Vaccine [4] [5] (or sometimes vaksin [1] [2] [3] ) are rudimentary single-note trumpets found in Haiti and, to a lesser extent, the Dominican Republic [6] as well as Jamaica. [3] They consist of a simple tube, usually bamboo, with a mouthpiece at one end.
They are thus also referred to as banbou [7] or bambú, [6] as well as bois bourrique [4] (or bwa bourik [8] ), granboe, [9] fututo, [6] or boom pipe. [3] 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. [1] [2] [3]
Vaccine players are known as banboulyès. [6]
Haitian ethnographer Jean Bernard traces the vaksin back to indigenous precolonial peoples of Haiti. [7] However both Thompson [7] and Holloway [10] draw links to the single-note Bakongo bamboo trumpets called disoso, themselves originated in Mbuti hocketing music. Gillis also likens them [11] to trumpets used in Bambara broto music along the Niger, and Jamaican Kumina.
Traditionally, vaccine are made of a length of bamboo, hollowed-out and dried, [6] with a node membrane pierced [4] [7] [1] and wrapped with leather [12] or bicycle inner-tube rubber to form a mouthpiece at one end. [3] One or more segments are taken from higher or lower in the bamboo trunk [6] to fashion vaccines; usually more than 1 m long and 5 to 7 cm in diameter. [3] Each one is cut shorter or longer in order to produce a higher or lower tone: [7] [6] bas banbou is long and gives a low-pitched sound, and charlemagne banbou is short and is pitched high. [7]
McAlister explains [2] 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. [...] [It] is harvested with the permission of Simbi, a Petwo Lwa who loves water, as bamboo in the Dominican Republic grows in moist land, e.g., along rivers" [6]
On occasion, iron [4] [13] or plastic [7] pipes are substituted for the bamboo.
A typical vaccine band is composed of three to five players, usually marching abreast of each other. [4] Players use a method called hocketing, whereby each individual blows a single tone rhythmically to create an ostinato motif together. [1] [7] These motifs are usually composed through a process of group improvisation. [7]
To keep rhythm, vaccine players also beat a rhythmic timeline, called kata [1] with a long stick on the side of the tube, making the instrument both melodic and percussive. [4] [7]
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 [3] —with the two treble-most vaccines often tuned a semitone apart. [7] [14] Landies also reports [6] other intervals between the lowest two voices. One of the vaccine serves as the tonal center of the motif. [3]
Most importantly, vaccines are a key component of rara orchestras. In his 1941 article, Courlander wrote that rara bands "seldom have drums and depend almost entirely on vaccines"; [4] though both Lomax's mid-1930s [13] and McAllister's early 1990s [7] [2] 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, [4] [1] fishermen, [4] stevedores [13] as well as sometimes used in dances of the Congo cycle. [4]
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