An African connection: Kaffir culture in Sri Lanka
Repost This ArticleHistorians say that the Kaffirs of Sri Lanka started arriving from the eastern shores of Africa in the 1500s with the Portuguese, and later in more waves with the different colonizers of Sri Lanka. ‘Kaffir culture’ is a video portrait of one such community of Kaffirs and their struggle to keep their culture alive in the face of falling numbers.
Written and produced by Kannan Arunasalam.
Music by the Ceylon Kaffirs. Special thanks to Sweta Velpillay, Nethra Samarawickrema, Leah Worthington and Greg Kelly.
Click here to watch this movie in stunning widescreen high definition (720p) on our Facebook fan page, where you can also easily share it with others. You can also watch it in high definition on Kannan’s Vimeo page  here.
I read R.L Brohier’s “Discovering Ceylon” many years ago and was intrigued by the story of the “Ceylon Kaffir” (BTW, you can buy it at Vijitha Yapa’s). He is talking about a time around the 1920s where he takes this “path from the 6th mile post on the main road from Puttalam to Anuradhapura” and reaches a colony called “Sellan Kandal”. He gives some insight into what the community was like by describing in vivid detail a festive occasion that he attended.
It is incredible to find out that this community actually still exists and continues to maintain some of its culture! Brohier says that the slaves were first brought to Sri Lanka by the Portuguese from Mozambique via Goa, India in 1630. The Dutch formed them into a labour pool, as they “had been left adrift”, to build the Fort in Colombo. There’s an interesting story about a slave insurrection and the murder of the Fiscal, Barent vander Swaan and his wife, which led them to be marched out of the Fort every evening to be kept on an island in shanties for the night.
Many Sri Lankans will not believe it if they were told that Baila actually was introduced to Sri Lanka by the Portuguese and that the driving rhythm comes from Africa. The word Baila (Bailar) actually means dance in Portuguese (and Spanish). What is also interesting is that Baila has roots of resistance. When the slaves gathered around their campfires at night they would sing songs making fun of the slave masters. It’s nice to see the Gypsies keeping this tradition alive with their humorous political songs, the latest being “comedy countryiak”.
Little do we realise every time we sing and dance to Baila, or go by “Slave Island” that we are visiting a past long forgotten.
Nice work. Thanks a million!
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It was wonderful to see Arunasalam’s video. At last the Ceylonese people are acknowledging the contribution the Kaffirs have made to the culture and music of ceylon. I hope the community will grow stronger and will contribute more to the rich culture of the island.
Possibly inspired by this film, AFP has a story on the Kaffirs here – http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iaORVW-MuvhsMtFdeGJzuUj1infw
Roshan’s comment posted 10/29/09 has helped me to understand an experience with Baila dance I had as an African American attending a Sri Lankan wedding. I am a gospel musician, a black clergy person, and a university professor who teaches sociology and culture, with particular emphasis on music and resistance. When the Baila dance broke out and I saw the young men lifting up their hands, arching their back and dancing in a way that black baptist and pentecostal Christians would call “cutting a two step,” I immediately began to fill connected to an experience of dance that reminds me so well of the African spirituality and rhythms that were outlawed in the United States, but preserved in black churches, in black gospel music and the black church holy dance, which are important not only to my research, but also to my own emotion, physical movements and embodiment of spirit and dance that has too played a part in cultural resistance from African American churches. I look at the faces of so many people in Sri Lanka and know we’re related, and often get asked if I’m Sri Lankan. Maybe the simple answer has to do with Kaffir culture and the African diasporic traditions of music, spirit and dance that tie us together around the world. I’ve experienced the same on travels to Cuba, Puerto Rico with Santarea. Now I am more intrigued with the transformations African cultures in South East Asia. Boy, it’s great how cultures of resistance are still well and alive around the world, particularly through young people, like the young men and young women at the wedding who had no shame in continuing them. Right on brothers and sisters, right on!
Professor Wilson