Tambú: Curaçao's African-Caribbean Ritual and the Politics of Memory

3. The Laws Couldn’t Keep Tambú Away. The Church Couldn’t Keep Tambú Away. Leinan No Por a Tene Tambú Lew. Misa No Por a Tene Tambú Lew.

3 The Laws Couldn’t Keep Tambú Away. The Church Couldn’t Keep Tambú Away. Leinan no por a tene tambú Lew. misa no por a tene tambú Lew. art should be recognized as a major and integral part of the transaction that engenders political behavior. —murray eDeLman As already stated, during the early slavery years Tambú was allowed to evolve without much interference. Early Dutch interests were focused almost entirely on trade and profits, and the personal lives of manquerons were at first of little interest to the slaveholders.As the Jamaican governor of 1694 aptly observed in describing the Hollanders on Curaçao: “Jesus Christ is good, but trade is better” (Hamelberg 1694: 107). This helps to explain how Tambú managed to catch on quickly and spread rapidly among the manqueron community. Among Tambú’s main purposes during slavery was its role as accompaniment to Montamentu, its rhythms and dances performed as vehicles for conjuring the arrival of ancestors and deities, many of whom found duplication (and triplication) on Curaçao. Montamentu’s propensity for duplicated gods stemmed in part from the religion’s unusual rules of possession. Unlike most other Afro-syncretized Caribbean rituals, Montamentu’s invocation of specific gods and spirits was not limited to performing the specific 50 Acknowledgments 50 tAmBú musical rhythms and dances unique to the individual entity. In Tambú, for example, while events could be performed in honor of a particular deity,“all deities [were] welcome.”According to one respected Tambú leader,“It is the spirit world that makes the decision [regarding] which deities will arrive. [The spirit world] is best qualified to make that decision” (Yuchi, personal communication, November 3, 1995). Which gods arrive, how many gods attend, how long the gods will stay—these are all decisions made at the discretion of the gods themselves. Tambú’s binary structure specifically enabled the spirit world to be accessed directly by way of the Montamentu ritual itself. The preliminary of summoning Eshu (the gatekeepers) to throw open the gates to the spirit world—proper protocol in other Afro-syncretized rituals—was not mandatory to open Montamentu proceedings. It was believed heaven’s gates were pried open not by Eshu, but by the very ritual performance itself. Tambú’s first section (habrí) had this effect, and with the gates so opened, the second part of Tambú (the será) witnessed the gods’ and spirits’ arrival. In the sacred Tambú, then, the habrí section was used to present a formal invocation to the gods and spirits—a request for their help and guidance within the human realm. The point of contact between the spiritual and temporal worlds was the beginning of the será.At this point, the Obeahman or -woman serving as guide to spiritual possession entered the spirit world to summon the presence of the deity whose advice was being sought. The Obeah-man or -woman, having achieved possession, would empower other participants to enter spiritual possession themselves. Dancers’ repetitive foot-stomp rhythms helped induce a group trance. In the words of cultural historian Elis Juliana, dancers“let the whole body weight fall on the left foot without bending the knee. Because the left knee is not bent, it would absorb the shock” (1983: 14). This high-impact dance caused participants “to lose contact with reality. In other words, when the shock would leave the left foot, it would take away all the pain, and the bitterness. With the Tambú, then, you could dance away all your hurt” (ibid.). Funerals presented a second important occasion where Tambú emerged vital. Given the Afro-Curaçaoan proclivity for ancestral veneration, it is not surprising that the funeral became a critical part of culture. A traditional funeral involved an eight-day (and nine-night) cycle of prayer, during which time friends and relatives shared stories about the deceased. To early AfroCura çaoans, when an individual died, the body was buried but the spirit remained vital. From this perspective, death was not the end of one’s exis- Acknowledgments 51 tHe lAws coUldn’t keeP tAmBú AwAy 51 tence, but rather the moment one’s soul transitioned to another dimension. Friends and relatives of the deceased joined others in a long procession past the body. They shouted, chanted, sang to Tambú rhythms, through which it was believed the souls of the deceased might successfully travel to Venezuela, the “promised land” where they could reconnect with the...