The Yorùbá God of Drumming: Transatlantic Perspectives on the Wood that Talks ed. by Amanda Villepastour (review)

Áyán Ágalú, the man believed to be the first Yorübá drummer, is regarded as deity, spirit, and ancestor (Euba 1990: 90; Omojola 2012: 16). This tripartite characterization highlights the multiple resonances of Áyán Ágalú's identity. For some people, he exists as a religious deity, while for many others, he represents an ancestral spirit believed to reside in their drums. Most traditional Yorübá drummers, however, regard Áyán Ágalú (or Áyán) as their progenitor, and view their biological connection to him as validation of their calling as a drummer. The multifocal representation of Áyán's identity speaks to the dynamic ways in which worshippers, musicians, and even scholars have interpreted his attributes in speciic cultural and historical contexts and according to their interests. Multidimensionality is indeed an axiomatic feature of Áyán's identity. It lays the foundation for (and indeed is predictive of) the diverse and processual ways in which individuals and groups who encounter or associate with him—whether in the realm of religious experience, musical performance or scholarly enterprise—define and configure their relationships to him.

The multiple resonances of Áyán's identity provide an important background for understanding an important quality of this book. In different ways—ethnographic, analytic, and historiographic—various contributors problematize what it means to embrace and follow Áyán. The book, which has eleven chapters, a preface (by J.D.Y. Peel), and an extended introduction, focuses on the role and status of the Yorübá deity of drumming in Western Nigeria and the African diaspora. Its thematic coverage is wide. It includes cosmology, historiography, identity, gender, and secondary diaspora. As explained by the editor, Amanda Villepastour, the book examines the link between the "African [Yorùbá] Àyàn and its Cuban version, Añá," a topic which she says yearns for an "accurate or comprehensive treatment" (p. 11).

In her introduction, Villepastour lays out the key themes and arguments of the book. She discusses the core attributes of Àyàn, "the god of drumming" whose music is "both a form of worship and a medium to facilitate the worshipping gestures of others" (p. 13). Although Àyàn is not one of the major Yorùbá Orisa, its Cuban version, Añá, is embraced as a "drum-god tradition" and a vital component of the Lucumi Santeria religion. Practitioners of Añá are also found in countries like Brazil, the United States, and Venezuela. In explaining the wider significance of Àyàn/Añá, Villepastour explains that the spread of Yorùbá culture and religious practices around the world is indeed tied to the strong presence of Orisa religion in African diaspora societies. Scholarly interest in Orisa has also helped to foster the visibility of Yorùbá-based religious and spiritual practices globally. Villepastour also discusses the challenge of reconstructing the history of Añá in places like Cuba and the need to contextualize the competing narratives that mark the practice and perception of the deity, especially those relating to gender attributes and religious signiicance.

The chapters of the book develop these opening observations in many interesting and productive ways. Comparatist perspectives, for example, are provided by Akinsola Akinwowo and David Font-Navarrete, who in the opening chapter emphasize the similarities between Àyàn and Añá, observing that Yorùbá and Cuban practices outline a "continuum of devotional strategies and modes" (p. 35). Recalling the work of Ademola Adegbite (1998), these two authors explain how in both societies Àyàn practices serve to solidify the links between human, ancestral, and spiritual domains of existence in a manner consistent with Yorùbá cosmological thought. Villepastour's contribution in chapter 5 discusses the complex, diverse, and dynamic ways in which Àyàn is anthropomorphized while, in chapter 7, Kenneth Schweitzer discusses how members of the Añá cult have been able to sustain...