In her recent work, Amanda Villepastour, an ethnomusicologist, teamed with Yoruba master drummer Rabiu Ayandoku and linguist ‘Tunde Adegbola, harnessing their nearly ten-year relationship to intimately explore the language of the bata drums. While this book will be of interest to those studying speech surrogacy, especially within Africa and among the Yoruba, her work specifically contributes to a growing literature on the bata drumming tradition, both in Nigeria by scholars such as Debra Klein and Michael Marcuzzi as well as across the Atlantic in Cuban Santeria by authors such as Steven Cornelius and Katherine Hagedorn. Overall, by critiquing Darius Thieme’s seminal study of bata and deconstructing the subsequent pervasive perpetuation of his conclusion that the bata is a “stammerer,” or poor communicator, Villepastour seeks to combat such notions, carefully showing the ability of the bata to “speak” clearly, complexly, and effectively. In all, the book offers, as she states, “the most comprehensive description and analysis of the bata’s surrogate speech practice” (9), complementing the celebrated work of Nigerian scholar Akin Euba.

In chapter 1, the author provides only a short cultural and historical contextualization of the bata, leaving more detailed social investigations of bata drumming to others. She also notes that her choice of title serves to highlight the confluence of “old and new” technologies in contemporary Nigeria (13). This point seems to invite a broader discussion and connection to the extensive literature of modernity in Africa, but is not addressed at any length. Villepastour instead proceeds with a literature review of speech surrogacy and Yoruba drumming, focusing on the discursive relationship between the bata and the more widely known Yoruba drum called dundun. Subsequently, the author’s cursory coverage of the Yoruba people in general and their religious practices makes it clear that the book is intended to focus on the detailed description and analysis of the mechanics of the bata language. After briefly outlining Yoruba drums in general and the repertoire of the bata, she spends a significant portion of this chapter chronicling the lives and works of her collaborators, along the way showing that the bata is an endangered art form threatened primarily by modernity and Christianity.

After giving a brief overview of the various generic categories of bata drumming (praise poetry, proverbs, orisha rhythms), with an increasingly complex array of transcriptions and linguistic analyses, chapter 2 builds toward a grammar of the bata speech-surrogacy system. While such technical analysis of vowel-consonant construction and other phonetic issues may alienate some readers, her careful study will undoubtedly be of great importance to those particularly interested in the mechanics the bata’s drum language and its relationship to Yoruba verbal speech practices.

In chapter 3, the author discusses a recent artistic innovation within the bata ensemble, namely, the development of the omele meta—a collection of three small drums tied together, which are indirectly inspired by Cuban congas. Comparing it to Euba’s work on the dundun and her own on the iyaalu bata, she further puts to rest the notion that the bata is a “stammerer,” or “talks with difficult” (69). Before delving into another technically dense section with rich linguistic detail, we get a glimpse of the omele bata’s role in Nigerian popular music, such as the fuji of Barrister and the widely known juju of King Sunny Ade and other highlife artists. In the end, Villepastour argues that, “the bata can in fact do everything that the dundun and omele meta can do in respect of representing ordinary speech” (90); it is only that the dundun and the omele meta are more widely understood because they are more ubiquitously disseminated in Nigeria and throughout the world via the aforementioned popular music forms.

Chapter 4 then particularly deals with the coding of Yoruba speech into a verbal system of vocables that can, in turn, be translated onto the bata drums. This intermediary coding serves several functions, for instance, providing an oral notation system that acts as a lingua franca which can be comprehended across geographical regions. While this coding unites bata musicians, it also establishes, as Villepastour argues, insidership and identity. Most notably, perhaps, the author highlights the Yoruba practice of using this coded system as a form of spoken communication in itself, apart from a pedagogical tool for drummers; this phenomenon further solidifies the collective identity of bata drummers, she claims, adding to their prestige and pride as it is sometimes employed to conveniently exclude outsiders.

After a brief epilogue, in Appendix II, the author includes an extensive transcription of the owe and oriki music performed on the bata ensemble, complete with the drummed texts and their English translations. Villepastour notes that her book is not intended to be a how-to of bata drumming; rather, transcriptions are descriptive, not prescriptive, with the primary goal of aiding analysis, not facilitating performance.

Supplementing her careful transcriptions and analysis of Yoruba drum texts, the author includes a self-produced CD. This recording includes performances of spiritual rhythms, praise poetry, proverbs, and other selected phrases. Removing bells and adding voice-overs, this CD, produced under controlled studio/“laboratory” conditions, emphasizes its heuristic intent, designed to provide aural clarity rather than accurate representations of performance contexts. In this way, this CD acts to supplement numerous previous recordings of bata drumming, helping to make sense of these earlier works (3).

In the end, this study will most certainly be of great value to scholars of bata drumming (dispelling its reputation as a “stammerer”) and speech surrogacy more generally. However, while this research has the potential to contribute to wider discourses in African studies, anthropology, and ethnomusicology, it only marginally engages with such conversations directly. It would have been interesting to see the author take up in more detail issues that she herself references, such as modernity, tradition, popular music, globalization, migration, identity, communication, and religion.

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[Review length: 967 words • Review posted on April 20, 2011]