02. Kromanti Cudjoe (Invocation to awaken the Ancestors)

Описание: A salute to Kromanti Cudjoe, the Maroon drummer who is considered the great ancestral drummer, and father of the Big Drum Nation Dance celebrations that brought all the nations together.

Winston Fleary: "The first drummer of Big Drum was Viri Kiri, who came from Marie Galante, of the Bakongo and Nkisi, in Quail Bay, 1650."

Boula, James "Laka" Moses; kòt drum, Winston Fleary; foule, David Gibbs
Chantwèl: Winston Fleary

Dawole
A-Dawole
A a Dawole
Ban Hector-o
A, a Dawole
[Continues, naming Sugar Adams, Collie Lendoree, and other important ancestors]

WF: "Let's hurry and go and get him. Wake him up. And wake up Ban Hector (Cudjoe's son). We call them, we wake them up! We ask them to unite the children. They (the Ancestors) have come from the east, west, north, and south, the four cardinal points of the universe. We ask [them] to bring the children together in peace, in unity, prosperity, and health."

Sugar Patch lays the two handkerchiefs in a cross form in front of the drummers, then picks them up and waves them to the four cardinal points, bidding the Ancestors to come from all directions, then lays them down again before the drummers. The same actions are performed in succession by Bontin Scott, Suzanne Duncan, Mrs. Duncan Lang (elderly first cousin), and Princess Noel, who puts an end to the dance by putting the kerchiefs on the kòt drumhead.

WF: The British fought against the Maroon people in Jamaica. In 1739 the Maroons won, but the British captured the drummers (among them Kromanti Cudjoe) who had been beating the war code, and sent them to Grenada, then a French-speaking colony, to live as free men. Cromanti Cudjoe became an ally of Fedon, who fought with the Jesuits to bring back French rule. But the British won in Grenada, and Kromanti Cujoe brought Fedon to Carriacou. He hid him in a mausoleum for three days. He was fed by Mr. Sabazan, a cotton grower. Kromanti Cudjoe and is buried on his estate near Bretech Village. He died in 1823; his wife Zaroba of Dahomey, a slave, died in 1827, and was also buried in Sabazan, Bretech, on Carriacou.

Director/camera: John Melville Bishop; Sound/camera: John Horace Terry; Line producer: Naomi Hawes Bishop; Cultural liaisons: Geoffrey Clarfield, Mireille Charles; Producer: Anna Lomax Wood; Executive Producer, Kimberly Green; Transcriptions: Ronald Kephart; Comments and translations: Winston Fleary.

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For more information about Alan Lomax and the Association for Cultural Equity, visit http://culturalequity.org. To hear streaming audio from Lomax's 1962 Caribbean Collection visit http://tinyurl.com/9yfplwa. And for photographs from the 1962 Caribbean Collection visit http://tinyurl.com/8f3bcdj.

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