Vaccine (or sometimes ''vaksin'') are rudimentary single-note trumpets found in Haiti and, to a lesser extent, the

Dominican Republic The Dominican Republic ( ; es, República Dominicana, ) is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean region. It occupies the eastern five-eighths of the island, which it shares with ...

as well as Jamaica. They consist of a simple tube, usually bamboo, with a mouthpiece at one end. They are thus also referred to as ''banbou'' or ''bambú'', as well as ''bois bourrique'' (or ''bwa bourik''), ''granboe'', ''fututo'', or ''boom pipe''. They are not to be confused with other Haitian handmade trumpets called ''konè'' or ''klewon'', made of a yard-long white metal tube with a flared horn, called ''kata''. Vaccine players are known as ''banboulyès''.

Origins

Haitian ethnographer Jean Bernard traces the vaksin back to indigenous precolonial peoples of Haiti. However both

Thompson Thompson may refer to: People * Thompson (surname) * Thompson M. Scoon (1888–1953), New York politician Places Australia *Thompson Beach, South Australia, a locality Bulgaria * Thompson, Bulgaria, a village in Sofia Province Canada * ...

and Holloway draw links to the single-note Bakongo bamboo trumpets called ''disoso'', themselves originated in

Mbuti The Mbuti people, or Bambuti, are one of several indigenous pygmy groups in the Congo region of Africa. Their languages are Central Sudanic languages and Bantu languages. Subgroups Bambuti are pygmy hunter-gatherers, and are one of the old ...

hocket In music, hocket is the rhythmic linear technique using the alternation of notes, pitches, or chords. In medieval practice of hocket, a single melody is shared between two (or occasionally more) voices such that alternately one voice sounds wh ...

ing music. Gillis also likens them to trumpets used in Bambara ''broto'' music along the Niger, and Jamaican

Kumina Kumina is an Afro-Jamaican religion. Kumina has practices that include secular ceremonies, dance and music that developed from the beliefs and traditions brought to the island by Kongo enslaved people and indentured labourers, from the Congo r ...

Construction

Traditionally, vaccine are made of a length of bamboo, hollowed-out and dried, with a node membrane pierced and wrapped with leather or bicycle inner-tube rubber to form a mouthpiece at one end. One or more segments are taken from higher or lower in the bamboo trunk to fashion vaccines; usually more than 1 m long and 5 to 7 cm in diameter. Each one is cut shorter or longer in order to produce a higher or lower tone: ''bas banbou'' is long and gives a low-pitched sound, and ''charlemagne banbou'' is short and is pitched high. McAlister explains that Afro-Hispaniolan lore involves asking the bamboo plant for its use and leaving a small payment in its place. Landies witnessed this process, which she described as follows: "''the harvest of the bamboo was accompanied by an offering. .. tis harvested with the permission of

Simbi A Simbi (also Cymbee, Sim'bi, pl. Bisimbi) is a water spirit in traditional Kongo spirituality. In Haitian Vodoun context, they are a large and diverse family of serpents known as loa. Hoodoo In Central Africa's Kongo region, "...bisimbi in ...

, a Petwo Lwa who loves water, as bamboo in the Dominican Republic grows in moist land, e.g., along rivers''" On occasion, iron or plastic pipes are substituted for the bamboo.

Playing

A typical vaccine band is composed of three to five players, usually marching abreast of each other. Players use a method called

ing, whereby each individual blows a single tone rhythmically to create an ostinato motif together. These motifs are usually composed through a process of group improvisation. To keep rhythm, vaccine players also beat a rhythmic timeline, called ''kata'' with a long stick on the side of the tube, making the instrument both melodic and percussive.

Tuning and scale

Within an ostinato, vaccine tones stack up in approximate third intervals to each other—creating tritones and arpeggiated diminished chords, but without a harmonic intent—with the two treble-most vaccines often tuned a semitone apart. Landies also reports other intervals between the lowest two voices. One of the vaccine serves as the tonal center of the motif.

Uses

Most importantly, vaccines are a key component of

rara Rara is a form of festival music that originated in Haiti that is used for street processions, typically during Easter Week. The music centers on a set of cylindrical bamboo trumpets called vaksin, but also features drums, maracas, güiras or g ...

orchestras. In his 1941 article, Courlander wrote that rara bands "''seldom have drums and depend almost entirely on'' vaccines"; though both Lomax's mid-1930s and McAllister's early 1990s studies report many more instruments—mostly percussive—as part of rara orchestras. Scholars also report vaccines used as signal horns by parties of agricultural workers, fishermen, stevedores as well as sometimes used in dances of the Congo cycle.

References

{{Reflist, refs= {{cite document , title=Thinking Rara: Root Grafts in Haitian popular music , author=Averill, G. , year=1990 , publisher=New Orleans: International Association for the Study of Popular Music {{cite book , title=A Day for the Hunter, a Day for the Prey: Popular Music and Power in Haiti , author=Averill, G. , year=1997 , pag
237
, publisher=Chicago: The University of Chicago Press , isbn=978-0-226-03292-4 , url=https://archive.org/details/dayforhunterdayf00aver/page/237 {{cite journal , title=Ballad Hunting in the Black Republic: Alan Lomax in Haiti, 1936–37 , author=Averill, G. , journal=Caribbean Studies , volume=36 , number=2 , date=July–December 2008 , pages=15, 17 , publisher=San Juan, Puerto Rico: Institute of Caribbean Studies , doi=10.1353/crb.0.0042 , s2cid=145296791 , url=https://www.academia.edu/8759088 {{cite dictionary , url=http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-4002255816 , title=Vaksin , author=Averill, G. , journal=Grove Music Online , year=2014 , access-date=4 March 2018 , doi=10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.L2255816 , isbn=978-1-56159-263-0 {{cite journal , title=Musical Instruments Of Haiti , author=Courlander, H. , journal=The Musical Quarterly , volume=XXVII , issue=3 , pages=375, 381 , year=1941 , doi=10.1093/mq/XXVII.3.371 {{Cite AV media notes , url=https://www.discogs.com/Various-Rara-In-Haiti-Gaga-In-The-Dominican-Republic/release/10907308 , title=Rara in Haiti/Gaga in the Dominican Republic , author=Gillis, V. , series=Ethnic Folkways Library , page=5 , year=1978 , id=Folkways 4531 , publisher=Folkways Records {{cite AV media notes , url=https://folkways-media.si.edu/liner_notes/smithsonian_folkways/SFW40402.pdf , title=Caribbean Revels: Haitian Rara and Dominican Gagá , last=Gillis, V. , last2=Averill, G. , year=1991 , id=SFW40402 , publisher=Smithsonian Folkways Records , doi=10.2307/768727 , issn=0740-1558 {{cite book , url=http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=22065 , title=Africanisms in American Culture , author=Holloway, J. E. , page=298 , year=2005 , publisher=Indiana University Press , isbn=978-0-253-21749-3 {{cite thesis , url=https://pqdtopen.proquest.com/pubnum/3373713.html?FMT=AI , title=The band carries medicine: Music, healing and community in Haitian/Dominican Rara/Gagá , author=Landies, M. E. , year=2011 , isbn=978-1-244-08147-5 , via=ProQuest {{cite thesis , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CbAHAQAAMAAJ , title=The Origin and Development of Ethnic Caribbean Dance and Music , author=Lekis, L. , year=1956 , publisher=University of Florida Press {{cite book , url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9790520228237/page/46 , title=Rara! Vodou, Power, and Performance in Haiti and Its Diaspora , author=McAlister, E. , page
464795
, year=2002 , publisher=Berkeley: University of California Press , isbn=978-0-520-22823-8 {{cite journal , title=Listening for Geographies: Music as Sonic Compass Pointing Toward African and Christian Diasporic Horizons in the Caribbean , author=McAlister, E. , page=32 , year=2012 , journal=Black Music Research Journal , volume=32 , issue=2 , doi=10.5406/blacmusiresej.32.2.0025 , jstor=10.5406/blacmusiresej.32.2.0025 , publisher=Chicago: University of Illinois Press , s2cid=191993531 {{cite web , url=http://gailpellettproductions.com/ra-ra-a-haitian-festival/ , title=Ra-Ra, a Haitian festival – Gail Pellett Productions , date=3 December 2010 {{cite web , url=http://www.units.miamioh.edu/ath175/student/WALKOKD/index.html#performance , title=Intertwining Voodoo and Catholicism in Celebration. , author=Walko, K. , publisher=Miami University (ATH175 Peoples of the World) , date=12 December 2012 , access-date=9 March 2018 Bamboo musical instruments Haitian musical instruments