the instrument’s sound, scholars call this a “membranophone.”

To reach a partial understanding of these membranophones’ history, including their relationship to the continent of Africa and the Americas, we present twenty-four photographs taken by researcher and photographer Pierre Fatumbi Verger (Paris, 1902 — Salvador, 1996). Verger traveled the world over, and he took these particular photographs during his trips to countries in Africa and the African Diaspora during the 1940s and 1950s. The images presented here were selected from a vast collection of photographs that also depict drums and other musical instruments from all over the world.

Twelve of these photographs represent African countries that had varying degrees of contact with the New World that appears in the other twelve images from the Caribbean and Brazil. Some of them feature the instruments more clearly, others focus more on the musicians, and still other photos foreground the musical or cultural contexts of the instruments and instrumentalists.

Salient in the photos is the infinite number of drum shapes and sizes that exist throughout Africa. For musical occasions, ranging from religious ceremonies and work-related activities to secular festivities such as weddings, the drummers are typically men, though women and children sometimes play drums as well.

Generally speaking, in Africa these instruments are made from whole trunks that are cut from significantly larger trees and are put through a complex hollowing process. These drums are often beautifully carved and adorned, becoming literal works of art and an expression of ancestral power. Their sizes can vary drastically and, as we will see, can even be larger than the musicians themselves.

People frequently ask if the drums present in the Americas came from Africa, as is often affirmed and even taught. It is therefore necessary to stress that the drums did not come readymade from Africa, nor could they have been, given the severe conditions of the human slave trade. But the drums did indeed traverse the Atlantic in the form of ideas, vibrant in peoples’ heads, for these were expressions of both living memory and the identity of the diverse ethnic groups displaced to the Americas. As such, they became something like intangible heritage for these groups, as instruments were reconstructed here in accordance with the varied experiences of the instrument makers, and would subsequently become new material heritage for Latin American cultures. But of course, we must not forget that the material and social conditions of the places to which enslaved Africans were taken could facilitate or encumber the recreation of these versatile African-inspired instruments.

The drums of the Americas have gone through a number of successive transformations, with many still being constructed from tree trunks, as is the case in remote rural communities of Haiti and Maranhão (Brazil), as well as among the maroon populations of Suriname. Other drums have been constructed through cooperage, a technique originally used for the making of barrels and kegs. As a result, these latter instruments were neither hollowed nor carved, but rather made from strips of wood, making them lightweight. They are generally painted colorfully, and are used for innovating new styles of leather coverings and leather types, including, for example, snakeskin. Furthermore, we also find drums strongly influenced by European traditions, though not included in this exhibit, with their own ramifications.

Upon concluding this transatlantic voyage through the world of drums, by way of this virtual exhibit’s photographs, the changes and adaptations that have transpired over the centuries will no doubt become apparent, and certainly the transformations will continue. But always evident is the versatility of these instruments, attracting people with their strong musical personalities and close associations with bodily expression. Indeed, this drum-dance connection is lucid in many of those photos depicting the drums in their social and religious contexts. Of course the central role of bodily expression was a cause for years of incomprehension vis-à-vis the drums, for many people viewed the music-induced dancing as overly sensual, but at the same time, this is the aspect that continues to underpin the attraction people feel to the sonic power of the drums.

Bon voyage…

Display A - Africa

1) In Central Africa instruments are used in many different social contexts. In the Congo area we find something like a Brazilian cuíca, a friction instrument with a stick attached to the interior part of the skin, as well as other drums, which are used in contexts of both work and leisure. Meanwhile, in Rwanda we see large percussion groups, veritable drum orchestras, comprised of a variety of instruments of the same size. While female drummers here are rare, to the north of Africa, in Mauritania, it is the women who, dressed in elaborate clothing, play drums in a wedding ceremony. (Photos 1-4)

2) The countries Verger visited most were Benin and Nigeria, in West Africa. Benin is home to a tremendous diversity of drums, which are used in different musical traditions: square tambourines known as adufes, which are played by “agudás,” the descendents of freed slaves who returned to Africa from Brazil during the nineteenth century; and the drums played by the women of the court of the King of Porto Novo, who also play giant gourds. And even the enormous drums from another region, which represent the feminine and the masculine, as well as drums used in funerary rituals, accompanied by other musical instruments. (Photos 5-8)

Display B – Africa and the Caribbean

3) The worship of the oricha Xangô is pictured in two cities of Benin, Saketê and Adjawere. Religious practices for Xangô are always accompanied by the batá, a drum associated with the deity. Depicted in the other photographs is the city of Oshogbo, in Nigeria, where the veneration of the oricha Oxum is most prominent. Specific drums, which can even be played by children, are used not only in these ceremonies, but also in the city’s annual procession to the Oxum River. (Photos 9- 12)

4) The Caribbean is home to an infinite variety of drums. In Cuba, we again find batá drums—this time in the syncretic context of the celebration of the Virgem de La Regla—in addition to drums of other shapes in the Bembé celebration. On the other hand, the Kromanti, a maroon group from Suriname, play carved drums, which are also found in Haiti. The way in which they decorate their ceremonial religious space is similar to Brazilian “barracões,” which are the spaces in which Candomblé temples hold their public ceremonies. (Photos 13-16)

Display C - Brazil

5) The greatest diversity of drum types is found in the northern Brazilian states. In Maranhão, for example, carved drums are still prevalent in both Casa das Minas and Tambor de Crioula, for which the drum skins are tuned near fire. We once again see female instrumentalists who maintain a centuries-old tradition and play drums: the caixeiras do Divino Espírito Santo (the cashiers of the Divine Holy Spirit). Turning to Recife, in the Casa de Xangô, we find painted drums whose construction is quite similar to the instruments encountered in Bahia. (Photos 17-20)

6) In Bahia, the atabaques made by coopers have become the most important instruments in Candomblé temples and in afoxés, for the knowledge of how to shape other types of drums has progressively disappeared. Among the countless number of Carnival groups, other materials such as “barricas,” small barrels originally used to carry mate tea, water, and cod, were adeptly transformed into drums, often using the skin of boa constrictors, snakes still common in the city’s surroundings during the 1940s. In this way, people created alternatives based on sustainability, weight, mobility, and aesthetic finish, choices that even today continue to be part of the constant transformations and adaptations of the drums in Brazil and the world. (Photos 21-24)

Background of the text/exhibit: The Pathway

This exhibit, with its accompanying text, is the fruit of an extended study, through a transversal perspective, of Pierre Verger’s photography, guided from the outset by an ethnomusicological focus. It began with a preliminary study of the subject, on the occasion of Verger’s ninetieth birthday in 1992, when a small exhibition—with an accompanying catalogue—was organized. The subsequent research began in the late 1990s, during which time an exhaustive search for every musical instrument photograph was conducted in Verger’s photography archive, which included more than 62,000 negatives. These were moreover consulted, one by one, by way of contact prints that accompanied each respective negative’s envelope, before having established the database that currently harbors all of the photographs in digital format.¹ This process was finally completed in 2003, this time making use of the database, thus allowing us to confirm a total of 2,900 negatives concerning our topic.² These negatives offered tremendous cultural and musical diversity, spanning five continents, with an evident emphasis on African and African-American cultures. This is hardly surprising considering that Verger concentrated his research on the cultural and historical issues that pertained to relations between Africa and Brazil, and was no doubt inspired by a general interest in the day-to-day cultural expressions of people in the different parts of the world that he visited over the course of fifty years as a professional photographer.³

Pierre Fatumbi Verger, a Frenchman who relocated to Salvador (Brazil) in 1946, dedicated a large portion of his life to documenting, and later researching, the relationship between Africa and its Diaspora, focusing specifically on the Golf of Benin and Bahia (Brazil). During this extended process of observation, the peripatetic photographer gradually became a researcher in the areas of history and anthropology, authoring many books that made important contributions to understanding transatlantic exchange at a time when the subject was largely absent from the academic and intellectual scene in Brazil (see Verger 1952, 1954, 1957, 1963, 1966, 1981a, 1981b, 1982, 1989, 1990, 1992, 1993, 1995). His magisterial book, Flux et reflux (translated to English as Flux and Reflux), accepted as a doctoral thesis at the Sorbonne in 1966, was published in Paris (1968), Ibadan, Nigeria (1976), and later in Brazil (1987), catalyzing a broader discussion of transatlantic exchange in historical, social, and cultural terms.⁴

The historical significance of Verger’s work, which continues to remain relevant today, allows us to reflect on the processes by which cultural habits and traditions have been transformed and reinterpreted, even though these are often erroneously viewed as static rather than dynamic and dialogic. Therefore, although the exhibit’s images depict cultural contexts from a half-century ago, as historical documents they offer us the opportunity to reflect on present-day situations and their ramifications. For instance, the present exhibit was first shown during the release of a book on the trajectory of a particular set of historical music recordings (Lühning; Mata 2010). Verger made the recordings in late- 1958 with the members of a Candomblé terreiro in Salvador, the Casa de Oxumarê, with which Verger maintained a friendship, especially with the alabês and ogãs, the musicians who play the atabaques (drums) and other musical instruments during the ritual contexts of the religious celebrations.

This exhibit and the subsequent addition of historical sounds and images allowed us to assemble the pieces for the discussion of present-day musical and social contexts: it was designed for the general public, including both musicians and non-musicians, who often have questions about the development of the musical instruments that are today so widespread in Brazilian—and particularly Bahian—culture.⁵ It is common, for instance, to hear people ask whether the atabaque, no doubt one of the most important instruments today in Afro-Brazilian religious contexts, such as in Candomblé, did in fact come from Africa. As already mentioned in the exhibit text: the instruments themselves were not brought; instead it was the knowledge of drum construction and the variety of traditional uses of the membranophones—especially for use in religious context—that derived from Africa. We thus notice, for example, that playing techniques are related to drum types, and over the centuries in the New World, the raw material and construction procedures used to make these drums have transformed continuously.

Given the difficult situation of historical sources, the search for origins, as part of an affirmation of identity, has often led—and indeed continues to lead—to simplistic interpretations of the complexities of cultural exchange. Consequently, people often insist that Afro-Brazilian religions, among them Candomblé, came from Africa as cohesive and readymade religious systems. It is important to emphasize, however, that what arrived in the New World were the experiences and knowledge concerning the orixás, spiritual entities venerated in the Candomblé religion and in many other religious traditions in Brazil—Xangô in Recife and Tambor de Mina in São Luis, Maranhão—and the Caribbean, such as Shango from Trinidad and Tobago, and Cuban Santería, among many others. This spiritual and ancestral knowing, which subsumes profound botanical and musical instrument making knowledge, was rearticulated in each of these New World settings with localized names and configurations, while at the same time sharing many similarities.

The discussion of this topic is also relevant to the recent interest in the role of Afro-Brazilian culture in Brazilian society, particularly in light of Law 10.639/2003, later changed to Law 11.645/2008, which promotes the teaching of Afro-Brazilian, African, and Indigenous cultures in Brazilian schools. This was no doubt a significant step in a positive direction, even if the initiative’s goals are inhibited by a lack of available means and materials. For this exhibit, we sought to present specific information on this complex topic to the general public, by way of a notable aspect of Bahian culture: music. But even with such an appealing topic, the language needed to be accessible and to condense effectively the complex content into an appropriate text, while also relying on the power of the visual in each of the carefully chosen photographs. In this way, the idea of the photo exhibit with explanatory texts emerged, the goal of which was not only to appeal to spectators visually, but also to introduce concepts regarding the study of musical instruments, known as organology, and to provide information concerning cultural contexts.

Concluding, it seems important to emphasize that the format presented here should be regarded as a contribution to the dissemination of scientific knowledge, as it provides for the circulation of knowledge in different formats and broader contexts, recognizing the lacuna of available material for both schools and the general public. I believe that a focus on the more democratic circulation of knowledge and information is one of most important challenges for all twenty-first- century researchers and educators, independent of area of study. Indeed, in our case, this is little more than a continuation of that which Pierre Fatumbi Verger set out to do during his life and through his work, but now in a digital format.

References

Lühning, Angela and Silvanilton Encarnação da Mata. 2010. Casa de Oxumarê. Os cânticos que encantaram Pierre Verger. Salvador: Vento Leste.

Verger, Pierre F. 1952. “Cartas de um Brasileiro estabelecido no século XIX na Costa dos Escravos”. Anhembi 6 (17): 212-253.

_____. 1954. Dieux d’Afrique. Paris: Paul Hartmann.

_____. 1957. Notes sur le culte des Orisha et Vodoun, à Bahia, la Baie de tous les Saints au Brésil, et à l’ancienne côte des Esclaves. Dakar: IFAN.

_____. 1963. “Rôle joué par le tabac de Bahia dans la traite des esclaves au Golfe du Bénin”. Cahiers d’Études Africaines, no. 15: 349-369.

_____. 1966. “The yoruba High God, a review of the sources”. Odù - A Journal of West African Studies 2 (2): 19-40.

_____. 1968.  Flux et reflux de la traite des esclaves entre le golfe du Bénin et Bahia de Todos os Santos, du dix-septième au dix-neuvième siècle. Paris: Mouton.

_____. 1976. Trade relations between the bight of Benin and Bahia, 17th-19th centuries. Ibadan: Ibadan University Press.

_____. 1981a. Orixás, os deuses Iorubás na África e no Novo Mundo. Salvador: Corrupio.

_____. 1981b.  Notícias da Bahia – 1850. Salvador: Corrupio.

_____. 1982. 50 anos de fotografia. Salvador: Corrupio.

_____. 1987. Fluxo e refluxo do tráfico de escravos entre o golfo do Benin e a Bahia de Todos os Santos; dos séculos XVII a XIX. São Paulo: Corrupio.

_____. 1989. Dílógún - Brazilian Tales of Divination, Discovered in Bahia. Ibadan: Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilization.

_____. 1990. “Uma rainha africana em São Luiz”. Revista da USP 6: 151-158 (June/August).

_____. 1992. Os Libertos. Sete caminhos na liberdade de escravos da Bahia no séc. XIX. Salvador: Corrupio.

_____. 1993.  Le Messager, The Go-between. Photographies 1932-1962. Paris: Éditions Revue Noire.

_____. 1995.  Ewé: The use of Plants in Yoruba Society/Ewé: o uso das plantas na sociedade iorubá. Foreword by Jorge Amado. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras.

Notes

¹ The first research project was conducted with the assistance of grantee Mabel Macedo, by way of a project sponsored by CNPq.

² The second identification research project was conducted with the assistance of Aaron Lopes, a grantee in a then scientific initiation project, but who is now a doctoral student.

³ 50 anos de fotografia (50 years of photography) is in fact the title of one of Verger’s many books (1982), which covers his travels around the world, and is incidentally, the only book that includes an autobiographical text.

⁴ The Verger archive (including the 62,000 negatives, extensive espistolary exchanges with many people around the world, vast research annotations, and the library, whose collection focuses on African and Afro- Brazilian cultures) is gathered at the Pierre Verger foundation, founded by Verger himself in 1988. The Foundation’s headquarters is located in what was Verger’s home, in an economically impoverished neighborhood (barrio popular) of Salvador, where he lived for nearly forty years. The Foundation controls access to Verger’s work, as well as preserving and promoting it. For more information, access http://www.pierreverger.org.

⁵ The exhibit was first shown during the release of the aforementioned book in August 2010, and later in schools and universities. Indeed, the itinerant exhibit intends to pass through a number of different locales and spaces.