Legacy of Slavery and Indentured Labour

Linking the Past with the FutureConference on Slavery, Indentured Labour, Migration, Diaspora

and Identity Formation.June 18th – 23th, 2018 , Paramaribo, Suriname

Org. IGSR& Faculty of Humanities and IMWO, in collaboration with Nat. Arch. Sur.

Playing Banya: The Evidence and Legacy of Shared Cultural Practice Among Enslaved Africans throughout the Americas.

Kristina GaddyAbstract

This paper examines ritual dances, celebrations, and festivals described in thirty-seven sources across ten locations in the Americas and Caribbean. A comparison between the key elements in The Old Plantation (John Rose, 1785-1790), the Slavendans dioramas (Gerrit Schouten, 1810-1839), and the historical documents will reveal shared practices and associated beliefs that span North American and the circum-Caribbean. These key elements are the King, the Queen, the hut, the vessel, dancing, singing, and the banjo. An examination of these elements connects the cultural religious practice of the Surinamese Banya to African American religious and spiritual practices, including New Orleans Congo Square, a John Canoe procession in North Carolina, the Pinkster festival in the former Dutch colony of New York, Vodun ceremonies in Haiti, and dances in the West Indies. This paper is the starting point for research into the intra-American African Diaspora and how religious practices transformed and were transmitted throughout the Americas.

Sometime between 1785 and 1790 on a plantation in South Carolina, a man named John Rose took his paintbrush to paper and began sketching a watercolor (Figure 1). The detail in the work suggests he was painting from life, and the feeling of accuracy and authenticity makes the painting one of the most iconic North American images of enslaved African Americans engaging in their own cultural practice. The twelve people in the painting were likely enslaved to Rose or on nearby plantations; Rose was the owner of at least fifty people of African descent and their forced labor allowed him to have the time to paint.

Playing Banya / Gaddy 2

In the watercolor, the man at the far right sits with a drum pressed between his knees. In each hand, he holds a slender stick. To his right, a man in a hat plays a stringed instrument. This is a banjo, an early banjo, the earliest North American image of a banjo that doesn’t always read as banjo to the modern viewer, but a banjo nonetheless. The banjo provides rhythm and melody simultaneously as the right hand strikes downward on the strings and soundboard, while the left hand frets notes on the strings. In the center of the painting, two women and a man dance, facing each other. Each woman holds an object between her hands1 and the man is holding a stick. A man in red and a woman in white stand behind the musicians, while five people sit and stand behind the two women dancing. The subject of his painting was actually illegal— after the Stono Rebellion of 1739, drums, horns, and loud instruments were prohibited in South Carolina (Pollitzer, 2005, 156) — but Rose allowed them to engage in this dance.2

This image is used as a stand-in for enslaved Blacks in the United States on book covers, in museum exhibits, and throughout academic papers. However, there has been no definite conclusion to what the scene actually portrays. Susan P. Shames (2010) discovered in the estate of John Rose’s son a description of the painting as: “One picture of a negro slave dance, done in water colors, on white drawing paper” (24). But what was the purpose of the dance? Was it a social dance with drink and music? While that seemed like the only answer for many years, dioramas created by Gerrit Schouten in Suriname in the early 1800s give us a completely different answer.

Born in Suriname to Dutch poet, publisher, and actor Hendrik Schouten and Suzanna Johanna Hanssen, a free women of color educated in the Netherlands, Gerrit Schouten was a completely self-taught artist. Between 1810 and 1839, he made papier-mâché dioramas varying in size from 35cm to 170cm, with scenes from Suriname that were sold as tourist items (Medendorp, 2008, 10). Six of these dioramas are all titled Slavendans (Figure 2) and depict a scene almost identical to The Old Planation watercolor. Under a straw hut with a center pole, eleven to fifteen people participate in the dance, known as the banya prei. The banya is a ritual that combines song, dance, and role-playing in a religious ceremony to establish spiritual contact with ancestors and gods. This later evolved into the du, a musical which included secular commentary and ritual dances (Guda, 2008, 615).

Although each diorama is slightly different, they have the same essential elements. Each feature a section of musicians, with drummers either sitting astride long drums or with the drum between their legs; and a melody player on a flute-like instrument,3 identified by Captain John Stedman as the Loango too-too (1992, 277-278). There is always a man standing in red or in a uniform -- the only person wearing shoes. He plays the Kownu, the King, and a woman who is the narrator or storyteller, the Afrankeri, wears her most beautiful clothing and jewelry. The 1 This point will be discussed later. Some have identified the object as shegurah, a type of rattle, but I will argue that scarves are more likely. 2 This might have been because he was a musician himself, because he wanted to allow them to recreated, or because he thought it might have stopped a rebellion.3 The undated Slavendans diorama does not have a melody instrument, and the 1820 Slavendans includes an instrument called a “bent,” identified in Stedman as No. 14 (1992, 277-278).

Playing Banya / Gaddy 3

lower right-hand corner of the dioramas all have a large, tan-colored ceramic vessel. In the center of the scene, men and women are dancing with scarves. The dancers, both male and female, stand on each side, approach each other, and then retreat (Medendorp, 2008, 73).

In addition to the works of art by Rose and Schouten, I will also reference accounts of rituals observed in ten locations across the Americas (see Table 1), all observed by people of European descent, mostly between 1790 and 1820, but some as early as 1700 and as late as the 1850s, as well as unattributed copies of Schouten’s dioramas (Figure 3) and Rose’s watercolor (Figure 4).

In New York, this ritual celebration was Pinkster, the African American transformation of the Dutch religious holiday for Pentecost. Fifty days after Easter (the celebration of the return of the Holy Spirit), the Black community in Albany-- both free and enslaved-- would gather at the African Burial Ground known as Pinkster Hill, dance, and pay their respects to King Charley.

In North Carolina, John Coonahs (known as John Canoe or Jonkanu in the Caribbean) would appear in the days between Christmas and New Years, dancing, celebrating, and walking in procession from house to house.

In New Orleans, Congo Square was the site of Sunday dances, where Benjamin Henry Latrobe viewed a gourd-bodied banjo and women dancing with scarves.

In Saint Dominique (modern-day Haiti), Vodun dances and songs as part of religious rituals offer insight into how Yoruba, Kongo, Mande, and Catholic traditions synchronized to form a new religion that included drums, banjos, scarves and strips of cloth, kings, and queens. M.L.E Moreau St.-Mery observed a Vodun ritual he refers to as the Voudoux dance, with many of the same elements that make up the banya prey/ du, and the calenda dance he observed in Santo-Domingo, the Spanish-speaking portion of the island of Hispaniola.

In the late 1840s, Charles Day was keen to report the dances, songs, and rituals of enslaved Africans he observed during his five-year stay in the West Indies. During Christmas and Carnival celebrations in Trinidad, dances include processions, main figures he designates as the king and queen, drums and melody instruments, and clear spiritual elements such as men dressed as skeletons. In St. Vincent, the Jumbee dance is led by a lead male figure with a stick, accompanied by a female chorus. In Barbados, Day makes notes of the instrumentation and style of the "Joe and Johnny" dances around Christmas and New Year's.

Leon Beauvallet describes a "curious festival...peculiar to Havana," with a king and queen and a procession, while a very brief description during Carnival in Havana portrays a man playing a gourd banjo -- a previously undiscovered (and the only) account of a banjo in Cuba.4

Finally, the earliest account of the gourd banjo in the New World comes from Sir Hans Sloane on the island of Jamaica. This account is brief, but the observance of the instrument and the song and festival that surround it help articulate how broad and long-lasting these rituals were in the Americas and the Caribbean.

The costumes, instruments, and objects that these accounts share are like trace fossils, remains that provide evidence of simultaneous events in different locations to paleontologists

4 In Samuel Hazard’s Cuba with Pen and Pencil (1873). Ned Sublette (2008, 74) mentions the significance of no banjos appearing in Cuba and Spanish colonies.

3

Playing Banya / Gaddy 4

and bring continents together. This paper will examine the following “trace fossils,” or key elements: the King, the Queen, the hut, the vessel, dancing, singing, and the banjo. A comparison between the key elements in The Old Plantation, the Slavendans dioramas, and the historical documents will reveal shared practices and associated beliefs that span North America and the circum-Caribbean.

The KingEveryone had been waiting for the tall, athletic man to appear. When he did, he was as

regal as ever. He had on a bright red coat that contrasted against his dark brown skin. The jacket reminded everyone of what the British soldiers wore, and the lapels were trimmed in bright golden lace, as was his hat. Underneath the coat, he wore yellow leather buckskins with blue stockings. He was King Charley, and he had come to preside over Pinkster in Albany, New York, the Black transformation of the Dutch holiday of Pentecost (Eights, 1867, 323-7). Everyone gathered under the huts that had been placed on Pinkster Hill, and the King took his place in the center of the festivities and waited for the dance to begin.

Scholars see King Charley as a continuation of king and governor elections and the "King of the Kongo" traditions that extended from Brazil to the Caribbean (Dewulf, 2013; Kiddy, 2002). He may fall into this tradition, but his role and the dances he presided over also indicate the spiritual significance of Pinkster. When a king or central male figure in red appears in the ritual ceremonies of enslaved in the Americas, he carries with him deep references to African religions and spiritualism.

In the Yoruba religion, the deity of thunder and lightning Shango is represented by the color red (Farris Thompson, 1983, 131).5 In Kongo traditions, the chieftain was wrapped in red cloth before burial (Franklin, 1995, 154), and red symbolizes the intersection of invisible forces with the lives of the living (Franklin, 1997, 8). In the western hemisphere, beliefs from different African religions and Christianity blended and transformed, but the rituals retained the role of the red king as a central figure and position of power.6

In Haitian Vodun, the red portion of the good serpent of the sky Da is the male portion. In 1798, M.L.E Moreau de St.-Mery observed a "genre of dance called Vaudoux" in Saint Dominique, where new initiates in the religion place red handkerchiefs around their body and, "The Vaudoux King has the most, and the most beautiful, handkerchiefs, and something all red winds around his brow to serve as his diadem."7 The king, queen, and snake are the centerpieces of this ritual, and a dance to drums and song follows. In the United States, Robert Farris

5 Monica Schuler observed a dance in Jamaica with reference to Shango, where people danced in a circle, yet everyone had a partner and takes turns dancing in the ring.6 Jeroen Dewulf (2013, 246) argues that, "a syncretic Luso-African culture emerged in Central Africa in the late fiftieth century," and that the presence of king elections, both in New York and in other places in New England, was a function of "Afro-Portuguese" traditions. He points to the Moors and Christians plays from Spain and Portugal, but also to Brazil where the Christian forces are commanded by a King of the Kongo. However he provides little evidence that this tradition of wearing red first appeared in Portugal and then made its way to Central Africa in these traditions, or that the Kongo did not have the symbolism of the color red and the King before the arrival of the Portuguese.7. FIND

Playing Banya / Gaddy 5

Thompson (1983, 131) notes that anti-hex charms are still wrapped in red flannel by members of the Black community. In Trinidad, Charles Day (1852) observed a grand procession during Carnival in 1849 with, "a canopy of red glased calico, trimmed with silver tinsel, shading a royal pair, who, in conscious majesty, sat within, represented the Sovereign pair of England” -- although he may have been mistaken about which royal pair the couple depicted (313-316). In St. Vincent, he observed the main character of a "Jumbee dance," the "Jumpsa-man" wearing a mask made of red cloth and cowrie shells (85-97). In Barbados, Day made note of the first man to start dancing during a “Joe and Johnny" dance, who wasn’t wearing red but was very finely dressed in a black hat, jacket of green, and fancy shoes (50). On Dia de Los Reyes in Havana,8 Leon Beauvallet (1856) observed a Black man "with a genuine costume of a king of the middle ages, a very proper red, close coat, velvet vest, and a magnificent gilt paper crown," who also had a "queen" (363-365).

In the Surinamese du play, the king is called Kownu,9 and symbolizes the governor of the colony (Medendorp, 2008, 74); he appears in all but one of Schouten's dioramas and in all of the slavendans or du copies not by Schouten. Part of Kownu's costume was to wear shoes (forbidden footwear for the enslaved), and in Schouten's dioramas he is portrayed often wearing the red regimentals reminiscent of a British soldier's uniform (Figure 2) -- just like King Charley in Albany.

In The Old Plantation, we see a man in a red coat (Figure 1), standing behind the musicians, but because of this placement, we cannot see his pants or feet. Laurent Dubois and other scholars point out that his costume seems significant, but do not assign a role to the man. In comparing the scene primarily with Schouten's dioramas, but also with the examples from Haiti, the United States, Cuba, St. Vincent, and Barbados, we see that the red clothing and his prominence standing near the musicians shows that he is King, and a central figure to the ritual.

The QueenAs Charles Day viewed the "Joe and Johnny" dance around Christmastime, he noted that

first the men came out and danced, then some of the ladies. He was struck by the movements of one woman in particular, and he called her the “queen of the ballet.” She was tall and thin, with wrinkled, light brown skin. She was the most finely dressed of all the women dancing, with a bright white cloth wrapped around her head, black shoes, white stockings, and jewelry everywhere. She had three oval brooches pinned into her head covering, gold earrings, gold chains hanging from her slim neck, and seemingly endless rings on her fingers. “She evidently belonged to the old school, when dancing was dancing, and seemed to take great pride in displaying to the rising generations how the thing ought to be done,” Day wrote (1852, 51).

This central female figure appears less often than the king in the sources used for this paper, and she is portrayed as less prominent than the king and her title may simply be a function of her prominence next to the king and lavish clothing and jewelry. For example, Day (1852) writes that in Trinidad there was a “sovereign couple” (315), and in the Cuban 'Negro Carnival,'

8 January 6, Three Kings Day.9 A word likely derived from de koning in Dutch and similar to Jonkanu, the name of a Black Caribbean festival.

5

Playing Banya / Gaddy 6

Beauvallet simply describes a woman standing next to the king, “who represented some queen or other” (363-365). In the Vaudoux dance described by Moreau de Saint-Mary (1798), the Queen is "dressed with simple luxury," and has a red sash or waistband (TKTK). In the visual representations, this female lead is easier to see as the woman in prominent place or with the most luxurious outfit.

In The Old Plantation, the female lead stands next to the man in red. She is the most finely dressed of the five women in the watercolor, with a blue and white checkered scarf on her head and a bright white dress trimmed in yellow. Her placement next to the man in red and her outfit led scholars to postulate that these two might be a bride couple. However, when we compare her to accounts where queens and female leads occur in other ritual dances, we see she is playing is the female lead or queen, or perhaps even Afrankeri.

Afrankeri is the storyteller in the banya prei and explains and defends high morals to the observers (Lang, TKTK). She could be distinguished by her costume: in Sranan Tongo, afrankeri means to display or flaunt, and she displays her most beautiful outfit (Medendorp, 2006, 327; Medendorp, 2008, 74). In Schouten's dioramas, she stands centrally in the scene with her hands clasped but is not dancing.10 On his trip to Suriname between 1805 and 1807, Baron Albert von Sack (1810) describes a "Doo," which he identified as a sort of challenge between free women of color when one feels she has been offended. Under a tent erected in the garden, the woman sits in a prominent position, and is "finely dressed," she then, "sings a line containing part of her complaint, or some reflection upon her antagonist; and this is repeated in a chorus by the attending female slaves, and followed by other lines until it becomes a complete song, between the different parts of which there is a dance,” essentially creating a dance with a call-and-response song (113). H.C. Focke (1858), a free Surinamese man of color, wrote that the female chorus responding to the lines of a female lead was a key song in the banya ceremony (95).

The HutWhen Moreau de Saint-Mery (1798) described the Vaudoux dance in Saint-Dominique,

he reveals that the real Vaudoux meeting takes place secretly, "in a closed place away from profane eyes" (TKTK). The home of the Vodun rituals is the oum'phor, a compound with a series of rooms and an open courtyard, the peristyle, in the middle of which is the most sacred point of the compound, the poteau mitan. The poteau mitan is a post through which the gods can descend from the heavens or rise up from the water (Farris Thompson, 1983, 181).

The setting for the banya in Schouten's and the unattributed copy dioramas is very similar. Each work of art depicts the dance taking place under a thatched hut with a center pole.11

Albert von Sack (1810) noted that when the free women of color in Paramaribo challenged one another during the Doo, a “tent” was erected in the yard (113).

While the hut is significantly missing in The Old Plantation painting, enslaved Africans in the Low Country of South Carolina and Georgia gathered under a brush arbor to practice a mix of Christianity and African spiritualism (Rutkoff and Scott, 2010, 10; 28). In New York,

10 However in Figure 2, the Rijksmuseum identifies the woman dancing to the far left as the Afrankeri.11 Except for the unattributed piece that is titled "Dancing Maroons."

Playing Banya / Gaddy 7

King Charley of Pinkster had his own “tent,” and more thatched tents created an amphitheater on Pinkster Hill for the celebrations (Eights, 1867, 323-7).

The VesselEvery one of Gerrit Schouten’s Slavendans has a terra-cotta jug in the lower-right hand

corner, as does every copy-cat, and even Dirk Valkenberg’s 1707 painting of a dance in Suriname has a gourd vessel in the lower-right hand corner. We see the exact same placement of a large terra-cotta-colored pot and two smaller bottles in The Old Plantation.12

The assumption with The Old Plantation painting has been that the jugs and bottles at the feet of the musicians hold "beverages" (Shames, 2010, 8), but why are the jugs there rather than on the left side where the spectators seem to be revelling? In the copy of The Old Plantation (Figure 4), the jugs are at the feet of the musicians even though they have separated. While these containers may have been for alcoholic beverages (various drinks are mentioned in the accounts examined here), they may have also been govi or a similar minkisi containers.

In Haitian Vodun, the priest and priestess can summon the gods and spirits through drumming and dancing (Metraux, 1972, 189), but once the spirits enter the oum'phor, they need a place to reside. Charles Day observed a Vodun follower being "mounted" by a spirit (Riguad, 1985, 46), but the spirits can also enter a govi, a terra-cotta pot (Galembo, 1998, 64).

Pots are also one of the containers for the minkisi in the Kongo spirtual practice (Landers, 2002, 237), and each nkisi can contain medicine and a soul (Farris Thompson, 1983, 117). In Central Africa, ceramic bowls and jars are used for preparation of medicine and to induce spirits (Ferguson, 2007, 4). This tradition seems to have become part of the Vodun rituals, while Robert Farris Thompson observed a strong minkisi-making tradition in Black communities in the United States, which he believes came from the West Indies (Farris Thompson, 1983, 129).13 Placing bottles around a grave is a practice seen both in Central Africa and the U.S. Low Country (Pollitzer, 2005, 178), and in South Carolina pots were likely used to administer medicine (Ferguson, 2007, 6) and many later examples of pottery made by enslaved African Americans featured crosses or crosses-in-circles, symbolic of the Kongo cosmogram (Joseph, 2011, 140), and may have been used intended for the housing of minkisi (Ferguson, 1992, 127).

DancingOn Sunday afternoon in the early 1800s, renowned architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe

walked through New Orleans, and heard a loud thumping he mistook for horses hooves on a wooden floor. He made his way closer to the sound, seeing masses of people assembled on a public square. He pushed in to get a better view, and realized that everyone participating was Black. He saw men playing drums and a stringed instrument that he found interesting enough to

12 "Whether all of these items [jugs and bottles] would have been found at an actual dance and placed in this manner is problematical," writes Jerome S. Handler (2010, 5), but does not provide further explanation as to why that placement or item might not be accurate.

13 Farris Thompson (1983) also notes, "Thus a dog or doglike nkisi is often used by Kongo mystics to see beyond our world," (121) and a dog figure is present in many of Schouten and the unnamed dioramas, perhaps another ritual symbol.

7

Playing Banya / Gaddy 8

sketch in his journal. The men and women dancing were formed into circular groups and he noticed something: "In the first two [circles] were two women dancing. They held each a coarse handkerchief, extended by the corners, in their hands, and set to each other in a miserably dull and slow figure, hardly moving their feet or bodies” (Latrobe, 1905, 180). Latrobe didn't seem to care very much about the dances, yet his description of Congo Square is one of the most quoted in discussions about African American dance and music. The description of women dancing with scarves connects Latrobe’s description to other accounts from the Americas.

Scholars have debated whether the women The Old Plantation painting were dancing with rattles or scarves (Figure 1). Joseph Opala first made that conclusion that the women in The Old Plantation had shegureh,14 gourd rattles used in Sierra Leone by women. However, in the context of New World spiritual ritual, it is more likely the women are dancing with scarves.

Women did dance with rattles in a number of ceremonies, and the instruments have significance. In Suriname, the rattle can bring on spiritual possession, and during the Winti rituals in Paramaribo rattles were only played by women (Herskovits & Herskovits, 1936, 87-88). Captain Stedman (1992) noted the saka-saka rattle (No. 22, Figure 5) used during dances as "a hollow gourd with a stick and handle fixed through it, and filled with small pebbles" (277). In Vodun, the asson (Figure 6) is a rattle used in sacred rites, and only members of the priesthood are allowed to hold them (Wilcken, 1992, 41).

The rattles have a very specific construction in the New World that does not match The Old Plantation. Milo Rigaud (1985) asserts that the rattle's construction is vital: "the asson becomes a geometrical synergy combining the two activating principals of all magic: the magic wand, which is the handle, and the magic circle” (36). In both the Haitian and Surinamese sacred rattles, there is a round part and a handle, and the gourd is clearly visible with beads around it. In the West African shekere, there is no handle, the gourd is larger, and more densely covered with beads, but the gourd is still clearly visible (Figure 7).

In The Old Plantation, no gourd is visible in the object that the women are holding, and while some might argue that this was a failing of the artist's interpretation, John Rose is so precise on other details that this argument does not make sense. The more plausible reading is that the women are holding scarves; the objects in the women's hands drape like scarves and look like pieces of fabric. More significantly, dancing with scarves was a key component of many spiritual dances.

In addition to the Congo Square account from Latrobe, Moreau de Saint-Mery (1798) described women dancing with scarves during the calenda. A male and female dancer faced each other and the male dancer, "moves around the female dancer, who turns about and changes place with the [male] dancer ...the lady holds both ends of a handkerchief which she waves." In the chica dance he observed, "the female dancer, who holds the corners of a handkerchief or the two borders of her apron... [while] A male dancer approaches while she is in motion" (TKTK).15 During the Voudoux dance he observed, he also noticed the significance of the strips of fabric:

14 Alternatively spelled shekere and segbureh; Opala to Curator, 25 September 1987 [CW, Folk Art Center, # 35-301-3, folder 3].15 Floyd (1999, 20) also calls this Bamboula.

Playing Banya / Gaddy 9

"[each initiate] places around his body a more or less considerable number of red handkerchiefs, or handkerchiefs in which that color predominates,” similar to what a woman remembered about John Coonahs (Jonkanu) in North Carolina, where men had red and white fabric “tufts and fringes” sewn all over their clothing (Cameron, 1913, 8). In the banya, handkerchiefs are representative of events or proverbs so that dancers and actors could communicate without words during the play (Martinus-Guda, 2001, 617) and the design would determine the meaning (Herskovits & Herskovits, 1936, 7).

Robert Farris Thompson examines the use of textiles and fabrics in African and African American culture. He notes that the Mande cultural traditions of West Africa were disseminated by Mande warriors during the expansion of the Mali Empire, as far south as the Yoruba-Dahomean areas. One of those artistic traditions was the weaving of multi-strip textiles in vibrant colors, which came from Africa and was further remixed in the New World (Farris Thompson, 1983, 208). In Bahia, Brazil, Mande-style ritual clothes had colors that referenced gods from the Yoruba religion, while loin-clothes from Suriname and quilts from the United States also share similar patterns to the West African cloth. Dances and rituals used cloths, strips of fabric, or handkerchiefs to symbolize gods, events, and meanings that were almost never understood by white observers.

In The Old Plantation, the man dances with a stick, which is in contrast to the Schouten dioramas, where all the men dance with scarves. In all but one, however, men stand to the right side of the scene holdings sticks, not unlike magical staffs collected in Suriname now at the TK museum. In 1736 New York, the Spy sees "some [men] exercising the Cudgel, and some of them small Sticks in imitation of the short Pike” (TKTK). While this may be an example of stick-fighting or training-day rituals,16 they could have also been using the staffs as conjure sticks to agitate the spirits. Like the magic wand incorporated in the asson rattle of Vodun rites, the stick was a symbol of power and the person who carried it had the ability to do magic (Franklin, 1995, 155).

Charles Day observed a man's dance with the magical stick during the Jumbee dance in St. Vincent. The main figure of the dance “the Jumpsa-man,” asks the spectators to test his powers by firmly holding a stick. By working his magic and talking to the stick, he manages to free it from their grasp. In the Vaudoux ceremony Moreau de Saint-Mery describes, the King taps a mounted worshipper on the head with a stick (TKTK).

In the copy of The Old Plantation, the man no longer dances with a stick but with a scarf (Figure 4). However, his role as a conjurer is more clearly articulated. In between the man and woman sits a frog, a symbol of the spirits who can move between the land of the living (earth) and the land of the dead (water) (Franklin, 1997, 8). We also see the stick appear on the house behind the banjo player in a varied form,17 looking similar to Surinamese (Figure 8), Brazilian, Cuban (Farris Thompson, 1983, 63), and African (Figure 9) whisks also used in spiritual ritual, with a snake wrapped around it. Sticks carved of wood with snakes, lizards, or alligators have

16 Forthcoming in TKTK. See Shlomo/Greg, etc.17 Maria Franklin (1995, 1997) has also guessed that this might be a nkisi, or wrapped packet holding spirits.

9

Playing Banya / Gaddy 10

been found in the South Carolina and Georgia Low Country (Pollitzer, 2005, 176), an image that also appears in the veve ground drawings of Haitian Vodun (Farris Thompson, 1983, 176).

SingingThe call-and-response song is recognized as a hallmark of African American music, and

can be heard in Central African ngolo fight-dancing (Obi, 2002, 358), in Cuban Santeria ceremonies, in Brazilian candomble (Floyd, 1999, 1) and cucumbi (Kiddy, 2002, 180), and in the Surinamese Canto Winti (Floyd, 1999, 1). In almost every instance where singing is noted in the accounts used for this paper, there is a female chorus and a call-and-response format.18 In New Orleans, Latrobe observed: “A man sung an uncouth song to the dancing, which I suppose was in some African language, for it was not French, and the women screamed a detestable burden on one single note” (1905, 181). Two other visitors wrote about the singing on the Levees (Cuming, 1810, 333) and the "extraordinary rhythmic chant" of the Congo dance (Hearn, 1884, 45). During the calenda in Saint-Domingo, Moreau de Saint-Mery (1798( wrote that the banzas (banjos) were accompanied by clapping women who, "form a chorus that responds to one or two principal female singers whose striking voices repeat or improvise a song" (TKTK). In St. Vincent during the Jumbee dance, Charles Day observed five or six women forming a chorus and clapping their hands to accompany the drums (1852, 85).

Even more intriguing, a similar call-and-response song shows up in Suriname, New York, Haiti, and Jamaica. In Suriname, Herskovitz and Herskovitz (1939) witnessed a priestess's call and response one evening in the early 20th century. She was trying to summon a god and called, "Mother Loąŋgo, I am gąŋgule Lele,” and the chorus responded, "Bumba-e, Kɛre Bumba-e," a line they could not translate but thought was related to a water god Bomba (96). Descriptions of the banya from the mid-19th century also make note of the call-and-response style singing format (Kappler, 1854, 46-47; Benoit, 1839, 23). In the early-19th century, Albert von Sack (1810) also described the singing during a dance in January (likely a banya), saying the women not engaged in dancing, “have strings with sounding nut shells, which they clap to with their hands, and sing a chorus to it” (114).

In New York in the early 19th century during Pinkster, Jackey Quakenboss sat on top of a drum, just like Latrobe witnessed in Congo Square and Schouten depicted in his dioramas, beating on the skin stretched over the opening. He cried out in time to the drumming, "Hi-a-bomba, bomba, bomba," which was then called back by the women who were not dancing, and clapped their hands to the beat (Eights, 1867, 323-7).

During the Vaudoux dance in Saint-Dominique, the first line of the "African Song" sung by the King is, "Eh! Eh! Bomba, hen! Hen!” (TKTK). The words of the five-line song are sung in a call and response form by the worshippers as a person in the center of the ring is taken over or “mounted” by a spirit. In Haitian Vodun, Bomba references the rainbow spirit or the dead (Sublette, 2008, 188).

18 Songs and singing are mentioned in North Carolina (Cameron, 1913, 8) and Havana (Beauvallet, 1856, 350) but are not detailed enough descriptions to connect them to other rituals.

Playing Banya / Gaddy 11

And one hundred years before that, Sir Hans Sloane witnessed a festival of the Blacks in Jamaica with a song he transcribed called "Angola," and notes, "You must clap your Hands when the Base is plaid (sic), and cry, Alla Alla." The lyrics he provides are, "Ho-baognion, Ho-baognion, Ho-ba, Ho-ba, ognion, ognion," visually dissimilar to the previous lyrics, but when sung to the music Sloane transcribed, it transforms and sounds more familiar: "Oh-Bania, Oh-Bania, Oh-Ba, Oh-Ba, On-ya, On-ya."19

Used in rituals that share many other similar elements, these songs may be the same invocation of a god or spirit at the beginning of the religious ritual.

The BanjoIn the sea of people and pounding of drums in Congo Square, Benjamin Henry Latrobe

made note of an unusual instrument he had not seen before that he believed to have been imported from Africa. He wrote that body was made of a calabash,20 with two strings and the carved figure of a man sitting on top of the fingerboard. More than 100 years earlier in Jamaica, Hans Sloane (1707) also observed feast days where, “They have several sorts of Instruments in imitation of Lutes, made of small Gourds fitted with Necks, strung with Horse hairs, or the peeled stalks of climbing Plants or Withs” (xlviii). He provided images of the lutes, but referred to them only as "strum-strum" (Figure 10). John Gabriel Stedman noted a similar instrument in his Voyage to Suriname (Figure 5; 1992, 278) and even brought back an example to the Netherlands:

No. 15 is the Creole-bania; this is like a mandolin or guitar, being made of a gourd covered with a sheepskin, to which is fixed a very long neck or handle; this instrument has but four strings, three long and one short, which is which and served for a bass.

The bania does not appear in the banya prei dioramas of Gerrit Schouten, although other instruments Stedman observed do. However, P.J. Benoit (1839) wrote about a "type of guitar" played during a Dou: "The guitar, which serves as a violin, is a half calabash attached to a stick, and on which is stretched a skin and four cords with guts. It is played hitting the string in time with the hand" (23). In the mid-1800s, another instrument almost identical to Stedman's bania was collected in Suriname and donated to the Ethnologisches Museum Berlin (Figure 11), referred to in the collection notes as a panja and particular to the death celebration and the song Ananhitori,21 likely a misspelling of Anąnsi-tɔri or dances for the ancestors (Herskovits & Herskovits, 1939, 91).

In Saint Dominique, Moreau de Saint-Mery (1798) observed "The Banzas, a sort of primitive guitar with four strings" (TKTK) played during the calenda, while other early 19th century sightings also mention the calabash, cut lengthwise, with four strings (de Tussac, 1810, 292; Descourtilz, 1833, 85-6). In 1841, French abolitionist Victor Schoelcher collected an

19 Heard on www.musicalpassage.org, a collaboration between Laurent Dubois, David Garner, Mary Caton Lingold exploring Sloane’s transcriptions.20Calabashes (grown in the tropics and on trees) and gourds (can grow in cold climates and on vines) are often mistaken for one another and the term “calabash” is used interchangeably. 21 Hauptkatalog Original-Eintrag Leopold von Ledebur (1861): "Panja, 4 saitiges Streich-Instrument, besonders zu Todtenfesten zu dem Gesange: Ananhitori,” translation my own.

11

Playing Banya / Gaddy 12

instrument referred to as the "Haiti Banza" (Figure 12), also cut length-wise with a flat fingerboard. All of these descriptions and existing instruments closely resemble the instrument being played in The Old Plantation.

Many white observers, including U.S. President Thomas Jefferson, believed that the banjo was an instrument that enslaved Africans brought from Africa. However, banjos from the western hemisphere share construction that is different than that of African instruments: flattened fingerboards, the presence of tuning pegs, and different way the neck joins to the body of the instrument (Pestcoe, 2018, 172-86).

On the three extant early banjos, as well as the banjos pictured in The Old Plantation and Sloane's book, the fingerboards are flat, like that of a guitar, rather than radiused, like violins or contemporary West African instruments like the akonting or ngoni. The instruments also have tuning pegs, whereas on akontings and ngoni, the strings are held in place by leather thongs. These elements could have been added after European influences or because these changes made instruments easier to tune and play.

The third major change in construction-- the neck joint-- does not make the instrument easier to play. In West African instruments, the gourd or calabash is cut in half (length-wise or the stem/ top cut off) and notches are cut into the edge of this opening of the gourd for the neck to rest in. The skin head is stretched over the opening, where the neck and body meet, holding the neck in place and creating an ease of playability on the fingerboard (referred to as low action by musicians and luthiers). In the instruments found in the Americas and Caribbean, the calabash or gourd is cut length-wise and the neck enters through the top (where the vine or stem of the fruit is) and comes out the opposite end (Figures 11, 12). This results in a higher action where only a few notes at the bottom of the fingerboard can be played, unplayable by modern banjo players (Ross, 2018, np). What would be the purpose of creating a less playable version of the instrument? Some might argue that this was simply a bi-product of the flat fingerboard and European influences, or a need for structural integrity by piercing the gourd at thicker bottom of the gourd or calabash, but the banjos are rich with ritual significance, and the construction itself may be because the banjo was a ritual object.

The dance Gerrit Schouten was depicting in his dioramas is known as the banya,22 similar to words used to name the banjo (bania, banjar, banza). The Surinamese panja was used in a ritual related to death, the anąnsi-tɔri, which was closely related to the baka-futu-banya dance for the ancestors and the bąnya dance for the earth spirits (Herskovits & Herskovits, 1939, 743-4). The etchings on the fingerboard of the images from Jamaica (Figure 10) and the back of the neck of the Haiti Banza are reminiscent of veve, Vodun drawings that symbolize the spirits. The cross-shaped sound holes in the Haiti Banza likely symbolize the intersection of the earthly plane with spiritual plane (Dubois, 2016, 134), as do the crosses depicted on the banjo in The Old Plantation.

22 Trudy Guda suggests the name could have come from creolizations of the Portuguese balhar, meaning to dance, which the Dutch wrote as baljaaren in official documents beginning in 1741, but that origin seems uncertain.

Playing Banya / Gaddy 13

In Vodun, the asson rattle is a magic wand that pierces the magic circle. Like the crosses, the magic circle is derived from the Kongo cosmograms that trace the path of the sun from the living on earth to the dead beneath the water (Landers, 2002, 230). The magic wand is the symbol of the Yoruba deity Ogun (Farris Thompson, 1983, 54); is represented in the center of the Vodou oum’phor as the poteau mitan, where deities descend from the sky or arise from the water (181); and are recognized in U.S. traditions as conjure sticks, used by a person who had the power to heal, harm, and agitate spirits (Franklin, 1995, 155). Like the asson, the way the banjo is constructed in the New World is the perfect meeting of these two magical symbols: the neck (symbolizing the magic wand) cuts the gourd or calabash (symbolizing the magic circle) perfectly in two. This construction makes a less playable instrument, but playability is sacrificed to be able to use the banjo as a ritual instrument.

Even though early examples of the banjo come from Suriname and similar instruments and descriptions are found in Jamaica, Haiti, and Cuba, the banjo is thought of as an instrument from the United States. In John Rose's watercolor, we see one of the musicians playing a four-stringed banjo, with three long strings, a short string, and a skin soundboard. Rebecca Cameron remembered the banjo being one of many instruments used during the John Coonah procession during Christmas in North Carolina (1913, 8). In New York City, we see the very first mention of a North American banjo (called Banger) in the 1736 newspaper account: "Massa, today Holiday; Backerah no work; Ningar no work; me no savy play Banger; go yonder, you see Ningar play Banger for true, dance too; you see Sport today for true” (TKTK).

However, “banjo” might not have just referenced the lute. For Gabriel Furman during Pinkster in Albany, the banjo is also a descriptor of a type of drum: “The music which usually accompanied this dance was the 'banjo drum,' formed of a hollow log, with a skin of parchment stretched over one end, the other being left open, on which they beat with a stick, making a rough, discordant sound” (1875, 238). For Stedman, the Creole Bania was the banjo-like instrument, but he also noted the Loango bania and Ansokko Bania (Figure 5), both of which involve pieces of wood of different lengths that are struck or plucked to create a melody. While in the West Indies, Charles Day (1852) referred to many different instruments as a banjo. In Trinidad he does not describe the banjo, but writes, "The banjo, or tum-tum, supplants the more refined fiddle and triangle and the dancers pay ten dogs, each time they dance,” (130) suggesting that 'banjo' is a rhythm instrument both since it is an accompaniment to the melody of the fiddle but also because he refers to drums as tum-tums throughout the West Indies. In a different description, Day offers an image of something very similar to Stedman's Loango Bania:

Here we saw a real banjo, the most primitive musical instrument that can be conceived. It was formed of a piece of hard wood, about a foot in length, and an inch and a half thick, rounded at one end. On this eighteen strings, made of slips of thing wood of unequal lengths were tightly fastened, and then raised by a bridge. It was played with the thumbs, and really sounded very well considering the material. (324)

The most interesting use of the word banjo, however, is the description of provided by H.C. Focke, who as a man of color had more insight into the rituals Blacks than a white observer did. In "Music of the Black Surinamese" (1858) he wrote:

13

Playing Banya / Gaddy 14

There is, however, another kind of music which is particular to Black creoles. It appears to typify, with slight modification and nuance, the festivities of the Blacks, not only in Suriname, but in the French, British and Spanish colonies, and from Brazil to the US South. It is apparently substantially the same as the Bamboula of the French colonies and the Banjo of the South. (90-91)

Here, Focke uses Banjo as a type of music and dance, just like the Bamboula and the Banya. The use of the lute-like instrument as the component of a spiritual dance, combined with how Focke uses the word and that other instruments were called "banjo" may suggest that "playing banjo" did not necessarily mean playing the lute-like instrument alone, but could have meant engaging in this ritual cultural practice.

ConclusionThe story the white New Yorkers told was that King Charley had come to the Dutch

colony from Angola in his infant days, possible as early as the 1730s, some even said he was a King. We don’t know whether this is true or not, but what we might guess is that he knew something of his ancestors, religion, and traditions in Africa. But Pinkster was not just a product of one African culture being transmitted to one colony. Pinkster and the related practices in the accounts examined here are descended from African belief systems and practices, but they are entirely born of the New World experience: the blending of African cultures, exposure to Ameri-Indian culture, and oppression by Europeans. They were the result of combinations of cultures, transmitted throughout the Americas both by force and by choice.

This paper cannot provide an exhaustive list of all accounts of ritual dance and ceremony of the enslaved in the Americas. However, the similarities between The Old Plantation, the dioramas of Gerrit Schouten, and the accounts provided demonstrate the cultural continuity between Pinkster, Banjo, bamboula, calenda, banya, Vodun, Jonkanu, and other ritual dances. This research should serve as the starting point for a greater dialogue about and research into the lives and legacies of enslaved Africans and their descendants in the Americas. A further re-examination of other historical accounts, works of art, and contemporary practices will expand our knowledge of this shared New World culture, and see how far “playing banya” extends.

Playing Banya / Gaddy 15

Figure 1, The Old Plantation (John Rose, 1785-1790), Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

Figure 2, Slavendans (Gerrit Schouten, 1830), Rijksmuseum.

Figure 3, Plantation Scene (unattributed, undated), Mint Museum of Charlotte. Figure 4, Slavendans Copy (A.F. Westmaas, c 1830), Museum Volkenkunde.

15

Playing Banya / Gaddy 16

Figure 5, Plate 69, Musical Instruments of the African Negroes, Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Suriname (Stedman, 1992, 277).

Figure 6, Asson rattle (Haiti), Smithsonian.

Figure 7, Shegbureh (Sierra Leone, 1960s), Roderic C. Knight Musical Instrument Collection, Oberlin

Playing Banya / Gaddy 17

College of Music.

Figure 10, Detail from insert, Voyage to Jamaica (Sloane, 1707, image 3).

Figure 8, Wedel (Suriname), Ethnologisches Museum Berlin.

Figure 9, Vliegenmepper, (Congo), Afrika Museum.

17

Playing Banya / Gaddy 18

Playing Banya / Gaddy 19

Figure 11, Panja. Figure 12, Haiti Banza Replica (Pete Ross, 2017)

19

Playing Banya / Gaddy 20

Playing Banya / Gaddy 21

21

Playing Banya / Gaddy 22

Playing Banya / Gaddy 23

Works CitedBeauvallet, Leon. (1856). Rachel and the New World: A trip to the United States

and Cuba. New York: Dix, Edwards & Co. Benoit, P.J. (1839). Voyage a Surinam. Bussells: Societe des Beaux-Arts. Cameron, Rebecca. (1913). Christmas at Buchoi, A North Carolina Rice Plantation. The North

Carolina Booklet, Vol. XIII No. 1, 4-10. Cuming, Forestcue. (1810). Sketches of a tour to the western country : through

the states of Ohio and Kentucky, a voyage down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, and a trip through the Mississippi territory, and part of West Florida, commenced at Philadelphia in the winter of 1807, and concluded in 1809. Pittsburgh: Cramer, Spear & Eichbaum.

Day, Charles W. (1852). Five Years’ Residence in the West Indies. London: Colburn & Co.

Dewulf, Jeroen. (2017) “From Moors to Indians: The Mardi Gras Indians and the Three Transformations of St. James.” Louisiana History, 5-41.

Dewulf, Jeroen. (2013). “Pinkster: An Atlantic Creole Festival in a Dutch-American Context.” Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 126, No. 501, 245-271.

Dubois, Laurent. (2016). The Banjo: America’s African Instrument. Cambridge: Belknap Press.

Farris Thompson, Robert. (1983). Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy. New York: Random House.

Eights, James. (1867). “Pinkster Festivals in Albany Sixty Years ago.” In Joel Munsell (Ed.) Collections on the History of Albany (323-27). Albany: J. Munsell.

Fenn, Elizabeth. (1988). “‘A Perfect Equality Seemed to Reign’: Slave Society and Jonkonnu.” The North Carolina Historical Review, No. 65, 127-153.

Floyd, Samuel A. (1999). "Black Music in the Cirum-Caribbean." American Music, Vol. 17, No. 1, 1-38.

Focke, H.C. (1839). “De Surinaamesche Negermuzijk.” In TKTK (Ed.) West-Indië: bijdragen tot de bevordering van de kennis der Nederlandsch West-Indische koloniën, Volume 2 (93-107). Haarlem: A.C. Kruseman.

Franklin, Maria. (1997). “Early Black Spirituality and the Cultural Strategy of Protective Symbolism: Evidence from Art and Archeology.” Colonial Williamsburg Foundation: Department of Archeological Research.

Franklin, Maria. (1995). “Rethinking the Carter’s Grove Slave Quarter Reconstruction: A Proposal.” The Written and the Wrought: Complementary Sources in Historical Anthropology, No. 79, 150-155.

Furman, Gabriel. (1874). Antiquities of Long Island. New York: J.W. Bouton.Galembo, Phyllis. (1998). Vodou: Visions and Voices of Haiti. Berkeley: Ten Speed

Press.

23

Playing Banya / Gaddy 24

Green, Edward C. (1978). Winti and Christianity: A Study in Religious Change. Ethnohistory, Vol. 25, No. 3, 251-276.

Guda, Trudi. (2001). Banya: a Surviving Surinamese Slave Play. A History of Literature in the Caribbean, Volume 2: English- and Dutch-Speaking Regions. A. James Arnold (Ed.). Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Hazard, Samuel. (1873). Cuba with Pen and Pencil. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Low & Searle.

Hearn, Lafcadio. (1883). The Scenes of Cable's Romances. Century Magazine, No. 27, 40-47.

Heywood, Linda M. And John K. Thornton. (2007). Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585-1660. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Kappler, A. (1854). Sechs Jahre in Surinam oder Bilder aus dem militärischen Leben dieser Kolonie. Stuttgart: E. Schweizerbart’sche.

Kiddy, Elizabeth W. (2002). Who is the King of the Congo? A New Look at African and Afro-Brazilian Kings in Brazil. In Linda M. Haywood (Ed.) Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora (153-182). Cambridge: Cambridge University.

Landers, Jane. (2002). The Central African Presence in Spanish Maroon Communities. In Linda M. Haywood (Ed.) Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora (228-237). Cambridge: Cambridge University.

Latrobe, Benjamin Henry (1905). The journal of Latrobe; being the notes and sketches of an architect, naturalist and traveler in the United States from 1796 to 1820. New York: Appleton and Company.

Medendorp, C. (2006). History in a Diorama. Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum, Jaarg. 54, Nr. 3, 327-329.

Medendorp, Clarion. (2008). Kijkkasten uit Suriname: De Diorama’s van Gerrit Schouten. Amsterdam: KIT Publishers en Rijksmuseum.

Metraux, Alfred. (1972) Voodoo in Haiti. (Trans. Hugo Chateris trans.). New York: Schocken Books.

Pollitzer, William S. (2005). The Gullah People and their African Heritage. Athens: University of Georgia Press.

Rigaud, Milo. (1985). Secrets of Voodoo. (Robert B. Cross, trans.). San Francisco: City Lights Books.

Rutkoff, Peter M. and William B. Scott. (2010). Fly Away: The Great African American Cultural Migrations. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University.

Schuler, Monica. (1980). “Alas, Alas, Kongo”: A Social History of Indentured African Immigration into Jamaica, 1841-1865. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Playing Banya / Gaddy 25

Shames, Susan P. (2010). The Old Plantation: The Artist Revealed. Williamsburg: The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

Sloane, Hans. (1707). Voyage to the Islands of Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica. London: B.M.

Stedman, John Gabriel. (1992). Stedman’s Suriname: Life in an Eighteenth Century Slave Society. Richard Price and Sally Price (Ed.). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Stuckey, Sterling. (1994). Going Through the Storm: the Influence of African American Art in History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sublette, Ned. (2008). The World that Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square. Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2008.

Von Sack, Baron Albert. (1810). Narrative of a Voyage to Surinam of a Residence there during 1805, 1806, and 1807 and of the Author’s Return to Europe by the way of North America. London: G. and W. Nicol.

Wilcken, Lous. (1992). The Drums of Vodou. Tempe: White Cliffs Media.

25