West African Vodun

but

as I did analysis, extremely complex interlocking patterns, but not in what we would consider even a, you know what I mean? Almost a totally different type of rhythm, you know, to recognize it, it's almost at a different time, right? But in terms of like voodoo stuff, so Voodon, Santeria, so these are spaces specific beats that are you could say like magical beats right there they are i mean they're they induce even a voodoo you're going to have one person who's fully possessed but i mean the the um the beats are not only invoke, you know, a state, a collective state as people are listening to them, but they also, they create a trance in the audience through kind of repetitive rhythms.

And these different beats were used to summon specific deities or spirits, right? So they, this particular beat and some songs probably you know are used to call forth this spirit um you know baba legma or whatever and then the you know the priest will get it and then people will use that you know that entity or whatever you know you know make someone fall in love with them kill their enemy whatever you know or different things like that or propitiate that that thing so so these voodoo beats actually went into some rock and roll beats actually went into this popular music via um you know certain degree from jazz actually which is also tied coming from new orleans also has some ties to the the voodoo stuff but it there were specific beats that were included in rock and roll and this is um you know going back to the nerve jamming um there were many um even with jazz and stuff there's many music critics and even you know psychologists musicologists you know saying this these rhythms have harmful effects on the nervous system i mean these are you know and then some of the um the the beats the rock rock beats or some of the stuff that came in through blues but primarily in rock too these were used to summon specific spirits and then they become and these beats are not like you they're used you hear the same beat you know about 10 to 100 000 times you know it could be you know many many different songs right these it became like the the structure to a certain degree so i mean yeah it's interesting that that that you know, parallels this, you know, but the trans induction is another phenomenon, right? And that also relates to, it'll actually take your heartbeat, your whole body will synchronize and will, you know, sync, you synchronize your heartbeat with that rhythm and then, you know, have, yeah,

so.

And Brazil, just to go way, way backward, in 1896 doesn't make sense either.

And so the spaces where I think we should expand—and this is me coming out of Oberlin now, college and conservatory— is that I think we need to do a better job about examining the multiplicity of religions, like Lukumi, like Condomble, like Ife, like Vodun.

And honestly, with Black studies in general, and this is a critique from across institutions, is how we prioritize looking at sexuality studies.

What does it mean to be a Black trans woman? What does it mean to be bisexual, bi-curious? What's the historicity around that? And funny enough, There's an Oberlin alum.

Basically, this outlines that in a place called Ouida in Benin, there's a temple of pythons.

Sounds like an Indiana Jones film, doesn't it? And it's a highly revered historical and spiritual sanctuary central to the Vodun or voodoo that people are more familiar with, probably religion.

And it was built in 1717 by King Hufan of Huda.

And it's a concrete and clay roofed structure and it serves as a living monument to the divinity of Danya, or Dangbi.

Oh, right.

So for part of the Afro-diasporic religious tradition, sometimes called Voudon or Voodoo, or in different forms it can be called Santaria or Candomblé, is a notion that there are either gods, sometimes they're called gods, sometimes they're called saints, sometimes they're called great spirits, usually referred to, I think the term is Yoruba, with the term Orisha or Orisha.

So famous ones include figures like Ogun, who used to be a god of iron in sub-Saharan Africa, or, you know, Erzuli, who's sometimes called the goddess of love, but they're often also identified with saints.

So Erzuli is sometimes identified also with the Virgin Mary, I believe, and Ogun is sometimes identified with, I think, St. George, although I forget that identification.

They could be consulted, appeased, celebrated.

Further west, among the Fon and Yu peoples of present-day Benin, Togo and Ghana, the spiritual system known as Vodun, the ancestor of what the wider world would later, and rather inadequately, call Voodoo, contained within it a whole cosmology of water spirits known as Tohoso.

These were the royal dead, those children born with extraordinary or troubling qualities who were returned to the water rather than buried in earth.

They were understood to become spirits of uncommon power, dwelling in the watery realm between the living and the ancestral, neither entirely one nor the other.

the spirit who takes you under and decides whether or not to give you back.

These ideas landed in different places, took root in different soils, and grew into forms that were locally distinct but spiritually recognizable as family.

In Haiti, the spiritual tradition that emerged from the crucible of slavery, Haitian Vodou, which is a direct descendant of the West African Vodun we encountered in the last segment, gave her one of her most elaborate diaspora forms.

In Vodou, the water spirits are known as the Lua of the Rada nation, and among the most central of these is La Sirene, the siren.

And so these stories feel true and grounded, despite the fact that at times we have somebody on a ghost pirate ship full of zombie pirates that are piloting the thing at the

behest of a Voodoon master, right? Mm-hmm.

And he's such an interesting storyteller that that example, by the time we get there, even though it's over the top, it makes sense because it's at the end of the book.

And we've already had this mix of fantastical and very concrete elements that allows us to ground ourselves and believe in the world that he's created.