Musical thoughts on unresolved questions and recent findings in big drum research.

I traveled to Carriacou, Grenada, immediately after reading Paule Marshall's novel, Praisesong for the Widow (1983). The novel introduced me to an island I had never heard of and to a society mysteriously unified in memorializing its past. After a first trip, I came to solidify my graduate school project of comparing stylistic musical types and eras of the various musics (1) on Carriacou. But when I realized the depth and historicity flowing from the Big Drum (with about 150 extant French Patois songs), I was enticed to study and collect the songs.

Carriacou is a simple, small island with about seven thousand people living on its arid soil and, some say, with the majority of its population living in London and Brooklyn (Hill 2003). It is situated in the southern Caribbean, near Grenada, its governing island, and near Trinidad and Tobago.

The first major study of Carriacou was written by Jamaican sociologist M. G. Smith, who revealed an island with unusual patterns of lineage drawn by people with long memories of ethnic inheritance kept intact by a ritual dance, the Big Drum:

   Carriacou is an island almost completely unknown to the outside
   world, and even to its neighbors in the northern Caribbean. Its
   political and economic insignificance, coupled with its minute
   population and area, guarantee it a marginal position, even in the
   British West Indies to which it belongs. In no sense therefore is
   it representative of Caribbean societies; yet a knowledge of life
   in Carriacou is important for the light it sheds on the larger
   Creole units nearby. (Smith 1962, 1)

No longer unknown nor a British colony, current investigation of Carriacou and its ritual dance continues to define the formation of slave societies and Caribbean religion. In this article, I will present some new assumptions on Carriacou's religious past.

Perhaps by now overstudied, with four books (Smith 1962; Hill 1977; David 1985; McDaniel 1998) and six recordings (see Discography), interest in Carriacou seems to grow. Since the island gained some notoriety during the 1983 U.S. invasion of Grenada, this minute island continues to attract a growing number of researchers in the social sciences, history, anthropology, dance ethnology, ethnomusicology, linguistics, art, and cultural studies.

Long before the modern interest in Carriacou, the legendary Trinidadian dancer/anthropologist Pearl Primus, infused with the understanding of African dance, wrote a paper on the oldest dances--the Nation dances--of the Big Drum and performed them as early as 1950 at the New York YMCA (Wenig 1983, 50). Primus's paper is lost, but hopefully other dance ethnologists will revive her performance study in the near future.

The Carriacou case reviewed here, although researched from the living ritual, is in actuality a historical examination focused on ancient traditions. In this article, I hope to use the spiritual contexts of the old society in formulating a pantheon of ancestors that has been forgotten by the people but survives in the texts of the ancient Big Drum ritual. The perpetuation of dances, structures, symbols, melodies, and texts allows a perusal of the discrete African ethnic origins and original formations in the early society.

Dance

I continue to encounter validation of the cultural depth and power of the dance circle in its projection as institution and canon in diasporan culture. The cultural infusion of the ring resonates as a history-keeping practice in original, revitalized, and syncretized forms, danced in countless configurations, movements, and reasoning. The order of the dance gives us a clue to ritual structure. Being aware of the distinctive low stance that unifies the first three dances (Cromanti, Igbo, and Manding) and the upright stance of the remaining six will serve as a major clue to the conclusions presented here.

Commanding an influence in molding these images of dance as a cultural/religious and universally symbolic pattern is Sterling Stuckey, who reminds us that "dance was primarily devotional, like a prayer ... [and] was to the African a means of establishing contact with the ancestors and with the gods" (Stuckey 1987, 25). Samuel A. Floyd Jr. theorizes a musical lineage from the dance ring throughout African-American music, which incorporates the "spirit and significance of Esu" (Floyd 1995, 11). And Henry Louis Gates, in lifting Esu Elegbara from his position as gatekeeper of ring communication to a metaphor of African-American aesthetics, also acknowledges the foundation of circle dances. It is clear from the emphasis of the earliest Big Drum songs that their essence was seated in drawing spirits to the dance for comfort, atonement, healing, and relief from insistent longing for the homeland.

The literature reviews and analyzes historical, descriptive writings on ancient ring practice at Congo Square of Louisiana, Pinkster Festivals of New York, and Washington Square dances of Philadelphia (see Epstein 1977; Southern 1983; Stuckey 1985; Floyd 1995). The reviews of the dances differ only slightly from the description of the multiple and concurrent dance rings in Jamaica in 1772, where "each different nation of Africa meets and dances after the manner of their own country" (Equiano [1789] 1987, 128). And this was the essence of many early ring dances that convened in the fields in several discrete groups, each occupied by a single nation, singing and dancing "after their own country," individual and separate.

Nine West African groups, speaking various languages, were brought into slavery on Carriacou, forming a diaspora on the island and in the consolidated dance with all nations dancing in one ritual. The Cromanti, consisting of mixed Akan groups--Fanti, Asanti, and Akwapim--were the dominant leaders of dance and social law. They were named after the Dutch-built Gold Coast slave castle, Kormantin, and they exited Africa from the site (Meredith [1812] 1967, 130). The Cromanti were, most likely, the group that established the Big Drum, as the first, largest, and most influential of those enslaved on Carriacou (McDaniel 1998, 42). As other people were traded or sold to plantation owners on Carriacou, the Igbo, Manding, Chamba, Temne, Banda, Arada, Moko, and Kongo repertoires were appended to the ritual, with their peoples forming a congress of multinational representation (Pearse 1978-79, 638). The Big Drum is "an Africanesque ritual with many creole overlays in which the ancestors are supplicated or thanked" (Hill 1973, 9).

The Big Drum ceremony is given by any family as a yearly tribute or in celebration of a new house, a boat launching, a wedding, or as gratitude for good luck. As the time for the ceremony draws near, one of the two contemporary dance troops is contracted to dance, animals are slaughtered for food to be eaten during a break at the Big Drum, and preparations are made. Neighbors or others from remote sections of the island arrive at the dance without invitation. I once used the question of dance attendance with a friend: "Are you going to the dance?" I asked. The frank, intrepid reply taught me a great deal about the Big Drum: "They didn't tell me not to come," was the reply. The joyous dance is open, and sometimes rowdy, with religious roots hard to discern. The guests are served a meal that might include cou-cou (a traditional corn dish), roll rice, fig, plantain, goat, mutton, pork, rum, and soft drinks.

In preparation for spirit visitation to the Big Drum, dance towels crossed on the spiritual space mark the entry paths of the spirits, while rum libations thrown in the cardinal corners of the dance ring outline the paths of spirit flight across the north/south and east/west axes. Only spirits may dance in the "free ring," a time allotted to them alone at the opening of the dance. Humans who dare to dance then are inviting danger.

The nine nations of Carriacou's historic Big Drum remained somewhat intact, exhibiting a political and cultural sensibility in its creators. The oldest, most treasured Nation songs of the Cromanti, the Igbo, and the Manding are danced at the opening of the Big Drum, with the other six Nation dances performed later, intermingled with secular dances.

Figure 1 shows the three groups of Big Drum dances that have developed during the past three centuries: Nation dances (eighteenth century), Creole dances (nineteenth century), and Frivolous dances (early twentieth century). Some dances have been lost; among these are dances that were most likely borrowed from Antigua, Grenada, Union, or Trinidad. Later additions to the dance repertoire include Scotch Igbo (Nation dance), Scotch Kongo (Nation dance), Dama (Creole dance), and Ladderis (Creole dance) (Pearse 1978-79, 638). The mixed national dances, such as Scotch Igbo, are probably dances of people from two cultures.

Figure 1. Three groups of Big Drum dances (Pearse 1956; 1978-70)

Nation                    Creole                    Frivolous
Cromanti                  Old Bongo                 Chattam
Igbo                      Hallecord                 Lora
Manding                   Bele Kawe                 Cariso
Arada                     Gwa Bele                  Chirrup
Kongo                     Old Kalenda               Pike
Chamba                    Juba                      Chiffone
Banda                                               Man Bongo
Temne                                               Trinidad Kalenda
Moko

The female dancers dress in long, wide, frilly, florid skirts with patterned tops or white blouses. This costume imitates a nineteenth-century European skirt that is open in the front, exposing a beautiful white slip. In the Creole dances, the outer skirt is held out at the ends of the split, displaying the slip and creating bird-like wings.

The Big Drum dance holds a clue to the original meaning of this historic ritual. Judging by the postures of the dances, it appears that the dances of the first three Nations hold a different meaning than the other dances. In the first three, the dancers crouch and bend to the earth at low angles, with arms expressing sentiments of petition. Accompanying the Cromanti dances, prayerful invocations called Beg Pardons are sung during peak spiritual engagements at the beginning of the ritual and at midnight. In the remaining dances, the dancers' posture is upright.

Drum Codes

The most unique feature of the Nation dance is the individual drum emblem of each dance type. Actually, it is a type of drum signing, where each Nation's repertoire is accompanied by the reiteration of a Nation code. At the beginning of this research, I incorrectly imagined multiethnic Africans composing their political places in their new society by constructing individual ethnic musical languages, but as I grew to understand the depth of the tradition, I found that the beats of the codes where not composed by enslaved people but were brought here as emblems of deities related to their ethnicity.

In transcribing the Nation beats of the nine African groups that were given to me by reticent drummers, I noticed that the beats of the first three Nations (Cromanti, Igbo, Manding) appeared more clearly delineated than the others (see Ex. 1). The six remaining national emblems seem to be indefinite and nearly alike.

Example 1: Drum codes for the Cromanti, Igbo, and Manding National Dances (McDaniel 1998m 87)

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Herskovits (1944, 491) introduces the role of drummers into the scheme of nation coding among Africans in the "New World" from a culture not thought of as related, bringing a fresh insight to the complex nature of African ritual organization: "The Afro-Brazilian 'nations,' the groupings descended from various tribes of West Africa, have different rhythms for the deities they hold in common, in addition to the rhythms they have for such deities as each 'nation' may worship by itself." From the Brazilian model of nation integration, one may speculate on a structure by which the people of Carriacou may have developed a unified religion and discrete pantheon. In Brazil, gods are named and called by drum rhythms; likewise, in Carriacou, these rhythms, perceived as lineage codes, may have initially been the drum names of principal deities and not politically formed emblems as I had imagined them to be.

Texts

Each of the Nation dances' texts calls upon a name that is usually expressive of ancestral duty and denotes former spiritual observance of specific ancestors or deities; such names may be used to praise, tell a story, or outline a situation. The Creole texts concern social and interpersonal cares, while the Frivolous texts belong to fun-loving songs for the joy of the dance. Because they are the most recent dances to join the Big Drum, the Frivolous texts do not receive the same attention as the older dances and texts. An example of a Frivolous song from the early twentieth century is "Mama, Don't Beat Me So, I Love Him Already." The theme of this song concerns the conflict between the anxious, controlling mother and the young daughter in love.

My work leans heavily on the research of Scottish sociologist Andrew Pearse. Working in the Caribbean and Brazil during the 1950s, he produced the influential album The Big Drum Dance of Carriacou (Ethnic Folkways FE 4011). Impressed with his accuracy and inspired interpretations, I readily accepted his translations of and assumptions about the Patois texts. But how did Pearse come to the conclusion, for instance, that Ina, who is invoked in a Cromanti song, is an ancestor figure? An example is the text from a Midnight Cromanti song (2) (see Ex. 2). Pearse (1956, 3) points to her supplementary name, "mama nu," the Patois term for "Our Mother," which defines Ina in the category of an ancestor/sprit. The Inna in the Hausa Bori religion is celebrated as the "mother of us all," and in a specifically Akan context, Inna is a popular female kinship term which also means "mother" but spelled Ena(o).

Example 2. "Ena-o," Cromanti Midnight song (McDaniel 1998, 48)

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Oko is a Yoruba goddess, a member of the Nigerian Orisha pantheon, guardian of crops and fertility. Yorubas did not enter Carriacou as a group, so how did Oko's name enter Big Drum songs? Virtually forgotten within the Nigerian orisha ritual of Trinidad, the memory of Oko has wandered. The enslaved population of Trinidad thought it absurd to entreat the goddess of agriculture and fecundity to work in the favor of the colonialists, increasing their holdings and wealth (Simpson 1962, 1217); however, the Yoruba deity Oko was appropriated by those who traveled away from the drought-ridden landscape of Carriacou and worked in the cane fields of Trinidad soon after the end of slavery in 1838 (Hill 1973, 23). Trinidad was the principal host country after emancipation, and Carricouans returned to Carricou celebrating new deities. The people's need for a more gracious environment is perceived from the many early twentieth-century colonial letters, reports, and newspaper articles that refer to the lack of rain and the dependence on Granada for food and water. Free Carriacouan people appropriated Oko for their ritual (see Ex. 3).

Example 3. "Oko," Cromanti Beg Pardon (McDonald 1998, 49)

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

I am suggesting a relationship between these two songs, "Ena" and "Oko," that informs us of the way songs can tell history. The pillar tones circled in each song in Example 4 create a melodic prototype that implies an association between the two. With this supposition and the hypothesized history, it would appear that "Ena" evolved into "Oko." Mysterious names are sprinkled throughout the oldest texts, about which I conjecture and seek substantiation of assumptions through textual, historical, or musical evidence. The most convincing substantiation of the late entry of "Oko" into the Nation repertoire is its musical setting and cultural history. I propose that the knowledge of Ena, with her authentic name, arrived with the early entry into Carriacou of the original Akan people. Oko's late entry can be seen in her borrowed Yoruba identity.

Because language has passed through several creolized language cycles (including French and English Patois) that carry several meanings, other methods must dominate the exegesis of the lyrics. Culture bearers offer pre-memory defenses for unfamiliarity because, by now, the original texts predate the people's experience. The suggested choices for translation and origin of "Anancy-o" (see Ex. 5) are many and widely scattered. Anancy is known in many West African cultures, being at once a deity and a devilish folkloric spider creature. In seeking the etymology of sari baba, I found competing translations of sai ba (pl. sai baba), Hausa words that mean "people who have persistent bad luck." Hausa linguist Ousseina Alidou (1995) states that the word sari should be tsari, signifying "protection" in Hausa. She suggests that the phrase should read tsari baba, meaning "the father's protection" or "the ultimate protection," giving Anancy a clear divinity.

Igbo songs most often include the words "Igbo Lele," a portion of the deity Ianman Igbo Lele's full name; this deity is also found in Haitian ritual. In Example 6, her name has been Anglicized to sound like "I am a."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Iama Diama

Iama diama                              Ianman, Ianmna
Igbo Le-le                              Igbo Le-le
Iama                                    Ianman
I'm a polin Igbo                        Ianman polin Igbo
Mwe polin Igbo                          Ianman polin Igbo
Ayen ba ka fe Igbo                      Nothing can harm the Igbo

The phrase "Ayen ba ka fe Igbo" (nothing can harm the Igbo) is also usual in Igbo songs.

I questioned culture bearers about the meaning of ambala, heard as the last line of a seemingly innocuous Chamba song, "Amba." The answer was based upon a Patois translation: "under there." In the French Creole song texts, a term may appear to have either French or African origins, like the word amba, which takes forms such as aroma, amba da, ambala, amba dabio, or abadino. Herskovits' interpretation of Amba--also found in a Suriname Winti song--as "either a goddess or ancestress" (Herskovits and Herskovits 1936, 539) leads me to understand Amba, the Fanti word for "Saturday," which is found in the last line of text in "Mwe li-li-le" (see Fig. 2), as belonging to a spiritual family. Because her name and variations of her name occur frequently in many Nation songs, I list Sai Amba as first in a speculative ancestral pantheon.

Ancestral Pantheon

With the scant and vulnerable name discoveries, vague, obscure meanings, and untranslatable words, I have conjectured a pantheon that mirrors the hierarchy of goddesses, deities, and ancestral spirits of the Big Drum (see Fig. 3). This constructed ancestral pantheon, whose members now rule veiled domains, include the trickster deity Anancy; a second male ancestor, Cromanti Cudjo; the Cromanti ancestresses Sai Amba, Ena, and Oko; and a Hausa spirit, Ahwusa. The single Igbo deity, Ianman Igbo Lele, is also known to Haitian Vodun participants, but in song her name is articulated as Iama Igbo Lele. The Manding Goddess Negesse Manding has a name similar to the loa Negesse Igbo of Haitian religion (see McDaniel 1998, 60).

With this speculative data, gathered solely from closed musical texts and the keen, perceptive disclosures of earlier researchers, we can understand why the Cromanti, Igbo, and Manding songs are sung during the opening liturgical segment at every Big Drum performance, why their rhythms remain stable and distinguishable from the six remaining nations, why all three primary dances are choreographed in a bent angle toward the earth, and why the texts invoke the ancestors--these songs all invoke the principal deities that served the entire population.

Figure 2. "Mwe li-li-le," Manding song

Mwe li-li-le

Mwe li-li-le                       Mwe li-li-le
Mwe li-li-le                       Mwe li-li-le
Mwe li-li-le                       Mwe li-li-le
Negesse Manding mwe                My Negesse Manding
Vini oue                           Come to me
Sai Amba                           Sai Amba

Figure 3. Ancestral pantheon of the Big Drum

Cromanti
Sai Amba  Anancy  Ena  Oko  Cromanti  Cudjo  Ahwusa

Igbo
Ianman Igbo Lele

Manding
Negesse Manding

In the Carriacou case, the discrete though integral nature of the dance ring suggests a democratic social ideal that honors national exclusivity and at the same time promotes prestige in social plurality. Blended beside a multinational African congress, we see that the Big Drum was a consolidated diaspora for national cohesiveness, spiritual outreach, and the retention of ancestral communication.

DISCOGRAPHY

Fernandez, Rolando Perez. Folk music of Carriacou. Egren 60001 (1985).

Hill, Donald. The Big Drum and other ritual and social music. Ethnic Folkways FE 34002 (1980).

Lomax, Alan. Caribbean sampler. Rounder 1161-1727-2.

--. Caribbean voyage: Carriacou calalou. Rounder 11161-1722-2 (1999).

--. Tombstone feast. Music of Carriacou. Rounder 11661-1727 (1999).

Pearse, Andrew. The Big Drum dance of Carriacou. Ethnic Folkways FE 4011 (1956).

REFERENCES

(1.) Among those musical types are Big Drum songs, Lancers fiddle tunes, quadrille-ensemble fiddle music, Nine-night memorial songs, Spiritual Baptist songs, children's songs, sea chanties, French Cantique songs, pass-play game songs, anthems, and calypsos.

(2.) The term "Midnight Cromanti" denotes a group of songs reserved for the highly spiritual period of the Big Drum ritual. "Ena" and "Oko" are two of the five such songs known to me. They are also classified as Beg Pardon songs.

REFERENCES

Alidou, Ousseina. 1995. Personal communication with the author.

Brinkley, Frances. 1987. Personal communication with the author.

David, Christine. 1985. Folkore of Carriacou. [Carriacou, Grenada]: Author.

Equiano, Ouladah. [1789] 1987. The interesting narrative of the life of Olaudah Equinano, or, Gustavus Vassa, the African. In The classic slave narratives, edited by Henry Louis Gates, 1-182. New York: Penguin.

Epstein, Dena. 1977. Sinful tunes and spirituals: Black folk music to the Civil War. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Floyd, Samuel A., Jr. 1995. The power of black music: Interpreting its history from Africa to the United States. New York: Oxford University Press.

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. 1988. The signifying monkey: A theory of African American literary criticism. New York: Oxford University Press.

Herskovits, Melville. 1944. Drums and drummers in Afro-Brazilian cult life. Musical Quarterly 30: 477-492.

Herskovits, Melville, and Frances Herskovits. 1936. Suriname folk-lore. New York: Columbia University Press.

Hill, Donald. 1973. "England I want to go": The impact of migration on a Caribbean community. Ph.D. diss., Indiana University.

--. 1977. The impact of migration on the metropolitan and folk society of Carriacou, Grenada. New York: American Museum of Natural History.

--. 2003. Personal communication with the author.

Marshall, Paule. 1983. Praisesong for the widow. New York: Penguin.

McDaniel, Lorna. 1998. The Big Drum ritual of Carriacou: Praisesongs in rememory of flight. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.

Meredith, Henry. [1812] 1967. An account of the Gold Coast of Africa, with a brief history of the African Company. London: Cass.

Pearse, Andrew. 1956. Liner notes, The Big Drum dance of Carriacou. Ethnic Folkways FE 4011.

--. 1978-79. Music in Caribbean popular culture. Revista/Review Interamericana 8, no. 4: 629-839.

Simpson, George. 1962. The Shango cult in Nigeria and in Trinidad. American Anthropology 64: 1204-1210.

Smith, M. G. 1962. Kinship and community in Carriacou. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.

Southern, Eileen. 1983. The music of black Americans: A history. New York: W. W. Norton.

Stuckey, Sterling. 1987. Slave culture: Nationalist theory and the foundations of black America. New York: Oxford University Press.

Wenig, Adele R. 1983. Pearl Primus: An annotated bibliography of sources from 1943 to 1975. Oakland, Calif.: Wenadance.

LORNA MCDANIEL is a retired professor from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Prior to the University of Michigan, she taught at Cheyney University in Cheyney, Pennsylvania. Although she was formally trained in organ performance, her research focuses on Caribbean music and culture. She is the author of The Big Drum Ritual of Carriacou: Praisesongs in Rememory of Flight (University Press of Florida, 1998).