This chapter concentrates on rhythm in danced, sung, and drummed practices of Cuban Santería. Musicians and dancers sing, drum, and dance the sequenced rhythms of the ancestors and provide opportunities for others to experience and learn. Many versions of ritual prose and poetry have been conserved, first by the continuous input of arriving Africans in the trans-Atlantic slave trade from the 16th to the late 19th century. Codified gestures and movements display specific patterns in accelerating and intensifying tempi. In predetermined rhythmic, tonal, and intervallic relationships, ritual musicians display the buried mathematics of a dance and music liturgy. In order to facilitate human dancing and suprahuman transformation, worshipers have relied and continue to rely on rhythmic remembrances.
