Roots in the wind

For most of its history, Jamaican Maroon music has been kept from the ears and eyes of outsiders. Like much else in Maroon culture, these sacred musical traditions have been considered secret and have not been shared with non-Maroons. This protectiveness harks back to a time in the Maroons’ history when their very survival depended on guarding information that, if placed in the wrong hands, could be turned against them and used to destroy them.

One result is that this “private” Maroon music has had very little impact on other parts of Jamaica or the wider world. There is an important exception to this, however, in the music of Kumina. Kumina is a Kongo-related spiritual and musical tradition practiced by non-Maroon Jamaicans who live in the eastern part of the island near the Maroon communities. Kumina has had a considerable influence on urban popular music in Jamaica, contributing, for instance, to the Rastafarian Nyabinghi drumming tradition, to reggae, and even to more recent dancehall music. Over the years, Maroons and Kumina people have interacted a great deal, and as a result there is now a mixed Maroon-Kumina style called Tambu that is part of the repertoire of “lighter” (less spiritually powerful) songs in the Moore Town area. Maroons have also contributed some of their own songs to the Kumina repertoire, some of which have entered from there into the broader Jamaican folk culture. A few of these have even made their way into the repertoire of the Kingston-based National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica.

In the last two decades or so, Jamaican Maroon music has gained increasing exposure both in Jamaica and abroad. Restrictions on performing this sacred music and dance outside Maroon areas, and on sharing it with non-Maroons, have been relaxed to some extent. Maroon music and dance troupes now travel occasionally to other parts of the island to perform in heritage festivals and other cultural events. In Accompong, certain styles of Maroon music and dance are regularly performed for visiting tourists. Maroon performers from both Moore Town and Accompong have gone on international tours taking them as far as the United States and Europe.

In 2003, UNESCO formally declared the musical tradition of the Moore Town Maroons a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, reinforcing hopes that this unique repository of Maroon ancestral knowledge and aesthetic values, despite the pressures that have led to its decline among younger Maroons, will be passed on to future generations.