African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
This chapter concentrates on rhythm in danced, sung, and drummed practices of Cuban Santería. Musicians and dancers sing, drum, and dance the sequenced rhythms of the ancestors and provide opportunities for others to experience and learn. Many versions of ritual prose and poetry have been conserved, first by the continuous input of arriving Africans in the trans-Atlantic slave trade from the 16th to the late 19th century. Codified gestures and movements display specific patterns in accelerating and intensifying tempi. In predetermined rhythmic, tonal, and intervallic relationships, ritual musicians display the buried mathematics of a dance and music liturgy. In order to facilitate human dancing and suprahuman transformation, worshipers have relied and continue to rely on rhythmic remembrances.
The article discusses the oral histories of the Arará people in Perico and Agramonte, Cuba, and their roots in African cultural practices. The spiritual Arará religion is discussed. Emphasis is placed on similarities between African and Arará dances, social memory, and communication with the dead. Various Arará deities and religious objects are discussed. Many practitioners of the religion believe such objects came from Africa. Many of the oral stories revolve around the experiences of both African slaves and freed people at the España sugar refinery. It is believed the Arará people are descended from the African Ewe and Fon people, and therefore are strongly influenced by their religious customs.
This study investigates the importance of the bullroarer cult in Cuban orisha worship. Though the cult was one of the most feared collectives of precolonial Yorubaland, carrying out the executions of criminals and witches on behalf of the state councils, the cult that came to be recreated in Cuba after the transatlantic separation took on a quality that was more devotional, though equally secretive. Given that so much change has occurred among the bullroarer cults in Cuba and Yorubaland since the termination of the slave trade, the conspicuous links between the two cults have all but disappeared. However, by lending particular attention to the bullroarer and other accouterments of the cult in Cuba, links can be re-established that explain the persistence of the cult in Cuba and demonstrate the ways in which ironically this emblematic sounding instrument of the cult is often constructed in a manner that actually mutes the instrument., [unedited non–English abstract received by RILM] Este estudio es una investigación sobre la importancia del culto “zumbador” (xiloaerófono) en la religión oricha en Cuba. Aunque el culto fue una de las colectivas precoloniales más temidas del mundo Yoruba, asesinando a criminales y brujas a nombre de los consejos del estado, después de la separación transatlántica la recreación del culto en Cuba asumió un carácter más devocional. Dado a la magnitud de los cambios ocurridos entre los cultos zumbadores en Cuba y en la tierra Yoruba desde que finalizó la esclavitud, los vínculos obvios entre los dos cultos prácticamente han desaparecido. Sin embargo, se puede argumentar que, al prestar atención particular al zumbador y a otros objetos del culto en Cuba, es posible establecer vínculos que explican la persistencia del culto en Cuba y demuestran como este instrumento icónico del culto, irónicamente, ha sido construido muchas veces de una manera que deja al instrumento “mudo.”
