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BLACK DRUM
The spirits of sound Developing project Executive producer: Ana Cristina Henríquez Length: 42' Oracle, cry of war, and chronicle of community life, African cultures that came to America have used the drum as an instrument for communication and teaching. In the most relevant moments of the lives of these men, the drum has been present to interpret emotional states: to plea to the gods; communicate with ancestors; send messages to a friend; during mourning, celebrations and in initiation rituals. Towards the year 1500 this drum arrived in America. It came with the black slaves to tell us about Africa, its beliefs, its varied music, and the peculiarity of its collective life. Here it stayed, and alike the African slave, it perished and was reborn; it adapted, multiplying its forms, giving birth to new sounds, narrating new stories and reciting new chants. The drum reappears together with the black slave in the sugar-cane and cotton fields America; in the cocoa and coffee plantations; in the sugar refineries and in the mines; in the plantain fields and in the swamps. In the dances—the only entertainment allowed to the slaves—the drum served to relieve tensions with their masters, relax after the hard work at the fields and to worship old and new gods. Undoubtedly, in the circumstances that reigned in America for almost four centuries, the role of the drum as a means for communication changed. However, in most of the places where it was introduced, it preserved one of its most beautiful features: to gather round it diverse human groups to express happiness and dissipate sadness. The drum set its roots where the active and energizing presence of the black slave and their descendents had once been. Its sound, alone or combined with claps and chants, continues to invoke sacred entities; encouraging action and promoting communication between past and present. The drum might have changed in its form, but whether it is cumaco, mina, medio golpe, arriero, curbata, cruzao, or pujao, it will always be the inevitable partner of the man who seeks solidarity. |
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