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c h a p t e r e i g h t e e n  Orchestrating Water and the Wind Oshun’s Art in Atlantic Context Robert Farris Thompson Overture: Matters of Geography and Spirit The river Oshun begins in the hills near Igede, northeast of Ilesha, capital of the Ijesha Yoruba, in southern Nigeria. She then flows west, past the city of Oshogbo , famed for one of her major shrines, then south, to empty into the waters of the Lekki lagoon. There she mixes with the brine of the Atlantic. And then she falls off the map, spiritually to reappear in the Caribbean, on the islands of Cuba and Trinidad, and among the cities along the coast of Brazil. The Ijesha Yoruba live in and around the upper reaches of Oshun River. Many were brought, in the infamous Atlantic Trade, to Cuba and Brazil. Despite this, the captives defiantly remembered their culture and their province with terms that changed only slightly over time, to Yesa in Cuba and Jesha in Brazil. Oshun went with them. She is, without doubt, one of the most powerful spirits of the Yoruba pantheon. She is equal to the senior deities Orunmila, Ogun, Shango, and Obatala and worked with them at the founding of the world. Her strong presence was a blessing for followers subjected to enforced migration. As John Mason remarks, an Afro-Cuban song remembers Oshun bringing healing water to restore the vision of her devoted: “She helped her people survive the Middle Passage, to come out of the death ships and [taste] again the light of day.” In the midst of circumstance, she keeps tradition flowing like the depths of the river in which she dwells: Iya mi, ile oro Mother mine, house of tradition T’alade mo’ro gbogbo orisha. Sovereign woman who guards the traditions of all the gods. (Mason 1992: 366) Stephen S. Farrow, in his Faith, Fancies, and Fetich, writing of Oshun worship in 1926, made this observation: “curiously enough, although [the Oshun] river is distant from Abeokuta, many of the Egbas [in that city] worship Oshun and may be seen wearing her distinctive necklaces of transparent amber-colored beads” (Farrow 1926: 65). Why the surprise? Because Farrow assumed Yoruba faith comprised no more than local “cults” when in fact it was already by that time a world religion, with shrines on three continents. So let us now review a number of the transatlantic attributes of this fabulous goddess of dazzling beauty. Her Upheld Hands When Oshun comes down, in the body of a priestess among the Ijesha, she lifts up both hands as a “sign of gladness,” fingers flaring from the palm. In this pose she stands in ecstasy. The blessing becomes truth, as she bubbles up from the depths, on a superb brass fan made in her honor by the remarkable brass smith, Ajirotitu of Ilesha, between 1900 and 1925. Ajirotitu depicts her eyes exorbitant , filled with spirit. He causes her hands to resemble fins, or some other underwater structure (fig. 18.1). Her pose echoes across the Americas. One of the lovelier instances was the dancing of Mercedita Valdez, famed follower of the Yoruba deities in Cuba, miming Oshun in Havana, September 1948. With bracelets of brass coiled around her arms, and brass and copper-colored beads about her neck, she made the bangles of the goddess chime to the beat of the river. Meanwhile her body spiraled upward, like a porpoise in search of air. Her upheld hands communicated , in Afro-Cuban reprise, the overflowing happiness associated with the goddess of the river, for Oshun serves, as they chant in Nigeria, the very “witness of a person’s ecstasy renewed.” Her Laugh Roland Abiodun shares, from his rich knowledge of the permutations of the divination god, the odù ifá, the following story: once when the seventeen odu came down from heaven, they comprised sixteen men plus a woman. Once on earth the men neglected the seventeenth who was Oshun. They snubbed her because she was a woman. And Oshun sat down, and watched them, and laughed. Instantly their luck turned. Instantly people shivered with a first attack of fever. Semen dried up and men became impotent. Things got worse and, not making the right conclusion, the sixteen odu returned to heaven to ask God’s advice. “How many are you?” God asked. Sixteen. “How many were you when you left heaven?” Seventeen. “Well, then, you left someone behind and that is...

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