- File
Drummers caught up in the 'beat' as they display their skills.
Donna-Marie Rowe, Contributor
THE BEATING of the Congo drums and the accompanying screeches of the drummers are popular spectacles these days at concerts and graduations.
They form a part of the cultural entertainment package, which is gaining ground in almost every social gathering. But is this the kind of entertainment that should be encouraged? After all, persons have been seen falling into a trance or appear to be losing their minds under the spell of the pulsating rhythms of the Congo drums.
Recently in an article in The Jamaica Observer entitled 'Kingston Drummers' confession: Strange things happen when we play", two members of the Kingston Drummers group warn against the pull of the drum, saying there is real danger of losing control. In the article that was published on December 24, Ezra and Devon, "admit that in their 10 years existence, they have seen some strange things happening during their show". They cite two examples of the effect drumming has had on persons who listen to the music. One is of a person who was taken from a graduation ceremony kicking and screaming and the other involved one of their female dancers who wanted to run into the water and drown herself.
The Sunday Gleaner sought out Nigerian-born Bishop Joseph Ade-Gold, founder of Overcomers Christian International for his explanation on the spiritual effect of drumming on listeners.
"Drums in Africa are used for communication," Bishop Ade-Gold explained. He noted that they were used in two areas of communication one as a signal and the other to convey a message. He stressed that the messages conveyed depends on the "way you beat the drum for example my language the Yoruba language they beat the drum as though they are talking my language. It is not verbal communication."
APPEALING TO DEITIES
Clarifying the types of drums that are being referred to as the Congo drums, Bishop Ade-Gold described them as "talking drums made of solid wood with membranes of skins maybe goat or in Africa, the skin of a tough animal like a lion or leopard." Kumina, he said, used talking drums while he has seen slit drums being used especially among Maroons. These drums are made from solid wood and are hollow on the inside.
While growing up in Nigeria, Bishop Ade-Gold said he began playing the drums naturally when he was only a young child. It came as a natural talent to him. When he played, people used to gather around him and they would jump up and down and he would not understand what he was doing until people began to teach him. They taught him that when he beat the drum a certain way he was appealing to the deities. It was like he was appealing to the god of the mountains or the god of the water or ancestral spirits.
"The kind of response you get is a kind of ecstasy," Bishop Ade-Gold related, adding that this happens to the drummer as well. "It has serious effects on the people around."
The Kingston drummers' member gave an idea of the effects: "Sometimes when the spirit goes into a person sometimes they would fall on their back, kick like they have fits."
Drums in Africa, Bishop Ade-Gold said, are used for religious purposes stating that African religion is based on what is primitively known as ancestral spirits. "When you beat the drums you are asking the ancestral spirits to come and help you."
Bishop Ade-Gold said that African religion is also based on animism where spirits are seen in almost every object and so the drum itself is a spirit. He noted that the spirit of the animal that is used to make the drum is also in the drum.
"When I became a Christian, I thought I could beat the drum in the same way," Bishop Ade-Gold confessed, but "later on I realised that I can beat the same drum without appealing to the ancestral spirits but this time to the glory of God."
Bishop Ade-Gold who became a Christian in 1975, pointed out, "What now occupies my mind and my motives is that God is praised, and I am saying 'Jesus is Lord' and so no demon can come in. Some people are possessed because the drumming appeals to a demonic spirit." He quoted the scripture where Paul admonished Christians to be filled with the Spirit and not with wine because once filled with anything but the Holy Spirit, any other spirit can dictate what happens to the person who then is no longer in control and must go according to the dictates of the spirit realm as in the case of the female dancer and the woman who was taken out screaming and kicking.
But the drumming does not affect the drummers because they exercise control and, in fact, they are masterminding and controlling the beating of the drums.
Continuing on the tradition of the drum in Africa, Bishop Ade-Gold, who believes that salvation comes through Christ, cited the use of music in social ceremonies such as marriages, circumcision, saluting the spirits, rituals, rites of passage for young men and the dead at which time drumming plays a major role.
GOING BACKWARDS
A graduate of the Caribbean Graduate School of Theology in Christian Education, Bishop Ade-Gold who has been in Jamaica for the past 12 years, marvelled on the fact that Jamaica was embracing the very traditions that the people of Africa are moving away from. He noted that we should look very carefully at those traditions that we are seeking to embrace before we embrace them. "I do not say that we must despise the culture of Africa," Bishop Ade-Gold asserts, "But we must know which to accept and which not to."
Generally speaking, he said, black people react to the beating of the drum easily but they are not doing it based on a Christian perspective. Africans want something they can see and go with and so when Christians came with the gospel, Africans thought it was not tangible. This led to Africans blending the African religions with Christianity and this further resulted in syncretism.
"They wanted to appeal to what they believe and at the same time claim Jesus is God."
Giving a historical background of the church in Africa, Bishop Ade-Gold said, "From the 1850s to the 1930s a number of African churches used African traditions to complement what they believed in Christianity but the African Apostolic church fought against syncretism."
Jamaicans, he said, also see Christianity as Western and at the same time they want to identify with their homeland, Africa, and so they want to revive the African religious culture. The wearing of guards, and even the dancing to the drums and the nine-night, which is a common practice in Jamaica, Bishop Ade-Gold said, appeals to spirits. The belief of the nine-night tradition is that one has to appeal to the spirit of the dead to depart and by doing this, Bishop Ade-Gold said, we expose ourselves to demonic attack.
Bishop Ade-Gold, whose wife, Grace, is also a minister, cautions against adopting those traditions that will not lead us closer to God. He cited Carnival, which he recognised from Africa as an old masquerade that he used to practice in Africa and that affected people adversely. His advice with respect to persons leaning away from the traditional churches, which have gone too Western and have not appealed to the people, is to use some of the African ways to the glory of God.
"We have Congo drums in our church and I have never seen anyone possessed I educate them." He asks, "Can we use it to glorify God?"
Bishop Ade-Gold, whose four-year-old assembly has a congregation of some 500 persons, believes, "Yes, we can." But he blames the church for being silent on the issue and the media for promoting the African traditions that will destroy the people.
E-mail Donna-Marie Rowe at dmarowe@yahoo.com
