Ebook: The drums of Vodou

Drums are accorded special treatment in Haitian religion, as they are throughout Afro-Caribbean cultures. They are sacred symbols—indeed they are often regarded as a kind of poto mitan (central pillar) of the African cultural inheritance—but they are also sacred media, used in ceremonies to call the lwa-s (deities of Haitian Vodou).

Knowledgeable drummers are essential for a successful ceremony; many Vodou ceremonies fall apart for lack of good drummers. The success of a book such as this one is also dependent upon the participation of a master drummer, and here we are indebted to Frisner Augustin for choosing to share so much introductory knowledge in this fashion. The book is as interactional as the music, bringing together the talents of Augustin with those of Lois Wilcken, a researcher with a long acquaintance with Vodou dance, music and ceremony. Their decade-long collaboration brings a particular richness and complexity of viewpoints to the book.

Musics of African descent are typically governed by principles of interaction. Soloists and choirs “converse” in call-and-response fashion; gestalt-like composite patterns emerge from the intricate interlocking of numerous percussion instruments; each instrument has its own pitch range and sonority; master drum patterns function as signals and cues, alerting musicians and dancers to changes and breaks in the fabric of the music; and drummers and dancers respond to each other’s constantly-shifting improvisations. The complexity that outsiders find so baffling in these musics is not rooted in the difficulty of any one vocal melody or percussion part, but in the cumulative interactive patterning. The authors of this book have accepted the challenge to explicate Haitian sacred drumming for interested outsiders.