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Ifa Tradicional Nigeriano: The Polemics of "Re-Yorubized" Spirituality in Cuban Sound / Ruth Meadows.
- Format:
- Book
- Thesis/Dissertation
- Author/Creator:
- Meadows, Ruth, author.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Music.
- Religion.
- African studies.
- Caribbean studies.
- Latin American studies.
- Music--Penn dissertations.
- Penn dissertations--Music.
- Local Subjects:
- Music.
- Religion.
- African studies.
- Caribbean studies.
- Latin American studies.
- Music--Penn dissertations.
- Penn dissertations--Music.
- Genre:
- Academic theses.
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (250 pages)
- Contained In:
- Dissertation Abstracts International 79-01A(E).
- Place of Publication:
- [Philadelphia, Pennsylvania]: University of Pennsylvania ; Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2017.
- Language Note:
- English
- System Details:
- Mode of access: World Wide Web.
- text file
- Summary:
- In Cuba, emergent circulations between Cuba and contemporary Yorubaland, Nigeria are transforming the landscape of gender, belief, and state religious policy. This project examines this reencounter through the lens of the controversial Yorubization---or re-Yorubization---of the religions of Regla de Ocha, also known as Santeria, and Ifa. Through an ethnography of affective belonging and emancipatory desire in Havana, Santiago de Cuba, and the provinces of Holguin, Ciego de Avila, and Guantanamo, this work examines how "African Traditionalists" mobilize select aspects of the Yoruba Traditional Religion (YTR) and Yoruba language of Nigeria in order to circumvent Cuban prohibitions regarding gender and carve out novel spaces of religious autonomy and authority. Through a critical examination of the intersections of aurality and predications of Africanity in Nigerian-style Ifa-orisa, this work interrogates the ways in which women and men craft sound and listening in order to reshape gendered subjectivities and reconstitute the boundaries of orisa worship in Cuba. In the realm of gender, which constitutes the most polemical break between Nigerian-style Ifa-orisa and Cuban-style Regla de Ocha-Ifa, women have carved out access to the previously-prohibited tambores de ana, or consecrated bata drum set. Additionally, women break the gendered boundaries and taboos against female participation in Ifa by "speaking Ifa" as Iyanifa, or divining priestesses. In the Ile-Ife&dotbelow;-rooted Aworeni lineage in Havana, the "Araba of Cuba" and other babalawos (priests) mobilize the recently-imported dundun "talking drums" of Yorubaland as a means to "re-Yorubize" Cuban Ifa and to promote the spread of Nigerian-rooted institutions in Cuba. In eastern Baracoa and western Havana, all-male Egungun masquerade is additionally gaining prominence as a Yoruba-inspired means of worshiping and "working with" the dead. This project interrogates how various forms of engagement with sound and listening inform---and, often, constitute---central practices of assertion for practitioners of Nigerian-style Ifa-orisa in Cuba. In a larger sense, this project points to the ongoing ways in which the contemporary African continent continues to influence and transform the landscape of gender and belief in contemporary Cuba.
- Notes:
- Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 79-01(E), Section: A.
- Advisors: Timothy Rommen; Committee members: Jairo Moreno; Stephan Palmie.
- Department: Music.
- Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania 2017.
- Local Notes:
- School code: 0175
- ISBN:
- 9780355182552
- Access Restriction:
- Restricted for use by site license.
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