Beat Of The Drums: Batucadas

The island's fiestas are theatres of tradition but they are experimental theatres of innovation as well, their experiments attaching to the old the exuberance of the new. Yet, this new can itself be old, rooted in traditions far away in time and place which have morphed through their global movement and taken on a dynamic which, while it seems new, is nevertheless of a certain antiquity.

A musical tradition of the fiestas is the local band of drums and cornets. Most places have such bands in addition to the municipal band with its broader collection of horns and percussion. The drum, the rhythm is beaten wherever there is fiesta. It is drum of a military style. Correct, proper, never flash. It is the percussive heartbeat of fiesta music, but it is heartbeat which only ever used to keep steady time. It has now been made to race and to dance and to crash into the usually night air with an incessant rhythm that can be uplifting, soulful and mysterious. It is the batucada, a drumathon that is out of Africa, that has passed through a samba-ing in Brazil and is now a Mallorcan fiesta phenomenon. There are batucada bands galore. They are, more so than DJs with their decks and their Ibizan pretensions, the riot of music of the contemporary fiesta. Loud. Non-stop. The beat of fiestas.

Where did these batucadas come from? Well, that's easy to answer - Brazil in terms of musical inspiration - but it hasn't necessarily been the case that Brazilians have been the driving force. The batucada, for all that it is nowadays ubiquitous and de rigueur for the Mallorcan fiesta (and other occasions), doesn't have a long history on the island. At the turn of the century, it was all but unknown. One of the first batucada groups to emerge was Tambors per la Pau (drums for peace). Another, Pachamama Percussió, is about ten years old. The most likely explanation as to how the batucada caught on is probably the local celebration of Carnival, and as part of the mythology of Carnival there is "La Pachamama", said to be Mother Earth but rather more than this. A different meaning is the cosmos.

Whatever the background to the batucada in Mallorca, it has taken on a life of its own. Musically, new styles have been adopted. Pachamama Percussió combines all sorts of styles, though they are all Latin of one type or another. And while in the early years there were only a handful of batucada troupes, there are now numerous ones. Mostly every town can claim to have one. Or more than one. The growth has been such that the biggest group, Saravà, was the result of the merger of Bunyola's and Santa Maria del Cami's batucada groups. It has anything up to seventy people banging away.

Though they exist in most towns, the batucada groups' relationships with town halls have not always been that positive. Certain towns have embraced them, others have been less inclined to, the reason being a touch of musical snobbery. Is the playing of a whole load of drums music? This seems to be the look-down-the-nose attitude, one born out of the local pride in towns' music bands and music schools. This pride doesn't always extend to being open to alternative types of music, while with the batucada, though the groups do include professionals, there are also amateurs who have certainly not gone through anything like a musical schooling route. Not untypically perhaps, there has been some official resistance to participation of the more or less anyone-can-make-music variety.

This said, it is clear that many towns have no problem at all in accepting batucadas. Their presence is part of the official programme for fiestas and it is a presence that has been grafted on to existing traditions. Muro is a case in point with its Sant Antoni fiestas. The batucada adds powerfully to the overall spectacle, noise and terror of the demons, and indeed several demons gangs now have their own dedicated batucadas. 

But then, there is the noise. Well yes, the batucadas are very noisy, but this is the point of them. You don't bang drums in order to be quiet. The noise may be a further reason why there has been some official indifference or unacceptance, but it is the case that the batucadas have gained popular acceptance. They make a heck of a racket, but it's a heck of a good racket and one that is amplified even more when there is a gathering of different batucada groups, as is the case at some fiestas. Maybe they should consider organising a mega-mega-batucada. Hundreds and hundreds of drums. There again, I suppose something like this has already been done. Remember the London Olympics opening ceremony?