Performing African Nations in Jamaica

Kenneth Bilby (*)

 Rural Jamaica is culturally more complex and varied than most people –
even most Jamaicans – realize. Relatively few Jamaicans know that in the
eastern part of the island, in the parishes of St. Thomas and Portland, live
two distinct “nations” of people. When I say “nations,” I am using a term
that members of these groups use to identify themselves. One of the groups
is known as the “Bongo Nation” or “Kongo Nation.” The other group is the
“Maroon Nation,” whose members also sometimes call themselves the
“Kyatawud Nation.”

These two groups of Jamaicans have different histories. The Maroons in this
part of the island are direct descendants of those famous African warriors of
the 17th and 18th centuries who escaped from British slave plantations and
fought their way to freedom, forcing the British colonial government to ask
them for a peace treaty in 1739. Their leader and founding ancestress was
Queen Nanny, who is now a Jamaican National Hero, and whose portrait can
be seen on the Jamaican $500 bill. The other group of people, the Bongo
Nation, is descended in large part from indentured African laborers who
came to Jamaica much later than the Maroons; the founding ancestors of
the Bongo Nation began to arrive only in the 1840s, a few years after the
abolition of slavery, and more than a century after the liberation struggles
of the Maroons.

It is interesting enough that in Jamaica there still exist groups of people

who proudly identify themselves as members of distinct African-derived
“nations.” But it is even more interesting that these two groups, the Maroon
Nation and the Bongo Nation, have developed a sense of kinship and
common identity based on a long history of contact and cultural exchange.
Even though their ancestors came from different parts of Africa and arrived
in Jamaica at different points in time, once circumstances brought them
together, they were able to recognize in each other certain cultural
similarities that could provide a basis for harmonious interaction. Music and
dance played a particularly important part in this process. But before we
can understand the significance of the shared musical culture developed by
these two African-Jamaican nations in Jamaica, we need a little more
background on each of them.

I mentioned that the ancestors of the Maroons and the ancestors of the
Bongo Nation came from different parts of Africa. Historical records and
present-day linguistic evidence strongly suggest that the early Maroons,
although they came from many different parts of West Africa and were
ethnically diverse, were led by Akan-speaking individuals from the areas
known today as Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. It appears that the Akan cultural
traditions brought by these leaders came to dominate in the new African-
based culture developed by the Maroons in Jamaica. The founding ancestors
of the Bongo Nation, in contrast to the Maroons, came from a part of Africa
farther to the south, primarily from the Kongo-Angola region of Central
Africa. These different origins are clearly reflected in the present-day
musical and cultural traditions of the two peoples.

The Maroons still speak a ritual language called Kromanti, the name of
which is derived from Cormantin, on the coast of present-day Ghana. The
vocabulary of this language is derived mostly from Akan languages such as
Asante-Twi and Fanti. The members of the Bongo Nation also have their a
ritual language of their own, called Bongo or Kongo language, which is
derived primarily from Kikongo and neighboring Bantu languages such as
Kimbundu. These two ritual languages, the Kromanti language of the
Maroons and the Kongo language of the Bongo Nation, are totally distinct
and mutually unintelligible. The core musical traditions of the two groups
are also very different. The sacred music of the Maroons, like their ritual
language, is known as Kromanti. The sacred music of the Bongo Nation is
known as Kumina – or, sometimes, as Kumeika, or Kodongo. These two
musical traditions, Maroon and Bongo, are clearly distinct; they use
different kinds of drums, on which different styles and rhythms are played,
and they have songs sung in different ritual languages.

Maroons and Bongo people are well aware of their musical and cultural
differences, and they often talk about them. Yet, they also often point out
that their musics are “very similar” – sometimes they even go so far as to
say they are “almost the same.” In fact, despite their different cultural
origins, members of the two nations sometimes claim to belong to a single
“family,” and say they are really of the “same nation.” There is even a story
that tells of how the two groups are descended from two African sisters who
became separated when they arrived in Jamaica. There is no contradiction
in these simultaneous claims to similarity and difference. What they reflect
is a recognition of a shared Africanness, a deep cultural affinity underlying
the musical and cultural specificities that distinguish these two peoples. This
sense of cultural commonality developed during the 19th century, as
Maroons migrated from their mountain communities to the coastal
plantation area where the Central Africans who were banding together into
the Bongo Nation were concentrated. As visiting Maroons were exposed to
the Kumina tradition and welcomed into it as fellow Africans, a process of
cultural exchange took place. As a result, a new zone of musical and
cultural overlap developed in the eastern part of Jamaica. Today this history
of musical exchange is most obvious in the dozens of songs that are shared
by Maroons and Kumina practitioners belonging to the Bongo Nation. Most
of these shared songs are recognized as the joint property of the two
“nations.” And all of them belong to what might be called a more creole, or
Afro-creole, layer of culture (as opposed to each nation’s “deeper”
categories of songs). All of them, for instance, are sung in the Jamaican
creole language known as Patwa rather the African-derived ritual languages
of the two nations, and they tend to be associated with the “lighter,” less
spiritually powerful segments of ceremonies rather than those portions
calling upon the more powerful, older ancestors.

In the Kumina ceremonies of the Bongo Nation, these songs belong to the
musical category known as “bailo,” which consists of music primarily for
entertainment and enjoyment rather than high spiritual purposes. Similarly,
among the Maroons, when these songs are performed in Kromanti
ceremonies, they are invariably backed by drumming styles that Maroon
musicians characterize as “lighter” – styles such as Tambu, John Thomas, or
Sa Leone, which are used mainly for entertainment rather than calling
ancestors. In fact, it seems very likely that most of the “lighter” Maroon
styles, which are closer to the rhythmic structure of Kumina drumming than
any of the other Maroon drumming styles, actually developed out of musical
interaction and exchange between Maroon and Kumina drummers beginning
in the 19th century. This is particularly true of the Maroon style called
Tambu. Interestingly enough, the name Tambu is also sometimes applied
by members of the Bongo Nation to their own Kumina music and dance
when these are done without a serious spiritual goal in mind, but purely for
pleasure.

What does this overlapping musical zone, this musical bridge between the
Maroon and Bongo Nations, mean in practice? For one thing, it allows both
Maroons and Kumina practitioners, who sometimes meet by chance in
Kumina ceremonies, to use music to quickly establish social bonds with
each other, and to cultivate a sense of spiritual connection. In fact, when
played in certain ways, both the printing, as the Maroon drums are known
in Kromanti language, and the ngoma, as the Kumina drums are known in
Kongo language, can be used to call ancestral spirits of either nation. The
common musical territory staked out by the Maroon and Bongo ancestors
more than a century ago is still perceived as a place of harmony and
communal sentiment. This feeling is reinforced by the ease with which
drummers are able to learn one another’s related styles – not to mention all
the shared songs that do not need to be newly learned before a member of
one nation can participate in the ceremonies of the other.
Many Maroon drummers spoke to me of this musically-grounded sense of
connection with the Bongo Nation and its Kumina tradition. One great
Kromanti drummer, who was also an accomplished Kumina player, told me
of how nobody had ever taught him how to play Kumina; rather, he had
traveled to Kumina ceremonies at different places, and had just watched
and picked it up from listening. It wasn't hard to do, he said, because
Maroon drumming and Kumina drumming are very close, and he already
knew how to play Kromanti drums. After all, he pointed out, Maroons and
the Bongo Nation are "like brother and sister." And that’s why Maroons have
an equivalent of Kumina which they play on the Maroon Kromanti drums – a
style that they call Tambu. Another Kromanti drummer explained what it’s
like, as a Maroon musician, to sit in on the Kumina drums for the first time.
“It comes like when you know how to drive a big truck,” he said. “Then one
day you have to drive a small van. Well, when you sit behind the wheel you
know how to operate it already, you don't really have to learn. It might
steer a little bit different, a little lighter. You just have to get used to it, but
still you can do it.”

The other remarkable thing about this overlapping musical zone is that,
even as it fosters a sense of common identity based on a feeling of shared
Africanness, it permits members of the two groups to maintain distinctive
identities at the same time – as representatives of related, yet different,
nations with musical and cultural traditions of their own. In fact, few
drummers are able to “cross over” stylistically to such an extent that other
expert players can no longer identify what nation they belong to by their
playing. When playing Kumina, for instance, Maroon drummers usually
reveal their Maroon identity by the way they “mek bar” – that is, the way
they press the heels of their feet on the head of the drum to change the
pitch. Since the Maroon Kromanti drums are played in an upright position
without the use of the feet, Maroon drummers tend to pay less attention to
this “heeling” technique, and are seldom able to reproduce the subtle
differences in timbre expected of a Kumina master drummer. Differences in
the rhythmic patterns typically played by Maroon versus Kumina drummers
– even when performing within this overlapping musical zone – also serve
to keep the musical identities of the players somewhat separate. Because
the supporting parts of the related drumming styles of the two nations,
Tambu and Kumina, are compatible with the typical lead drum patterns of
either nation, lead drummers are able to play with supporting drummers
from the other nation without making major adjustments, and their playing
still fits in. Although their style of playing may sound somewhat “foreign” to
listeners belonging to the other nation, the resulting music, which combines
elements from both sides, still “works.”

We have here, I would like to suggest, an excellent example of the use of

music and its spiritual power in building cultural bridges in the African
diaspora. Much as people on both sides of the Atlantic today continue to
recognize and build upon a broadly shared musical heritage, Africans in the
Americas in past centuries used common musical sensibilities to help bridge
their differences, even as they sometimes also maintained the ethnically
more specific musical traditions they or their ancestors had transplanted or
recreated in this hemisphere. We know, of course, that the Jamaican case is
hardly unique; wherever in the Americas Africans of different nations met,
they constructed interethnic musical bridges. There is plentiful evidence of
this process in places such as Haiti, Cuba, and Brazil, each of which has its
own inter-African musical fusions. But one of the things that is particularly
interesting about this Jamaican case is that it shows that even after the end
of formal slavery, African newcomers were still able to rely on a broadly
shared Africanness, manifested in music and other cultural spheres, to forge
lasting social bonds with Jamaicans several generations removed from the
African continent.

In fact, Kumina, although it remains the ethnically-specific music of

communities of Central African descendants in eastern Jamaica, has also
come to serve as the vehicle of a broader African identity in Jamaica – a
process that might be seen as an extension of the kind of musical
transculturation that has long been taking place between Maroons and the
Bongo Nation. In the initial phase of the Rastafari movement, before the
emergence of what is now known as Nyabinghi, the songs and drumming of
Kumina played an important part in the Rastas’ attempts to re-create Africa
in Jamaica. Among later generations of Rastas, Kumina gave way to the
new musical fusion called Nyabinghi, which was itself based in part on
Kumina rhythms. And today, Kumina continues to be used to re-create
Africa in Jamaica, even in the latest dancehall music. We close with a
thoroughly up-to-date pop recording in which the Jamaican D.J. known as
Determination raps over a dancehall beat called the “Kumina riddim.” This is
but one of several records released in 2003 using this new version of the
Kumina riddim.
 

http://www.etno.musica.ufrj.br/biblioteca_virtual.html

http://pagesperso-orange.fr/lameca/dossiers/ethnomusicologie/bilby1_eng.html

Actes du Séminaire d'ethnomusicologie caribéenne, du 7 au 11 juillet 2003,

Sainte-Anne, Guadeloupe