Kongo people

And if you remember our friends from the last episode, Moishe Showambe, he was from Katanga.

And Joseph Kasavugu, he was from Bakongo.

And those are two really big places with, you know, big backings behind them.

And Patrice Lumumba was from a much smaller group, so he didn't really have that baked in support that both of them did.

Everyday religious life concerns the Loa, spirits with distinctive personalities, histories, preferences, and ritual relationships.

The Loa are organised into Nanchon, conventionally translated as nations, including Rada, Petwo, Kongo, Nago, Gede and others.

These names preserve memories of African ethnic and geographical categories, but they should not be interpreted as museum specimens of African tribes frozen in 18th century Haiti.

they have become Haitian ritual classifications.

You can build a altar for him in the water as well, if you feel more called to do that.

His offerings include, like, soul food, water, whiskey, rum, alligator head, foot, teeth, tobacco, incense, herbs, drums, crystals, land shells, mojo bags, swamp plants, playing cards, bones, candles, the Bakongo cosmogram symbol.

So like I said, for these spirits, you can work with them even if that's not necessarily your lineage.

But it's more powerful and it's more intentional when you work with spirits that are a part of your lineage.

Don't do that.

Then there's also simbis.

So simbis come from the Bakongo religion, and they're also African water spirits that traveled with us, um, to the Americas from the Caribbean.

And they're known for their knowledge, wisdom, their sorcery, healing, guardianship, guidance, prosperity, wealth, nature, pretty much everything Mama Jo is known for.

Let me draw some diagrams and some pictures." [laughs] And so I'm very grateful that he did that.

And so for the Bantu-Kongo people, life does not start in light.

It's not the property of whiteness.

Life actually emerges from Blackness.

It's tempting to say that jazz began there, but the reality is messier.

The square was a melting pot of Bakongo, Yoruba, and other West African groups, mixing with French, Spanish, Creole, and even Caribbean influences.

And the politics were already at play.

the city's white elite, wanted to keep that space under surveillance.

And that understanding that my humanity is caught up in your humanity, and having an understanding about what that means for us as a people historically and what that means for us as a people in relation to where we find ourself now in some of the most challengingest times that we have.

So you know, the, the conference has kind of gone back to a real, um, African-rooted, yeah, that notion around wellbeing, and it utilizes the, um, Bakongo cosmology cross that illustrates that cyclical journey of birth, life, death, and rebirth, and thinking about how none of these elements are standalone.

They are all connected-

Sure

Not to be confused with voodoo.

Vodou draws on the Bakongo religion and a number of other factors.

It is essentially a creation out of slavery in the area with all of these different backgrounds going on, different religions, and the fact that they're forcing Catholic religions onto them as well.

And in Vodou, there is a belief that the human body is nearly flesh manipulated by two spiritual elements that make up the soul.