Calabash

As a percussionist I almost inevitably encountered the calabash, perhaps more known as “gourd” in English. The fruit of a wider family, including also the pumpkin, squash, but also the courgette (zucchini, in English), the calabash (also: gourd) obtained in several cultures in dried form a wider function than a nutritional one (container, for one). Whereas the strong US influence in this world, and even the imitation of Halloween parties in European countries – for some reason – made the pumpkin’s decorative, “ritual” use most well-known, in my life as percussionist the calabash had another significance altogether. First, in my case, as resonator of – acoustical - musical instruments I used. Not unimportant of course, but while I enjoyed the sound it helped produce, I took it somehow for granted.

RESONATOR

A shékere I use (of African, Yoruba origin), and the guiro scraper (originally known from Cuba, but also long used among Amerindians in South America) – both made from dried calabash - would not be the same without the calabash, or gourd, as resonator. That because it is in reality not just a resonator, but also a natural “amplifier”.

The dried gourd is hard and firm enough for that use. Interestingly, a small balafon (xylophone-like) I have, from Senegal, has gourds as resonator under the stones, to very nice effect. Recently I got a shaker made of gourd/calabash, in a “bottle” shape – a bottle gourd- probably from Igbo culture in SE Nigeria, similar to shape as the shékere, but without beads around it.

Another shaker I have for a long time (even before I delved more intensively into percussion, since about 2006) consisted of two calabash resonators on each side of a kind of basket, filled with metal beads. Here also the calabash makes the difference with other shakers, but I maybe did not realize it that much even. I just liked the sound, and how it combined with other instruments.

The Kalimba thumb piano – a wide-spread modern (“westernized’) simplification of the Zimbabwean Mbira thumb piano – also is often made often of gourd, although the one I have is – as someone said – probably from coconut (also common). The original Mbira (with more metal tines) – by the way used traditionally the gourd.

Another lamellophone/thumb piano I have is actually African, from Cameroon, but is also from wood (with bamboo tines). Calabash/gourd is however used a lot for African instruments, as resonators (also for Kora lutes, for instance, mbiras, or musical bows), and as “drum” itself.

Thus throughout my percussion compositions (I call these “percussion instrumentals”), or jamming with percussion instruments live in some clubs, I in fact used “calabash” quite regularly, but especially as resonators, contributing therefore to some degree nicely to the whole musical experience. It was therefore in this sense like the proverbial “elephant in the room”, though not as much ignored, as just not deeply analysed.

I suddenly realized that I have quite a lot of dried “calabash” in my house, spread throughout several instruments, haha. A percussionist’s thing..

SHEKERE

The shékere shaker (beads around a calabash with a hole) – common in Yorubaland, Nigeria, but spread throughout Latin America, might be the best known use, with the roundish beads wrapped around it. Enslaved Yoruba and other Africans brought this to Cuba, Brazil, and other countries. The shékere is still used there, especially in folk culture, such as Afro-Cuban and –Brazilian religions (Santería, Candomblé).

In addition, especially the larger Shékeres – known as sekere in Yoruba – function often as calabash drum as well, as it is tapped at the bottom while shaken at the same time, customary also in traditional Yoruba music (SW Nigeria, Benin).

Interestingly, the also quite well-known Cabasa shaker – more modern and with metal beads, was developed in Brazil as a modernization of that Shékere, but without calabash (instead: wood, metal, and plastic) in its shaking or resonating. The calabash Shékere however still tends to be more used traditionally in Brazil, as in Cuba, and elsewhere in the Americas and Africa.

In more southern Africa, by the way, the gourd/calabash also has a resonator function for the semi-percussive “musical bows” there (Angola, Namibia, Zambia, South Africa), the foreparent – of course – of the Berimbau bow of Afro-Brazilian Capoeira (still using a gourd resonator for the sole string).

AS DRUM

Directly hitting or drumming on a calabash also is possible of course – to which the large Shekere use already hinted, but without the beads -, and I got interested in that later. I hit the calabash shaker I have with a stick sometimes as extra sound (even live in the mic), but especially in Africa itself, actual calabash, or gourd, “drums” are still commonly used, also played by hands. In fact, this is the case in a large part of Africa: from Mali and Ghana, Cameroon, to even more southern in Southern Africa, alongside its mentioned use for musical bow resonators, and large and small balafons (in fact all over Africa).

I vaguely knew this, but my interest in this was revived when I saw another musician I know (drums and percussion) in the Netherlands, Freddy Poncin, play a larger calabash drum (open bottomed) at a concert in Amsterdam. Poncin played with several (also Jamaican) Reggae artists as a drummer, but in this case played that calabash drum – with a kind of bass function – on a concert, November 2023, accompanying nicely local Surinamese-Dutch Reggae artists Rapha Pico and Miriam Simone in Amsterdam.

Instead of a standard drum kit, this concert had two percussion sets for the rhythm section, one by Freddy Poncin (the other one played by experienced Netherlands-based Reggae percussionist Ras Maiky), turning out groovy (read: danceable) enough as replacement of that drum kit. I got especially intrigued by the unusual use of that calabash drum by one of the percussionists, Freddy Poncin.

It was then that I entered something more “new” for me: the calabash as drum. Theoretically it was not new to me, but in reality I did not encounter it as much. I saw - also online – how Africans played such a large calabash (with open bottom), alone or in a drum ensemble, rendering a low, full sound. It can be played with sticks and hands.

When with hands, there was one hand use that intrigued me, as it seemed adapted to the unique material and sonic characteristics of the calabash shell: the fist-down hit (like when you slam your fist on the table, pinky-side down). This “fist down” hit on a larger calabash drum renders a deeper, nice sound (bass-like), that sounds quite unique, when compared to other (skin-based) drums, or wood-based instruments I am used to playing. A distinct, unique sound.

Sure, on larger skin-based drums this fist-down (pinky at bottom) hit is possible, but usually does not add much difference, from e.g. a palm hit. For a calabash drum it seemed more required for a certain sound.

In Ghana and Burkina Faso this calabash drum is e.g. known, but in other parts of Africa as well: the Mande-speaking regions (Mali, Niger, Guinea, a.a.). It is most known from that West African region, but further study showed it is also used as drum (besides as resonator) or “hitting block” up to Southern Africa.

A pity I could not find such a calabash drum for my collection and compositions (and jamming), I began to think..

WATER DRUM

Another use that intrigued me was the “water drum” use of the calabash. I read about this in a paper book I have since long (‘Trommels & klankinstrumenten’, by Töm Klöwer), in Dutch, translated from German (title transl.= Drums and sound instruments). This water drum was mainly found among the Malinké en Senufo people, spread throughout Mali, Burkina Faso, and Ivory Coast, this book said.

In this instrument, in a large though emptied melon basin filled with water, half-calabashes are put in belly-up, and hit with a kind of spoon (also traditionally made from calabash), by the prestigious female Poro community. Whereas in many African culture skin-based drums are the domain of men, these water calabash drums are played by women.

This skin-based-drum played only by men in Africa is a common gender division, though more strictly upheld (traditionally at least) in West Africa, and less so in Central and Southern Africa, where women more often play skinned drum. The calabash-based water drum in West Africa – not skinned - can however be played by women.

This division (men can only play skin drums) might seem strange or sexist to some, or at least rigid. Motivations given for it relate mostly to (spiritually) “purity” or “strength”, or (socially) “desexualizing” the context, especially in sacred settings. Some – more practically - associate it with the skin and wood: taking skin of killed or deceased animals for drum skin, and chopping and reworking wood, are “men’s jobs” (also in Europe, btw), so also the drumming that they result in..

The Nyabinghi drummers of the Jamaican-originated, spiritual and Afro-centric Rasta i movement, still more or less uphold this distinction, as often only men drum, and women tend to play shakers and chant along. This water drum in Mali/Burkina Faso/Ivory Coast, however is played by women, and is known in the local language as “gi dunu”, a funny “onomatopoeia”, as linguists call it: the formation of a word from a sound associated with what is named. In this case a “watery” sound.

Indeed, its sound is kind of “gi dunu-like” , “underwater” bass-like, and deep and warm. They exist in different sizes, with differing tonality. More modern uses (also by Westerners and men), include with metal basins, newer sticks, or played by hand.

The Tuareg nomadic people in Northern Mali and around (Berber language, mixed with black Africans) use a similar calabash water drum, to imitate the sound of the camel, so crucial in their desert lives.. Also an interesting use. Men play it among the Tuareg.

DOMESTICATION

According to Wikipedia, the gourd or calabash was known in Asia from “ever since”, so to speak, at least since around 8000 BC, then around 4000 BC in Africa, then parts of Europe, and not long after Asia, being there long, so long before Columbus came. It was also “domesticated” in cultivation (adapted, strengthened by humans) quite soon in history, in all these continents.

ASIA AND ELSEWHERE

It is therefore quite possible that those musical functions of gourds (resonator or percussive) could be found outside of Africa as well. I became curious, but know also that Africa is the most percussive continent. It sounds like a cliché, but it’s true musically: Africa is the most percussive/percussion-rich continent. It also is, also almost a cliché, the most rhythm-focused continent, especially sub-Saharan Africa.

I said this before, but over-simplifying one can say that, musically, Europe focuses overall more on harmony, Asia on melody, and Africa on rhythm.

Tellingly, a known example from a gourd-based traditional instrument in China is a reed instrument: the “gourd flute”, or Hulusi, in fact known in a larger part of Asia, from Myanmar/Burma, to Vietnam, and mainly in the most southwestern of China’s provinces, Yunnan, bordering both Burma and Vietnam, and with a subtropical climate. So, as resonator it is found outside of Africa and the African Diaspora (in the Americas) as well. The flute consists of bamboo flutes, with a gourd resonator. Drum in Chinese is “gong”, and in Chinese, and other Asian music, metal seems indeed the preferred material for “drums” or general rhythmical functions. Skin drums are not absent, but of lesser importance, and calabash as drum (as in e.g. Mali, Africa) also unknown..

The Chinese/SE Asian Hulusi resembles in sound somewhat the Clarinet, and has popularity in some regions, and the calabash resonator is part of that. Hulu in its name is Mandarin for “calabash gourd”, by the way, recognizing its importance. There are similar reed/flute instruments in China as well, such as the Sheng.

In India the gourd is also used as a resonator of reed instruments, but has in the remarkable Gopichanta (or Ektara) instrument, which is a string instrument with also a drumming/tapping function. Besides in the India region (inc. Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh) a similar instrument is found in Egypt.

In Vietnam there is likewise a string instrument using a gourd/calabash resonator, called Dan Bau, known as “gourd zither”. Bau is “gourd” in Vietnamese, Dan means “string instrument”.

In the Middle East and Turkey regions, the gourd resonator is found also with stringed instruments, with violins (The Kemane violin in Turkish folk music) and other string instruments, like lutes, as the Kora in (Islam-influenced parts of) Africa.

All very interesting, but not really percussion, being my main field of interest and expertise. The shaker among Amerindians in the Americas (the early Maracas: that I also wrote a blog post about), as well as scrapers, used gourd/calabash as resonators, and are more in the percussion category (idiophones, they call them). The guiro shaker in Cuba tends still to be made of calabash.. The Amerindians also knew the Peyote “rattle” made of gourd.

Yet, shakers and scrapers were also long known in Africa, also with gourd resonators, long before colonialism, so to say.

INTERNATIONAL DIFFERENCES

It is just that the material characteristics of dried calabash (in its later domesticated form) as hard and water-resistant, made it suitable for many functions, across various cultures, as containers and carriers for households, and more, especially in subtropical and tropical climates. From Spain (where the word Calabaza – at the root of English calabash as synonym of “gourd” – appeared from Moorish Arabic, in the times of Moorish Spain, with probably Persian roots) to Vietnam, and from Turkey to Namibia, and to South America (where gourds once arrived from Africa, long before Columbus), the calabash was found useful.

Yet, in culturally different ways, and here again becomes evident that “Africa is the most percussive continent” is perhaps a cliché, but certainly not nonsense. Calabash used for specifically drums or blocks are really only found on the African continent or in the African Diaspora in the Americas. Then gourds were traditionally used as resonators of musical bows (in southern Africa, like in Angola, South Africa, Zambia – the Brazilian Berimbau in Capoeira derived from this), for types of harps and lutes as the Kora in Sahel/West Africa and the Mande-speaking regions (Mali, Guinea, and around) - not to forget the precursors to the Afro-American Banjo -, marimba and balafon, both “xylophone-like” instruments in large parts of Africa (from Senegal to Mozambique).., all using calabashes/gourds as resonators.

The use for different types of shakers (shékere being the best-known) of gourd/calabash for shakers goes way back in Africa: in fact known as early as the maracas shakers among natives in the Americas.

Besides in Africa, and partly among Amerindians, calabash functioned more secondary to melodic and harmony instruments (reed and string instruments) in most of Asian cultures, and seldom percussively, as in Africa.

The solid, dried calabash was used across cultures and continents, but in different ways. We call these “cultural differences”, that seem predictable, but are largely true, with nuances: for string instruments in the Middle East and India, flutes/reed instruments in South East Asia, shakers/scrapers in the Americas, and for shakers/scrapers and for drums and more other percussion-like instruments in Africa.

All cliché’s generalize too much, and of course most folk music – world wide! - combines to differing degrees melody-harmony-rhythm.. It’s just a matter of emphasis. Even within musical “cultural zones”. For instance the folk music of Spain and Southern Italy has relatively more “rhythmic aspects” than elsewhere in Europe, while Italian folk music (as its classical music) is more “melodic” when compared to German/Austrian more “harmonic” folk music influences. Classical music enthusiasts sometimes point at the – relative - “rhythmic” strength of Spanish classical music (by e.g. Manuel de Falla), the “harmonic” strength of German/Austrian compositions, and in turn the more “melodic” strength of Italian classical compositions.

India, Indonesia, South East Asia (and the aboriginals), as well as the Middle East, of course know drum and percussion instruments as well, though often with secondary functions to more melodic or harmonic pieces.

Calabash drums (and scrapers) in Africa, however also foreground Calabash musically, rhythmically, as main instrument, as it does with the other (skin-based) drums, often with polyrhythms (several rhythms at the same time), especially important and common in sub-Saharan African traditional music.

Interesting, and illustrative, cultural differences therefore also show in the different historical and present calabash/gourd uses in different regions, especially its musical and wider creative use..

MODERN POP

Its present use in modern, mostly electric (“western”) “pop” or “rock” music, is of course more limited, though “calabash” as sound maker or resonator can be found as part of the added percussion sections of especially modern Afro-American genres like Reggae, Salsa, Merengue, Soca, or even Soul and Blues (and some Pop and hip-hop), often combined with electrical instruments of modern pop (electric guitar, drum kits, keyboard, etc.).. a reminder of the “acoustic era” after all at the root of all music of today. Also in Jamaican early folk music (like Mento) gourds were used, after all, not just in Cuba. This is after all often a function of “percussion sets” in modern (popular/rock) genres, especially Afro-American ones: reminding of the roots and acoustical times.

More prominent in Latin styles like Salsa (Cuban-derived) and Merengue (from the Dominican Republic), but Jamaican Reggae uses the scraper (often of gourd) quite a lot in the mix (as does Salsa or Cuban Son) too, as well as some shakers made from calabash.

CONCLUSION

What I can conclude from this research and reflection is that the calabash or gourd, especially as used in subtropical and tropical areas of different continents, contributed strongly to folk music globally, mostly as “resonator” (read: amplifier) for other instruments, and specifically in Africa also as primary instrument (drum, percussion) as well. It proved in fact crucial in folk and traditional music historically, due to its tough and water-resistant characteristics as the fruit got domesticated in human history, alongside of course wood, or other natural materials (clay/earthenware, mud, straw, coconut, bamboo, from animals..).

African continuities

For many years now, I find this an interesting theme: African continuities and retentions in the African Diaspora in the Americas: among the descendants of enslaved Africans in the Americas: the US, the Caribbean, Latin America, and South America. I have read a lot about it.

This has naturally come across on this blog of mine, in fact being one of the most recurring themes on this blog. Having studied Trans-Atlantic slavery for many years, both in a professional context, and personally, this interest followed automatically and logically. After all, I am very much interested in culture and music, and always have been.

How much can you maintain of your culture despite all and massive efforts of deculturization and dehumanization, Africans endured during the trans-Atlantic slavery? Not even their family names, these enslaved Africans could keep, while also losing their original languages, cultural contexts and bonds, and faiths.

DERACINATING

This “losing” is the crux, though. The oppressors wanted the African slaves to lose it as much as possible, especially when interfering with their production goals. In reality, the “losing” was luckily relative. Against all odds, the original cultures and the underlying ideas and values were never fully lost. While of the African languages the slaves spoke, only fragments are maintained to the present, with some exceptions among e.g. Maroons or in ritual contexts (with more of the languages maintained), and the original family names seem to really be lost (though in cases traceable, but difficultly), the culture and cultural values – on the other hand - were maintained much better. To differing degrees and in different ways, but for real and undeniable.

This begs the question: in what ways can you maintain an ancestral culture, threatened for whatever reason? In the case of enslaved Africans, this threat was their forced removal from their own land, their enslavement, and the mentioned dehumanization and attempts of deculturalization. Quite a bigger and more destructive threat and attack on an ancestral culture than just “modernization”, outside cultural influences (on further still preserved and respected own cultural contexts), all old cultures in this world face. African enslavement in the West was in that sense more “deracinating”, besides destructive.

Against all these odds, there are undeniably still African cultural continuities among Blacks in the Americas. This is both interesting and beautiful. For these reasons, I delved much in that theme during my life.

I am a Reggae fan since my early teens, love other Black Music too, and am interested in several countries in the Americas, as well as in the African continent. All this, kept my interest in the theme of “African retentions in the Americas” surely alive.

I am also interested in the Rastafari movement, feeling myself even associated with it. In a book – a collective volume – about the Rastafari movement, these “African continuities”, also in the movement, are also treated. It is the work ‘Chanting down Babylon : the Rastafari reader’ (Temple University Press, 1998), edited by Nathaniel Samuel Murrell, William David Spencer, and Adrian Anthony McFarlane. A Neil J. Savishinsky wrote an article in it on ‘African Dimensions of the Jamaican Rastafarian Movement’, but other essays/articles in the same work, by other authors, address the theme too.

The Rastafari movement is interesting in this regard, since it is known as “Afrocentric”.

CREOLIZATION

Other books and works, such as by Robert Farris Thompson, referred to elsewhere on my blog too, and several scholarly works on “creolization” and “Négritude” in the Caribbean and around, also deal with African continuities in the Americas.

Négritude and Creolité are terms that arose among French Caribbean intellectuals, notably Aimé Césaire (from Martinique) who emphasized the remained Africanness among Caribbean Blacks (Négritude), whereas other authors focus rather on the inevitable adaptation in the Americas of Africans, and cultural mixtures, albeit with underlying values (Créolité), of which Raphaël Confiant was an exponent.

These were partly literary movements, but had their more general sociohistorical and cultural counterparts, also in the English-speaking Caribbean. Thus the term “creolization”, became common as cultural description among scholars in Caribbean Studies, referring to the cultural adaptation of Africans (and others) in the Americas, toward a new essentially mixed culture. This still maintained African retentions, but more indirectly, in values.

The equivalent of Négritude in the British Caribbean would probably be Black Power or Afrocentric thought.

The usage of these terms often take their significance far beyond merely academic, historical descriptions, supposedly striving to neutrality. They even became ideological or political stances among intellectuals and politicians; at least an assertion of chosen cultural identity.

Such biases or ideologies aside, or rather “behind” those ideological and biased surfaces, it remains interesting to study as neutrally and impartially as possible, what African continuities and retentions actually remain in the Americas, despite what movements or ideological currents claim or aim to.

RASTAFARI

The Rastafari movement from Jamaica is an interesting case, because it is a movement of a – one might say – ideological and spiritual nature. It arose in the 1930s in Jamaica, largely under the influence of Jamaican thinker and activist Marcus Garvey. It is a Black Power movement, focusing on African/Black upliftment, “Africa for the Africans”, and with the eventual aim of repatriation to Africa.

Garvey did not expect a prosperous future for the Black race, anywhere in the Americas, even limitedly in “Black majoritarian areas” in it (Jamaica, Haiti a.o.), opting instead for freeing Africa from White colonialism, making it the home and power base of all Africans and African-descended people. As far-fetched and quite ambitious this idea and goal might seem, it had some solid reasoning behind it by Garvey and its followers.

This essentially Black Power movement obtained an important spiritual dimension with the rise of the Rastafari movement, who began to worship the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I as divine or at least crucial, as a kind of fulfillment of prophecy, also found in the Bible. The ultimate aim of repatriation centered on Africa, but now more specifically also on Ethiopia, as ”Zion”. This was opposed to the “Babylon”, Rastas and all Black people were forced to live in, i.e. the Western world, including the Americas.

The Rastafari movement thus read the Bible from a Black perspective, but was overall focused on Africa, making it truly Afrocentric in stance.

There are stances and there are facts . An interesting article in the Rastafari reader, deals with these historical and cultural facts; “neutral”, scholarly knowledge, so to speak, about the actual African (cultural) characteristics of the Rastafari movement, looked at it academically and factually.

In other words, is Africa mostly an (ideological or philosophical) goal or aim within the Rastafari movement, or is the movement itself inherently already mostly African (culturally and spiritually), lost in a wrong context (the Americas). If so, to what degree?

An intriguing question, being as old as the Rastafari movement (since the 1930s) - or even the Garvey Movement (active since the 1910s) - themselves.

An uneasy question should be asked too: is it, painfully, maybe so that Blacks in the Americas are too Westernized or ”creolized” over time, to adapt easily in present-day Africa?

NATION OF ISLAM

I think a comparison between the (US) Nation Of Islam and Rastafari is useful here, for a broader historical perspective. The comparison between these two (originally) Black Power movements is quite logical and can lead to insightful results. Both movements have “spiritual” dimensions beyond politicized Black Power, and both movements are in fact somehow related historically, with connecting historical personalities, and notably with deeper origins in the Garvey Movement. The readable work ‘Marcus Garvey and the Back to Africa Movement’ (Lucent Books, 2006), written by Stuart A. Kallen, says about this:

“Elijah Mohammed, who led the influential Nation Of Islam, or Black Muslim organization, from 1934 to 1975 was a corporal in the Chicago division of the UNIA (Garvey’s movement) in the 1920s”.

In the same book it is recounted how both Malcolm X’s parents (his mother was from Grenada in the Caribbean) were UNIA members, and his father even vice president of the Detroit division.

Malcolm X himself indeed recognized the pioneering role of Marcus Garvey, having stated: “It was Marcus Garvey’s philosophy of Pan Africanism that initiated the entire freedom movement..”

This post is about African continuities or retentions in the Americas. This is somewhat problematic in the case of the Nation Of Islam. It is more wishful thinking and ideology than real historical facts, that the “Islam is the original Black Man’s religion” as some Nation Of Islam leaders claimed. It never was and is, as such. The Islam originated on the Arabian peninsula, where indeed also some people with a darker hue (migrants or slaves from Africa, included) were found, being often slaves. The prophet Mohammed had an Ethiopian slave who became free because of his conversion to Islam. Historically, this Islam, developed after Christianity already has taken hold in Africa itself, notably Ethiopia, where it even became a state religion, and other parts, such as what is now Egypt and Sudan.

The conquering spree from the Arabian peninsula from the 7th c AD onward, spreading Islam to the whole of Northern Africa, and even somewhat more to the South (the Guinea and Mande regions for instance), parts of Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania, and elsewhere, was exactly that: a conquest from outside. Only in time this was “Africanized” culturally, such as in the Guinea and Senegal regions, among Oromo in Ethiopia, and other groups, diverging a bit from the imposed “Arab model”.

The Nation Of Islam seems to deny this fact that Islam was more or less imposed on the African continent. The Arab slave trade made many Black Africans as victims, proportionately much more than the “white slaves" (Slavic, Mediterraneans, or others) some like to overemphasize. True, also many in Africa converted more or less willingly, since at least nominal conversion to Islam is relatively easy, even for illiterates: Islam is centered on rituals, rather than on complex writings. It is in any case not an African religion, and the type of Islam propagated in the Nation of Islam, even by current leaders like Farrakhan, seems to strive to the “pure, Arab” kind, ignoring or at least downplaying direct African cultural retentions. Relatedly, the Garvey-ite “Back to Africa” repatriation focus has been abandoned by the Nation of Islam. A separate Black nation - but in the US - came to be instead the norm within the Nation of Islam, at some point.

It is therefore safe to say, that Rastafari and the Nation of Islam, while sharing some same goals (Black upliftment), moved in separate directions, seeking different solutions.

REGIONAL DIFFERENCES

This is where Robert Farris Thompson, and other cultural history scholars, and their studies, become useful: African retentions and cultural heritages worked out a bit differently throughout the Americas. Enslaved Africans came from different parts from Africa, and got concentrated in different areas – relatively -, shaping some cultural differences. Only, Farris Thompson states, slaves from the Congo region spread relatively evenly throughout the whole Americas: from South America, to the Caribbean, and the US, Congo Africans becoming a kind of “binding” or “connecting” cultural group within the African Diaspora.

Further, there were some differences: slaves from the Ghana regions ended up in some colonies more than others, having to do with European access to trade in Africa. Relatively much in Suriname, Guyana, Jamaica, St Croix, proportionately less in other colonies. Yoruba slaves (from present-day SW Nigeria, and Benin) ended up more in Spanish and Portuguese colonies like Cuba or Brazil, Igbo slaves in some British colonies more, Fon and Ewe slaves relatively more in Haiti and other French colonies, Senegambian slaves more in the US, etcetera etcetera.

It is still important to point out that African slave populations within all these colonies were in the end mixed: so also culturally. Partly Yoruba-influenced Cuba still had also about 40% of its slave population from the Congo region, and (partly Akan/Ghana-influenced) Jamaica, also about 25% of its slave population from the Congo region (besides Igbo and others). In Suriname, slaves of Fon and Ewe origin (from present day Benin, Togo and around) were also quite numerous, according to some linguists still noticeable in structures of the Surinamese Creole language (Sranan Tongo), besides also noticeable Ghanaian/Akan remnants among Afro-Surinamers.

To return to the Nation Of Islam and African Americans in the US: in the US the slavery regime while of course still dehumanizing, was overall a bit less deadly than elsewhere in the Americas (more nutritious food for instance), enabling slave populations to reproduce in much of the US, and with less needs for new African imports. This diluted the culture more from the African roots, though some African retentions still remain in African American culture, only more indirectly. The partly Senegambian/Guinean origins of US Blues are beyond doubt, but there are more examples of indirect African retentions among African Americans in the US.

This found its way in a movement like the Nation Of Islam, whose present-day leader (Louis Farrakhan) is by the way of Caribbean origin, but the increased emphasis on a purist (Arab) Islam might have disturbed that.

BACK TO AFRICA

One of the differences between the Nation Of Islam and the Rastafari movement is that the latter still espouses the “Back to Africa” ideal of Garvey, up to the present.

This “Back to Africa” can be taken both literally or of course metaphorically or mentally: as a mental, spiritual process, all the while still residing in Jamaica, the US or elsewhere. Some Rastafari adherents among reggae musicians, likewise chose a maintained main residence in the Americas, though having travelled now more to Africa. The aim is there.

How much does this connect to actual African cultural values among most Rastafari adherents?

SAVISHINSKY

In the article in the 1998 collective volume ‘Chanting Down Babylon : a Rastafari Reader’ I mentioned earlier in the post, the one titled ‘African Dimensions of the Jamaican Rastafarian Movement’, the author Neil J. Savishinsky discusses that.

Regarding the “dimensions” of the title, Savishinsky distinguishes between “direct African continuities”, “indirect African influences”, and “African parallels”.

Among the direct continuities, he categorizes the music. He includes in this “neo-African” (mixed African) continuities, rather than just exactly similar musical patterns from, say, Ghana or Congo, but now in Jamaica. There are nonetheless still some regional, and strong continuities: the Kumina rituals in especially Eastern Jamaica, having many, quite intact/maintained musical and drumming patterns stemming from the Congo region, considering the diverging histories.

Burru drumming, elsewhere in Jamaica, shows some evident Ghanaian/Akan/Coromantee influences. Both these traditions, Burru and Kumina, influenced what would become known as Nyahbinghi drumming among the Rastafari in Jamaica. The types of drums more influenced by the Burru, while drumming patterns themselves, and rituals and terminology, are influenced by Kumina, including the “heart beat” base of rhythms.

Equally significant, Savishinsky, points justly at the underlying values regarding the role of music in faith, spirituality and in cultural expressions. In African culture, music and dance are necessarily intertwined, while the sacred and the profane are also merged, consisting of a profound difference with imposed European culture, where music plays usually different roles, bearing other values and functions. Some folk European music genres come a bit closer, but Burru and Kumina, Maroon music, but also Jamaican “pop” music genres that developed over time from these influences (Ska, Rocksteady, Reggae, Dancehall), still maintain that essential “Africanness” in the connection between music, rhythm, dance, and spirituality.

MARIJUANA

Regarding what he calls “drugs”, the use of marijuana among many Rastas, Savishinsky also sees interestingly an African continuity. Interestingly, because many – even some scholars – associate the common use of marijuana in Jamaica, including spiritually among Rastas, with an East Indian influence, as Indians interacted with Africans on the island. The term “Ganja” is also of Indian origin, as is another common term for “weed” or “herb” (all terms for cannabis/marijuana), namely: “collie”.

Savishinsky rather sees more African cultural historical parallels, pointing at the historical role of marijuana use in the Congo region, among several groups, also for spiritual reasons, not unlike among the Rastafari adherents. Another term for marijuana, popularized by artist Bob Marley & the Wailers, namely “Kaya” is of Congo/Central African origin, bringing this point home. It is the name of a song and album by Bob Marley and the Wailers, but also a common term among Rastas for “the herb” (alongside other terms like ganja, herb, lamb’s bread etcetera). This opened my eyes a bit, as I began to take the East Indian influence too much for granted: it might not be only that influence.

DREADLOCKS

Savishinsky also mentions “dreadlocks”, but as more indirect African influence. I think it is a more “direct” one, though. Like other scholars, he also sees a possible East Indian influence here, as in India, long-haired, dredlocked priest-like figures, known as “saddhu’s” are known for a long time, within variants of Hinduism. These connect spirituality with dreadlocks, similar to Rastas.

In time, I studied more sources, and came to doubt these Indian origins of dreadlocks in Jamaica, not as sole source, anyway. There were – after all - historically in Africa, from long before slavery, people with dreadlocks, often also with spiritual functions: e.g. the Nimba in Northern Namibia, in parts of the Congo regions, other Bantu-speaking regions, in the Guinea regions, the Nigeria/Cameroun areas, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania. The way the Maasai wear their hair is quite known, but other groups in Africa wore dreadlocks looking more similar to Jamaican Rastas nowadays, and have done so since long.

Savishinsky instead points at the influence of the news on the anti-British colonial Mau Mau warriors in Kenya (appearing around 1952), known to have wore dreadlocks, and Afro-Jamaicans emulating this. Indeed the rebellious Mau Mau from Kenya were an influence on Jamaican Rastas starting to wear dreadlocks, but based on deeper African roots, and - I argue - more than on Indian Roots. Besides, even among European or other Asian groups (some Celtic or Viking groups, Eskimo’s, Tibetans) dreadlock-like long hair has been found. It is not exclusive, let’s just say..

As other African “indirect” influences, he mentions the Rasta colours (red, gold, and green or red, black, and green), while he also pays attention to other Pan-African parallels, following on international exchanges, and the international influence of Marcus Garvey, also on the African independence movements. He also discusses Biblical rereadings by Rastas from an African perspective.

All interesting and true, but more in the terrain of stances or ideological choices, or an “identity search” if you will. All valid and even positive and successful, but studied elsewhere too.

CONCLUSION

What’s in this case more interesting though, I opine, is that Africa was already there in basic cultural values, musical and spiritual ones, as examples, among the Rastafari adherents. All this, despite centuries of attempts of deculturalization, Judeo-Christian, and European influences.

These basic African values guided all what came after, including later adaptations, emulations, mixtures, or new creations. The focus on Africa, veneration of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I, and the goal of repatriation to Africa (theoretical or not), all made sure these African values remained the guides. As “the tree with good roots bearing good fruits”, as Marcus Garvey once described it.

“Rhythm” and drumming are important parts of this, as also became clear from an interview with Ras Michael, Jamaican artist and Nyahbingi veteran, in 1986 for the Modern Drummer magazine (see: https://www.moderndrummer.com/article/august-1986-ras-micheal-the-roots-of-reggae/). Hand drums, and even later trap drums in Reggae, Ras Michael argued, ensured the African historical connection in its very patterns, of Rastafari, but also in broader Jamaican (musical) culture, and in modern reggae, even with modern digital instruments. Rhythm and music as an essential heart beat, keeping Africa alive. Likewise, the drummer with Bob Marley & the Wailers, Carlton Barret, pointed out how that he as drummer within Reggae especially carries that weight of “African retentions”, even more so than other instrumentalists.

Perhaps, this living cultural practice in the end outweighs any Islam-derived (as the Nation Of Islam) or Christianity-derived (as Rastafari) beliefs, movements outwardly espouse.