Cantos Lucumí a los Orichas (Thomas Altmann):

Frequently Asked Questions

How was it possible for you to access all this material?

In the first place, I transcribed the songs - melodies and words - from the (public and private) recordings that I possessed during the three years period of writing. A decent part of these were recordings of drum lessons, or of interviews with Cuban musicians, which I either had myself, or got them from fellow musicians. The "official", published recordings were almost all records and CDs that were available before the series of Abbilona and Orisha Aye came out. Another central recording that was unavailable in Germany at that time (1995-1998) was Emilio Barreto's Santísimo.
When it came to written sources, John Mason's book Orin Òrìsà, Fernando Ortíz's Los Bailes y el teatro de los negros en el folklore de Cuba, Rogelio Martínez Furé's texts in Bailes Yorubas de Cuba, and a couple of other sources such as record texts were all I could refer to. I did not even have Jerry Shilgi's "Song Anthology" back then.
I wish I had had the opportunity to interview various Cuban akpwones (solo singers), like the three Lazaros: Lázaro Ros, Lázaro Pedroso, and Lázaro Galarraga, to compare different versions. However, I did not have the financial freedom to seriously consider this option.

Does the book include batá rhythms?

The book does not include the batá rhythms - or toques, for a better word. I listed the basic scores of not more than five simple rhythms that are very common, to the extent that they are often played in secular music styles. These simple "toques" are: Ñongo, Chachálokpafún, Rumba Iyesá, Rumba Obatala (Wardo, Osain IV), and Yakotá. For studying the toques batá, I suggest you buy The Music of Santería by John Amira and Steven Cornelius, Bata Scores Vols. 1-2 by Adrian Coburg (and Julito Davalos), or Bill Summers' Studies in Batá.

When I compared your song texts with the ones that I learned from my teacher /that I have on CD, I realized certain deviations ...

There may be four reasons for that; either I was wrong, or your teacher was wrong, or we just know different versions of the same song, or we were both mistaken.

• I was wrong: This is possible, because some of the recordings that I used were of a rather bad sound quality that often made it difficult to discern the consonants. This is especially true of the "unofficial" private recordings that I had. Also, the singers on these recordings did not make it really easy for people like me; often their articulation was quite unclear. Some of the informants proved to be careless or inaccurate about what they were passing on. Lastly, there have certainly been a few songs that I wrote somehow in a hurry; this should never happen, but it did nevertheless.
• Your teacher was wrong: Not everyone who has a Cuban passport is automatically well-versed in Ocha liturgy, especially if he is not an akpwón in the first place. According to my personal experience, the most serious mistakes in my transcriptions have been caused by people who claimed to know something they did not know well enough. Also, some adherents of the religion are not exactly interested in passing on that kind of information.
• We know different versions: It is a fact that in most instances, several different versions of one and the same song do exist. The differences may occur on all levels; on the level of local tradition lines (like between La Habana and Matanzas); on the level of house-temple (ilé) lineages, or between individual singers. There are also cases where one singer knows various versions, but prefers one over the other, or maintains that one is more correct than the other. (As a rule, somebody's own version is generally more correct than somebody else's.) Upon the respective inquiry of one of my readers, I once provided him with four listening samples and four written texts of one song, each of which differed from the other ones. Today I could supply even more material to choose from.
• We are both wrong: This is the logical fourth possibility. It should be remembered, however, that we are dealing with an oral tradition here, meaning that the material is traditionally passed on by word of mouth. This has been going on like that for many generations now. Naturally, the material is subject to changes; so in all probability, quite a few songs are not sung the way they were sung fifty or hundred years ago. Some of the songs are still sung in Africa with different words. The modification and alteration of cultural contents is a natural and standard feature in oral traditions; it vitalizes and updates the culture. It is generally problematic to judge oral material to be correct or incorrect, because in a way, most of it had to be called incorrect from a literal point of view. Actually, however, the only disruption of the oral tradition is its literal record in a book. A careful distinction has to be made between deliberate falsification, personal indifference and the natural evolution of the traded material.

The words are not in Spanish. Which language is that, and what do the songs mean?

The language in these songs is Yoruba, which refers to a group of tribes in Nigeria, Africa, which are idiomatically related. The Yoruba, among other African peoples, were enslaved and shipped to be sold in Cuba and the Americas. Although Africans of all tribes were imported to Cuba since 1520, the majority of Yoruba slaves came to the island towards the end of the 18^th century. As slavery was abolished in Cuba between 1880 and 1886, with the last imports of Africans actually arriving around 1900, the Yoruba language in which these Afro-Cuban songs are sung corresponds to the language spoken in Yorubaland, Nigeria, between 1760 and 1900. Until today, Yoruba language in Cuba has developed and changed in a different way than in Africa. Therefore the translation of the song texts is problematic. The texts would have to be transferred to modern Yoruba first. However, this endeavour would require a careful study of Yoruba language history first; but to know how Yoruba language was spoken in Africa hundred to 240 years ago, is only half of the road that has to be walked. After that, it must then be researched in which way Yoruba language has changed in the Cuban diaspora, separated from its African homeland.

It may sound like bad news that under the influence of Spaniards and the various different African ethnicities in Cuba, the ancient Yoruba language has suffered from changes that make it almost impossible to decode the literal meaning of most of the songs. First of all, Yoruba is actually a tonal language. So the meaning of a particular word is determined by its intonation, its melodic pronounciation. Yoruba language employs three tones: high, middle, and low. Now in Cuba, the tonal quality of Yoruba language has widely been lost. Instead, the tonal inflections were replaced by accents, as used in Spanish language. As a result we have to choose from up to four or five different translations to determine the meaning of a two-syllable word. As we are likely to find more than one word with multiple meanings in one sentence, we can easily imagine the variety of possible translations. Remember that we are still talking about ancient Yoruba.

As if this was not enough, whenever in Yoruba language one word that ends with a vowel is followed by a word that starts with a vowel, the initial vowel of this latter word is generally omitted. Song analysis shows that it is not always omitted. So a one-syllable word could either be a one-syllable word (with more than one possible meaning), or it could be a two-syllable word, from which the initial vowel had been omitted. The question is: If a vowel was missing, then which is the one? Yoruba language has seven oral plus five nasal vowels, but even if we had to choose from five vowels only, the range of possible translations would become infinite.

In addition, Spanish words are often mixed with Yoruba words. They might be woven into the text, or they could also replace similar sounding Yoruba words. Sometimes in a song you cannot know whether you are hearing a Spanish word or a Yoruba word with a completely different meaning. The same is true of combinations with other African idioms, like Arará or Bantú (Congo). Even Yoruba alone is not a single language, but rather a group of linguistically related idioms.

In some cases, over the decades and centuries, consonants have been inserted between words to smoothen the flow of a given text. The resulting "new" words often allow or suggest misinterpretation.

The resulting language can hardly be named Yoruba anymore. It may perhaps be called Lucumí. Lydia Cabrera has written a Lucumí dictionary called Anagó, which means "language of the Nagó people". Nagó is nothing else but the name the Dahomeyan Fon gave to the Yoruba.
It is not astounding that very few people in Cuba still understand the song texts or know what they are singing. There are some Lukumí who still claim to know the meaning of the songs, but for those who understand only a bit of Yoruba it is pretty obvious that these "meanings" are not based on verbal translations, but rather memorize a vague record of the intention with which the song has always been used. I would not say it is impossible to make sense of the song texts. There are still certain passages that are clearly understandable. But whoever picks up the task of translating the songs has to be very well-versed in language, history, ethnology, and religion of the Yoruba, African as well as Afro-American. Otherwise the deduction of the meaning of the song texts, which requires the proper combination of multiple translation options, would not really be promising. Certainly I would not be the right person to approach this endeavour. And until I have come across a plausible translation of a song, I will appreciate any translation suggestions or attempts that are accessible and sing songs that I do not understand.

This is such a vast amount of songs. Where should I begin to learn? Which are the most important ones?

This is an easy question. The 275 songs in the book are just some of the most important songs in the liturgy. Depending on the song material you are exposed to the most, you may start anywhere at your convenience. Usually the songs that are sung in the oru cantado and the songs for the principal Orishas are the most important, but the oru cantado draws from a slightly different repertoire in each house, and the principal Orishas are exactly the ones mentioned in the book. Moreover, it is advisable not to stop learning beyond the number of songs that happen to be in the book.

You notated a clave figure on top of the song melodies. On most of my records, I cannot hear a clave being played!

The word clave has three meanings; it can be the instrument, the claves; it can refer to the ostinato rhythm pattern played by the claves, a bell, or a shaker, as a steady, unalterable time line; or it can be the rhythmic key that is outlined by this time line. While the instrument, the wooden claves, are traditionally not played along with the batá, the rhythmic pattern, or time line, is sometimes played with a ritual shaker instrument, the acheré, or - in substitution - with ordinary maracas along with the singing. However, whether the clave pattern is actually played or not, the phrasing of each song is rhythmically organized by, or aligned/ synchronized with, the clave pattern, exactly in the way it is written in the top staff of the song chart. So here, clave means "rhythmic key", as opposed to an audible instrument.

I understand that the songs are sacred. How can you publish a book with sacred invocations and earn money with it?

Sure enough this is one of my favourites, and yes; I was confronted with this question for real.

First of all, it is true: the songs are sacred. Some of them are invocations, some are hymnic prayers (rezos), some tell stories from the mythology of the Orishas (Orichas). Some songs are so-called puyas, offenses against the deities that serve the purpose of "tricking" them into appearing (taking possession of their devotees). So the music in this book is definitely not the kind of material that you burn down on noisy club dates or society gigs. There has been a time indeed, when these songs - along with the batá rhythms - were exclusively performed on religious ceremonies of the Regla de Ocha, commonly known as "Santería".

While I insist that the material inside the book has to be treated with respect for human spirituality in general, and Yoruba religion in particular, it is not my purpose to surpass the legitimate members of the religious community in terms of piety. Since the Cuban revolution, the secrecy in which the religious liturgy of Santería has been kept for more than a century, has gradually waned. Cuban folklore ensembles are performing the formerly secret sacred music in public concert settings. Afro-Cuban musicians are openly offering lessons and workshops on Orisha dance, singing, and drumming. So, what was missing as a working aid for music groups who wish to use and perform the material, especially for those steeped in literal culture, were notations of the songs, along with the words and clave alignment, which is what I created. If the songs were not sacred enough to be recorded on public CDs by Cuban Orisha worshippers themselves, then what is the point after all?
Besides, it is not too far fetched that one day the music and the dance will successfully transport and project the religious potential and turn a couple of western folklore students or musical aficionados into followers of the Regla de Ocha.

As far as the money is concerned, I refuse to name concrete figures; but I can say that I often earn more money playing a single Jazz concert than I earn from book sales in a whole year, and considerably less than people who are giving workshops on Afro-Cuban music.
A few last words about my copyright: Like with every other book, it is prohibited to reprint or copy the music without the permission of the author. This was my labour, and not the labour of Mr. Xerox, so accordingly I insist to get paid for what I made. On the other hand I am not so naive to ignore that unauthorized copying is actually practiced everywhere; how can I ever know what happens somewhere in a little American (or Japanese) village? Particularly, I would never try to persecute Cubans for copying my notations for private use, because I feel indebted to them, culturally. And, needless to say, I am not as criminal as a couple of exploiters of Cuban folklore music who "legally" claim rights on previously unprotected material. Music belongs to everyone who respects it.