Abstract:
Bàtá drums are “talking drums” that originate from West Africa and were reconstructed in Cuba by African slaves. Used in ritual on both sides of the Atlantic, bàtá drums are believed to identify the attributes of supernatural beings (òrìṣà.) through the performance of melo-rythmic patterns that replicate the pitch structure of spoken language. There is considerable debate amongst Cuban bàtá drummers regarding the extent to which original African linguistic content remains in drummed ‘salutes’ to the òrìṣà performed in ritual. This study suggests possible hypotheses for the decline of ‘drum speech’ in Cuban bàtá drumming. I argue that amongst other factors, the ascendancy of one faction in a contest for ritual authority in Cuba introduced changes in ritual practice, shifting the focus from the batá’s role as ‘talking drum’ to a more ‘musical’ role within ritual. This shift demonstrates how musical meaning, ritual enactment, and oral tradition are fluid and evolving in diasporic communities.
