La Confradia de los Congos del Espiritu Santo de Villa Mella

There I was the other day, sitting alongside a dirt road in a poor Dominican barrio, women passing by with fruit baskets on their heads, kids playing beisbol with a branch and a ball of yarn. I was eating my rice and bean casually as if my setting was not extraordinary whatsoever, and I couldn’t help but start laughing spontaneously that this was my life now. It’s amazing how fast you get used to things, people can adapt to anything.

The place was Mato Los Indios, a community at the top of the poor northern suburb called Villa Mella, practically the farthest point you can go and still be in the city. Although officially still part of sprawling Santo Domingo, you really wouldn’t know it. A world apart from the lonely endless boulevards downtown, Mata los Indios is luscious and green with mango and avocado trees, its residents live in spacious but rickety clapboard houses. Men sleep in rocking chairs, women in curlers sit around a dominoes game and talk in hushed tones.

I’ve been coming here quite a bit because the community is well known for retaining old-school Afro-Dominican musical practices long forgotten elsewhere. There is a lot of stuff going down here, but I’m here specifically to check out a particular group called the Brotherhood of the Congos of the Holy Spirit of Villa Mella. They are a religious brotherhood of sacred musicians organized into a kingdom, with their own king, and dukes, and princes, and the whole thing gets passed down hereditarily, so if you are born into a confradia family, you know right then and there that you have a lifelong obligation to keep the music alive. The confradia plays a unique music called congo, consisting of a strict repertoire of 21 toques, or tunes, on a unique set of instruments that they build themselves. Other than a few select fiestas patronales (saint's day parties), the sole responsibility of the Congos is to play for the funeral rites for people in the community. The songs are a sung in Spanish mixed in with long forgotten African words. Nobody knows what the words means anymore, but the point gets across.

The Confradia was recently recognized by UNESCO as patrimony of humanity, whatever that means, so this group of sagely old men has gotten a bit of international attention. The local anthropology museum is funding a drum-making workshop taught by them on for the local kids, and I’m helping out by taking pictures and recording the class. You can check out some footage of a demonstration of Congo here:



The king of the Congos is about to hit the grand old age of 102, and isn’t doing much playing nowadays, so the class is led by the Captain of the brotherhood, Sixto Minier. I couldn’t help but be kind of nervous meeting him – the man literally pulsates with some kind of crazy gravity, he has a look in his eyes that almost makes me believe that he does indeed communicate with the misterios, the spirits of the saints that come down to Earth to cure the sick and possess the musicians during long nights of playing. Instantly though, I feel accepted by him, he welcomes me warmly in his home as a family member, this is just how it goes in Mata Los Indios. Unlike the incredibly depressing and hopeless poverty I’ve seen elsewhere in DR, this neighborhood has this strange peacefulness about it, as everybody that goes there insists, there really is something powerful going on there.

I decided to stick around for the afternoon, and as I was both sick and somewhat hungover, I took an amazing nap underneath a mango tree and enjoyed a respite from the maxed out car stereos that pass by my window every 15 minutes. After politely declining several mothers insisting on offering their daughters in marriage, I got my ass kicked in dominoes by three 7-year-old girls, and then played first base in a short-lived baseball game in which no player was over 4 feet tall.

My personal self-appointed guide in town is this little dude who happens to be the heir to the throne of the Confradia. He is awesome, and teaches me all sorts of things like how to cheat at dominoes, and the shortcut to the dirty river down the hill. I asked him what his favorite music was, and he told me “reggaeton, and congo.” The tradition sure isn’t going anywhere. But the other reason that this answer was perfect and beautiful to me is because, as my teacher Duluc’s theory goes, reggeaton descends from congo. The style of drumming played here in Mata Los Indios has been found in isolated little pockets all over the Americas, the theory going that it these spiritual brotherhoods and their music carry over directly from a specific part of Central Africa. Duluc thinks that the group of Congos in Panama, where reggaeton was first born, influenced the music. Sure enough, the basic rhythm of played on the smallest drum is the very same dum-da-doop-dum that itches your brain behind every Daddy Yankee club jam.

Could be, anyway, I am no longer surprised by the intricacy of the webs. As Anthony Braxton once said, “Hooray for music.”

More blog updates to come soon! I promise.