The Sonic Structure of Shango Feasts
The Orisha religion began in Trinidad sometime in the middle to late-19th century, originating with several thousand indentured laborers (free, not enslaved) from the areas in present-day Nigeria. (The religion was long known as Shango in Trinidad, but many worshipers now prefer the name Orisha.) Based on the veneration of a pantheon of Yoruba spirits known as orishas – with attendant spirit possession, animal sacrifice, and drumming and singing—Orisha bears strong resemblances to the Yoruba-derived religions in Cuba (Santería) and Brazil (Candomblé). As in those places, Trinidad Orisha musicians use three drums. But while Cubans play bata drums, and Brazilians play Dahomean-derived peg-style atabaques, Trinidadians use a trio of bembe drums with bent sticks. Very similar bembe drums can be observed in Nigeria today.
Like elsewhere in the diaspora, Christianity plays a central role in Trinidad Orisha—though some Orisha shrines since the late 20th century have spearheaded a more “pure” Orisha practice that renounces Christianity. Historically, the Yorubas in Trinidad syncretized their orishas with the saints of the local (French) Catholic religion.[1] As Orisha practitioners in Trinidad maintained their Christianity over generations, many became Spiritual Baptists (an Afro-Protestant faith native to the West Indies), such that “Shango-Baptists” remains a common (if derogatory, in the eyes of many) moniker on the island. (The Spiritual Baptist connection remains strong, and the setting of the Orisha ethnography below is a Spiritual Baptist church.)
Being one of three main Yoruba-derived faiths in the Americas, Trinidad Orisha has received the attention of several anthropological studies.[2] These include a Herskovitsian study on the high degree of Africanisms found in Orisha (Simpson 1965); a study of syncretism in the religion (Houk 1995); a biographical sketch of the well-known Shango leader, Papa Neezer (Henry 2008), and a study of the sociopolitical legitimization of the religion (2003); studies of spirit possession in the Orisha religion in relation to trance practices of Spiritual Baptists and Hindus (Lum 2000 and McNeal 2011, respectively); and studies of Yoruba language retentions in Trinidad (Warner-Lewis 1994; 1996). However, while at least one of these anthropologists performed Orisha drums as part of his methodology (Houk 1995), no scholar has written specifically about Orisha music.[3] When one considers that drumming and singing are nearly ever-present during Orisha rituals, it becomes clear that the study of Trinidad Orisha music is long overdue in African diaspora scholarship.
In this audio essay I look specifically at the “feast”—the main, annual event held by an Orisha congregation—to explore the idea that music during Orisha rituals is much more than ancillary. Rather, Orisha feasts can be understood as sonically structured. In that sense, Orisha music and ritual are inseparable. While individual Orisha songs are typically brief, taking a wider view reveals long-form structures and a more complex relationship between Orisha music and time. Along these lines, Michael Tenzer argues that a useful concept in world music analysis is periodicity, which “orients us in music and a much larger hierarchy of time that connects to experience both at and beyond the scale of human lives” (Tenzer 2006:25). The Orisha feast periodicities herein described might be categorized as 1) hymn time; 2) Litany time; 3) drumming and ring march time; 4) manifestation time; 5) offering time; and 6) time for giving thanks. In Tenzer’s terms, Orisha music “orients” its participants in the feast, signaling the progression through different periods of the ritual, and, beyond the scale of participants’ lives, to the historicity of their tradition.[4]
The recordings included in this essay were made by me in June 2014, using a Zoom H4N handheld recorder, at an Orisha feast at the Mount Moriah Spiritual Baptist Church in Brooklyn. This church was something of a home base for me during my fieldwork, especially during the summer in 2011 when I was a regular umele drummer in the Orisha scene in Brooklyn. The umele (derived from a Yoruba word in Nigeria denoting an accompanying drum) is the smallest of the three standard bembe-derived Orisha drums, all of which are played seated with either one or two curved sticks. Drumming in Orisha can easily involve 4 to 6 hours of continuous work, usually in the middle of the night. While this was tiring, the central rituals of Orisha—namely spirit possession and animal sacrifice—are carried out mere feet from the drums (the drums being a focal point of the religion). Being a drummer at these ceremonies gave me a front row seat for the proceedings and enabled a unique perspective of Orisha ritual and structural development. Although I was not a drummer when I made the present recordings, this perspective aided me while I was attending as an onlooker, singing participant, and ethnomusicologist with recorder in hand.
While these recordings were made in Brooklyn rather than in Trinidad, for the purposes of this article they can be considered representative generally of the genre “Trinidad Orisha music” (see Bazinet 2013). Though the context of this feast is somewhat different from a Trinidadian version (indoors rather than outdoors, as would be the case in Trinidad), the music is the same. I make this statement with confidence not only based on my own frequent travels to Trinidad and to Orisha feasts there, but also due to the fact that several of the singers and drummers recorded herein split their time between Trinidad and Brooklyn, as do many other transnational West Indians. In Brooklyn, Trinidadians use music—from Orisha to soca—to recreate home in the diaspora (Bazinet 2012).[5]
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