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Sacred Objects & Ritual Items

Bata Drums

Also Known As bata · ilu bata · the fundamento drums (when consecrated) · bata; ilu bata; the fundamento drums (when consecrated)
Ritual Instruments

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Origin Attested in Yoruba practice before the Atlantic crossing and continuing in Cuba today

The bata are a set of three double-headed, hourglass-shaped drums played as an ensemble to call the orisha in Yoruba religion and in Santeria. Each drum has two heads of different pitch, and the three interlock in speaking rhythms, each orisha having its own patterns; the drumming is not accompaniment but summons, and at a bembe or tambor the orisha are expected to arrive and mount initiates to the sound of it. A fully consecrated set, the drums with fundamento, is held to house the spirit Ana, the orisha of the drum, and playing such drums is itself a priestly office restricted to initiated drummers, the omo Ana.

Facts
Use
Who May Handle It
Trained or authorised specialists only 1
Played by drummers who hold the standing to play the consecrated set
Consecration
Consecrated in a rite before use 1
Origins
Origin Period
Attested in Yoruba practice before the Atlantic crossing and continuing in Cuba today 1
Attributions
Tradition
Yoruba religion and Santeria (Lucumi) 1
Learn More
Drums That Do Not Accompany the Ceremony but Summon It

The bata drums are often described as musical accompaniment to Yoruba and Lucumi ceremony, and within the tradition they are nothing of the kind: they are the summons itself.

Speaking rhythms

The bata are a set of three double-headed, hourglass-shaped drums played as an ensemble to call the orisha. Each drum has two heads of different pitch, and the three interlock in speaking rhythms, each orisha having its own patterns. At a bembe or tambor the orisha are expected to arrive and to mount initiates to the sound of the drumming, so the drums do not accompany the event but produce it, which is a different relationship between instrument and rite than the word music implies.

The drum that is a spirit

A fully consecrated set, the drums with fundamento, is held to house the spirit Ana, the orisha of the drum, and playing such drums is itself a priestly office restricted to initiated drummers, the omo Ana. The first consecrated set in Cuba is traditionally credited to the drum-makers Atanda and Ana in the nineteenth century. The rhythms are among the most technically demanding in the Atlantic world and have passed into Cuban popular and art music, while consecrated performance remains bounded by ritual rule, so the same instrument leads a double life, one secular and one sacred.

Two Kinds of the Same Drum, and Who May Touch Each

Bata drums are hourglass shaped, double headed, traditionally carved from a single log, and played as a set of three of differing size, iya, the largest, called the mother drum, itotele and okonkolo, each producing its own register within the ensemble.

Consecrated versus secular instruments

A set intended for religious use undergoes a specific consecration rite that seats the spirit Ana inside the drums, called fundamento, which makes a consecrated set categorically different from an otherwise identical looking set built for folkloric or educational performance, the wood and the hide are the same, the object's status is not.

Who may play and touch a fundamento set

Only initiated drummers, omo Ana, who have undergone the required rites may play or even touch a fundamento drum, and in most lineages women are traditionally excluded from playing or touching the consecrated set specifically, a real and frequently discussed restriction rather than an incidental custom. Non-consecrated batá used in secular or folkloric performance carry no such restriction and are played by trained musicians of any background, and re-heading a fundamento drum, unlike an ordinary one, involves its own ritual process rather than a simple repair.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Belongs to Tradition

Santería (Lucumí), Religions

In Cuba the consecrated set, with Ana inside the drum, is the one that may play for the orisha, and only initiated drummers may play it.

Source Santeria Enthroned: Art, Ritual, and Innovation in an Afro-Cuban ReligionDavid H. Brown
Yorùbá Religion (Ifá), Religions

The three drums, iya, itotele and okonkolo, speak a tonal language of salutes addressed to particular orisha.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Implement Of

Bembe, Rituals
Source Santeria Enthroned: Art, Ritual, and Innovation in an Afro-Cuban ReligionDavid H. Brown

Related To

Ritual Drum, Sacred Objects & Ritual Items

The bata are consecrated drums belonging to one tradition and played by initiated drummers, where the ritual drum is a general form; the two are not interchangeable.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Sources
1. Santeria Enthroned: Art, Ritual, and Innovation in an Afro-Cuban Religion
David H. Brown, University of Chicago Press, 2003on the bata, the fundamento and the omo Ana
Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005View the Source

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