The Fear of French Negroes by Sara E. Johnson

Author:Sara E. Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2012-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

Hence according to Cally the “purest” form of the bèlè/djouba drum can be found in Haiti, and it is played using virtually identical techniques. The fact that this same drum is called the tanbou matinik in Haiti is a semantic circle that certainly complicates the question of origins while emphasizing the constant interisland movements, both before and after the Haitian Revolution, that made such commonalities possible.

I close with a useful visual artifact provided by the intrepid traveler Lafcadio Hearn. It documents the techniques involved in the sound production of the bèlè and, by extension, the tumba francesa, the bomba, and Belisario’s performance of “frenchness.” In a series of descriptions chronicling his 1888 visit to Martinique, Hearn included a photograph and a description of the music he had heard while on a plantation in Grande Anse. The image, entitled Manner of Playing the Ka, depicts “the best drummer in the settlement” sitting astride his drum (figure 27). Ka is a generic term for drum, more specifically called the tanbou bèlè. A young boy is seated behind the percussionist to his left, who “keeps striking the drum at the uncovered end with a stick, so as to produce a dry clattering accompaniment.” This accompaniment may well have been the rhythm of the cinquillo. As for the drums themselves, Hearn provides the following description:

Both ends of the barrel having been removed, a wet hide, well wrapped about a couple of hoops, is driven on and in drying the stretched skin obtains still further tension. The other end of the ka is always left open. Across the face of the skin a string is tightly stretched, to which are attached, at intervals of about an inch apart, very short thin fragments of bamboo or cut feather stems. These lend a certain vibration to the tones. . . . . The skillful player straddles his ka stripped to the waist, and plays upon it with the finger-tips of both hands simultaneously—taking care that the vibrating string occupies a horizontal position. Occasionally the heel of the naked foot is pressed lightly or vigorously against the skin, so as to produce changes in tone. This is called “giving heel” to the drum—baill y talon. (143–47)

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