ANCESTRAL CONNECTIONS

Author:Sobonfu Somé
CSQ Issue:33.1 (Spring 2009) A Celebration of Pacific Culture
I grew up in southwestern Burkina Faso, where the houses are built with mud and nicely polished with cow dung and ash. The children have their own rooms; the women have their rooms; and the men have their room. It is not to promote gender differences [...]

To Serve the Gods is about the beliefs, rituals and performances of a week-long ceremony given by a Haitian family in honor of its ancestral spirits. We are told at the outset of the film that this sevis loua only occurs every twenty to thirty years. This particular service takes place in a rural community [...]

REVIEW: ‘Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti’ is an incredible visual document chronicling authentic Haitian Voundoun practices as they’ve never been viewed by the public-at-large before. Filmed between ‘47 and ‘51 by the legendary cult filmmaker and author Maya Deren who was an initiate into these religious practices, her involvement made it possible for [...]

The completion of an interview with the King of Oyotunji village in South Carolina PLUS an interview with the grandson of Baba Medahochi, an outstanding cultural pioneer who is responsible for exposing so many of our people in the West to our traditional African culture.

BABA MEDAHOCHI: TRIBUTE TO A CULTURAL PIONEER

MUSICAL HEALERS PODCAST

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Marketing ‘killing Nigerian festival’
By Andrew Walker,
BBC News, Osogbo, Nigeria
An annual gathering to celebrate a traditional spirit-god in one of Nigeria’s few remaining virgin forests is one of the last places you would expect to hear complaints of over-commercialisation.
But experts on Nigeria’s traditional religion say the 600-year-old Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove Festival is under threat.
The event [...]