Context and Meaning in Trinidad Yoruba Songs: Peter Was a Fisherman and Songs of the Orisha Palais

This paper discusses two bodies of songs from the Yoruba oral tradition in Trinidad and Tobago connected especially with the veneration of divinities in the Yoruba pantheon. This tradition, originally brought to the New World by enslaved Africans, continues to be augmented by new compositions modeled after the older forms dealing with subjects as varied as worship and social intercourse. While the new songs exhibit linguistic and other departures from the older ones, they are evidence of a vibrant relocation of an old culture in the New World and represent a unique recreation of and complement to a larger, global African identity.