TAMBUFEST 2019

Videostill from CEE recording of Tambufest 2019, St Thomas, Jamaica

Kumina as Embodied Archive

Multimodal notes from fieldwork supported by the Center for Experimental Ethnography. 

This summer, three graduate students accompanied professor Deborah A. Thomas to Jamaica to participate in the second annual Tambufest, in the parish of St. Thomas. Tambufest, organized by Junior “Gabu” Wedderburn (one of Thomas’s collaborators on “Tivoli Stories” and Bad Friday), is a celebration of one of Jamaica’s most vibrant and dynamic traditions – Kumina. Kumina was developed by members of the self-described Bongo Nation in eastern Jamaica, the area that has led the resistance to colonialism, that birthed the Morant Bay Rebellion and inspired the founding father of the movement of. Rastafari, Leonard Howell. Though geographically dispersed, particularly across the parish of St. Thomas, members of the Bongo Nation looked to the Congo-Angola and Guinea Coast regions of Africa as the home of their oldest ancestors.

They found in the tradition of Kumina a unifying cultural heritage, one that interweaves musical, linguistic, movement, and spiritual practices that connect them to the ancestors. Kumina is, therefore, an embodied archive of our history. It is also the tradition that is at the root of the popular music of dancehall and reggae. This year, Tambufest began by honoring the elders who have served the tradition over their lifetimes. This was followed by poetry readings, a performance by the Kingston Drummers, and drumming and singing (and dancing!) by the St. Thomas Kumina Collective, a group that brings together representatives of all the St. Thomas Kumina groups. The whole event was recorded by Alain van Achte (sound engineer for Broadway’s The Lion King), and was broadcast live through internet radio by Jake Nussbaum, a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology who is pursuing the CEE Graduate Certificate. The event was documented on film by graduate students Dee Asaah (Graduate School of Education) and Farrah Rahaman (Annenberg School for Communications), and Farrah will edit the footage into a number of short clips, and a short film that will also serve as archival material for the community of practitioners.

"Broadcasting Tambufest is an opportunity to amplify kumina’s affective, spiritual, and political dimensions, and to think about how creative practices can move through time and space beyond their immediate public.”---Jake Nussbaum, Graduate Student (Dept. of Anthropology)

"The Tambufest is an invaluable celebration of timeless cultures. What a sight to behold elders, youth, and even young children from different communities across Jamaica engaging with passion in music and dance! The festival's intergenerationality is particularly poignant, strengthening communal ties through nurturing and propagating the magic of Kumina." 

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Tambufest is part of a broader project, “Bush Music,” which is ultimately meant to amplify awareness of traditional musical practices associated with Afro-Jamaican rituals – such as Kumina, Nyabinghi, and Coromantee – through digital archiving and collaboration with ritual practitioners. On one hand, Wedderburn seeks to preserve the integrity of the original forms, understanding that people constantly innovate based on current experiences, the availability of other instruments, and familiarity with drumming traditions from other parts of the Caribbean and Africa. More broadly, Tambufest seeks to create dialogical spaces within Jamaica and beyond within which communities might discuss the forms of renewal and respect they would like to see moving forward. By embracing that which has been denigrated – “bush” music – we want to re-enchant humanistic practice in a way that could reformulate the grounds of modernity, both within the artistic sphere and more broadly.

Watch some short clips from Tambufest 2019 below!