Shared Possessions: Black Pentecostals, Afro-Caribbeans, and Sacred Music

Abstract

She was left undisturbed, allowed to continue her solitary dance to music that had long since ceased. As she danced, evening worship service progressed in usual manner--a few more testimonies, offertory, beginning of sermon. Soon after start of sermon, her dance subsided, and ladies in white went to her side to fan wipe sweat from her brow, and escort her back to real time. Lord is a work in her, preacher observed in a momentary digression from his sermon. The congregation responded with amens and other devotional affirmations, grateful for this evidence of Lord's work, and unbothered by its spontaneous interpolation into normal unfolding of things. This scene was one of many similar phenomena that I witnessed at Open Door Church of God in Christ in Gary, Indiana, black Pentecostal church of my childhood from late 1960s until early 1980s. There were many labels for this particular brand of Lord's work. The solitary dancer might be described as getting Holy Ghost, doing holy shouting, being filled, catching Spirit, being purged, or simply as someone getting a blessing. Whatever descriptor, phenomenon was familiar to all members of this religious culture. And it was understood that music-not just any music, but certain music--could facilitate such manifestations. While getting Holy Ghost and catching Spirit, parishioners at my urban, black-American church had no awareness of many parallels between our Spirit-driven modes of worship and those common to our Afro-Caribbean counterparts. We were completely unaware, for example, that members of Trinidadian Spiritual Baptist communities, Haitian Heavenly Army churches, and Jamaican Revival Zionist groups entertained and embraced religious phenomena very similar to ours, and that they, like us, used terms like catching power or catching or being filled in reference to Holy Spirit manifestation. We were even less aware of threads that connected both black-American and Afro-Caribbean religious expressions to their West African origins. And although term was nowhere in parlance of my particular church, it aptly describes divine encounters both in our congregation and in religious contexts of African diasporal groups around world. Spirit possession is a phenomenon common to nearly all African societies, one that underscores boundless interchange between physical and unseen in African consciousness. Some writers, such as Kenneth Anthony Lum, distinguish between spirit possession and spirit manifestation. While I use term spirit possession primarily in reference to phenomenon wherein an individual worshipper's consciousness, emotional state, and physical gestures are entirely subjugated to divine presence, I may use this term somewhat interchangeably with spirit manifestation. Spirit possession occurs when, through acts of worship involving ritualistic drumming, dancing, and chanting, divine agent temporarily, yet dramatically, inhabits body of devotee. This divine incarnation brings on a state of transcendence during which worshipper serves as conduit for manifestation of deity's presence. Writing about ubiquity of spirit possession in Africa, Samuel Floyd (1995) that ceremonial possession was about by rhythmic stimulation (drumming and chanting), energetic and concentrated dancing, and controlled emotional and mental concentration. He contends, however, that the whole of ritual experience, which includes dance, music, costumes, and at times storytelling makes possession effective. Floyd further that while hallucinogens sometimes help to facilitate possession, these sacred, blissful, and altered states are brought on principally by drumming (20-21). Spirit possession was as central to my black-American, Pentecostal upbringing as it is to religious cultures throughout Africa. …