In the Afro-Venezuelan community of Curiepe, the past and religion are deeply connected to the construction of identity and to the sociopolitical organization (Ugueto-Ponce 2017). The religious festivities are centered around three main figures: San Juan Congo, Niño Jesús de Curiepe, and San Juan Bautista. These festivities set the arena for the circulation of narratives about the foundation of the town of Curiepe. Key characters of different ages (young, adult, and elderly) use and transform representations of the past to explain individual and collective practices and behaviors of the present. Based on ethnographic methodologies, this paper approaches the intergenerational function of social memory through similes with the rhythmic dialogue of Barlovento’s “culo e’ puya” drums. I propose that historical narratives and memories circulate among the community in a similar fashion to the “culo e’ puya” ensemble’s rhythmic exchange. Evoking memories from Curiepe’s foundation and other events of the 18th Century in a collective intergenerational context produces discursive counterpointing and improvisation. Each generation starts from the oral history that their elders (prima drum) passed on to them. Then, this generation (cruzao and pujao drums) executes some changes (embellishments) that the youngest (pujao) circulate in their field of action. In this way, history is altered as it responds to a new sociopolitical context. What we perceive is a renewal of the soundscape and a representation of the past that responds to the needs of the youngest generation, after having retained the adults’ and elders’ references.

In a context of mass migration and political crises, and after a rich history of political organizing throughout the twentieth and twenty-first-century, Afro-Venezuelan movements continue to struggle to be heard by the government, and the population at large (Monagreda, 2021). While official recognition as a group and inclusion in the latest census are recent gains of Afro- Venezuelans across the country, their musical expressions and the history contained in them are often not considered in their complexity, but rather seen as a monument of a distant past, or as surviving in a simplified form. It is time, then, to examine what kind of voice lies in the Afro- Venezuelan experience, which has been misheard or unheard for so long. What is the role of the human voice when it accompanies the drum-centered Afro-Venezuelan musical culture? Are these chants and singing mainly religious in nature? A way to introduce a more “legible” or “audible” melodic tone amidst the polyrhythms? Or a way to conform to a Western musical standard that otherwise would qualify these expressions as mere noise? Examining examples of call-and- response, religious chants, and improvisations from the popular music of the Barlovento region (as presented in the compilation that Jesús “Chucho” García put together for the Smithsonian Folkways recordings), this paper will locate the voice behind the drums, arguing how you cannot divorce one from the other. In sum: to hear the voice, you need to listen to the drum first.

Due to economic hardship, thousands of Venezuelans have left their homes for new territories abroad. The myriad of cultural traditions, spiritual practices, and rituals that ancestrally ground the Afro-Venezuelan community are now in flux. In the community of Barlovento, one will find drums of culo e’ puya, mina, fulía and instruments like the quitiplás, platillo, and maraca. These instruments are used for specific festivals and times of year and mark a social and spiritual moment and space that has been passed down for centuries. The music, song and dance brought on from these instruments and the musicians have been a tool of survival. From an ethnographic research model this paper asks Venezuelans outside of the country: Where are the Drums? Did they travel to the new home? Were they recreated? Replaced with another instrument or solely remembered? Chucho García states that, “We can interpret our cultures of resistance as reflecting and being products of these principles of resistance to death, which are still a part of our resistant worldview and behavior... These principles will continue to guide us in the new millennium” (1990). For Afro-Venezuelans, the drum has been a leading symbol of resistance and García’s belief that the principles of resistance will serve as a guide is now being put to the test in this millennium. This paper will discuss the connection of the music to the cultural values and endurance of Afro- Venezuelan people.

From its origins as a community-based means for religious and secular celebration in Afro- Venezuelan communities, tambor has been selectively embraced as national folklore since the 1940s and as a lucrative venture in the local entertainment industry starting in the 90s. In this paper, I will discuss the fusion of tambor with electronica as a much more recent development that propels Afro-Venezuelan traditional music and musicians into wider networks of consumption. It also creates forms of aesthetic legibility for tambor in clubs, as part of latamtrónica collectives, and beyond Venezuela. My focus is on Barlovento-inspired tracks made by 4 DJ/producers (Akilin, Raúl Monsalve y los Forajidos, Venezonix, MPeach), three of which are part of the Venezuelan diasporas in the US and Europe. While debates about ethics in the world music market (Erlmann 1999, Feld 2001) and the politics of digital fusion in Latin American musics (Asencio 2004, Baker 2015, Madrid 2008, Moehn 2012, Romero 2002, Tucker 2018) abound in ethnomusicology, I ask: What do members of the tambor community make of this creative exercise? How has this form of experimentation come about in collaboration with well-known tambor culture bearers when the notion of the traditional is still highly policed in other tambor contexts? Instead of pondering whether this is a reiteration of world music dynamics, my interests are on the specific labor of collaboration and learning between DJ/producers and tambor performers despite displacement, and the previous local music scenes that contributed to the popularity of electronica in Caracas.