Track Listing

1. Tui-Tui for Shango
2. Ide werewere ni'ta Oshun ide werewere (Song for Oshun)
3. Oku o Shola Kiniba o (Praise song [oriki] for Aganju)
4. Baba Fururu olore re o (Song for Obatala)
5. Kurukuru bede/Osain adadara mada o (Song for Osain)
6. Mojuba Olodumare (To Olodumare, the orishas, and the ancestors)
7. Ago ago 'lona mojuba/Ibarabo ago mojuba (Song for Eshu)
8. Oya o owo kode Oya be wa lo (Song for Oya)
9. Obe re obe Ayanaku Nana lewa (Arara song for Nana Buruku)
10. Ibeji ota ese aremu 'beji ota ese (Song for the divine Twins)
11. Kiri nya kiri nya ago/Eshu o Elegbara e (Song for Elegua)
12. Kolele kole o iya o wo miya kolele (Song for Ogun)
13. Baba Fururu olore re o (Song for Obatala)
14. Moforibale oba [k]oso/Moforibale fu'[n] Shango (Song for Shango)
15. Kayoba Oba o omo lowo Oba lere mi/oba eleko aya osi (Song for Oba)
16. Awoyo, Yemaya o omo du kwe [modup(u)e o]Iowo mi (Song for Yemaya)
17. Iyami ile [odo] (Praise song or oriki for Oshun)
18. Okonile re ra e oko mi lo e mile bewa e
19. Omode t'orisa de ke awao omode funmi rawao
20. E be oro, be mode loro
21. Ndudu dale vuelta al ingenio (The spirit is circling the sugar mill)
22. .
23. Shanigo
24. Oyaya obe
25. Oba o china
26. Mareengue
27. Umbe
28. Vamo' tune tune tune a casa mangoya

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #244440 in Music
• Released on: 2003-11-25
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Live
• Dimensions: .22 pounds

Album Description
These recordings, made just a few years before Fidel Castro’s rise to power, reflect Afro-Cuban musical and spiritual life in Havana and around the sugar cane mills of Matanzas. In 1957, Lydia Cabrera and Josefina Tarafa captured a fascinating snapshot of African slave-descendant communities performing their religious songs and ceremonies. Influences from present-day Nigeria, Angola, and Benin became some of the critical components of a vital religious movement in the Cuban countryside where linguistic, symbolic, and musical elements blended over time. As reflections of evolving practices, these recordings, are considered a soundtrack to Cabrera’s writings on Afro-Cuban religions and are the perfect complement to volumes one and two.

Amazon.com
Pre-Castro Cuba was not only about cigars, rum, and tourism. Even more than today, the countryside was a haven for practitioners of African-derived religions. These marvelous field recordings are a treasure trove of rare and thrilling material and still sound remarkably clear and immediate. They were the work of Lydia Cabrera, an anthropologist and writer of Cuban birth and Parisian nurture. She began gathering examples of music from slave descendants during the 1950s, often accompanied by photographer Josefina Tarafa. Using Tarafa's portable tape recorder and with help from engineers who later transferred her finds onto fourteen discs, this intrepid woman captured indelible examples of religious drumming, chants, and songs from the Yoruba, Angolese, and Dahomean traditions, back when the original languages and drumming styles were still relatively unadulterated. The accompanying booklet is chock-full of fascinating details and illustrated by examples of Tarafa's idiomatic black-and-white photographs. --Christina Roden