This study investigates the importance of the bullroarer cult in Cuban orisha worship. Though the cult was one of the most feared collectives of precolonial Yorubaland, carrying out the executions of criminals and witches on behalf of the state councils, the cult that came to be recreated in Cuba after the transatlantic separation took on a quality that was more devotional, though equally secretive. Given that so much change has occurred among the bullroarer cults in Cuba and Yorubaland since the termination of the slave trade, the conspicuous links between the two cults have all but disappeared. However, by lending particular attention to the bullroarer and other accouterments of the cult in Cuba, links can be re-established that explain the persistence of the cult in Cuba and demonstrate the ways in which ironically this emblematic sounding instrument of the cult is often constructed in a manner that actually mutes the instrument., [unedited non–English abstract received by RILM] Este estudio es una investigación sobre la importancia del culto “zumbador” (xiloaerófono) en la religión oricha en Cuba. Aunque el culto fue una de las colectivas precoloniales más temidas del mundo Yoruba, asesinando a criminales y brujas a nombre de los consejos del estado, después de la separación transatlántica la recreación del culto en Cuba asumió un carácter más devocional. Dado a la magnitud de los cambios ocurridos entre los cultos zumbadores en Cuba y en la tierra Yoruba desde que finalizó la esclavitud, los vínculos obvios entre los dos cultos prácticamente han desaparecido. Sin embargo, se puede argumentar que, al prestar atención particular al zumbador y a otros objetos del culto en Cuba, es posible establecer vínculos que explican la persistencia del culto en Cuba y demuestran como este instrumento icónico del culto, irónicamente, ha sido construido muchas veces de una manera que deja al instrumento “mudo.”
A recent editorial in the Trinidad Express quotes V.S. Naipaul in describing the idea that "if people cannot live in the day they would live in the night", as indicated in the greater willingness of people to cross the fine line between legitimate religion and superstition as life becomes more complex and challenging. The `mental darkness' to which the author was referring is the result of "the inevitable accompaniment of social marginalization and economic hopelessness in which so large a part of our population lives." From Montreal to Toronto to New York and the Caribbean there would seem to be a proliferation of new churches (38 in one small Toronto community), and ministers with questionable credentials promising solutions to all problems (`miracles' to be more precise) including childlessness, drug and alcohol addiction, impotence, disease, release from `spells', and depression. All for a price, of course. Two recent cases involving the deaths of teenagers in Trinidad can also serve to highlight the extremes to which this new `religion' has gone. In the first case a 17-year-old girl who became sick at her parents home was taken to her late grandmother's house (apparently a well-known Baptist woman in South Trinidad) where her body was kept for three days after her death (in spite of decay and flies) in the hope that the spirit of her dead grandmother would resurrect her back to life.
Taylor, Patrick (Editor) and Case, Frederick Ivor (Editor)
Format:
Book, Edited
Publication Date:
2013
Published:
Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
2 vols. (1144 p.), Considers religious traditions such as Vodou, Rastafari, Sunni Islam, Sanatan Dharma, Judaism, and the Roman Catholic and Seventh-day Adventist churches. Detailed subentries present topics such as religious rituals, beliefs, practices, specific historical developments, geographical differences, and gender roles within major traditions. Also included are entries that address the religious dimensions of geographical territories that make up the Caribbean.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
Originally published in Portuguese in Campinas by Editora da Unicamp as A formação do Candomblé: História e ritual da nação jeje na Bahia, 2006., 398 p., Interweaving three centuries of transatlantic religious and social history with historical and present-day ethnography, Luis Nicolau Pares traces the formation of Candomble, one of the most influential African-derived religious forms in the African diaspora, with practitioners today centered in Brazil but also living in Europe and elsewhere in the Americas.
Wynter,Sylvia (Author), Bogues,Anthony (Author), and Eudell,Demetrius Lynn (Author)
Format:
Book, Whole
Publication Date:
2010
Published:
Kingston ; Miami: I. Randle
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
Originally published: London : J. Cape, 1962., 340 p., Written in the late 1950s on the cusp of Jamaica's independence from Britain, The Hills of Hebron tells the story of a group of formerly enslaved Jamaicans as they attempt to create a new life and assert themselves against the colonial power.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
505 p, Davis depicts the various ways different societies have responded to the intrinsic contradictions of slavery from antiquity to the early 1770's in order to establish the uniqueness of the abolitionists' response. While slavery has always caused considerable social and psychological tension,Western culture has associated it with certain religious and philosophical doctrines that gave it the highest sanction.
Blanes,Ruy Llera (Editor) and Espirito Santo,Diana (Editor)
Format:
Book, Edited
Publication Date:
2014
Published:
Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
305 p., By stripping symbolism from the way we think about the spirit world, the contributors of this book uncover a livelier, more diverse environment of entities--with their own histories, motivations, and social interactions--providing a new understanding of spirits not as symbols, but as agents.
