Over the years, in celebration of Emancipation, the African Cultural and Development Association (ACDA) honours many villages that have a common history of being purchased by freed slaves. This year, the Association honours Union Village No. 53 on the Corentyne River, Berbice with special focus on Conga drums.
Conga drums of Union Village
Drums provide the soundtrack to the rhythm of life in a village that maintains most of the small, close-knit, communal way of life. Union Village, a name evocative of the unity of its founders who purchased the abandoned cotton estate, is located on sandy reefs that embrace the Atlantic Ocean, about 34 miles from New Amsterdam and 14 miles from Plantation Skeldon.
Drums are the heartbeat of Union Village residents as they labour in the fertile fields that produced ground provision of all kinds: eddoes, cassava and sweet potato, plantains and bananas, long mangoes, cherries, citrus fruits, paw-paws and even rice, which was planted in Sandy River. This tradition of cultivation wanes now in the face of villagers trading the uncertainty of the market forces in favour of employment in large scale rice cultivation. And of course, the Atlantic Ocean continues to provide bountiful catches of fish, supplementing the sheep, goats and cattle reared for their meat by some villagers.
Drums beat out rhythms joyful and full of promise in celebration of achievements in the cooperative spirit for which Union Village is famous for, even in these days when it is called by another name, No. 53 Village, after the introduction of the Neighbourhood Democratic Council system of governance. These drums produce mournful beats in times of trouble, grief or remembrance of things less welcomed, but still drummed into the consciousness of a people unwilling to forget.
The drums weave myriads of echoes of pattern dances, keeping the tradition of the ‘Cake Walk’, the ‘Shove Down’ and other folk dances alive. These dances were performed when former slave masters were made to pay wages to the emancipated slaves, but still forced them to dance for their earnings, tied in cotton rags and tossed bit by bit into the circle of dancers who stomped and weaved and moved to the sounds of the drums to sweep up their hard-earned rewards.
Drums speak the names of those who hold it as close as their heartbeat and performed celebratory dances to Queen Elizabeth II, under whose reign they were emancipated, and danced for Kenneth Kaunda and other African leaders when they visited Guyana. These cultural icons include Phylis Hope, Samuel Chisolm, Aunt Belle Douglas, Kathy and Reuben Welch. Today, Murlene Welch, Susan George, Ingrid Harvey, Josephine Johnson and Elise Williams are keepers of the flame. And drums continue to echo their soundtrack across the sands of time. (Text and photos provided by ACDA)
