Lisa’s Neighborhood

            Even in Brazil, female percussionists number far less than men drummers. What is clear is that the drums historically have been used to express male physical prowess in both popular music, such as samba reggae, and the sacred rhythms of Candomblé.

           The drums used in Brazilian Candomblé, called atabaques, initiate ritual, announcing that time and space is now shifting from a “mundane” layer to a “sacred” one, and place becomes cosmological, a meeting ground of orum, the dwelling place of spirits and aiyé, the earth. The atabaques mediate between both worlds and the Candomblé drummers command the liminal space. Because the rituals are so long, strength and endurance are just as important as technical skill.

            In Candomblé, it is tradition for men to perform on the atabaques during sacred ceremony and it is forbidden for women to play the consecrated drums. Bahian anthropologist Goli Guerreiro points to the taboo of women drummers in Candomblé ritual spaces as one of the main reasons why female percussionists did not find their place among male percussionists in popular African-Bahian music until the 1990’s (Guerreiro 2000). In spite of this fact, women have made rare appearances behind the atabaques during ceremony.

            While researching the early history of Candomblé in Bahia, João José Reis found one mention of a female drummer in the newspaper Alabama, published between 1864-1871, that he believes is “a hint that women were allowed to play drums” (131):

I was very surprised

With my mouth opened and dumb

When I saw Maria Doufona

How she could play the drum. (Reis 131)

            During my fieldwork in Bahia during 2006, I had the opportunity to visit a music school, Escola Pracatum[1], where I interviewed three young women percussionists, Mercia, a Catholic, and Ivana and Ayala, who are both Candomblé practitioners.

            Ivana, whose orixá is Iemanjá Ogunte, a warrior version of Iemanjá connected to the warrior orixá Ogum, told me she once saw a woman drummer play in her grandmother’s Candomblé house when one of the male drummers did not show up. When I inquired which house her grandmother led and who the female drummer was, she did not answer. Instead, she reiterated that in general, women were forbidden to play atabaques. I heard other reports about women playing in Candomblé rituals and no one wanted to mention the houses where they took place.

            Women percussionists report that drumming is an empowering activity that enables them to re-vision themselves as strong creators of their own destiny. Viviane Caroline, a Candomblé practitioner and band leader of the Brazilian all female drum group, Dida Banda Feminina, describes how drumming has transformed her life: “When I play the drum, I feel on top of the world, able to do anything, to change whatever destiny, to build, to overcome” (“Girl Beat,” 00:38-00:54).

            Despite their growing numbers, women drummers and all-women percussion groups in Bahia, such as Dida Banda Feminina, struggle for the kind of international fame and recognition earned by their all-male group counterparts, Olodum and Timbalada.

            The growth in numbers of female drummers is not limited to Brazil and the phenomenon reaches across to other parts of the globe, including the United States, Canada and Europe. Although, my study has focused on Brazilian female percussionists and the Candomblé female deities, I also surveyed and interviewed women from other cultures because these groups also experience the marginalization that Brazilian female drummers do. I found women who practice Candomblé in North America, as well as other African-Atlantic religions, namely, Santeria, Ifa and Vodou. I want to note that many women cited other religions and deities who inspired them, but time does not permit me to discuss these in this paper. The complete survey results, will be posted to my website at http://www.mythicrhythm.com before the end of the year.

            I asked all the women I interviewed and surveyed for this study, three main questions: “Who is your role model?”; “Are they male or female?”; and “Who is your orixá?”            . 

            Ethnomusicologist Clarence Bernard Henry points out that the ayabas, Yoruba for “queens,” are the predominant role models for women in Bahia  (Henry 121). The top three female orixás who appeared most among the research participants include the ayabas Iemanjá, Oxum and Iansã. Xangô, definitely not an ayaba, was also cited by a good number of the survey respondents, and, not surprisingly, since in Candomblé he is the patron orixá of drummers.

            All of the orixás in Candomblé possess an archetypal resonance with both nature and the realm of human activities. They provide structural patterns that inform the inner and outer lives of their devotees and serve as functional models for the roles that men and women perform in society. When I use the term archetypal, I’m referring to its use in post-Jungian archetypal psychology, as an image or story that is “geographically distributed, temporally enduring, and emotionally charged” (Hillman 29).

            The archetypal images are not just reflected in the myths and images of the orixás, but also in the drums and rhythm patterns. The sacred rhythms of Candomblé are “leitmotifs.”[2] Each rhythm is a narrative, telling the story of its associated orixá, and each rhythm has the power to call down that orixá into earthly manifestation through trance possession. The rhythmic patterns for each deity is distinct and is mimetic of that orixás’ personality as expressed through Candomblé mythology.

            I would like to play some examples. The music excerpts are from a CD called Odum Orim, and were produced by the master drummer Gamo da Paz of the ile Gantois in Bahia, Brazil. Gamo resides in SF and teaches the rhythms and songs of Candomblé.             

          The rhythms for Iansã are played at a faster tempo than any of the other rhythms for the orixás. As her Yoruba name Oya, meaning “swift,” and her element, wind, suggest, Iansã’s dance movements are quick and agile. She sometimes brandishes a sword and at other times holds the buffalo-tailed whip to show her control over the Egun, the ancestral spirits, and forces of life and death.

            [Listen to Iansã’s rhythm – play track 1 on the CD]

            In contrast, Oxum’s rhythm can best be described as regal, calming and sensuous, matching her feminine elegance, healing qualities and capacity for fertility. Paul Christopher Johnson makes a reference to her “cooling” sacred rhythm: “Drum rhythms are played to honor and call Oxum with the bare hands and thus sound ‘cool’” (Johnson 38).

            [Listen to Oxum’s rhythm - play track 2 on CD]

            Oxum and Iansã personify the archetypal energies of Trickster. Oxum is the guardian of the gates of life, protecting both mother and child during the birth process. Iansã is the queen of the cemetary, a psychopomp who guides the souls of the dead to the spiritual realm. Many canonical tricksters we have come to know and love share common characteristics with Oxum and Iansã: the capacity to create new life, the ability to shape-shift, a connection with the realm of the dead, and particularly, the facility to upset the balance of power in order to bring equilibrium to their mythological universes. For these two orixás, there is no question of asking for permission or doubting they have the right to have or do what they wish.

            In opposition to Paul Radin’s view of the Trickster as “undifferentiated and plunged in unconsciousness” (Makarius 86), Laura Makarius suggests that “the myth of the trickster is truly the first myth bringing onto the stage a characterized individual hero” (86) that acts in opposition to society. Makarius’ argument underscores how Trickster’s actions portray a differentiated being, consciously creating change and upsetting the status quo.

            Ricki Stefanie Tannen refers to “Female Trickster” as a trickster in female form who possesses “psychological authority, physical agency, and bodily autonomy” (Tannen 8). The female trickster initiates change by asking and encouraging questions, particularly challenging authority by “encouraging others to ask questions about their own lives” (Tannen 74). In following her model, I re-imagine two prominent female figures in Brazilian Candomblé, Oxum and Iansã, as tricksters.

            One instance to illustrate the connection between trickster and Iansã is this myth told in a film about the orixás of Candomblé:

At the beginning of time Xangô sent Iansã, mistress of winds and storms, his most important wife, to bring him a potion that would let him breathe fire from his nose and mouth.

Iansã disobeyed him and tasted the potion on her way back, so that she could breathe fire too.

This made Xangô furious because he had wanted to keep that power all to himself.

Without Iansã, Xangô cannot make fire.

Xangô is inseparable from Iansã. (“Orixás,” 13:50-14:28)

            Iansã takes it upon her own authority to drink the potion and become indispensable to her husband, Xangô, even though she knows she is going against his wishes.

            Trickster stories also show up in Oxum’s myths. In this example, Oxum is the only female orixá present during the creation of the earth.

According to legend, when Olorum created the universe, he forgot to send Oxum along with the first orixás, so everything was dry and ugly and lacking in feminine grace. Realizing his mistake, Olorum sent Oxum who took with her all the fresh water, the source of life on aiye. (“Orixás,” 21:27-21:53) 

            The myths of Iansã and Oxum just told, imply that the feminine principle is an indispensable factor in the balance of the cosmos, and as above so below, the feminine principle is necessary for social balance as well.

            Through their subversive acts, Iansã and Oxum may take power for themselves to be equal to their male counterparts, but they do not take or use the power to spite their husbands. Badejo expresses this eloquently when she describes her calling to write about Oxum:

What Osun wanted me to say is that women are powerful in and of themselves, and that power exists to ensure our continuity, and that controlling our lives and our destiny is a joint effort not to be diminished by male dominance or female antagonism. (Badejo xvii) 

            Women drummers differentiate their feminine power by challenging the supposition that drumming is a “male-oriented” performance medium and replacing it with a paradigm that favors a “community-oriented” approach. Pauline, who played clave and surdo, not the traditional atabaques, in a Candomblé ceremony in the U.S. muses, “Women bring a different energy to drumming. Often it is more about community and being and doing together than about performance” (personal interview Oct 28, 2009).

            Although all Candomblé rituals are designed to balance feminine and masculine energies, the Mother in tandem with the Female Trickster are the formative and transformative feminine archetypes in Candomblé mythology.

            The Mother archetype is associated with the atabaque that calls down the orixás and is referred to by the Yoruba term ìyá ‘lù, meaning “mother drum” (Henry, Music and Female 121).

            Normally, the Great Mother is stereotyped to be all nurturing, all encompassing, but in Brazilian Candomblé there are multiple types of Iemanjás. According to Pierre Verger there are seven Iemanjás and not all conform to the picture of motherly, unconditional love:

[…] she [Yemaya] is Ogum’s woman, deity of war; is a terrifying amazon, who brings, hanging around her waist, a machete and other iron implements of Ogum. She is severe, rancorous and violent […] (Verger, Orixás 192)

            Myths function as imaginative icons that inform change and re-visioning by providing figures who model transformation and innovation. According to William Doty: “Myth is, yes, conservative; but it is also an important source of change. It e-du-cates, draws forth some of the possible means of revisioning ourselves, both individually, first of all, and then (and most importantly) socially” (Deardorff “An Interview”).

            As more women begin to play drums and perfect their craft in the mundane realm, it will be interesting to see if more opportunities to perform in sacred ritual will also arise. The trickster represents the what if energy of all possibilities, seen and unseen, that can break through at any time.

            Carolyn Brandy has been a drummer since 1968 and is considered a “foremother” of the movement of women into the field of percussion by many of the women who participated in this research. Carolyn, whose orixá is Obatala, has performed on congas in Santeria ceremonies both in the U.S and in Cuba, but never on the fundamento bata drum, which women are forbidden to play. When I asked Carolyn, “Hypothetically - if there was no longer a taboo for women to play the fundamento bata, how would that make you feel?” Her answer was enlightening:

To tell you the absolute truth, what I would really like to do is play a woman’s Fundamento drum in ceremony.  I love to sing and dance to the Bata, but I don’t have that strong desire to play Fundamento Bata. If there is a Fundamento drum that women play traditionally–just to be part of a lineage of women who have played for a long time would be really great. (personal interview Oct. 21, 2009)

            There are three potent feminine figures in Candomblé mythology who are role models for female drummers: Oxum and Iansã, who personify the Female Trickster, and Iemanjá, personifying the Great Mother. As role models, they empower women drummers to transform their lives and break down social obstacles to their musical expression in percussion.

            If we wish to restore, and re-story, the voices of female drummers, we can begin by reimagining the feminine as a dynamic agent of change, with the capacity not only to extend female drummers’ participation into both sacred and profane musical contexts, but to re-vision that participation as uniquely feminine; where the goal is not to replace men in ritual or to undermine their masculinity, but rather to create a new space to express the power of the feminine principle in drumming.

Works Cited

                 Aiello, Pauline. Personal interview, 28 Oct. 2009.           

                 Brandy, Carolyn. Personal interview, 21 Oct. 2009.

                 Deardorff, Daniel. “An Interview With William Doty.” http://www.mythsinger.com/doty_interview.pdf accessed on 10/01/2009.

Faria, Lazaro. “Orixás da Bahia.” DVD. Bahia, Brazil: Casa de Cinema da Bahia, 2005.

Gil, Fora. “Odum Orim.” Music CD. Musical Director: Gamo da Paz. 2000.

Girot, Suzanne and Renato Frota. “Girl Beat: Power of the Drum.” DVD. 2004.

Guerreiro, Goli.“Mulheres Do Batuque.” A Trama dos Tambores. São Paulo:  Editora 34 Ltda, 2000. Word doc of this chapter emailed by the author .

Henry, Clarence Bernard. “Music and Female Imagery in the Candomblé Religion of Salvador, Bahia, Brazil.” Journal of Latin American Lore 22.1 (Winter 2004): 109-36.

Hillman, James. “Notes on White Supremacy: Essaying an Archetypal Account of Historical Events.” Spring, 46 (1986): 29-58.

Ivana. Personal interview, 22 Feb. 2006.

Johnson, Paul Christopher. Secrets, Gossip, and Gods: The Transformation of Brazilian Candomblé. New York: Oxford U P, 2002.

Makarius, Laura. “The Myth of the Trickster: The Necessary Breaker of Taboos.”             Mythical Trickster Figures: Contours, Contexts, and Criticisms. Ed. William J.             Hynes and William G. Doty. Tuscaloosa and London: The U of Alabama P, 1993.             66-86.

Reis, João José. “Candomblé in Nineteenth-Century Bahia: Priests, Followers, Clients.” Rethinking the African Diaspora, The Making of a Black Atlantic World in the Bight of Benin and Brazil. Ed. Kristin Mann and Edna G. Bay. London: Cass, 2001. 116-34.

Tannen, Ricki Stefanie. The Female Trickster: The Mask That Reveals. Post-Jungian and Post Modern Psychological Perspectives on Women in Contemporary Culture. London: Routledge, 2007.

Verger, Pierre Fatumbi. Orixás: Deuses Iorubás na África e no Novo Mundo. Salvador da Bahia, Brazil: Corrupio, 1981.