Drum Tongue
Last Thursday while I was busy cataloging books at the Open Hearth Foundation I was having a discussion with Tigre Cruz about a particular song that I had heard several years prior, right after he had been involved in the recording of it. The song was Yeyo Chango by Oshun Gaia. Here's the track on YouTube.
This particular track has stuck in my head for years. I can't speak to any accuracy as to word or rhythm for this particular track in regards to the traditional rhythms and structures of invocations of Chango in Santeria, but this is still a pretty kickass and moving track.
But then things started clicking.
I remembered years ago hearing some kind of legend of Chango connected to the drums, and about drumming being the language of Chango. Sadly I have no reference for that. However, what I do have is an uncited Wikipedia reference for the Bata Drum.
The drum dates back roughly 500 years, and is believed to have been introduced by a Yoruba king named Shangó el rey del tambor.
That would translate into Shango the King of the Drum. In another uncited Wikipedia reference to African Legends:
He is owner of the Bata (3 double-headed drums) and of music in general, as well as the Art of Dance and Entertainment.
Back a few months ago I began reading James Gleick's "The Information." This is a history of information science and information theory. In the preface he talks about how the drum language of African tribes became deciphered by a western missionary.
For a long time Europeans in sub-Saharan Africa had no idea. In fact they had no idea that the drums conveyed information at all. In their own cultures, in special cases a drum could be an instrument of signaling, along with the bugle and the bell, used to transmit a small set of messages: attack; retreat; come to church. But they could not conceive of talking drums.
Gleick, James (2011). The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood (pp. 13-14). Pantheon. Kindle Edition.
In solving the enigma of the drums, Carrington found the key in a central fact about the relevant African languages. They are tonal languages, in which meaning is determined as much by rising or falling pitch contours as by distinctions between consonants or vowels. This feature is missing from most Indo-European languages, including English, which uses tone only in limited, syntactical ways: for example, to distinguish questions (“you are happy ”) from declarations (“you are happy ”). But for other languages, including, most famously, Mandarin and Cantonese, tone has primary significance in distinguishing words. So it does in most African languages.
Gleick, James (2011). The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood (p. 23). Pantheon. Kindle Edition.
So, this got me thinking about the Yoruba language that is the root of this religion. Yoruba is a tonal language, specifically there are three tones: High, low and middle (middle being the default tone). Surely the Bata drums were used to convey messages in the same manner that we're talking about in the story from "The Information." Especially given that there the drums usually come in sets of three with a High, Low and Middle sound. Is there something linguistic in the rhythm of the drum during Santerian ceremonies?
Santeria is a diaspora religion based on Yoruba practices brought over on slave ships to the Americas and the Caribbean. Most all of the folks who practice Santeria now no longer speak the original language, most of them speak Spanish or English. Though the songs remain in Yoruba, the tones are a subtext that many people may not necessarily get. Especially if someone is encountering it for the first time, tones fall on tone deaf ears and they often just slide right on through without recognition. If there is something language based carried in the drum music it would be hard for those who are tone deaf to catch it.
The rhythms used in Santeria are very specific, and followers of Santeria can pick out the rhythms of particular Orishas immediately upon hearing them. The drum rhythms, being so unique to each Orisha, have been handed down from drummer to drummer and mastered. There is a level of skill and ritual purity that is prized in the drumming. Because the rhythms have been maintained so specifically there could be found residual linguistic elements of Yoruba tonal language in them. Though what they mean, or the poetics of those rhythms may be completely obscured. It would be certainly interesting to find out.
Here is a more traditional Bembe for Chango performed by Celia Cruz.
Click to viewThis particular track has stuck in my head for years. I can't speak to any accuracy as to word or rhythm for this particular track in regards to the traditional rhythms and structures of invocations of Chango in Santeria, but this is still a pretty kickass and moving track.
But then things started clicking.
I remembered years ago hearing some kind of legend of Chango connected to the drums, and about drumming being the language of Chango. Sadly I have no reference for that. However, what I do have is an uncited Wikipedia reference for the Bata Drum.
The drum dates back roughly 500 years, and is believed to have been introduced by a Yoruba king named Shangó el rey del tambor.
That would translate into Shango the King of the Drum. In another uncited Wikipedia reference to African Legends:
He is owner of the Bata (3 double-headed drums) and of music in general, as well as the Art of Dance and Entertainment.
Back a few months ago I began reading James Gleick's "The Information." This is a history of information science and information theory. In the preface he talks about how the drum language of African tribes became deciphered by a western missionary.
For a long time Europeans in sub-Saharan Africa had no idea. In fact they had no idea that the drums conveyed information at all. In their own cultures, in special cases a drum could be an instrument of signaling, along with the bugle and the bell, used to transmit a small set of messages: attack; retreat; come to church. But they could not conceive of talking drums.
Gleick, James (2011). The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood (pp. 13-14). Pantheon. Kindle Edition.
In solving the enigma of the drums, Carrington found the key in a central fact about the relevant African languages. They are tonal languages, in which meaning is determined as much by rising or falling pitch contours as by distinctions between consonants or vowels. This feature is missing from most Indo-European languages, including English, which uses tone only in limited, syntactical ways: for example, to distinguish questions (“you are happy ”) from declarations (“you are happy ”). But for other languages, including, most famously, Mandarin and Cantonese, tone has primary significance in distinguishing words. So it does in most African languages.
Gleick, James (2011). The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood (p. 23). Pantheon. Kindle Edition.
So, this got me thinking about the Yoruba language that is the root of this religion. Yoruba is a tonal language, specifically there are three tones: High, low and middle (middle being the default tone). Surely the Bata drums were used to convey messages in the same manner that we're talking about in the story from "The Information." Especially given that there the drums usually come in sets of three with a High, Low and Middle sound. Is there something linguistic in the rhythm of the drum during Santerian ceremonies?
Santeria is a diaspora religion based on Yoruba practices brought over on slave ships to the Americas and the Caribbean. Most all of the folks who practice Santeria now no longer speak the original language, most of them speak Spanish or English. Though the songs remain in Yoruba, the tones are a subtext that many people may not necessarily get. Especially if someone is encountering it for the first time, tones fall on tone deaf ears and they often just slide right on through without recognition. If there is something language based carried in the drum music it would be hard for those who are tone deaf to catch it.
The rhythms used in Santeria are very specific, and followers of Santeria can pick out the rhythms of particular Orishas immediately upon hearing them. The drum rhythms, being so unique to each Orisha, have been handed down from drummer to drummer and mastered. There is a level of skill and ritual purity that is prized in the drumming. Because the rhythms have been maintained so specifically there could be found residual linguistic elements of Yoruba tonal language in them. Though what they mean, or the poetics of those rhythms may be completely obscured. It would be certainly interesting to find out.
Here is a more traditional Bembe for Chango performed by Celia Cruz.