The Language of Bata Drums in and out of The Santería Ritual

Abstract

From the beguining of any learnig process in music, we think of it as a language to  express and communicate ideas, formats and forms of expression from all societies  and through out hundreds of years.

Among the percussion instruments we can find a group of instruments that have a closed relationship with the religious traditions, in which human being and deities are closely attached. In this case, I am talking about the “ Batá Drums” ( In Yoruba Language means Drum) The set of Batá drums work always in a group of three drums. These drums are double headed drums in a sand clock shape and their names from the bigges to the small are: Iyá – Itótele and Okóncolo. It is a performance practice in African drumming that the drums work togather, but the “Iyá” is the one that stablishes the communications between humans and deities in their ritual.

Based on the Linguistic model by Ferdinand De Saussure (French) and the idea of the stablishment of a language with the batá drums – as a communication system, we could think on a language with the batá drums by themselves.  In this way we see similarities between both languages regarding a well stablished commuication system.