Another Sunday digging and discovering themes. This time finding quite a lot of stuff devoted to Yemanja. Yemanja is one of the deities or Orishas of the Yoruban spiritual belief system that has a variety of manifestations in the Americas arising partly out of attempts by slaves to disguise banned traditional African practices. The Orishas, which represent different forces in nature, were presented as Catholic Saints within Candomblé in Bahia, Brazil and Santeria in Cuba. Yemanja is the ocean, the essence of motherhood, and a fierce protector of children.
Beyond the practice of traditional rituals, myths and legends have grown up around Yemanja in particular including stories of fishermen captured by her entrancing beauty never to return to shore. It's the stuff that makes for great musical raw material sometimes drawing on the traditional music of the rituals and sometimes not, as you'll hear in the variety of styles old and new that I've attempted to bring together here.
