Rhythm & roots: Black and insurgent ecologies of orisha music
Date
2024
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Lukumi people reconstructed their ritual music tradition from Yorùbáland in Cuba through the improvisation of their ecology or ecophilosophy. Although Cuba presented a set of environment conditions different from those of the Bight of Benin and Spanish colonists tried to impose a discordant relationship between them with the land, Yorùbá people developed a harmonic and improvisational relationship with the environment on their own terms. Through historical analysis, content analysis of orisha songs and material analysis of the accompanying instruments, this work considers what and who the environment was to orisha devotees. They reaffirmed their commitment to the natural world through the performance of their ritual music, in opposition to the terms of order that produced them to property, thus revealing a cyclical relationship between the material world and sound. That relationship was essential for the reconstitution of the instruments, rhythms and sounds which their ways of knowing required.
Description
Keywords
Music tradition, Rhythms, Orisha devotees, Cyclical relationship