I met Felipe García Villamil, a master Afro-Cuban drummer and craftsman, in 1992, several years after I began to do research on the music of the Afro-Cuban religious traditions, especially Santería. During my research, I frequently heard Felipe's name mentioned by drummers and students in the Afro-Cuban dance class I was attending at the Boys Harbor in New York. At that time I was struggling with the constraints and problems posed by research into a corpus of music linked to Santería, where the tradition of secrecy is still an imperative that many practitioners adhere to, and where musical knowledge is transmitted through long periods of apprenticeship and through a series of networks that are not easily accessed, especially by women. I thought that identifying a knowledgeable teacher who would agree to work with me was the best way to further my research. In January 1992, I went for the first time to Felipe's house in the Bronx to receive a chekeré lesson. This marked the beginning of weekly trips to the Bronx that lasted, but for a few breaks, until the end of 1994.
After a month of chekeré lessons, I decided to concentrate on collecting religious chants and to make this repertoire the focus of my dissertation. I explained to Felipe the nature of my work and asked him if he had any reservations. At that time Felipe's activities as a ritual drummer were limited; lacking connections with the network through which batá drummers customarily get hired to perform at religious rituals, he was quite isolated and had concentrated his musical activities on teaching. His aim was to train a group of drummers in the Matanzas style of batá drumming, a style almost unknown in New York, where all the batá drummers were familiar with the style from Havana. Teaching had also become for him a way to struggle against forgetfulness, a way to remember. He viewed our work together as an opportunity to ‘‘let people know the way things were done in Matanzas and back there in Cuba.”
Felipe and I conceived these sessions as classes and followed the etiquette of the student-teacher relationship. At the beginning of each session I would turn the tape recorder on, and Felipe would begin to sing. He gradually began to teach me the large body of chants used to praise or address the Santería deities—the orichas—in ritual. When he began to sing for a particular oricha, he would tell me some of the myths or legends—patakís—that narrate events of the lives of the orichas and tell of their idiosyncrasies, personalities, and demeanors. However, the chants and the music would always bring memories of Cuba back to Felipe, and he would then tell me stories about his family and his life “back there.” Sometimes he got so carried away that we would end up not working on the chants, and he spent most of the time reminiscing. He would then apologize and promise to organize “the lesson” better for the next meeting, making sure we went over a large number of chants. Most of the time I would let the train of his thought unwind without interrupting him. However, on some occasions, moved by concern that I would never “get my work done,” I would take advantage of a pause between stories to try to bring him back to the chants by asking him politely to sing for me a chant for this or that oricha.
As my work with the chants progressed, my relationship with Felipe and his family—Valeria, his wife, and his children Ajamu, Miguel, Atoyebi, and Tomasa—grew closer. My lessons in some way became part of the family life and were interrupted and enriched according to the unpredictable and sometimes hectic rhythms of Felipe's everyday routines. After several months of working in the repertory of chants, Felipe, who knew of my desire to learn to play batá drums, invited me to join the lessons he was giving to a woman drummer, Nanette García. He had already explained to me his position with respect to the prohibition that bans women from playing sacred batá drums. He believed that women should never be allowed to play a consecrated set of drums; yet, he saw no harm in teaching to women the music, the rhythms that are played for each oricha, as long as these were performed on unconsecrated drums or on congas. This marked the beginning of my involvement with the drums, which lasted until November 1994, the last time Nanette, Felipe, and I played batá drums together.
The stories that Felipe used to interpolate between chants or after having taught us a batá rhythm constitute the basis for my dissertation and for this book, and they cover Felipe's activities as a musician until 1994. Music carried powerful associations for Felipe, and it was music that triggered his reminiscences. Thus, even after I had decided to use his stories as the main focus of my dissertation, I eschewed formal interviews and limited my questions to clarifying the stories or arguments that arose out of a musical experience, be it a chant, a rhythm, or a performing technique. Yet aside from music, another stimulus would launch Felipe into long monologues and explanations. This happened typically after Valeria read to him from some of the books that began to be published and circulated in New York about the traditions and the music of the Afro-Cuban religions, or after he had an encounter with someone who had in any way questioned his knowledge or his credentials. Aware of the nature of my project, he wanted to explain to me his view about a particular issue, taking this as an opportunity to “set the record straight.”
~~Drumming for the Gods : The Life and Times of Felipe García Villamil -by- María Teresa Vélez
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