Kumina

Kumina is a religion centered in Jamaica's southeastern parish, St. Thomas. Its presence was first noted only in the 1950s, but it was likely formulated by West Central African indentured laborers introduced by the British colonial government and British plantation owners between 1845 and 1865. However, its beliefs and rituals are not unrelated to those of Maroons (runaway slaves) in the neighboring parish, Portland, from where migrants settled in northern St. Thomas in the late nineteenth century. During the mid-twentieth century, Kumina spread when its adherents joined population movements into Kingston, the island's capital, and in the second half of the century it moved further westward into St. Catherine Parish.

Kumina is a belief system dedicated to ancestor commemoration. While the human has a spirit that returns at death to its creator, it also has a spirit, kuyu, that bridges the grave and the temporal world. This is the spirit with which the believer interacts as a medium and protégé. Within Kumina, no deities are called upon or worshiped, although a divine creator is recognized, named Zaambi, Zaambi Ampungo, Kinzaambi, or anglicized as King Zaambi. This is the creator among many Kongo subgroups of West Central Africa. His element is thunder.

Kumina ceremonies take the form of dancing in a counterclockwise circle around drummers seated on two drums: the bandu or kibandu, and the playin' kyas (cask). The single-headed drums are beaten with the palms, and tonal variation is achieved by imposing and releasing pressure on the drumhead with one heel. The bandu keeps a 2/2 heartthrob, while counterrhythms and rolls are slapped on the cask. Short repetitive songs by the dancers use either the Kongo language or Jamaican Creole English. As the dancing and drumming proceed, participants become possessed by spirits of the departed, persons who had in the near or distant past been community members. Possession behavior involves slumping to the ground, rigidity of features, body tremors or stiffness, and climbing up rafters or trees. Possession, called mayal, is interpreted as the return of ancestral spirits to enjoy the life experiences they once knew.

The Kumina ceremony is called a "duty," which translates the Koongo word kamama, "to feel obliged to keep a promise or perform a duty." This obligation can result from a dreamed request by an ancestor, or it acknowledges significant rites of passage for an individual either living or dead, such as anniversaries of birth or death, and the "tombing" of graves (their cementing over) a year or two after burial. "Duties" also mark communal anniversaries such as the turn of the year or Emancipation from slavery on August 1, 1838. Ceremonies can also petition help with physical and mental healing, legal matters, and the like. Upright posts in the shed ("bood," or booth) may be wound with ribbons in colors that signify the spiritual mood of the occasion. The head ties and clothes of the principal participants may also bear emblematic colors.

Kumina ceremonies typically start in the early night and last until near dawn. A major recess occurs around midnight when the "table" is "broken." This is a table bearing candles, bread, cakes, and fruits in a borrowing from the Afro-Christian religion Revival; it replicates a communion altar. A reading from the Bible may introduce the bread-breaking segment. The communal meal also includes meat of a goat that had been fed while being led around the circle before being beheaded publicly during the ceremony. Cooked salt-free meat and rice on banana leaves are sacralized by placement in front of the drums and then sited on the ground at the four corners of the premises as offerings to the ancestors. Early in the ceremony the ritual space of the "bood" is demarcated by the "king" or "queen" of the proceedings, who sprays rum libations from the mouth toward its four cardinal points. Kumina's ritual language is an intercalation of Jamaican Creole English and Kongo words and fossilized phrases.

See also Africanisms; Creole Languages of the Americas; Kennedy, Imogene Queenie; Religion; Revivalism

Bibliography

Bilby, Kenneth, and Fu-Kiau kia Bunseki. Kumina: A Kongo-Based Tradition in the New World. Brussels: Centre d'étude et de documentation africaines, 1983.

Carter, Hazel. "Annotated Kumina Lexicon." African-Caribbean Institute of Jamaica Research Review 3 (1996): 84–129.

Lewin, Olive. A Rock It Come Over: The Folk Music of Jamaica. Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2000.

Ryman, Cheryl. "Kumina: Stability and Change." African-Caribbean Institute of Jamaica Research Review 1 (1984): 81–128.

Warner-Lewis, Maureen. The Nkuyu: Spirit Messengers of the Kumina. Mona, Jamaica: Savacou, 1977.

maureen warner-lewis (2005)