Conjunto Folklorico Nacional
de Cuba
Música
Yoruba
National Folkloric Ensemble of Cuba
featuring
Lázaro Ros
Música Yoruba is an outstanding recording of traditional Afro-Cuban folkloric music. It holds the double distinction of being one of the best produced records of this type, as well as featuring performances by one of the largest assemblage of Cuban folkloric masters ever. It is a classic, both as an incredible aesthetic experience and as documentation of a time that has passed into history.
The batá drums are the most important of the several differentdrum systems used in Lucumi ceremonies. Batá are a set of threeprogressively-sized, double-headed hourglass-shaped drums, considered to be oneinstrument and acting as a single organism. They play rhythms that are without adoubt the most intricate of the Afro-Cuban drum systems. The batáliterally "speak" the Yoruba language and recite a litany that is crucial toparticular rituals.
The largest of the batá is called Iyá (mother). TheIyá is the lead drum which initiates the recitation of the litany,improvises to the dancer's steps, and carries on call and response conversationswith the mid-sized batá known as Itótele. The smallest ofthe batá is the Okónkolo. The Okónkolo plays thesimplest patterns of the three, emphasizing the main beats.
Batá used in the religious ceremonies are considered sacred. Eachconsecrated set of batá has living within it the deity known asAña.
The Yoruba people of present-day Nigeria have a rich religious liturgy which includes hauntingly beautiful call and response songs and some of the most rhythmically complex drumming in the world.
Residing within the Yoruba cosmology is the pantheon of deities called orisha. Orisha represent the primordial forces in nature, the various archetypal human personalities, and act as personal guardians or guides to initiates of the religion. During the ceremonies (called bembés), which involve music and dance, the orisha come to earth by possessing the bodies of mediums. In this way, the orisha are able to 'live" amongst their followers, giving them blessings and guidance.
The Yoruba's Oyo empire collapsed in the early 1800's after decades of internal conflict and warfare with their neighbors. As a consequence, many Yoruba were sold into slavery and brought to the New World to work on plantations. Strong traces of Yoruba culture, specifically the worship of the orisha, can be found today in Cuba, Brazil, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago.
Lucumi:The Yoruba in Cuba
Cuba, in particular, still has a phenomenal amount of sacred Yoruba music and dance. In the time of slavery, owners purposely broke up the families of slaves and mixed together people from the different African ethnic groups as a way of maintaining control. However, in early 18th century Cuba the Spanish Catholic Church created mutual aid societies, called cabildos, as a medium of entertainment and reconstruction of many aspects of their ethnic heritage. There came to be Yoruba cabildos, Congo (Bantu) cabildos and Arara (Fon) cabildos in Cuba.
Yoruba religious ceremonies were practiced and preserved in the cabildos of Cuba as the slaves seemingly synchronized their masters' pantheon of Catholic saints with their own pantheon of orisha. Thus, the orisha covertly lived on in Cuba hiding behind a facade of Catholicism. In truth, these traditions did not exactly synchronize with Catholicism, but rather Catholicism was used as a camouflage behind which Yoruba religious practices took root and flourished. While the white slave owners observed the Africans celebrating a saint on his/her particular day, they were usually unaware that it was actually the orisha who was being worshiped.
Today, the terms saint and orisha are used interchangeably in Cuba. The correlation of the Yoruba orisha with the Catholic saints is part of the island's common culture. For example, Santa Barbara is understood to be the Yoruba orisha Changó, the god of thunder. San Lázaro is synonymous with Babalú Ayé, the orisha of infectious diseases. Consequently, the Yoruba religion in Cuba is often referred to as Santería, or the cult of the saints.
Another common name for this religion is Lucumi, a Yoruba word meaning friends. Lucumi is also the name given to descendants of Yoruba slaves in Cuba, as well as their music, dance and their Cubanized dialect of the Yoruba language.
Yoruban and Christian rites are easily mixed together by Cubans. After all, the genetic and cultural mixing of African and European ethnic groups has been occurring there for centuries. However, little European influence can be found in the dance and music of the Lucumi ceremonies. Also, the Nigerian systems of divination, such as Ifá, remain intact in Cuba.
