Yoruba Art: Major Orisha and Their Influences (PDF)

Yoruba Art Major Orisha and Their Influences Eshu Elegba single crimson parrot feather (ekodide), positioned upright upon his forehead, to signify that he was not to carry burdens on his head. Representing both the means and the end, the red parrot feather is seen today in init...

Yoruba Art Major Orisha and Their Influences Eshu Elegba single crimson parrot feather (ekodide), positioned upright upon his forehead, to signify that he was not to carry burdens on his head. Representing both the means and the end, the red parrot feather is seen today in initiatory contexts in the Yoruba religion ranging from the Benin Republic to Bahia in Brazil. lessons of the crossroads—the point where doors open or close, where persons have to make decisions that may forever after affect their lives—will be lost. Eshu-Elegbara is also the messenger of the gods, but sometimes bearing the crossroads to us in verbal form, in messages that test our wisdom and compassion Continued Eshu-Elegbara became one of the most important images in the black Atlantic world. - Cubans associate Eshu with change and would pour cool water at crossroads, less obvious if white individuals were around - Brazilians especially in Rio de Janeiro honor Eshu in gutters at intersections or shadows of skyscrapers The most important icons of this spirit in Africa are figures in lateritic earth and clay. These forms took root deeply in Cuba, Brazil, Miami, and Spanish Harlem. Wood sculpture, is divided in Nigeria and the Benin Republic into several categories: tiny supplicant figurines; paired male and female images united by a richly cowrie-studded strand Lateritic earth (a type of soil developed in hot and wet climates) is known to be the oldest icon of Eshu Continued Laterite is said to be the oldest and most important medium for representing Eshu, Eshu-Yangi, father of all Eshu. combines a Afro (Ewe -Dahomean) Cuban style in the work. It’s size allowed for them to be portable, and easy to hide from strangers and avoid oppression. The tradition of guarding homes with images of Eshu came with black Hispanic people from the Caribbean to New York City and Miami in the decades after World War II. Today clay or concrete images for Elegba in the United States number in the hundreds. Western Togo White Clay Plate Eshu Elegbara 1659 Continued “Some Egbado Yoruba villagers say such images represent Elegba and his wife. This complements a deeper interpretation of Eshu as the principle of life and individuality who combines male and female valences. Here both the male and female figures have bulging eyes, which for Yoruba embody the power-to-make-things-happen, the gift Eshu received from God in heaven. This hint of awesome potentiality is softened by the generosity of the woman’s gesture, a giving of her breasts, but sharpened by the male’s presentation of arms both real (a club or sword) and mystic (a calabash containing power). Their protruding eyes and the male’s calabash foretell a miracle that unfolds upon their heads, from which springs up a bladelike element structurally equivalent to the knife-atop-the-head that identifies Eshu in some of his clay and concrete avatars. Here the knives have been transformed into serpent heads, recalling a praise poem for Eshu, who “makes a whistle from the head of a serpent” (Plate 16).¢1 As if to emphasize the limitlessness of Eshu’s wonder-working, calabash containers of self-multiplying power surmount the serpents’ heads.” When a knifelike element rises out of Elegba’s head, it is a sign that the display of his powers has begun, the illustration of the wonder (ara) from which his special name, Eshu Odara, “the Wonder- Worker,” Slightly modified, these songs reemerged among the blacks of Bahia and Havana and, later, in Hispanic New York City and Miami. Eshu Sculpture Male and female Eshu Yemoja (Yemaya) Yoruba riverain goddesses are represented by round fans (abebe), crowns (ade)—some with beaded fringes—and earthenware vessels (awota) filled with water collected from the river or from the sea, rounded stones, and sand. Those who worship these powerful underwater women long ago devised an artistic strategy, the use of the round fan as an emblem embodying the coolness and command of these spirits of the water. the round fan was a fashion of the goddesses of ancient Ife. Speaking through the sacred divination instruments, Ife said that only the river goddesses themselves, including Yemoja, noted for her use of a round fan, could persuade him to return. Vengeance, doom, and danger also lurk within the holy depths (ibu) of the rivers where the goddesses are believed to dwell. are famed for their “witchcraft.” They are supreme in the arts of mystic retribution and protection against all evil. Many riverain goddesses are visualized as women with swords. The sword, together with the negative uses of the fan, may be said to form in part an image of what Judith Hoch-Smith calls “radical Yoruba female sexuality” a sharpened, arrowheadlike point at the top of the handle of the fan, as in the “drawn point”’ that accompanies Rio sacred songs for Yemayd/the Virgin Mary. New Year’s Eve thousands upon thousands of black and white worshippers descend from the hills above and around the city of Rio and crowd the famous beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema in one of he most celebrated of the festivals for Yemaya in the western iemisphere. Oshun Divination literature tells us that Oshun was once married to Ifa but fell into a more passionate involvement with the fiery thunder god, who carried her into his vast brass palace, where she ruled with him; she bore him twins and accumulated, as mothers of twins in Yorubaland are wont to do, money and splendid things galore. She owned lots of material —all in brass, the metal the Yoruba regard as most precious. When she died, she took these things to the bottom of the river. There she reigns in glory, within the sacred depths, fully aware that so much treasure means that she must counter inevitable waves of jealous witchcraft by constant giving, Oshun Fan Oginnin Ajiotitu Arode Onishona continued The chiming bracelets of her dance. She smites the belly of the liar with her bell. Mother, O Mother of cool water, You, who sired the soothing osun herb. Ecstatic praise literature. It is easy in the context of these verses and Oshun’s reputation for great beauty to appreciate why she was romantically transmuted into the ‘love goddess” of many Yoruba influenced blacks in the western hemisphere. But perhaps the most significant of her New World emblems are her round metallic fans. Here the closeness of the goddess of the water to the Supreme Being manifested by the handle. From the bottom of the handle hang three chains, the mystic number of Earth.