African Musical Instrument Surrogates in the Americas:
Stamped and Struck Idiophones
By Eddie Osborne
Idiophones, meaning literally "self sounding" (from the Greek idios, "own, personal," and phōnē,
"sound, voice"), are those musical instruments which do not require the addition of a stretched hide,
string, or other material to produce sound; rather, it is their own bodies which vibrate to produce sound
when they are struck, shaken or rasped.
In a previous article, we looked at some of the scraped, or rasped, idiophones developed by
Africans enslaved in the Americas as surrogates, or substitutes, for their traditional instruments. The focus
of this discussion is on those stamped and struck idiophones -- stamping sticks and stamping tubes,
percussion tubes, wooden-box percussion, water-resonated gourd percussion, metal and glass percussion,
and concussion sticks -- which occur in African-descended communities in the Caribbean, the Bahamas,
Central and South America, and the United States. Some of these instruments were derived from
traditional African prototypes; others, either because their use was severely restricted or banned outright,
were improvised from household implements, tools, and natural materials whose sounds approximated
those produced by traditional instruments.
Stamping Sticks
Stamping sticks -- lengths of wood (sometimes incorporating a gourd rattle at the upper end)
which are thumped against hard-packed earth, a wooden surface or a slab of stone -- once were fairly
widespread in the U.S. South, particularly in the area stretching from Louisiana to the Atlantic coast.
Based on similar makeshift instruments from the African homeland, stamping sticks initially were used
mainly in informal secular music contexts; however, they later became a staple in slave worship services,
during which they were stamped against the floor for percussive accompaniment to singing. Today,
however, stamping sticks are pretty much limited to coastal South Carolina and Georgia, where groups
such the McIntosh County (Georgia) Shouters use them in concerts and other performances.
stamping stick
McIntosh County Shouters in performance on Sapelo Island, Georgia
The stamping stick also has been documented in Cuba, where it is used during funeral rites for
deceased practitioners of the Yoruba-descended religion called Santería or Regla de Ochá. Called there
págugu (a name incorporating the Yoruba okpa, "stick," and egungun, "spirits of the dead"), it is struck
against the ground to activate spiritual forces. The págugu, painted black and often festooned with a
number of variously colored ribbons, reportedly is a symbolic representation of the deceased, and as such
must be as long as the person was tall (Marcuse 1975:38).
Such ritual use of wooden stampers also occurs in areas of Africa other than Nigeria, the
ancestral homeland Cuba's Yoruba descendants. An example is seen in the déblés, the so-called "rhythm
pounders" of the Senufo people of southern Mali and northern Côte d'Ivoire. Carved in the shape of an
elongated human body, usually that of a woman, déblés are used in ceremonies of the all-male Lo society
(known more widely as the Poro), during which initiates hold the figures by the upper arms and pound
them on the ground to keep the rhythm in rituals performed to promote the fertility of the soil and at the
funerals of important Lo society members.
Senufo déblé
Stamping Tubes
Stamping tubes are bamboo poles of different lengths and diameters, each cut so that one end is
open and the other is closed by a natural node, or joint. Because of their varying lengths and diameters,
the shafts produce notes of different pitches when their closed ends are struck against the ground, slabs of
stone, or other hard surface. Each musician plays a different rhythmic pattern, varying the pitch by
alternately covering and uncovering the openings of the tubes with cupped hands.
stamping tubes
Bamboo stamping tubes occur in a number of societies in sub-Saharan Africa under various
names; in Benin, for example, one of the names for them is kukugoku, and among the Ga people of Ghana
bamboo stampers are called pamploi (DjeDje 2000:161). Where they occur -- whether in West Africa or
among the Wapare, Washambala and other peoples of East and Central Africa -- stamping tubes tend to
be used in ensembles to accompany singing at performances of recreational music and at fertility rites
held at sowing or harvest time (Nketia 1974:76).
It was this tradition of adapting bamboo poles to musical purposes that Africans introduced to the
Americas during the period of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Though apparently more widespread at an
earlier time, bamboo stamping tubes occur today in only a few scattered locations under various names:
quitiplás in Colombia, Venezuela and Panama; tamboo bamboo in Trinidad and Tobago; ganbo or ti
ganbo in Haiti, and bamba in Curaçao (Roberts 1972:163).
In some areas of the Americas where they occur, musicians initially resorted to the use of bamboo
stamping tubes as substitutes for hide-covered drums. Such was the case in Trinidad when, in 1884, the
British colonial government banned the playing of traditional drums during Carnival street processions.
To circumvent this restriction, musicians turned to bamboo stampers. Formed into ensembles consisting
of variously sized bamboo tubes, the instrument soon came to play a prominent percussive role not only
during carnival processions but also at wakes, at bongo and other folk dances, and at stick fights (Bilby
1985: 189; Stuempfle 1995:23; Mason 1998:57; Averill 1999:173).
A similar situation obtained in Haiti. During the 19-year U.S. military occupation of the island
nation (1915-1934), drums often were seized and destroyed. The result was that bamboo stamping tubes,
called ganbo or ti ganbo -- thought to derive from dikanmbo, the name in Kikongo or a related language
of the Congo-Angola region -- received renewed popularity as rhythm instruments and as substitutes for
hide-covered drums, a popularity that continues to this day, particularly in rara bands (Courlander
1960:196; Howard 1967:260; Marcuse 1975:38; Stuempfle 1995:23).
Percussion Tubes
Another New World innovation is a type of percussion tube consisting either of a length of
bamboo with the nodes removed or a section from a hardwood tree trunk which is hollowed so that both
ends are open. Katá (which is applied as well to the use of sticks to keep time on the sides of drums) is
the name of the instrument in Haiti, where it is either placed horizontally in the crotches of two Y-shaped
sticks inserted in the ground or suspended by a strap from the neck and played with a pair of sticks
(Courlander 1960: 197; Marcuse 1975:38).
katá/catá
The instrument also occurs in Santiago, Guantánamo, and other areas of eastern Cuba, having
been introduced from Haiti during the early 1800s. In Cuba the instrument is called catá and is made, as
in Haiti, either from a length of bamboo or from the trunk of the mahogany tree or other hardwood. The
catá typically is used to mark time in tumba francesa orchestras, which originated in Haiti, as well as in
ensembles playing music associated with Santería, or Regla de Ocha.
In a further development, some musicians cut two or more sections from a metal container and
nail them to the top center portion of the instrument. With this addition the catá then becomes a guáguá
(from a Cuban colloquialism meaning "bus," a term by which some also refer to the bamboo version of
the catá). In this instance, though, one does not strike the wood but rather the metal plates (Marcuse
1975:38).
Wooden-Box Percussion
As we have seen, the absence of drums does not necessarily prevent the survival of drumming.
Indeed, a signature trait of African musicians, whether on the continent or in the diaspora, is the tendency
to substitute whatever may be at hand when the actual instruments are unavailable. Thus, any object that
can be used to produce a rhythmic beat might function as a drum: a bench, table top, door, inverted bucket
or wash tub, etc.
The Ghanaian adaka, a large wooden box used as a drum surrogate, is thought to have come
about in just this way. Years ago, according to one account, when an anonymous musician had no hidecovered drum to play, he took a wooden crate and began drumming on it. By striking the crate in various
areas with clinched fists and palms, he found that he could produce a variety of sounds similar to those of
a traditional adakam master drum. The new instrument caught on among other musicians and soon
became a standard rhythmic instrument in osode and apatampa ensembles (Vetter: n.d.).
wooden box percussion
To be sure, the use of such wooden boxes as drum substitutes may have occurred first in West or
Central Africa and been brought to the Americas, where they became known in Spanish-speaking areas as
cajónes (lit. "large boxes"). On the other hand, it may be, as some have contended, that the innovation
occurred in the Americas when African musicians, forbidden by Spanish colonial authorities to play hidecovered drums, improvised by using the discarded crates in which salted codfish had been shipped as
substitutes for traditional drums.
If the cajón indeed originated in the Americas, exactly where it did so cannot be established with
certainty. A widely held theory -- one embraced by Ramòn Pérez-Prieto, co-founder of the Afro-Peruvian
fusion group Novalima, among others -- posits that the instrument came about in Peru; another holds that
it was developed in Cuba. Because Africans in the Americas tended to react in remarkably similar ways
when drums were scarce, the cajón may very well have been developed simultaneously in Peru and
Cuba; then, again, it may have caught on first in one country and then spread later to the other. Whatever
its actual origin, the cajón has emerged as an instrument in its own right. In Peru, the cajón is the
national instrument, and in Cuba it plays a major role in rumba ensembles and in music played in certain
Afro-Cuban religious contexts.
Water-Resonated Gourd Percussion
Another improvised instrument widely used in West Africa as a drum surrogate is a gourd-based,
water-resonated percussion instrument commonly called a "water drum," from a literal translation of its
name in various West African languages: e.g., Bambara, ji dunun, "water drum" (from ji, "water," and
dunun, "drum"), and Akan (Asante, Fante, etc.) dansuomu, with the same meaning.
water-resonated gourd percussion
Structurally, the instrument usually consists of one or more half gourds that are floated, with their
open sides facing down, in a larger half gourd filled with a quantity of water. Depending on the amount of
water in the gourd basin, the variously sized floated gourds produce different notes when their bases are
struck with mallets made from a dipper gourd split lengthwise, sticks, or with the bare hands.
Like hide-covered drums, which in some societies tend to be a male prerogative, water-resonated
percussion gourds are sex-specific in some societies, being played exclusively by women. In others, the
instruments are played by both sexes, in contexts ranging from baptisms, circumcisions, weddings, and
initiations to funeral rites.
Water-resonated percussion gourds also are found in parts of the Americas, having been
introduced by Africans swept up during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Where they occur, the instruments
are virtually identical to their African antecedents in construction (with basins of metal or plastic usually
taking the place of the larger bottom gourd hemisphere), playing technique, and even use, being employed
in both secular and ritual contexts.
In Cuba, for example, water-resonated gourd percussion is played as a part of funeral rites for
deceased practitioners of certain African-derived religions. The same holds in Trinidad. There the local
version of water-resonated gourd percussion, the kionu or sihu -- the latter having been derived from
sihun, the instrument's name in one of the languages of present-day Benin -- accompanies a special
repertoire of chants during a ceremony held nine days after the death of a highly placed member of the
African-descended community. Also apparently derived from sihun is seoe, or seú, the name of the
water-resonated gourd percussion in Curaçao. (Warner-Lewis 2010:38)
Metal Percussion
The tradition of forging single and double traditional metal bells was preserved for a time by
Africans transplanted to Cuba, Haiti, and certain other New World locales; in most instances, though, the
art soon was lost, a notable exception being Brazil, where the agogô, which retains its original Yoruba
name (which has the additional meaning of "watch" or "clock"), continues to be made in the traditional
manner.
Yoruba agogo (l.), Ewe gankogui (r.)
In most other areas, faced with the need to recreate the sound of their traditional metal percussion,
musicians were forced to improvise, using ax blades, car brake drums, and whatever other suitable
materials were at hand. In Cuba, for example, the metal bells hung from the necks of free-ranging cows to
determine their whereabouts, were put to use as musical instruments. Unlike in the Bahamas, where the
cow bell's internal clapper is left intact and is shaken, the Cuban cow bell percussion (called cencerro or
campana), is stripped of its clapper and is played with a stick, providing two notes depending on whether
it is struck on the body of lip.
Another implement that was pressed into service as a metal bell substitute in various locales was
the iron hoe blade, struck with a large nail or other thin length of iron. In Cuba, where the implement is
called guataca, it is used in musical ensembles which play music in honor of the Afro-Cuban orichas, or
deities. In Haiti, the hoe blade goes by the names ogan and fé (the former derived from the Fon name for
a metal bell, the latter a being Haitian Creole term meaning "iron"), and it is used in both secular and
religious musical contexts. In Curaçao, the hoe blade is called chapi, and it plays a percussive role in the
island's benta bands.
Yet another item sometimes used as a substitute for traditional African single and double metal
bells was the cast iron skillet used for preparing fried foods. The makeshift instrument, used singly, in
pairs, or in triplets, formerly was in widespread in rural areas of the U.S. South and in Cuba. Now
virtually obsolete in the United States, cast iron skillets have been reported in relatively recent times in
Cuba (there called sartenes), being employed in conga de comparsa groups for carnaval...(Roberts
1972:49).
cast iron skillet
Glass Percussion
During my early childhood in 1950s Griffin, Georgia, my father and his friends often would
gather for informal music-making sessions. Among the various household implements sometimes pressed
into service as musical instruments were water glasses, each filled with varying amounts of water and
played by tapping their openings with a spoon. Although I didn't realize it at the time, such waterresonated glass percussion has analogues in the water-resonated percussion pots played by various groups
in Nigeria, Benin, Mali, Guinea, Uganda and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa. Though the materials
differ, with clay pots or gourds/calabashes being employed in Africa, the principle is the same: Musicians
fill the vessels with quantities of water to tune them (the volume of water determining each vessel's pitch)
and strike the openings with beaters made from palm fronds or wood (Kebede 1982:54).
tuned water glasses
tuned calabash percussion
Water-filled vessel percussion -- in some instances used as metal bell surrogates -- also was a
feature of impromptu musical get-togethers of African-descended people elsewhere in the Americas.
Examples include the bottle-and-spoon percussion of the tamboo bamboo bands in Trinidad and Tobago,
the bottle and coin used in Cuba to tap out a clave figure, and the assorted other glass-and-metal
combinations found in the Bahamas and the United States (Roberts 1972:112; Stuempfle 1995:24).
Concussion Sticks
Concussion sticks are two pieces of wood, usually of unequal lengths and thicknesses, which are
struck together. Perhaps the best known of the concussion sticks are the Cuban claves, pairs of round
hardwood sticks used by musicians to play a rhythmic pattern, or time line, which serves as a point of
reference for other musicians and singers. In play, the musician accomplishes this by using the shorter
stick (the hembra, "female") to strike the center of its mate (the macho, "male"), the larger member of the
pair, which is cradled loosely in the palm.
The origin of the claves (whose singular form, clave, "key," also refers to the rhythmic pattern
played on the instrument) is uncertain. The popular belief is that claves are uniquely Cuban, having been
created by Afro-Cuban dock workers, prominent among them being the Efik, Ejagham, Ibibio and related
peoples, referred to in Cuba as Carabalí on account of their point of embarkation on Nigeria's Calabar
coast. Because concussion sticks are found in Nigeria and in various other parts of sub-Saharan Africa,
however, claves likely represent a continuation of, and elaboration on, a pre-removal musical tradition.
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