Carlos Aldama’s Life in Batá: Cuba, Diaspora, and the Drum by Umi Vaughan and Carlos Aldama (review)

Umi Vaughan has written a highly personal, engaging, and important ethnographic investigation of the life of Cuban drummer Carlos Aldama, whose lifetime study and performance of sacred batá music present a window to view Afro-Cuban culture and religious expression. Vaughan shares co-authorship with Aldama, and their approach allows us to enter the private world of the apprentice drummer and maestro in order to illuminate the progression that this specialized style of religious music has undergone in the Afro-Cuban diaspora. Vaughan presents us with a timeline of the evolution of batá drumming from its first development by the Yoruba people of West Africa, through its important years of re-invention in Cuba, to its arrival to the United States and specifically to the Bay Area of California. The work is presented in a tradition of oral history created through dialogic process. The author has paid close attention to the style of speech of his teacher to transmit the sound and feel and give the reader the experience of sitting with a great drumming master. He purposefully preserved the unique quality and musicality of his teacher’s everyday conversational narrative. In doing so, he has presented us with vibrant excerpts of his teacher’s life during different periods of development of batá music in Cuba and the United States.

The book is arranged in alternating sections representing the voice of the Vaughan as a student and the voice of Aldama as a teacher. Vaughan learns and writes of the role of an apprentice drummer, known as yamboki, in an innovative way that provides supporting information about the Yoruba influence in Cuba, the importance of Batá drumming in the Afro-Cuban religious tradition known as Lucumí or Santería, and histories of the important people who contributed to this tradition in Cuba and the United States. The contributions of drummers such as Trinidad Torregosa, Pablo Roche, and Jesús Pérez, as well as the ethnologist Fernando Ortiz and María Teresa Linares, past director of the Conjunto Folklórico Nacional de Cuba, and many other important people in the Afro-Cuban music and folklore scene are put into perspective. This is counterbalanced with Carlos Aldama’s voice relating personal experiences of historical events such as: his reminisces growing up in Cuba before the Revolution, his experience of the Cuban war in Angola, the creation of the Conjunto Folklórico Nacional de Cuba, and his return to Havana after years in exile. Aldama’s real-world interactions with key figures and his perspectives on the social circumstances that led to these events show the importance of oral history in illustrating the progression of diasporic communities. The inclusion of Spanish and Lucumí vocabulary gives this study an extra layer of texture that adds to its complexity. The author introduces the reader to the intricacies of batá music and the religious subculture to which it is inextricably joined. He provides much-needed information within the field of ethnomusicology and diaspora studies as they relate to Afro-Cuban culture and its impact on both African American and non-African American ethnic groups in the United States. The book is not so much a study as it is a presentation of one version of a reality that can illuminate undiscovered truths about the complicated interplay of multi-cultural communities and their effects on important transmitters of culture. Carlos Aldama learned to play batá with some of the original pioneers of Batá music in Cuba, specifically Jesús Pérez. His life has been dominated by the desire to learn, play, and pass on this tradition. Vaughan has captured the essence of this life in these pages.

The publication includes important photographs to illustrate moments in the life of Carlos Aldama, and access to downloadable audio tracks that bring to life the complex drum rhythms...