Bouladjel
guadeloupean vocal percussion technique
Bouladjèl (also sometimes Boulagèl or Bannjogita) is a vocal percussion technique practiced on the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. It consists of a poly-rhythmic superposition of percussive vocalizations (throat sounds, onomatopoeia, gasps) and hand claps performed as an accompaniment to certain forms of traditional singing, mostly songs of mourning and funeral wakes. A bouladjèl performer is known as a boularien.
Origins
Written accounts of bouladjèl are few and recent. It is thought to have developed among Guadeloupean enslaved field workers to replicate drumming at a time when the Code Noir forbade them to use drums, and transmitted orally since. In 1988, Lafontaine presented "boula-gueule" as a vocal polyphony performed during funeral wakes. However, although it is nowadays most specifically a funeral singing practice, local oral accounts state that it was also commonly heard outside of wakes up to the 1970s (e.g. child play, work, leisure singing...). Indeed, during his 1962 visit to Morne-a-l'eau, Guadeloupe, Lomax recorded bouladjèl in both a funeral context ("Bo! Pati") and a work context ("Adolin Do La").
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This entry incorporates text from “Bouladjel” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.