Beyond Batá: Documenting the Folkloric Lucumí Drumming Traditions of Matanzas, Cuba
This dissertation provides the first comprehensive documentation, in western notation and performance-practice prose, of three non-Batá Lucumí folkloric traditions from Matanzas, Cuba: Bembé Makawa, Bembé Omó Layé, and Iyessá Moddú. Drawing on five research trips to Cuba (2018-2024), it combines ethnographic fieldwork with contextual analysis of historical recordings, such as the 1957 Carera/Tarafa field recordings and the 1981 Música iyesá LP.The study situates Matanzas as a primary center of Afrodiasporic cultural preservation, with emphasis on the roles of the Cabildos de Nación (cultural hubs and mutual aid societies formed by colonial Spanish policy that mirrored African religio-political institutions) and lineages such as the Villamíl family in maintaining distinct drumming practices linked to Lucumí religious life. It documents foundational patterns, lead drum improvisational vocabularies, instrument construction and tuning systems, and the ceremonial contexts from which these traditions operate. Theoretically, the dissertation engages scholarship on African timeline/bell pattern organization, polyrhythm, and microrhythmic variation to explain how Matanzas Bembé and Iyesá structures relate to broader African and African diaspora rhythmic systems while remaining locally specific. Methodologically, it foregrounds collaborative validation, multi-format documentation (notation, audio, video), and explicit attention to sacred/secular boundaries and intellectual ownership. By addressing the long-standing imbalance in documentation that has privileged batá as the de-facto representation of Lucumí percussion, this work contributes to scholarship, pedagogy, and preservation. It offers method-book–style resources for performers and educators, primary-source material for comparative research, and a model for ethically grounded documentation of orally transmitted sacred music traditions.
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