Kumina and Glistening Waters

A Night of Kumina

One of the very interesting things about Jamaica is that many distinct traditions live on, often parish by parish. The scrubby, windward parish of St. Thomas, is known for kumina, a culture of spirits and ancestors as brought over 150 years ago by indentured workers from the Congo region.  I felt lucky that a Peace Corps volunteer invited me up for a night of kumina, all to honor the passing of a founder of a local organic cooperative. Under a canopy of stars, with flashes of lightning off in the hills, the drumming and dancing lasted all night. Or so they tell me. It's not like I can stay up all night any more. 

As with much of Jamaica, once you turn off the coast road, things quickly get rural as you climb up the winding, single-lane roads. This time I was doing it in the dark, my headlights illuminating the foliage around the road like I was in a tunnel. When I parked, I could only hear a faint murmur of drums and walked in inky darkness until I emerged into a clearing strung with blue and white ribbon (considered positive kumina colors) and lit by several candles on the ground, as well as a bright floodlight that one man held, it seemed, for most of the night.

Looking for Julia, the PC volunteer, I greeted some of the 20 or 30 people there in the shadows. This cooperative is no stranger to gringos, so I only felt somewhat the outsider. When I found Julia, I was introduced to the man who had made the drums. Kumina rituals like this are long nights of drumming and dancing and rum-drinking in order to channel the spirit world. The drums are very specific, played with the hands and adjusted by the feet, with a low-pitched drum considered the male (kbandu) and a higher-pitched drum considered female (kyas). A player also sits behind and uses sticks (katta tick) to beat a clicking rhythm on the wooden back-end of the drum. People lean in around the drummers, singing and chanting in a call-and-response style, sometimes in a kumina language, sometimes in English. The group seems to decide what to sing on the fly, and I saw them argue a couple times about it during the interludes. Dancers turn circles around the drumming group, shuffling their bare feet because contact with the earth is crucial.

Rum is a large part of the ritual, ceremonial and celebrational, with the drummers calling out for more in between sets. At one point, people began setting rum afire and dancing through it (which is much less dangerous than it sounds). I shared some of my Dominican mamajuana rum, sipping and standing to the outside with the other watchers or people taking a rest. Every now and then we would have to dodge a wild dancer, though I did not escape getting doused by flying rum shaken out over our heads. We were joined in the outer ring by a handful of local teenage girls, indulgent of the proceedings, but not above a wry comment or two, or even, it seems, a game of Clash Of Clans on her phone.

In kumina, the spirits are always close and, on nights like this, they will possess people (myal). Sure enough, we had some folks go into myal, toppling onto the drums, spinning violently, rolling in the brush. When this happened, there was always someone who acted as minder, keeping the possessed from hurting themselves, even tying a sash around them to hold on to. One lady began rubbing peoples arms with some liquid. At another point, the drum circle called out for a sacrifice, specifically wanting the sacrifice of a troublesome rooster I am here calling Frank. He escaped 2 weeks prior, had been molesting the hens, and seemed uncatchable. Being uncatchable spared him, of course, and no other candidates were volunteered for sacrifice.

In all honesty, this was probably kumina-light. The myal possessions could just as easily been a kind of personal rapture. But out there under the stars, with the rum and candle light, even a cynic like me figures it's all as real as anything else in this world. The drum-maker told me that there are dark kumina ceremonies ("...if you see them wearing red and black, walk away, walk away..."), and I don't doubt that farther back in the bush, the possessions take on more and more powerful qualities. At one point, a lady in myal danced for over 15 minutes with a bottle balanced on her head. That may or may not be possession, but it's certainly a level of focus that's pretty strong.

I was done by 1am, pitiful considering that when I returned at 8am, there were some who had not yet been to sleep. In daylight, I could see that the cooperative is a friendly cluster of buildings on a ridge with views to the ocean in the distance, with a little school room and composting. They fed me a breakfast of salted sprats and plantain, supplemented by a local farmer who came by with a bucket of fresh breadfruit.

A Night at Glistening Waters

You may already know about the nighttime phenomenon in which ocean plankton will sometimes, when jostled, light up like stars. Twice, as a California teen, I had a chance to enjoy the effect. One time it was the glittering wake behind a sailboat I was on, and another time it was during a dive, during which every wave of my neoprene hand was glittery magic.

It is notoriously hard to photgraph the effect,
I had to copy this photo from Google.

But neither compare to the show put on by a mangrove cove off of Falmouth, Jamaica. We went out on to the dark bay in a 20-seater wooden boat. Almost immediately we were in it, our wake didn't simply sparkle, it lit up as if by floodlight. The glow is produced by dinoflagellates, a neon green like fireflies make, and you see it wherever the water is disturbed. Each time our boat spooked a fish, a bright green slash would would streak away. Jennifer, Carter, and I slipped into the black water along with several others, splashing, laughing, and experimenting with our own luminescence. We felt like aqua sorcerers, summoning light at will, floating on our backs and waving our limbs to create illuminated snow-angels. Carter and the kids were giddy, hollering, panicking, happy. The water in the bay is shallow, with several feet of gelatinous silt. I decided to stand in it and it was so fine that I sank almost to my knees. There, weirdly planted in the muck like a mangrove, I lifted Carter up out of the water and I swear it was like my boy was made entirely out of stars. I know how dopey that sounds, but that's what it was like.