Artmosphere
Samba Zawo
Tanbou: The heart of music I
n every corner of Haiti, you can hear it: in a child’s footsteps as he scrambles on a crowded street, in a choir singing in a mountain top church, or on a stage where the dancer gracefully mirrors its rhythms. The pitter patter of drums, whether near or far, calls for your immediate attention. And like a moth drawn to a light, you cannot ignore it. To Samba Zao, one of Haiti’s best drummers and a founder of the Rasin music genre, the Haitian identity is directly tied to the Haitian drum, or tanbou, as it is called here. “The tanbou represents all of the different ethnicities that make up Haiti,” Zao says, “from North, East, West and 4 MAGIC HAITI OCTOBER 2011
South Africa. But some of the Africans that were brought over didn’t become slaves, they ran away to be with the natives of the island. This shows in the diversity of the tanbou rhythms. The native’s rhythms and the colonizer’s rhythms mixed with all the different African ethnic groups make up the diverse sounds of the Haitian tanbou.” Indeed, the tanbou is an anthropological instrument, and many years ago, it was used as a mode of communication, a way to assemble people. As its fast repetitive tempo resonates through your body and its complicated twists and turns weave smoothly to your ears, you understand why.