Berimbau wrote:Zeno, a little from Ortiz might shed some light on the ka drum- tumba francesas connection. Writing abot the ka drum in his "Los Instrumentos," Don Fernando tells us that "Aun es muy frecuente tocar asi en las tumbas francesas de Cuba y Haiti."
I think that when the Haitians immigrated to Cuba, they took BOTH Kongo and Fon derived drums with them. Again the "ethnic" origins of material culture are seldom barriers to their adaptation by other groups. Probably by the time of the Haitian Revolution many of the diverse African traditions in Haiti had already intersected to create a trully transcultural music.
Dr. Z I'm not exactly certain what you meant in your post, so let me try and clarify it. If you were claiming that Ortiz was unaware of the Haitian-Cuban connection, I assure you he certainly was, and he writes eloquently of it in his "Los Instrumentos." Obviously there WERE some things he might have missed, afterall, that's something which we ALL do, but in this instance, he was on it!
Now if what you meant in your post was to claim a Kongo origin for the peg tuned drums of the tumba de farncesas, I would strongly doubt it! The African technology represented by the peg tuning system is a VERY strong diagnostic marker in localizing the origins of these instruments in the Gulf of Guinea. Fon, Ewe, and Yoruba, to name the most important of these trans-Atlantic culture bearers. Kongo drums tend to use nailed heads or the rope and wedge system. Myriad examples might be forwarded, but this should not be necessary.
Now these tumba francesas drums, although ultimately originating in the Fon speaking areas of Benin, were imported to Cuba FROM Haiti, and are as such, somewhat different from contemporary drums from Benin. or Haiti. I think that they are also distinct from the older forms of Arara drums also present in Cuba.
The trans-Atlantic slave trade was a multi-track, multi-time series of events which were unique from place to place. Each of the Diasporan cultures experienced successive waves of African culture bearers, each group coming from different places in Africa and at different times. The picture is further complicated in the Caribbean by successive waves of inter-island migration, and something known in Cuba could easily re-appear in Jamaica, something from Haioti comes to Cuba, etc. Caution with those tumbas.
Saludos,
Berimbau
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