RFI: afro-brazilian music & orixas

A lot of my favorite things out of Cuba currently have some sort of Santeria/Yoruba aspect (examples: Sos Lazaga's "Chango" (and one or two other songs from the album that's on), Felix Baloy's "Ayudame Yemayá," Felipe Labrada's "Son a Babalu").

I also just bought this, which I like, but haven't listened to that much so far:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/cgogogomez

It's relatively straightforward religious music, although he has apparently arranged the lengthy opening track (which has rhythmic calls to a whole hierarchy of orishas) according to aesthetic considerations, instead of the standard ordering based on the ranks of the orishas.

Also, while a little peripheral to actual orisha music, Eddie Palmieri's Lucumi Voodoo Macumba is worth checking out. There are some rhythms in some parts of that album that I think are coming from Voodoo or Macumba.

Some of this my be helpful:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=s_sf_b_as/102-7971136-1306541?search-alias=stripbooks&rank=+relevancerank&field-title=candomble

As far as an overview of the orisha, this book lays things out nicely, I think, although it's specifically about Santeria:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0802849733/sr=1-3/qid=1153420778/ref=sr_1_3/102-7971136-1306541?ie=UTF8&s=books

It's from someone who grew up in the religion, and its from a publisher known for publishing evangelical books, but honest to god, it seems like a straightforward account of Santeria, not a "What Christians need to know in order to convert Santeros" or "How I escaped the darkness of Babalu and discovered Jesus Christ" type thing. (Eerdmans is a very odd publisher anyway. They publish a certain amount of material that is from a hardcore Calvinist perspective, but they also publish historically oriented academic studies of the Bible or of ancient Israelite religion that I might use myself in arguments against Christianity's claims.)

http://www.submarino.com.br/cds_productdetails.asp?Query=ProductPage&ProdTypeId=2&ProdId=225711&ST=3666mundo_2_2

Beautifully if heavily arranged, can sound like.. tropical christmas carols? Carlinhos Brown plays on the last three tracks.

Although we're talking central & south America, there seem to be countless references of these musical & cultural rituals within (electronic) dance music: sampling/borrowing of percussion patterns and instrumentation, project or label or song titles, club promo suggest recent afro-latino generations have been updating the practices in the north.

I would also digress that it helps vulgarize & broadcast elements of these cultures to the rest of the world.

Yes, indeed, I lived for a while next door to a terreiro de macumba in Recife, and the smell of melting wax on a Tuesday night was intoxicating.

I love love love maracatu, and play alfaia in a maracatu bloco + band in London. Our website is crap and never gets updated, but it's here www.maracatu.co.uk We can't claim to be religious, but we try to incorporate a bit of the symbolism - we have a king and queen who carry out a symbolic coronation with all the paraphernalia etc

I also love the 6/8 candomble rhythm. We used to play a bit in the maracatu band, but we just weren't very good at it and had to give it up!

Afoxe seems pretty religious, too, although I can't claim to know much about its origins. I used to spend my Sunday evenings in Brazil at an afoxe might, which was just lovely.

I have only heard C. Veloso's Um Canto De Afoxé, pretty anthemic. Your site is informative, not crap!

oh my. what nostalgia...i always slept better when the drums were beating in the night. waking up to Vinicius Cantuaria playing "Aracaju" or something else mesmerizing..eating a paozinho with mortadela and a plateful of bergamotas. sorry to digress from the intent of this thread...there are just powerful images i associate with macumba.