Bronx Series Highlights Congolese Influences In Caribbean Music & Dance

This summer the Bronx Music Heritage Center (BMHC) will present a series of music performances, a film screening, and moderated conversations exploring the many Congolese influences in Caribbean music and dance. The programming will be presented across three events in the BMHC's signature Bronx Rising! series, which brings the Bronx's cultural riches, past and present, to life. The July event will be held at the BMHC Lab at 1303 Louis Niñé Blvd. The June and August events will be at the Bronx Music Hall Plaza at 438 E. 163rd St., at the corner of Washington Ave.

 

“West Central Africa, popularly known as Congo or Bantu, brought a trove of ideas and music to the Americas. We are proud to shine a light on this vibrant cultural legacy with our programming this summer,” said Elena Martínez, co-artistic director of the BMHC.

 

This season of Bronx Rising! will begin on Saturday, June 24 at 3:00 PM on the Bronx Music Hall Plaza, with The Congo Influence in Puerto Rican Bomba, a conversation between Nkumu Katalay and Alex LaSalle, bandleader of Alma Moyo, followed by a performance of their ensembles.

 

Then, on Saturday, July 22 at 7:00 PM at the BMHC Lab, the BMHC will present Congo Roots in the Diaspora: Kumina in Jamaica, featuring a screening of the film “Kumina Queen,” followed by a moderated discussion and Q&A with the film's director Nyasha Laing and anthropologist Dr. Kenneth Bilby about the Congo influence in popular Jamaican music.

 

An ancestral ritual based on African traditions in Jamaica, Kumina is a distinct, expressive spiritual folk form that travelled to Jamaica with Kikongo-speaking laborers from central Africa during the 19th century. Its basic elements are song, dance, and trance possession. The practice is a driving force in Jamaica's culture and identity and the music and rhythms employed during Kumina rituals and ceremonies have heavily influenced Jamaican popular music. More specifically, the genres of reggae and dancehall that emerged during Jamaica's post-colonial renaissance enabled practitioners to share their tradition openly with the world. Today, artists and followers are reimagining Kumina, even as the mysterious world of spirit possession reveals divergent pathways to freedom, healing, and transformation.

 

The series will conclude on Saturday, August 26 at 4:00 on the Bronx Music Hall Plaza with Congo Roots in the Diaspora: “Quien no tiene de Kongo tiene de Karabalí” (translated as "Whoever does not have Kongo has Karabalí," which refers to the popular Cuban phrase that everyone has some African blood). This event will feature a performance by the Román Díaz Ensemble and discussion between Román Díaz, cultural historian Dr. Ivor Miller, and BMHC co-artistic director Bobby Sanabria, exploring how Congolese influences have shaped Cuban traditions, producing some of the most famous performance ensembles of the island.

 

Admission for the July event at the BMHC Lab is $10 with a discounted rate of $5 for students and seniors. Events in the outdoor plaza are free. For more information, call (917) 557-2354.

 

More historical and cultural background

Bantu-Congolese religious elements are embedded in popular and contemporary music forms in Latin American and Jamaican communities across the United States. The Bantu people (also known as the Congos in Cuba), who arrived via the slave trade, assimilated themselves quickly in Cuban culture. As a result, their religious traditions created somewhat of a collective Cuban identity that has influenced Cuban music forms such as Conga and Mambo, which respectively mean song and chant. Similarly, traditional and current Jamaican music genres, such as Reggae and Ska, have important Bantu-Congolese ritual contexts that associate worship with community building and social gathering. 

 

The Congolese influence in the South Bronx is embodied with Cuban-born composer, bandleader, and musician Arsenio Rodriguez. Born in the Matanzas region of Cuba, he was a direct descendant of Bantu-Congolese culture. Arsenio is attributed with being the first Cuban bandleader to add the conga drum to dance band performance. The conga drum is a stylized descendant of the “ngome” drum from Bantu-Congolese culture. Many of Arsenio's songs such as, Burundanga” and “Kimbio-Kimbimbia” featured Bantu-Congo rooted themes. Arsenio's creation of the rhythm known as son montuno (which is salsa's rhythmic foundation) first gave rise to the “mambo”—which is the Bantu-Congo word for chant. Arsenio was also an initiate of the Bantu-Congo rooted Afro-Cuban religion known as Palo Mayombe. 

The conga drum itself has its origins in the Congo religious drum, “ngome”—making the conga drum a direct visual and visceral link to Africa. Another example is the common bell pattern used by the timbales in fast tempos, which come directly from a Congo religious rhythm known as maquta. Ceremonial language also pervades the lyrics in the well know song, Rompe saraguey, which refers to a plant used in ceremony. 

Despite having such a large impact, the central African Congo influences and connections have been emphasized less both in the music world and within the Latin American and Caribbean communities in the United States, most likely due to their much earlier arrival via the slave trade—but their presence pervades many of the music, dance, and artistic traditions. 

 

About the participating artists and scholars

 

Nyasha Laing is a documentarian who works to transform our understanding of diverse social and cultural movements and practices. Her independent storytelling—which has appeared in and on the Los Angeles Pan-African Film Festival, BBC World Service, YES Magazine, The Art Museum of the Americas, IMZ International Festival, and European Traveling Showcase—explores loss, regeneration, identity, and freedom.

 

Dr. Kenneth Bilby is an American anthropologist, ethnomusicologist, and author. His published works include the books Words of Our Mouth, Meditations of Our Heart: Pioneering Musicians of Ska, Rocksteady, Reggae, and Dancehall (2016), Enacting Power: The Criminalization of Obeah in the Anglophone Caribbean, 1760–2011 (2012; with Jerome S. Handler), True-Born Maroons (2005), and Caribbean currents: Caribbean music from rumba to reggae (1995; with Peter Manuel and Michael Largey).

 

Nkumu Katalay is an artist, orator, multi-instrumentalist, and social activist whose main objective is to promote humanity. Born in Kinshasa, the capital city of the Democratic Republic of Congo, he lives in New York City. Nkumu's vision highlights the contribution of Congolese cultures in modern world history. He is the founder of The Life Long Project Band, a musical group and a project which focuses on pushing the positive narrative of the Congolese culture via music and social-cultural and educational initiatives. He is also founder of the Afro Congolese Dance program and company which offers weekly dance activities throughout New York City, in schools, corporations, or cultural centers for all ages from children to adults and seniors.

 

Alex LaSalle is a high priest (Tata Nkisi) to one of the oldest houses of Kongo-Cuban Palo in Cuba and now New York City—Batalla Sacampeño Mayombe. His teacher and mentor is Florencio Miguel Garzon (“Loanganga”) from Cuba. In addition to serving as a diviner and priest, Alex is also a specialist in hundreds of Afro-Cuban Kongo Mambo songs and rituals. Alex is fluent in the Afro-Cuban Bantu/Kongo language, is an avid researcher and oral historian. He has presented lectures for educators and students at Yale, Columbia, New York University, Long Island University, and others. A teaching artist in New York City public schools, Alex is the founder and director of Alma Moyo Afro-Puerto Rican Bomba group, and member of Grammy Nominated Los Pleneros de la 21 and Grupo Folklorico Experimental Nueva Yorquino. Alex has performed with such groups as Roberto Cepeda's Bomba Aché, William Cepeda's Afro-Boricua, Felix Alduén y su Tambores, Pa'lo Monte, Nchila Ngoma Mayombe, and 21 Division. 

 

Román Díaz is a Cuban born master percussionist and a living repository of Afro-Cuban culture. He is a noted scholar of Cuban religious and folkloric music as well as a composer and performer of contemporary Afro-Cuban music and Jazz. He has performed and recorded with Cuban diva Mercedíta Valdes, Canadian Jane Bunnett, Juan Carlos Formell, Paquito D'Rivera, and folkloric artist, Orlando “Puntilla” Rios, and Pianist Danílo Pérez. He has also recorded with the Afro-Cuban folkloric groups; Yoruba Andabo, Raices Profundas and Los Marqueses de Atares. He has also performed at Jazz at Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, and the Smithsonian Museum. As a member of the seminal Rumba ensemble, Yoruba Andabo, Díaz aided in the creation of the sound that has defined contemporary Rumba since the 1980's in Cuba and around the world. Díaz continues to innovate the song style as well as migrating the conical two-headed Bata drum from religious music into contemporary Jazz.

 

Dr. Ivor Miller is a cultural historian specializing in the African Diaspora in the Caribbean and the Americas. He was a Senior Fellow at the National Museum of African Art at the Smithsonian Institution (2011-2012), a Fulbright Scholar to Nigeria (2009-2011), and teaches in the Bassey Andah Institute for African and Asian Studies at the University of Calabar, Cross River State, Nigeria. His most recent book, “Voice of the Leopard: African Secret Societies and Cuba” (UP of Mississippi 2009/ CBAAC Lagos 2011) was awarded Honorable Mention by the Association for Africanist Anthropology. Based upon fieldwork in Nigeria, Cameroon, Cuba, and the USA, it documents ritual languages and practices that survived the Middle Passage and evolved into a unifying charter for transplanted slaves and their successors.

 

Bobby Sanabria is Bobby Sanabria is co-artistic director of The Bronx Music Heritage Center and an eight-time Grammy-nominated drummer, percussionist, composer, arranger, conductor, producer, educator, and bandleader. He has performed and recorded with legends such as Tito Puente, Mongo Santamaría, Ray Barretto, Cándido, Henry Threadgill, Larry Harlow, and the Godfather of Afro-Cuban jazz, Mario Bauzá. A South Bronx native of Puerto Rican parents, Sanabria was inducted into the Bronx Walk of Fame in 2006. He holds a B.M. from the Berklee College of Music and is on the faculty of the New School and the Manhattan School of Music, conducting the Afro-Cuban Jazz Big Bands at both schools.

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