Cuban Ceremonial Batá Drumming and YouTube: Understanding Tradition, Change and Video-Sharing in the 21st Century

Abstract

This thesis examines and analyses some key issues related to the emergence of Cuban batá ceremony on YouTube. A musical-religious ceremony related to the Afro-Cuban religion commonly known as Santería, batá ceremony has been part of the YouTube landscape since 2006, although its practice in Cuba dates back to the late 19th century. As a traditional musical-religious practice, its mediation through video, and subsequent dissemination and representation on YouTube, is examined in light of how videography and online video-sharing practices affect the performance and meaning of batá ceremony in the real world, offline environment, as well as examining the way that this new, online representation creates new meaning and understanding of batá performance for those who are involved in its practice. Through examining both the practice of videography at batá ceremony and the production and reception of its online representation on YouTube, I seek to contribute to the growing body of literature that is examining online communities that form around musical practice. This focus on a religious-musical practice also brings into perspective how the effects of modern technological mediation play into traditional religious practices in the modern era, and how this is affecting ceremonial batá drummers and other religious practitioners, those people who arguably have the biggest stake in these new practices. To do this I utilise ethnographic, participantobservation methods in both the offline environment of batá ceremony, and the online environment of YouTube.