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AfroCubaWeb
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Cuban Lukumí Bàtá:
Ajúbà to Oba Ilu
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In the 1830’s in Cuba, a Lukumí bàtá drummer’s guild was founded based upon
corresponding practices of the Yorùbá-speaking peoples of the present Republic
of Benin and Nigeria, especially the city of Ọ̀yọ́. The historical Aláàfin
(‘divine king’) of Ọ̀yọ́ named Ṣàngó was thought to have reigned in the 1400s,
indicating that the bàtá tradition is at least five centuries old (Thompson
1993: 169).
In the colonial period, Yorùbá-speakers forcibly migrated to Cuba were known as
Lukumí (from Olukumi, ‘my friend’). Cuban scholar Fernando Ortiz reported that
the Lukumí bàtá guild was established in Havana in the 1830s by named
African-born specialists, while other lineages were later established in
Matanzas (Ortiz 1954 v. 4: 316). The bàtá initiation club developed exclusively
in these two port cities until the 1960s, when it expanded to other parts of
Cuba and the Caribbean, primarily through the concert tours and teaching of
Jesús Pérez-Puentes “Oba Ilu.”
In Nigeria during FESTAC ’77, Pérez was part of the Cuban ensemble, making him
the first person to bring the Lukumí bàtá drums to West Africa. According to
eyewitnesses,he was able to interact with the Aláàfin of Ọ̀yọ́ through Bàtá
playing and speaking Lukumí. By the late 1940s, anthropologist William Bascom
found that many Lukumí chants were still easily interpretable by modern speakers
of Yorùbá (Garcia 2013: 10).
Since Pérez’s death in 1985, and as I argue largely through his legacy,
ceremonial Cuban bàtá ensembles are currently found on every continent (Miller
2003). -- Ivor Miller
Jesús Pérez and the transculturation of the Cuban batá drum.”
Dialago. n. 7. Center for Latino Research. DePaul University. Spring,
2003
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