Nyabinghi

COUNTRY: Jamaica
LANGAUGE: Jamaican Patois

This chant comes at the beginning of a Nyabinghi drumming session captured on the Smithsonian Folkways CD, “Drums of Defiance: Maroon Music from the Earliest Free Black Communities of Jamaica.” Jamaican Nyabinghi drumming is a style of Rastafarian ritual music in which three drums of various pitches – the bass (the “thunder”), the middle-pitched funde and the high-pitched akete – have a rhythmic conversation below the communal singing of familiar Rastafarian chants. Nyabinghi music was a rhythmic and cultural precursor to ska and reggae. Learn about Nyabinghi drumming.

Lyrics of All Around This World version:

Oh mister ay ay ay ay ay ay ay ay ay ay ay ay ay