by Thomas Altmann » Thu Jul 24, 2008 10:43 am
Hi Joseph.
Yes, this article was written by Mark Corrales, who maintained the BataDrums website for several years. The connected forum still exists, but with very little activity.
Let me still clarify one point. You mentioned repression and secrecy along each other in reference to bata drumming before 1936. That sounds as if all the bata drummers were waiting for the opportunity to reveal their art and mysteries to the public. I am sure it wasn't like that. Even today, the religion on the whole still implies a lot of secrecy and taboos; but anyone who becomes initiated knows about that. It becomes natural to deal with those restrictions. And a taboo that forbids to bring the drums out of the religious houses wasn't that painful, compared to many a taboo that you have to regard when you are initiated as olorisha (santero), which most (if not all) drummers were at that time. The drummers had enough bata work on ceremonies. There was no need to play them in public. Outside they were perhaps playing Rumba or Son. Some of them might have been Abakuá, another society with even more secrecy around it; so they were playing the Abakuá drums there. No suffering involved. On the contrary, it might have been more painful for some to reveal what shouldn't be revealed.
What leads to my next point: secrecy. Many of us tend to think that the secrecy around bata drumming and Anyá was caused by the persecution of Ocha practitioners in days gone by. That is certainly correct - partly. But even today not everything is revealed openly, and the opinions on what can, or cannot, be told, sung or played outside differ among the drummers as well as priests. I suspect that many of them seem to indulge in the sensation to know more than another person and deny him the desired information, religiously legitimated. That's only primitive, almost infantile.
But furthermore I believe that secrecy in Yoruba religion has a specific ethnic background that must be regarded and respected. In his book "Yoruba Medicine", Anthony Buckley explains how the traditional Yoruba idea of health is based on the concept of hidden and exposed areas/substances/colors. If too much of what should be hidden is exposed and vice versa, an organism either is or becomes ill. If we think of the religion and the religious community as a living organism, this idea is easily referable to the concept of secrecy. It makes sense to me, too, and I won't be the one who rushes forward in breaking any vow of secrecy, as far as I'm concerned.
Thomas