Kenneth Bilby (*)

Rural Jamaica is culturally more complex and varied than most people – even most Jamaicans – realize. Relatively few Jamaicans know that in the eastern part of the island, in the parishes of St. Thomas and Portland, live two distinct “nations” of people. When I say “nations,” I am using a term that members of these groups use to identify themselves. One of the groups is known as the “Bongo Nation” or “Kongo Nation.” The other group is the “Maroon Nation,” whose members also sometimes call themselves the “Kyatawud Nation.”

These two groups of Jamaicans have different histories. The Maroons in this part of the island are direct descendants of those famous African warriors of the 17th and 18th centuries who escaped from British slave plantations and fought their way to freedom, forcing the British colonial government to ask them for a peace treaty in 1739. Their leader and founding ancestress was Queen Nanny, who is now a Jamaican National Hero, and whose portrait can be seen on the Jamaican $500 bill. The other group of people, the Bongo Nation, is descended in large part from indentured African laborers who came to Jamaica much later than the Maroons; the founding ancestors of the Bongo Nation began to arrive only in the 1840s, a few years after the abolition of slavery, and more than a century after the liberation struggles of the Maroons.

It is interesting enough that in Jamaica there still exist groups of people who proudly identify themselves as members of distinct African-derived “nations.” But it is even more interesting that these two groups, the Maroon Nation and the Bongo Nation, have developed a sense of kinship and common identity based on a long history of contact and cultural exchange. Even though their ancestors came from different parts of Africa and arrived in Jamaica at different points in time, once circumstances brought them together, they were able to recognize in each other certain cultural similarities that could provide a basis for harmonious interaction. Music and dance played a particularly important part in this process. But before we can understand the significance of the shared musical culture developed by these two African-Jamaican nations in Jamaica, we need a little more background on each of them.

I mentioned that the ancestors of the Maroons and the ancestors of the Bongo Nation came from different parts of Africa. Historical records and present-day linguistic evidence strongly suggest that the early Maroons, although they came from many different parts of West Africa and were ethnically diverse, were led by Akan-speaking individuals from the areas known today as Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. It appears that the Akan cultural traditions brought by these leaders came to dominate in the new African-based culture developed by the Maroons in Jamaica. The founding ancestors of the Bongo Nation, in contrast to the Maroons, came from a part of Africa farther to the south, primarily from the Kongo-Angola region of Central Africa. These different origins are clearly reflected in the present-day musical and cultural traditions of the two peoples.

The Maroons still speak a ritual language called Kromanti, the name of which is derived from Cormantin, on the coast of present-day Ghana. The vocabulary of this language is derived mostly from Akan languages such as Asante-Twi and Fanti. The members of the Bongo Nation also have their a ritual language of their own, called Bongo or Kongo language, which is derived primarily from Kikongo and neighboring Bantu languages such as Kimbundu. These two ritual languages, the Kromanti language of the Maroons and the Kongo language of the Bongo Nation, are totally distinct and mutually unintelligible. The core musical traditions of the two groups are also very different. The sacred music of the Maroons, like their ritual language, is known as Kromanti. The sacred music of the Bongo Nation is known as Kumina – or, sometimes, as Kumeika, or Kodongo. These two musical traditions, Maroon and Bongo, are clearly distinct; they use different kinds of drums, on which different styles and rhythms are played, and they have songs sung in different ritual languages.

Maroons and Bongo people are well aware of their musical and cultural differences, and they often talk about them. Yet, they also often point out that their musics are “very similar” – sometimes they even go so far as to say they are “almost the same.” In fact, despite their different cultural origins, members of the two nations sometimes claim to belong to a single “family,” and say they are really of the “same nation.” There is even a story that tells of how the two groups are descended from two African sisters who became separated when they arrived in Jamaica. There is no contradiction in these simultaneous claims to similarity and difference. What they reflect is a recognition of a shared Africanness, a deep cultural affinity underlying the musical and cultural specificities that distinguish these two peoples. This sense of cultural commonality developed during the 19th century, as Maroons migrated from their mountain communities to the coastal plantation area where the Central Africans who were banding together into the Bongo Nation were concentrated. As visiting Maroons were exposed to the Kumina tradition and welcomed into it as fellow Africans, a process of cultural exchange took place. As a result, a new zone of musical and cultural overlap developed in the eastern part of Jamaica. Today this history of musical exchange is most obvious in the dozens of songs that are shared by Maroons and Kumina practitioners belonging to the Bongo Nation. Most of these shared songs are recognized as the joint property of the two “nations.” And all of them belong to what might be called a more creole, or Afro-creole, layer of culture (as opposed to each nation’s “deeper” categories of songs). All of them, for instance, are sung in the Jamaican creole language known as Patwa rather the African-derived ritual languages of the two nations, and they tend to be associated with the “lighter,” less spiritually powerful segments of ceremonies rather than those portions calling upon the more powerful, older ancestors.

In the Kumina ceremonies of the Bongo Nation, these songs belong to the musical category known as “bailo,” which consists of music primarily for entertainment and enjoyment rather than high spiritual purposes. Similarly, among the Maroons, when these songs are performed in Kromanti ceremonies, they are invariably backed by drumming styles that Maroon musicians characterize as “lighter” – styles such as Tambu, John Thomas, or Sa Leone, which are used mainly for entertainment rather than calling ancestors. In fact, it seems very likely that most of the “lighter” Maroon styles, which are closer to the rhythmic structure of Kumina drumming than any of the other Maroon drumming styles, actually developed out of musical interaction and exchange between Maroon and Kumina drummers beginning in the 19th century. This is particularly true of the Maroon style called Tambu. Interestingly enough, the name Tambu is also sometimes applied by members of the Bongo Nation to their own Kumina music and dance when these are done without a serious spiritual goal in mind, but purely for pleasure.

What does this overlapping musical zone, this musical bridge between the Maroon and Bongo Nations, mean in practice? For one thing, it allows both Maroons and Kumina practitioners, who sometimes meet by chance in Kumina ceremonies, to use music to quickly establish social bonds with each other, and to cultivate a sense of spiritual connection. In fact, when played in certain ways, both the printing, as the Maroon drums are known in Kromanti language, and the ngoma, as the Kumina drums are known in Kongo language, can be used to call ancestral spirits of either nation. The common musical territory staked out by the Maroon and Bongo ancestors more than a century ago is still perceived as a place of harmony and communal sentiment. This feeling is reinforced by the ease with which drummers are able to learn one another’s related styles – not to mention all the shared songs that do not need to be newly learned before a member of one nation can participate in the ceremonies of the other.
Many Maroon drummers spoke to me of this musically-grounded sense of connection with the Bongo Nation and its Kumina tradition. One great Kromanti drummer, who was also an accomplished Kumina player, told me of how nobody had ever taught him how to play Kumina; rather, he had traveled to Kumina ceremonies at different places, and had just watched and picked it up from listening. It wasn't hard to do, he said, because Maroon drumming and Kumina drumming are very close, and he already knew how to play Kromanti drums. After all, he pointed out, Maroons and the Bongo Nation are "like brother and sister." And that’s why Maroons have an equivalent of Kumina which they play on the Maroon Kromanti drums – a style that they call Tambu. Another Kromanti drummer explained what it’s like, as a Maroon musician, to sit in on the Kumina drums for the first time. “It comes like when you know how to drive a big truck,” he said. “Then one day you have to drive a small van. Well, when you sit behind the wheel you know how to operate it already, you don't really have to learn. It might steer a little bit different, a little lighter. You just have to get used to it, but still you can do it.”

The other remarkable thing about this overlapping musical zone is that, even as it fosters a sense of common identity based on a feeling of shared Africanness, it permits members of the two groups to maintain distinctive identities at the same time – as representatives of related, yet different, nations with musical and cultural traditions of their own. In fact, few drummers are able to “cross over” stylistically to such an extent that other expert players can no longer identify what nation they belong to by their playing. When playing Kumina, for instance, Maroon drummers usually reveal their Maroon identity by the way they “mek bar” – that is, the way they press the heels of their feet on the head of the drum to change the pitch. Since the Maroon Kromanti drums are played in an upright position without the use of the feet, Maroon drummers tend to pay less attention to this “heeling” technique, and are seldom able to reproduce the subtle differences in timbre expected of a Kumina master drummer. Differences in the rhythmic patterns typically played by Maroon versus Kumina drummers – even when performing within this overlapping musical zone – also serve to keep the musical identities of the players somewhat separate. Because the supporting parts of the related drumming styles of the two nations, Tambu and Kumina, are compatible with the typical lead drum patterns of either nation, lead drummers are able to play with supporting drummers from the other nation without making major adjustments, and their playing still fits in. Although their style of playing may sound somewhat “foreign” to listeners belonging to the other nation, the resulting music, which combines elements from both sides, still “works.”

We have here, I would like to suggest, an excellent example of the use of music and its spiritual power in building cultural bridges in the African diaspora. Much as people on both sides of the Atlantic today continue to recognize and build upon a broadly shared musical heritage, Africans in the Americas in past centuries used common musical sensibilities to help bridge their differences, even as they sometimes also maintained the ethnically more specific musical traditions they or their ancestors had transplanted or recreated in this hemisphere. We know, of course, that the Jamaican case is hardly unique; wherever in the Americas Africans of different nations met, they constructed interethnic musical bridges. There is plentiful evidence of this process in places such as Haiti, Cuba, and Brazil, each of which has its own inter-African musical fusions. But one of the things that is particularly interesting about this Jamaican case is that it shows that even after the end of formal slavery, African newcomers were still able to rely on a broadly shared Africanness, manifested in music and other cultural spheres, to forge lasting social bonds with Jamaicans several generations removed from the African continent.

In fact, Kumina, although it remains the ethnically-specific music of communities of Central African descendants in eastern Jamaica, has also come to serve as the vehicle of a broader African identity in Jamaica – a process that might be seen as an extension of the kind of musical transculturation that has long been taking place between Maroons and the Bongo Nation. In the initial phase of the Rastafari movement, before the emergence of what is now known as Nyabinghi, the songs and drumming of Kumina played an important part in the Rastas’ attempts to re-create Africa in Jamaica. Among later generations of Rastas, Kumina gave way to the new musical fusion called Nyabinghi, which was itself based in part on Kumina rhythms. And today, Kumina continues to be used to re-create Africa in Jamaica, even in the latest dancehall music. We close with a thoroughly up-to-date pop recording in which the Jamaican D.J. known as Determination raps over a dancehall beat called the “Kumina riddim.” This is but one of several records released in 2003 using this new version of the Kumina riddim.