Oya

Two streams of water gushed from her breasts and her abdomen burst open.

The streams from Yemoja's breasts joined and formed a lagoon, and from her gaping body came the following: one, Dada, god of vegetables; two, Shango, god of lightning; three, Ogun, god of iron and war; four, Olokun, god of the sea; five, Olosa, goddess of the lagoon; six, Oya, goddess of the river Niger; seven, Oshun, goddess of the river Oshun; eight, Oba, goddess of the river Oba; nine, Orisha Oko, god of agriculture; ten, Oshosi, god of hunters; eleven, Oke, god of mountains; twelve, Aje Shaluga, god of wealth; thirteen, Soponu, god of smallpox; fourteen, Oru, the sun; and fifteen, Oshu, the moon.

To commemorate this event, a town which was given the name of Ife, distension, enlargement, or swelling up, was built on the spot where Yemoja's body burst open and became the holy city of the Yoruba-speaking tribes.

The place where her body fell used to be shown, and probably still is, but the town was destroyed in 1882 in the war between the Ifes on the one hand and the Ibadan and Modakeke on the other.

He has a messenger named Ara, quote, Thunderclap, end quote, whom he sends out with a loud noise.

A small bird called Papakori is sacred to Shango, and his worshipers profess to be able to understand its cry.

Shango married three of his sisters, Oya, the Niger; Oshun, the river of the same name, which rises in Ijesha and flows into the waterway between Lagos and Lekki Lagoon near Emina; and Oba, also a river which rises in Ibadan and flows into the Kwadu water.

All three accompany their husband when he goes out, Oya taking with her, her messenger Afefe, the wind or gale of wind, and Oshun and Oba carry his bow and sword.

And these, these two can both exist, so I think about her in that way.

Um, another, uh, deity that found me was Oya, a Yoruban, um, crossroads goddess, because I needed, I needed to find an underworld-based mother.

Mm.

And I couldn't find one in Europe.

Yeah.

But here's the, here's the interesting thing.

Oya is also a goddess of the crossroads.

Anthropologically speaking, both Hecate and Oya were kind of, like, adopted into the tradition, but they come from somewhere else.

Yeah, those jealous people, you know.

And so my Orisha, Hedi Hecuahe Oya De-

Ya Ecuahe

... she owns the marketplace.

So for people to tell me, [claps] "Oh, that's not right.

You shoulda done this, you shoulda..." Nah.

I got the blessings of Oya, then that's all I need.

I don't need any person telling me or anybody else telling me that that's wrong when Oya gives me the blessings.

You know, being in California, you know, you kind of have an incentive to learn Spanish.

And then linking it with the wind goddess Oya at the beginning, who's an Orisha, you know, from the Yoruba West African tradition that's now everywhere in the Caribbean.

And Oya, I talked to her in the studio.

There were a couple of weird things in the studio that did happen when we were working on that tune where the lights flashed and I really felt like it was thank you and I did talk to her like is this okay is this okay for me to invoke you at the beginning of the song because you know it is a religion and she was like yeah I'm all for it and so I made sure to you know acknowledge her but I like bringing in the mythic you know the mythic well that's a big creative writing thing right but or I should say a literary thing literature, we look back at myth, but Wendy, you know, again, she had a little bit of a backstory with Oya behind her of being an actual wind goddess.

But, you know, the lyrics are kind of funny.

My engineer that I was working with, Dale, was, I don't think most people who work with him are like this.

Just like, I've got these two Orishas.

This is Ogun and Oya.

So they're like, it's from Candomblé.

It's like a Brazilian, Afro-Brazilian.

I have to look into it.

How deep did that get from just

my bio? But that actually is genuinely my bio, like Oya and Ogun.

But people know.