Creole culture in Sri Lanka |11 April 2014

A distinctive Creole culture began to evolve in Sri Lanka (Ceylon) with the colonisation of the island by Portuguese back in the early 15th century.

Oral history has it that some 3,000 Africans, mainly from east African coastal areas, Mozambique included, were brought to the island by the Portuguese to fight wars against the native kings and for labour. Portuguese mainly occupied maritime areas like Colombo, Batticaloa, Negambo, Trincomali, Galle and Jaffna.  The Portuguese era lasted from 1501 to 1658.

Having defeated the Portuguese, the Dutch took control of the coastal areas in mid-16th century (1658) and brought more Africans, believed to be some 5,000, to be used in the army, plantations and fortress-building. Portuguese, who were accorded amnesty, chose to stay on in the island under the Dutch rule. Some soldiers joined the Dutch army while others joined the native Sinhalese kings.

Non-soldiers engaged in plantation, trade and commerce. During the Dutch rule, some Africans owed by Portuguese escaped and ended up in the central province Kandyan kingdom where  they were well received and used by the native kings to fight back the colonialists, sometimes with much success.

The Dutch rule ended at the end of the 17th century with the arrival of the British. The British also brought Africans numbering round 6,000, and formed them into what was called ‘Kaffir regiments’ and stationed in different parts of the island. Even during the British rule, a significant number of Portuguese and Dutch families remained in the island. So did most of their African workers and the families they had started with local women.
 
Slavery was abolished in Ceylon in 1845 by the British government. Thus, the Africans totalling some 9,000 were freed. The British administration employed Afro-Ceylonese in various fields such as security, road and railway building, mail delivering, irrigation, plantations and domestic labour. The British ruled the entire island from 1796 to 1948, and during that period Afro-Ceylonese travelled freely and settled in different parts of the island, mixing with local families. Between 1871 and 1911, the Afro-Ceylonese were officially reported as Kaffirs in national census and official documents by the British administration.

Burghers
By the beginning of the 19th century, some 90,000 Portuguese and Dutch had naturalised having successively intermarried with either Sinhalese or Tamils, creating a new ethnic group called ‘Burgher’.   Those who lived in Colombo, Galle, Matara and Negambo mixed mainly with ethnic Sinhalese. In northern coastal areas like Trincomali, Batticaloa and Jaffna, they mixed with ethnic Tamils. Being predominantly Catholics, they had established a large number of churches across the country. Religious conversion took place en masse. Members of the Burgher community had also taken popular Portuguese and Dutch names like Silvano, Pereira, Fernando, Andre, Antonia, Bernardo, Alberto, Calixta, Celestino, Afonso, Aloisio, Alfredo, Hugo, Joaquim, Herberto and Francisco, which may be spelt and pronounced with slight variations today. As even non-Burgher Sinhalese and Tamil families took these names, due to the spread of Catholic religion from one coast to the other, they became popular names in Sri Lanka.

As for most of the Afro-Ceylonese, who had lived in the island for over 400 years, the process of assimilation was similar.  They had successively intermarried with Sinhalese, Tamils and Burghers. They had shed their original faiths and become converted Catholics. They had learned new languages and taken new names and dispersed all over the country, in what could be described as a true multi-ethnic melting pot, to the point one could not tell an Afro-Ceylonese from any other.
The legend of colonialists and their African workers is an integral part of Sri Lanka’s long history. If evidence is needed, the area called ‘Slave Island’ in the heart of Colombo city was where the largest regiment of Kaffir soldiers were kept by the colonialists. Kaffirs-built fortresses can be seen in several parts of the island, of which the one in Colombo was built by around 4,000 Kaffirs in the late 1600s, according to one Dutch governor. The Galle fortress built during Dutch era is now a world heritage site.

Creole culture
Portuguese-creole was the language developed within the community of Portuguese and Kaffirs for communication. Later it also became the link language between the colonialists, Kaffirs and the local Sinhala, Tamil, Muslim and Burgher communities. Creole, which was not written but spoken, resembles the early spoken language that existed in Portugal prior to the 12th century. Creole was widely spoken until English took over the role of link language and administrative language in the late 18th century. With Creole, there sprung a unique form of music and dance called ‘Kaffirinha’ based on African ‘manja’ and Portuguese ‘fado’ music, a  joint creation by Portuguese and the Kaffirs.  

Kaffirinha is a fast musical dance that stimulates men and women in performance. The music and rhythm are well adjusted to the dancers’ free movements, steps and gestures. Songs were electrifying to the dancers with plenty of twists of rhythm to keep them on patterned steps to the last, going into frenzy in the end. Kaffirinha became immensely popular among all communities due to its seductive  blend of music, lyrics and dance, which was mostly performed by men and women on intoxication having a good time, in the open air, mostly on the beach, late at night lit by the moon, a large bonfire or oil lamps. Romantic, isn’t it?
 
The earliest kaffirinha music makers would have used instruments like coconut shells, empty bottles, spoons, buffalo horns and local drums.  Several generations later, with that form of dance and music gaining immense popularity among all communities across the island, instruments like violin, mandolin, flat drum, maracus and Spanish guitar were used to play the accompanying music.

Baila
In 1940s, Kaffrinha transformed into dance and song form of entertainment called ‘Baila’ with the integration of Sinhalese lyrics, eastern and western rhythms and western musical instruments like drum kits, accordion, viola, organ, piano, mandolin, banjo, guitar, etc.  The word ‘Baila’ was derived from the Spanish verb ‘bailar’, meaning to dance and it resembled the ‘fandango’ which emanated in Spain.

Baila’s popularity reached incredible heights in the 1970s when the maestros like Wally Bastinaze, Henry Souza, Claude de Zoysa, Desmond Silva, Paul Fernando, Anton Rodrigo and Maxwell Mendis, swept the post independent nation off its feet with their energetic dance and music performance on stage.

 
Sri Lankan Kaffirs
The Sri Lankan born Africans have been better known as Kaffirs . They are proud to be called Kaffir and would insist that you call them nothing but Kaffir for they have been calling themselves as such for centuries.  

Their numbers are dwindling fast with only about 1,000 living in two pockets of palm-fringed rural settings; one on the north-west coast (Puttlum) and the other on the north- east coast (Trincomalee) of the island. The focus of this story is on the Kaffir community in Puttlum who have been able to preserve their original African form of music and dance and Creole, despite their integration into the larger social fabric by adopting the local ways of living.
 

“We are proud of our name,” said Lazarus Martin Ignatius, 82, recalling her grandfather saying that his ancestors came to Ceylon as Portuguese slaves.
“Music and dance are the best indicators of our African ancestry, other than our features,” said George Sherin Alex, 43, one of the village dancers who are taking a keen interest in preserving and promoting the African culture.

The Kaffir community still display noticeable African features like dark skin, curly hair, thick lips and wide nose. They display a fine sense of fun and humour whenever they get together. From the child to the old man, music is a way of life and instruments like tambourine and guitar are very familiar sights in every household. Often, men returning from daily wage earning jobs, having taken coconut toddy in moderation, doze off in hammocks strung across coconut trees while their women cook food on outdoor stoves singing catchy Creole tunes. Simplicity embroiled in fun and frolic is the way of life for the Kaffirs. This music is called ‘Manja’ (Portuguese – Manha).

African Manja

A typical Manja performance starts with slow rhythmic music and dance with songs of sadness, love, life, sea, animals, nature, birds sung in Creole. Manja songs are less charged with literacy meaning as the composers’ overriding concern has been to keep strictly to the melody, rhythm and beat. Songs contain few lyrics, just six or seven lines, which are repeated over and again.

But each song can last as long as an hour, starting with a slow beat and increasing in tempo until the music reaches a crescendo of drumming, shouting and clapping and dancers swinging their hips, hands and feet wildly. Music is played with home-made instruments like tambourine, coconut shells, spoons and empty bottles.

Manja performance is a direct link to the small minority’s distant African past. There are no particular costumes to be worn for a Manja performance, anything would do, but women would prefer long frocks reaching below their knees when performing concerts in full public view.

When asked about her African vibes, Sherin said: “We are the branches, our roots are in Africa. We have been living here for centuries. We don’t feel any different to anyone. We have been mixing so much that we fear our culture will disappear altogether with our younger ones looking less and less African.”

When asked what makes them different from other Sri Lankans, 61-year-old Elias said “our music and dance, which has been passed down from generation to generation. Otherwise we don’t feel any different to anyone else”.



Future

Even though their pride in African ancestry remains, the Afro-Sri Lankans are struggling to keep their heritage alive in an ever changing world. The future looks bleaks for them unless some concerted efforts are made to preserve their African identity, Creole language and original form of Manja music and dance in the face of rapid ethnic assimilation and socio-economic changes.

The younger ones are already looking less and less African, losing their facial features and the skin colour is getting lighter. Once a widely spoken Creole, is now limited to family conversations, community functions and songs.

Louisa Williams, 17, said she would train to become a traditional Kaffir dancer but admitted that she rarely used the dialect and could say only a few words like ‘water’, ‘eat’ and ‘sleep’.
Peter Luis, 52, said: “We are losing our language and having intermarried many times, our children are losing their African features.”

However, Sherin is hopeful and says “we want people to take an interest in our music so that they know that as a people, we too have a culture and something unique to offer. The African Sri Lankan should not simply become a distant memory”.

I couldn’t agree more with Sherin’s strategy: provide for families through music and they will preserve the culture in return. Perhaps, that is why Barefoot Gallery Cafe in Colombo is giving a lot of publicity to Manja music as depicted in the poster.



Contributed by Gamini Herath


The word Kaffir is not considered offensive, derogatory or insulting in Sri Lanka.