research
My research areas broadly defined include music, religion, ritual, performance, language ideologies, African diasporic studies, and identity formation. More specifically I seek to examine the ways in which identity is formed, reformed, and negotiated on both the individual and group level in transnational and diasporic communities in the United States, the Caribbean, and West Africa. I combine ethnographic (qualitative) and ethnomusicological (quantitative) field techniques that include classic participant-observation, formal and informal interviewing, audio and video recording, and musical transcription in order to collect data geared towards an holistic, cross-disciplinary approach spanning cultural anthropology, linguistic anthropology, visual anthropology and ethnomusicology.
In my master’s thesis, titled Drumming for the Egungun: (Re)Inventing Yoruba Identity at Oyotunji Village, I examined identity formation among a group of drummers from Oyotunji Village, South Carolina. Oyotunji Village is an intentional community of Yoruba revivalists that was founded in 1970 by Oba Oseijeman Adefunmi I as an attempt at providing African-Americans with a place to spiritually and symbolically reconnect with their African heritage through the practice of orisa-voodoo, a religious system based on Yoruba orisa worship. In my thesis, I employ an analytical model of subject-centered musical ethnography, proposed by Timothy Rice, as a means of examining the ways in which specific drumming practices and techniques employed by the members of the Oyotunji Village drumming society contribute to their identification with a transnational Yoruba identity. This identity production takes place primarily through learning to play drums and percussion instruments for performance in weekly ceremonies and monthly festivals dedicated to specific orisa and ancestral spirits. A successful performance depends on not only proficiency in technique, but cultural knowledge as well.
For my dissertation, I plan to return to Oyotunji Village for more extensive field work that will expand upon my earlier research in several specific areas. First, I plan to record and transcribe the various rhythms played during the festivals, while also learning to play those rhythms by taking lessons from some of the local drummers. Second, I plan to record, transcribe, and translate the songs and chants that accompany the drums and percussion. As these performances are usually conducted in Yoruba I will also learn to speak Yoruba under the tutelage of local members of the community. Lastly, I intend to videotape several performances, rituals, and ceremonies to produce a short ethnographic film that will accompany my written dissertation. All of this data will be used to analyze and compare the rhythms, songs, and chants performed at Oyotunji Village with similar performances in Nigeria, traditional homeland of the Yoruba, and Cuba, the birthplace of Santeria, a syncretic religion which also draws heavily on Yoruba culture and religion.
By combining this data along with further interviews of drummers, singers, dancers, and festivals participants I hope to gain further insight into the ways in which language use, musical performance, and religious practice come together to construct transnational identities in deterritorialized contexts on both the individual and group level. I believe this research will make a unique and valuable contribution to areas of study including the Black Atlantic and the African diaspora, syncretic religions, identity formation, ethnomusicology of African drumming, and language use in both music and speech production.
