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Transnational Displacements and Cultural Continuity: The Survival of Yoruba Religious Poetry in the Americas Today

Akintunde Akinyemi, Department of African and Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Florida
akinyemi@aall.ufl.edu

When Africans were brought to the New World during the Trans-Atlantic slave period of the 17th-19th Centuries, the slaves carried with them a whole body of African stories, legends, religious practices, poetry, music, and traditions. Although their arrival in the New World stripped them of their cultural identity, paradoxically, many of the slaves refused to succumb even in their nakedness. Therefore, the first generation of African slaves successfully retained several aspects of their cultures in spite of stiff opposition from their white masters. For instance, whenever social groups gathered after the day’s work, they use such avenue to dance to indigenous African music and drum beats, tell stories in African languages, and exhibit African fabrics. This way, the slaves were able to preserve their linguistic, religious, and aesthetic principles, which they then passed on to their younger generations.
Of all the aspects of African cultures that survived in the New World today, the Yoruba religion is the most spectacular and widely studied. Many scholars have observed rightly that the various African religious practices in the New World today, such as the Santeria or Lucumi in Cuba, Vodoo in Haiti, Condomble in Brazil, and the Orisa worship in North America, are based on a pantheon of Yoruba gods/goddesses. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to specifically examine the performance of oral poetry associated with Yoruba religious practices that survived in the Diaspora today. This boils down to a discussion of the content of the religious poetry and the survival strategies put in place by practitioners of these religious practices themselves to ensure that this aspect of Yoruba culture is preserved in their new home.