Enyenison Enkama(Roman Diaz, Angel Guerrero, Pedro Martinez)
Ecobio Enyenison
Some of the finest musicians in New York City at the crossroads of Africa and Cuba.
Afro-Cuban Folkloric, Abakua, Fusion, World Music
Recommended if you like Irakere,Yoruba Andabo, El Ven tu, Roman Diaz, Pedrito Martinez, Lazaro Ros, Synthesis, Mezcla
African secret societies played
a formative role in Cuban cultural history. During the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, no large kingdoms controlled Nigeria and Cameroon's
multilingual Cross River basin. Instead, each settlement had its own
lodge of the initiation society called Ékpè or Mgbè (leopard), which was in
effect the highest indigenous authority. Ékpè/ Mgbè lodges ruled local
communities while also managing regional and long distance trade. Cross
River Africans, enslaved and forcibly brought to the Americas,
became known there as ‘Carabalí’, after the port of Calabar from which many embarked. Evidence of Carabalí cultural practice is found today in Salvador Brazil, Colombia, Haiti, Jamaica, Panama, Puerto Rico, and Santiago de Cuba. However, only in Havana and Matanzas, Cuba did Carabalí leaders reorganize their Ékpè clubs into a
mutual-aid society called Abakuá, a term likely derived from the Àbàkpà community of Calabar.
Abakuá ritual
languages and practices became a unifying charter for transplanted Africans and their successors; its ideas and expressions became foundational to Cuba’s
urban life and music. Each lodge is a school that trains members in the performance of ritual theater and visual arts, as well as jurisprudence, or the legal codes of social organization. An analysis of Cuban popular music reveals ‘Carabalí’ influence in all genres, including danzón, rumba, son and timba. Cuba’s most famous 20th century painter, Wifredo Lam, incorporated Abakuá signs into his works, confirming this fraternity as a cultural symbol of the nation itself.
In 2001, Nigerian Ékpè and Cuban Abakuá met to display their related traditions, likely for the first time since separation through slavery some 200 years ago. The mutual excitement of this summit meeting, held at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, led to several further meetings, each incrementally larger. When the Obong (paramount ruler) of Calabar visited the USA in 2003, the Abakuá who arrived to greet him received invitations to visit Calabar. In 2004 the Governor of Cross River State, his excellency Donald Duke, arranged for two Abakuá and me to visit an Ékpè festival in Calabar, where the Cubans won the hearts and respect of Ékpè leaders. In 2007, the Musée Quai Branly of Paris invited two groups, one Nigerian Ékpè, and another Cuban Abakuá, to perform onstage for a series of five concerts exploring common themes in the music, chants, body masks, and visual signs of each group. The conversation that unfolded onstage demonstrated to both groups the significance of their links.
This recording by Proyecto Enyenisón Enkama is a brilliant effort to continue that conversation, using the same form in which both Ékpè and Abakuá have recorded their own histories: ritual phrases with symbolic rhythms. Members of Proyecto Enyenison Enkama have been leaders in the conversation with their African counterparts at each stage in the process, which certainly began before the first encounter in 2001. In 1997, the Havana rumba group Yoruba Andabo’s recording of ‘Enyenison Enkama 2’ (arranged and chanted by ‘Roman’ Díaz’) became the basis for the Brooklyn encounter; it included an historic chant evoking Efí Ebutón, the first Cuban lodge, that Nigerians interpreted as identifying ‘Obutong’, an important Calabar community. In 1999, Angel Guerrero led the creation of ‘Ibiono’ in Havana, the first full length CD devoted entirely to Abakuá ritual chanting that evoked historic lineages in Cuba and the foundation of Ékpè in Africa. Following this trajectory, in ‘Ecobio Enyenison’, Cuban Abakuá chant their history and proclaim their faith in their inherited traditions.
The phrases of each composition describe sacred geographies (maps) of West African source communities, as well as histories (epic deeds) of the African founders. By evoking these inherited chants, members of ‘Proyecto Enyenison Ekama’ praise their teachers, as well as all those Abakuá leaders of the past who maintained their faith in the teachings of those Carabalí migrants who established Abakuá. By chanting within the context of contemporary arrangements played by vanguard jazz musicians, they celebrate a cultural victory of continuity and evolution across time and space, as well as offer a vision of the expansion of their traditions into the future.
Dr. Ivor Miller
African Studies Center
Boston University
Enyenison Enkama: Roman Diaz, Angel Guerrero, and Pedro Martinez
Credits
Executive Producer: Pedro Martinez
Produced By Roman Diaz, Angel Guerrero, & Pedro Martinez
Recorded by: Pedro Martinez
Recorded at: PMP Studio INC Union Cuty, NJ and Roman Diaz's Studio Newark, NJ
Mixed by: Pedro Martinez
Mastered By Luis Güell at Digital Boulevard Audio
Artwork and Graphic Design: Jose Orbein/ Elton Boy Design Works
All Musical Arrangements: Pedro Martinez
All Lyrics and Compositions by: Roman Diaz, Angel Guerrero & Pedro Martinez
Except for Danza Ñañiga by Ernesto Lecuona and Paquito D'Rivera
A&R: Ivor Miller, Alexandre Jomaron, & Onel Mulet
Special Guests Paquito D'Rivera & Steve Turré
Musicians
Onel Mulet Sax and Flute, Oriente Lopez Piano, Ariacne Trujillo Piano, Axel Tosca Piano, Philbert Armenteros Lead Vocals, Ruben Rodriguez Bass, Panagiotis Andreou Bass, Alvaro Benavides Bass, Dennis Hernandez Trumpet, Eddie Venegas Violin & Trombone, Willie Alvarez Trombone, Edmar Castaneda Harp
World: African