c



Jamaican slaves came mainly from West Africa. Their

customs survived based on memory and myths. They
encompassed the life cycle, i.e. a newborn was not regarded
as being of this world until nine days had passed and burial
often involved libations at the graveside, and the belief that
the dead body's spirit would not be at rest for some 40 days.
They included forms of religion in which healing was
considered an act of faith completed by obeahmen and
communication with the spirits involved possession often
induced by dancing and drumming. African-based religions
include Kumina, Myal and Revival. Many involved
recreational, ceremonial and functional use of music and
dance (Brathwaite, 1971). "Slaves," Brathwaite explains,
"danced and sang at work, at play, at worship, from fear, from
sorrow from joy" (p. 220). They recreated African musical
instruments from materials found in Jamaica (calabash, 

conch, bamboo, etc.) and featured improvisation in song and |

 

 





  
dance. All of these customs and many more such as the
Christmas street parades of Jonkonnu, were misunderstood and undervalued by Europeans with the
exception of the political use of drumming to send coded messages from plantation to plantation.

Drumming of any kind was therefore often banned. Jamaican music today has emerged from the
traditional musical forms of work songs sung by slaves, the ceremonial music used in religious services
and the social and recreational music played on holidays and during leisure time (Senior, 2003, p. 339).

The cramped housing space provided to the slaves, which limited their dwellings (often made of wattle
and daub) to one window and one door, meant that very little other than sleeping took place indoors. Life,
as in Africa, was lived communally, outside. (Brathwaite, 1971, p. 233-4).

Similarly language, as in Africa, is considered powerful particularly naming. Brathwaite (1971) gives an
example of a woman whose child falls ill and wants her name to be changed, believing that this would
allow her to be cured, (p. 237). Language is certainly an area where African retention is strongest.
Jamaicans today move between Patois a creolised English and standard English. Jamaican patois was
born from the intermixing of African slaves and English, Irish, Welsh, Scottish sailors, slaves, servants,
soldiers and merchants. The African slaves spoke many dialects, and given the need for a common
tongue, Jamaican patois was born. It has been in use since the end of the 17th century by Jamaicans of
all ethnicities and has been added to by the Jews, Chinese, Indians, Lebanese Germans, and French
Creoles who also settled on the island. Some words also indicate Spanish and Taino presence in
Jamaican history (Senior, 2003, pp. 273-276).

Many of these traditions survive to this day, testament to the strength of West African culture despite the
process of creolisation (the intermingling of peoples adjusting to a new environment) it encountered
(Brathwaite, 1971). 

c

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There are too many notable Jamaicans of African descent to name. Here is a small sample: George
William Gordon, National Hero, George Steibel, the island's first black millionaire who built Devon House,
Sir Alexander Bustamante, the island's first Prime Minister, Norman Manley, the island's first premier,
Marcus Garvey, black nationalist and National Hero and more contemporarily, Merlene Ottey, Jamaican
track and field star, T. P. Lecky, creator of the Jamaica Red Breed of cattle, Cecil Baugh, world-renowned
potter, Bob Marley, worldwide musical superstar and the Hon. Louise Bennett-Coverley, cultural icon.
Their impact, and that of many others, whose contributions to Jamaican life in all aspects cultural, artistic,
political, economic, scientific was borne out of a brutal system forged through an integration of people and
place and emerged as a triumph of the human spirit. -
   
 
   

 
 







  

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"Central to every aspect of folk life are the religious overtones which pervade
it. People in folk societies have not yet separated their religious beliefs from
their secular activities." This quote from Barrett¶s 1976 work The Sun and the
Drum: African Roots in Jamaican Folk Traditioncontends that it is an exercise
in abstraction to discuss Jamaica¶s blend of African religions as a
"component" of some lifestyle. Instead, there exists a peculiar gravity, perhaps
a spiritual saturation, without which life itself is inconceivable. Some of the
deepest rooted musical traditions are preserved within the context of religious
practice, the ritual ceremonies that are part of this particular cosmology. In
Jamaica, African folk religions served this purpose, even in combination with
certain Christian denominations.

From 1655-1816, the Church of England made no attempt to Christianize the

slaves. This policy reflected the hypocrisy of the Church at that time. Barrett
writes, "the masters feared that the preachers« would stretch the equality of
humanity before God a little too far." However, Christianity found its way into
slave communities through the so-called nonconformist denominations ² the
Moravians in 1734, the Methodists in 1736, the Baptists in 1783, and the
Presbyterians in 1823.
At the same time, a folk religion evolved out of a blend of African religions.
The cult of Kumina was most affected by the Ashanti, the dominant ethnic
group among the slaves. Kumina ceremonies which are called for births,
deaths, marriages and other occasions involve vigorous dancing, drumming, a
sacrifice, alcohol (typically rum) and ancestor-spirit possession. The spirit
possession is critical. In this state, the possessed becomes a medium for a
revelation communicated by an ancestor of the dancer or of the person who
called the Kumina. The revelation is taken very seriously. In this way, neo-
African cults and religions were a main preserver of music. The spirits are
summoned by specific drum rhythms. This major role of music persists in
Afro-American cults though the music itself may venture in new directions. As
Roberts puts it, "slaves were not musically conservative or unenterprising."
The result was a spirit-filled amalgam of Christianity and African folk religions
invoking persecution by a fearful, established Church of England.

Christian fervor grew infectiously among Jamaica¶s African population from

emancipation through 1860 when a social phenomena dubbed the Great
Revival swept across the island and across the Western world. Barrett writes,
"The Great Revival allowed the African religious dynamic ² long repressed ²
to assert itself in a Christian guise and capture what might have been a
missionary victory." The Afro-Christian Revivalist sects used guitar, drums,
cymbals and handclapping in emotionally charged worship services. At this
point the music is essentially Jamaican, formed through a syncretism of
African concepts, dynamism and sounds with European style verses and
longer melody lines. So the overall sound might be called Euro/African in
Roberts¶ system. On the other hand, the energy of the worship service and
ultimately the practice of the faith overwhelmingly favors the African
contribution.

There is a symbolic element carried by the presence of the drum. The Church
of England , had they encouraged Christianity among the slaves, would
certainly have prohibited drumming at a worship service. For the Ashanti, the
drum is among the tangible connections to an African heritage. The drum is
the voice of God and a medium of worship. R.S. Rattray in his 1923
book Ashanti recounts the Ashanti story about the origins of drumming:

The Ê


 is a beautiful dark bird that

frequents the forest« Its call is not unlike the notes of
the drums. It is every drummer¶s totem, they claim
clanship with it and would not eat or kill it. Its call is
something like Ê 
 
 
 




 








. The Ashanti say is
taught them to drum.

Drumming is sacred to the Ashanti like the bird to the forest. Its voice called
from Jamaica¶s Revival yards, open courtyard spaces where worship services
convened. Thus African traditions were reformulated, becoming truly
Jamaican, and survived with remarkable clarity in the carriage of worship.

 



Why does music die? Musical practices of West African nations and their
Caribbean descendants, as discussed previously, are associated with specific
functions. As a musical tradition loses its original function, crucial motivation is
lost in participants. The music may find a new function or perish. Changes in
music or the passage of a form can happen slowly and quite noticeably. For
instance, when the younger generations in a culture fail to accept the
traditions of their elders, a music which may have been significant in worship
or folk medicine is bound for extinction. In the late nineteenth century, these
extinctions were globally recognized; academics rushed in to observe and
catalogue.

The effort did not begin in Jamaica, of course. Czechoslovakian-born,

American academic Bruno Nettl, in his essay "The Concept of Preservation in
Ethnomusicology" (1985), clarifies that 19th century collectors of non-Western
music were not initially concerned with preservation. Not until students of
European folk music wanted to preserve their own folk heritage did it become
a practice. Scholars in Britain compiled an immense collection of Child
Ballads. In North America, the Works Progress Administration sponsored
publications of folk songs. By the late 19th century, music publications
emerged to address the needs of the amateur musician. Books were
published for teaching while people were urged to play and to dance to keep
their heritage alive.

Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton¶s Reggae: The Rough Guide (1997) ² an
anthology of Jamaica¶s audio recordings ² notes that musicologists recorded
albums of Revival Zion music, work songs (called ring play or the ring game),
and Jonkanoo. These efforts are generally considered "too little too late".
Many of the forms were recorded post-mortem, the music¶s function having
turned entirely to self-preservation. However, recordings capture just a piece
of musical culture: the artifact of sound, of tones and pulses.
Alan Merriam contributed a measure of rigor to the ill-defined field of
ethnomusicology in his 1960 article "Ethnomusicology: Discussion and
Definition of the Field". Merriam offers a definition ² "the study of music in
culture or as culture" ² with a model of music having three components:
concept, behavior and sound. Nettl observes an overwhelming concentration
on sound: archives of transcription and recording lacking a sufficient
compliment of documentation regarding the when, where, how and why of
performances or the styles they have created or represented. To this day,
there is no consensus regarding methodologies of musical preservation.

The issue of preservation is further complicated by a search for identity and

reclamation of dignity. This dynamic, in Jamaica and also in Caribbean
studies in general, leads to an emphasis on the differences between two
musical macrosystems, Africa and Europe. While this pragmatic approach is
arguably oversimplified, it hopefully lends insight and context to more granular
approaches. Nettl¶s 1985 essay offers a summarized history of preservation:

Perhaps the history of preservation travels along a

continuum, beginning with attempts to make large
authentic collections, just for the record, to practical
collecting for educational use (in a broad sense), then
to the urgent efforts to preserve what would soon
disappear, and finally to a realistic, if resigned, way of
looking at music as such an enormous quantity of
cultural data that only selective samples can be taken
and preserved.

The urgency for preservation, manifest in non-Jamaicans, did eventually touch

the island. In successive visits during 1919 and 1921, Martha Warren
Beckwith collected Jamaican "Anansi" stories from over sixty native
informants. Miss Helen Roberts accompanied Beckwith in 1921 to record the
music and the "magical effect of song which, at least in the old witch tales, far
surpasses that in the action of the story." Among the Ashanti of
Ghana,  is a spider. Beckwith, in her preface, compares the Anansi
stories to the Hare of Bantu lore which became Brer Rabbit in the United
States. These folk tales have been interpreted to represent the power of the
ancestors to take on animal forms. The exposure of these stories through
publication has offered the outsider one more clue reflecting the complexity of
Jamaican folk culture which developed with a keen spiritual awareness
originating in West Africa.


Hundreds of Twi words of the Ashanti remain in the dialects of Jamaican
peasants. A few elderly people sing Yoruba songs in the parish of
Westmoreland. Folk forms of the lower class have percolated upward through
societal classes, taking on more sophisticated musical elements. As a music
is enjoyed by the upper class or the elite, a creole form may be tied to
nationalism, evidenced by Jamaican reggae music. No effort at preservation
has suspended the rapid transformation of Jamaican culture and music
though archetypal connections to the past are concocted, enshrined and
challenged.

In the later studies of Captain Rattray (1881-1938), published as Religion and

Art in Ashanti (1954), he recounts this Ashanti tale,

Many Ashanti think that the µman in the moon¶ is a

drummer; children are warned not to watch him too
long lest they should see him lay his drumsticks upon
his drums, when it is thought they would die.

The same moon this evening might stand as a reminder of what is distant and
practically imaginary in contrast to what is palpable. Landing on the moon and
tasting its soil is not the same as knowing or even understanding it. Similarly,
the conclusions of a cultural examination lacking direct experience is, at best,
supplementary to voices of the culture itself. Mindful of this predicament, a
world community can still benefit from such discourse so long as the µman in
the moon¶, like the Kumina drummers of Jamaica, maintains the rhythm.