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Review of Obiní Batá Cuba
Obiní
Batá Cuba, approximately 64 minutes long, features a group of
women who have challenged the prohibition of women playing batá
drums, as emphasized in the brief but cogent liner notes by Cuban
musicologist Enrique Zayas. Their name, Obiná Batá, is a
Yoruba phrase meaning “Women of the Batá” – a
signal to the male batá world that change is on the way. The
group was founded in 1993 by Eva Despaigne Trujillo, Deborah C.
Méndez Frontela, and Mirta Ocanto González. Of the
original members, only Eva Trujillo remains in the group’s
current configuration, which now includes six members, all of whom
sing, dance, and play percussion (batá, conga, bell, shekere,
and clave), as well as another woman who is primarily a dancer. In an
interview that concludes the DVD, co-founder Eva Trujillo states that
she graduated from the Escuela Nacional de Arte in folkloric and modern
dance, and joined the Conjunto Folklórico Nacional de Cuba as a
lead dancer. It was there, she said, that she learned percussion, and
in 1991 she confronted the male batá drummers in the group about
women being prohibited from playing these drums, and asked for lessons
on the batá drums. Her reasoning was that “batá
drums form a fundamental part of Cuba’s cultural heritage, just
like congas, maracas, and claves, so the [batá] drums should
belong to all Cubans.”
Obiní Batá give a
breathless, riveting performance at the Yoruba Cultural Institute in
June 2003. Their batá invocations for seven of the main orichas
in what they call the “Orishas Suite” are well executed.
The dancers for Eleguá and Ochún are appropriately
playful and flirtatious; the dancers for Yemayá and Oyá
are powerful and complex. The “Orishas Suite” is followed
by skillful rumba renditions of popular tunes by such favorites as
Celina González, Gloria Estefan, and Pablo Milanés. Their
choreography is smooth and professional, and the blending of percussion
and voice is seamless; the group has clearly rehearsed exhaustively.
Two
aspects set this performance apart from typical folkloric performances.
First, what the group has chosen to wear. The musicians are dressed in
black leotards with transparent black tulle miniskirts and black high
heels, accessorized with silver metal belts. In a typical Afro-Cuban
folkloric performance, the musicians would wear white, in honor of the
idea (if not the reality) of the religious initiation necessary to play
consecrated batá drums. (The reference to the religious context
is understood, even if the musicians are not “sworn to the
drum”) By wearing black, the women disassociate themselves from
the religious context, and align themselves with the Cuban tourist
industry, an impression heightened by the miniskirts and high heels. In
addition, the batá drums played by Obiní Batá are
clearly “factory-made,” with steel tuning lugs and rims,
another reminder that we are outside of a religious context.
Second,
the strangely impassive audience. They sit quietly while the young
women perform their carefully rehearsed repertoire at the Yoruba
Cultural Institute, clapping politely at the end of each piece. Only
twice – during the rhythmically intense “meta”
section played for Yemayá and during an exciting rhythmic
invocation to Oyá meant to evoke her whirlwinds – does the
audience erupt with spontaneous applause in recognition of the
superhuman effort involved in executing these complex. In a typical
folkloric performance context, the audience would be freer, joining in
the chorus parts in some of the songs, swaying back and forth for
certain rhythms, showing a unity of performative intent. Obiní
Batá may have deliberately enacted this separation from typical
folkloric and religious contexts as a way of diminishing the perception
of a threat to the male batá establishment.
[This]
excellent DVD [was] made on a miniscule budget provided by the team
themselves, and the audio quality is exceptional (the drums and vocals
were recorded separately, to provide a “better-than-live”
balance), especially when heard on stereo speakers. I would make the
following observations. . .the occasionally restricted camera angles
for “Obiní Batá Cuba” sometimes prevent the
viewer from seeing the dancers, especially during the “Orishas
Suite.” In addition, although the liner notes are available
on-line and from the DVDs themselves, I would have appreciated a small
already printed booklet of liner notes (which was not possible due to
budget concerns). But these criticisms are small in the context of the
very good work represented by . . .“Obiní Batá
Cuba: Conjunto Feminino de Percusión, Canto y Danza.”
Katherine Hagedorn---Pomona College
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