Yemaya

Number 3 in my occasional series of posts about "Radiant Ladies of Voodoo and the music they love". Having just returned from Cornwall and some inevitable Seaside Voodoo, today's post is about Yemaya, the Queen of the Sea and the Mother of Fishes.

Her name is a contraction of the Yoruba words: "Yeye emo eja" which means "Mother whose children are like fish". All life emerged from the sea, and Yemaya is seen as the divine source of all. Her colour is blue, her number is seven, and she likes offerings of champagne, watermelon, pound cake and molasses. She is syncretised with a Black Madonna known as Our Lady of Regla, and is called on for matters relating to pregnancy, fertility, wealth, abundance, cleansing, nourishing and the home. Her presence is like the fresh sea air and her service imparts a sense of well being, comfort and renewal.

One of her most important festivals throughout the year takes place on New Years Eve, where her devotees as widespread as Cuba, Brazil, Florida and Tynemouth will go down to the beach with offerings, set off fireworks, pour champagne into the sea and cast small wooden boats filled with offerings onto the waves to be received by the Goddess.

As per her sister/daughter, Oshun, there is a wealth of latin music dedicated to Yemaya. Perhaps some of the most popular and best known recordings of devotional music for Yemaya are by the Cuban "Queen of Salsa", Celia Cruz. Although publically a Roman Catholic, Cruz was an archetypal child of Yemaya who recorded numerous songs for the Orisha and drew much inspiration from the music of Santeria. Even Cruz's catchphrase "¡Azúcar!" (meaning "sugar"), a reference to the sweetness of Cuban coffee, recalls the traditional offering of mollasses that is received by Yemaya.

Here is a recording of Celia Cruz performing a track entitled "Yemaya" and accompanied by images of the Orisha.

Tubby Hayes' Voodoo Session

I got my copy of Tubby Haye's Voodoo Session in the post this week, the latest release from Trunk Records and limited to 666 numbered copies. Trunk is an independent label specialising in film scores, library music, sexploitation and kitsch releases, such as the soundtracks for The Wicker Man, UFO, Deep Throat, Ivor the Engine and The Clangers. (There's something a bit perturbing about mentioning  Deep Throat and Ivor the Engine in the same sentence).

The Voodoo Session record is from the soundtrack to Dr Terror's House of Horrors, a 1965 British horror film from Amicus Productions starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, among others. It was the first in a series of portmanteau films from the studio, which later included From Beyond the Grave, which has always been a particular favourite of mine.

The plot of the film involves five men on a train carriage having their tarot cards read by Peter Cushing, who reveals the horrible destiny of each of them. One of the stories that is revealed through the cards features Roy Castle (of later Record Breakers fame) in his first starring role as jazz musician Biff Bailey, who encounters a Voodoo ceremony whilst touring the West Indies. 

Loving the Voodoo sounds, he makes the mistake of copying down the music of the Voodoo Lwa Dambala and doing his own Brit jazz arrangement of the spirit rhythms at a club in London. Occult peril quickly ensues as a result of having stolen the music of Dambala. He could have at least offered a white egg on top of a mound of flour and asked nicely. It's not fucking difficult.

Castle was drafted in at the last minute to replace Acker Bilk who had recently suffered a heart attack, and his band in the film consists of a historic 1960s Brit jazz line-up including Tubby Hayes and Shake Keane. According to the Trunk website, the Voodoo Brit Jazz number from the soundtrack has been much in demand among record collectors for years, with one copy of what was assumed to be the single selling for £800 before it was discovered that it wasn't the lost recording from the film, but something else entirely with Roy Castle singing on it. 

Jonny Trunk of Trunk Records says: 

"Fast forward to mid 2009, and out of nowhere I get an email from a good jazz man known as Simon Spillett. He is overseeing the recently unearthed Tubby Hayes archive. This is a set of reels and records taken care of first by Tubby's mother, and then later passed on to Tubby's last girlfriend. In amongst these reels is the original session for this super Voodoo scene.

Simon emailed me the tracks, and I got extremely excited - it was the killer tune, the missing music that music people have been waiting for. A few weeks later the tracks were remastered, and a very limited 7" ep was designed, the idea being to make sure we can make enough money so Tubby's girlfriend can afford to fly abroad and see her family."

The main sequence where Roy Castle goes to the Voodoo ceremony and hears Dambala's drum rhythms, and the later sequence where he plays his jazz arrangement with the Tubby Hayes quintet, is embedded below. It's worth a look, if only for the surreal scene of Roy Castle being admonished for stealing the music of the great god Dambala. 

The 7" release itself is awesome, has a great cover and liner notes, and is an interesting pop culture Voodoo curiosity. Since one of the main subjects of this blog is the hidden influence of African Diaspora magico-religious traditions on popular music and culture, I took the recent unearthing and release of this record as a good nod. The liner notes manage to namecheck my mate Danny's pivotal UK jazz saxophonist uncle, Joe Harriott, but neglect to mention anything about Dambala, which feels like a bit of an omission. I'm not sure how auspicious it is to reissue the stolen music of Dambala and not give him his due. Did Jonny Trunk not see what happened to Roy Castle in the film...

New Orleans, Storyville and Billie Holiday

New Orleans is a 1947 film starring Arturo de Cordova and Dorothy Patrick in the leading roles, but much more interestingly has a supporting cast that includes Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday, starring in her first and last film role.

 

The plot gives a fictionalised account of the birth of jazz, focusing on the destruction of the historic Storyville district of New Orleans and the "jazz diaspora" that took place afterwards leading to the proliferation of jazz throughout the country.

Storyville was the prostitution district of the city from 1897 to 1917, and was set up to limit and restrict prostitution to one area where it could be monitored and regulated. It was based on the Dutch model of legalised red light districts that operated at various ports. Brothels in the district ranged from cheap 50 cent dives or "cribs" as they were termed, to magnificently opulent mansions servicing wealthy clients.  

The photographer E.J.Bellocq is famous for having taken a series of haunting images of Storyville prostitutes, the negatives of which were discovered hidden in a sofa and first published in 1971. In many of Bellocq's images the prostitutes wear masks or have had their faces scratched out on the negatives to conceal their identity. Some of the photographs are posed as if the subjects are acting out some strange and mysterious narrative, and more than a few of these scenes are suggestive of Erzulie Freda Dahomey and her mysteries. A few of the women are posed next to collections of objects that almost look like altars, as if the prostitutes were devotees of Our Lady.

 

The district was famous for its "blue books", that were guides to the brothels available in the area including prices and services on offer. The Storyville blue-books were inscribed with the motto: "Order of the Garter: Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense (Shame to Him Who Evil Thinks.)"

There are some nice reproductions of pages from the blue books in the journalist Herbert Asbury's, The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld,  currently in print under the title The Gangs of New Orleans, to cash in on the Martin Scorcese adaptation of Asbury's other book about NY gang culture. Tangentially, Asbury's French Quarter book also has a pretty good section on New Orleans Voodoo Queen's and Root Doctors, that discusses various Voodoo personages beyond the more well known operators such as Marie Laveau/s and Doctor John/s.

 

The New Orleans film portrays the popular, although incorrect, idea that jazz originated in Storyville. In reality, the emergent style of music was played all over the city, but as Storyville was often a social destination for many visitors to the city, that was where jazz was often first encountered. It was common for the higher end brothels to employ a piano player or small band, and this is where many jazz musicians in the city got their start, including Louis Armstrong.

Storyville was shut down by the Federal Government in 1917, and then later demolished completely in the 1930s. Some of the finest and most historically important buildings in the city were destroyed by a city government that wanted to eradicate all memory of the district's reputation from existence. 

Whilst the New Orleans film takes some staggering liberties with history (such as suggesting that one sympathetic white man was the driving force behind the success and popularity of jazz...), it does depict the exodus of jazz (or ragtime as it was then known) musicians from Storyville to Chicago in one of its most poignant scenes. Louis Armstrong, in his 40s in the film, did make the journey from New Orleans to Chicago as a young man, following the closure of Storyville, and initially found his success in the windy city rather than the crescent city. 

For much of his career, Armstrong was unable to play at venues in his hometown New Orleans as he often had a mixed race band, and in the south during that time, bands comprised of integrated white and black musicians were unwelcome. A venue would accept an all black lineup or an all white lineup, but bands that crossed the colour line on stage were a no go. A fact that Armstrong always said broke his heart, and gave him checkered feelings towards the city of his birth. The band that Armstrong plays with in the film is a who's who of early New Orleans jazz greats, including trombonist Kid Ory, drummer Zutty Singleton, clarinetist Barney Bigard, guitar player Bud Scott, bassist George "Red" Callender, pianist Charlie Beal, and pianist Meade "Lux" Lewis.

The most interesting scenes in the film, however, are the ones that involve Billie Holiday. Much of the surviving film footage of Holiday performing is from her later period during the 1950s, where her voice is  still awesome but you can almost see the demonic ravages of her drug use crawling under her skin. The nightclub scenes in New Orleans give us a glimpse of her closer to the prime of her career, three white gardenias in her hair and inhabiting the Lady Day persona. 

 

Holiday was not happy with the film, understandably, as it was kept from her that she was expected to play a maid until she had agreed to the part. In her autobiography Lady Sings the Blues, she says:

 "I thought I was going to play myself in it. I thought I was going to be Billie Holiday doing a couple of songs in a nightclub setting and that would be that. I should have known better. When I saw the script, I did. You just tell one Negro girl who's made movies who didn't play a maid or a whore. I don't know any. I found out I was going to do a little singing, but I was still playing the part of a maid."

You can pretty much see the resentment on her during the scenes where they have her dressed as a maid. She has the last laugh though, as New Orleans isn't actually a very good film, and the only reason to watch it is for the scenes where she sings. 

You can see her squirming with resentment in a maid's outfit here:

And then killing it in the Storyville exodus and nightclub scenes here:

Oshun Tropicalia

Today's blog post is the second in my occasional series of features on "Radiant Ladies of Voodoo and the music they love", and it celebrates my Lady Oshun, Queen of the Rivers, and ruler of love, intimacy, luxury, beauty, joy and all of the things in life that make it not just bearable but truly worth living.

She occupies a similar space in the pantheon of the predominantly Yoruban-influenced African Diaspora magico-religious traditions, such as Santeria and Candomble, as Erzulie Freda occupies in Haitian Vodou and New Orleans Voodoo, which are more influenced by the Dahomean traditions of Africa. Oshun shares many of the same mysteries with Erzulie Freda, and they could be considered cousins or sisters, but are not to be conflated. They are very different ladies, and you can learn more from observing how they differ than you can from noticing their points of similarity. I love and serve both of them in my House. 

Oshun's colour is yellow, her number is five, her day of the week is Thursday, and she is associated with rivers, mirrors, fans, jewelry, pumpkins, oranges, honey, and all sweet things. She is the quality of sweetness in your life, as well as your own sense of happiness and self-worth. Service to Oshun brings with it a feeling of refreshment, like cool water or sweet citrus, or a soft breeze on a hot summer day. She regularly receives offerings from her devotees at various places of power along the banks of the River Thames, a continuity of practice that recalls earlier riverside devotion to the old London Goddesses Isis and Tamesis. She is syncretised with Our Lady of Charity, the patron Saint of Cuba, and is much loved throughout the South Americas.

Perhaps not surprisingly, given her popularity in latin countries, Oshun is frequently the subject of a lot of Cuban and Brazilian music. A particular favourite of mine is Louvação a Oxum, by Maria Bethania, the sister of Brazilian tropicalia singer Caetano Veloso and contemporary of Gal Costa, Gilberto Gil, et al. This is actually a late cut of hers, dating from as recently as 1992, clearly a devotional song for Oshun (or Oxum in the Brazilian spelling), and here accompanied by some lovely imagery of the Orisha and her priestesses. 

Erzulie Freda Dahomey

My Lady Erzulie Freda Dahomey is the Voodoo Goddess of love. Her day is Thursday. Her colours are pink and white. She loves flowers and jewelry, beautiful cakes and pastries, champagne and expensive perfume. She is syncretised with the Mater Dolorosa, Our Lady of Sorrows, because of the tears that she cries for the world. Her heart is pierced with a sword but it does not bleed. She feels everything. Her mysteries are a whirl of parties, and music, and dancing and romance – but the world in all its crassness and brutality always lets her down. Conditions down here on Earth never live up to the beautiful dream of Erzulie. Serving her mysteries is then a celebration of that beautiful, wonderful, unrealistic dream that Erzulie holds in her heart and which may blossom with the same radiance within our own hearts. She is the vivid beauty of nature, the fire of Netzach, the passion of the senses, the fresh early morning dew upon the petal of a rose. She has three husbands among the Lwa – Ogoun, Agwe and Dambala – whose three wedding rings she wears on her fingers, and an infinite number of lovers and admirers. And now she also has her own dubstep label. 

Paul.Meme is a DJ and co-editor of Woofah magazine, the essential British print fanzine covering dancehall, reggae, grime and dubstep. He records under the name Grievous Angel, and released the record Belief is the Enemy last year on the Electrik Dragon label to much critical acclaim. Paul's website is a regular source of awesome mixes ranging from 2step to bashment. His series of Dubstep Sufferah mixes and Grime in the Dancehall collaboration with Jon Eden (which appeared as part of the much missed Blogariddims series), are particular favourites of mine and have provided the soundtrack to Vodou services for certain Lwa on many occasions. 

Last summer he released a 12" track called Lady Dub (catalogue no: ERZULIE01), the first of his Devotional Dubz series of dubstep/dark garage refixes of r'n'b tunes, this one being a refix of D'Angelo's Lady. Paul told me that the track was conceived as a result of meditational music making one evening beneath a Full Moon, during which he experienced a powerful sense of spiritual connection with Erzulie Freda Dahomey. Thus inspired, he completed the track as a devotional piece for her over the course of that Moon cycle, with the track being finished when the Moon came full again. Lady Dub is essentially a distillation of that joyful contemplation on the beauty and sadness of human life. Paul wouldn't describe himself as a Voodoo practitioner, but he instinctively gets it, and you only have to listen to Lady Dub to hear the presence of Erzulie in its beats.  

It was well received, coming in at no.8 in Pitchfork's dubstep 2008 chart, getting single of the week at Boomkat, and plenty of airplay on Rinse FM and the pirates. One of the things Paul said he was trying to accomplish with the single was to offer "a different vision of dubstep, one that reaffirmed the form’s original tolerance for sweetness and vocals while offering the biggest booming 808 sine waves I could manage." 

I've been a bit at odds with the dubstep scene myself ever since I encountered difficulty getting into FWD cos I was wearing a pale grey suit with an early 60s cut, which was at odds with their unofficial dress code of scruffy bastard in a washed out grey hoodie. Fortunately, retro tailoring won out over shit Gap t-shirts and combats, as it always will, and they let me in anyway. I enjoyed the tunes, and the physically overpowering bass, but the thing that notably seemed to be missing was the influence of The Lady. There was no glamour, none of her mysteries, an 80% male crowd nodding their heads in unison, and a marked absence of where Erzulie Freda ought to be on a night out. I even got served a bottle of Corona that was missing its lime, which speaks volumes about an abandonment of basic decency. 

Perhaps as a symptom of the rough and uncertain times that have characterised the zeroes (I refuse to call them the noughties, they've been the fucking zeroes), both dubstep and grime have lacked that essential component that is the essence of Erzulie Freda. Dubstep is like a South East London night bus journey expressed as music, the florescent lit midnight screech of the 171 as it howls through Peckham's dreaming, the arduous brutalised voice of Croydon concrete speaking of the barrenness of its heart in the only language it knows. Grime is a stark contrast to that, a mad energy rising up out of East London towerblocks and proclaiming its turf over apocalyptic SciFi beats, an urban folk music infused with the collective experience of Bethnal pressure, daily struggle, postcode killings, police hassle, quick thrills, and the dull ache of a blighted landscape. Cut grime and it bleeds testosterone, the microphone passed from hand to hand, bad boy threats in the dancehall, even girl MCs spitting violence in the night. 

Where was Erzulie Freda in this? What happened to the sweet vocals and champagne, the dancing and allure, making an effort before you leave the house, creating a space where the brutality of city living is overcome for a few hours and replaced with fleeting and ephemeral worlds of delight and fascination. This is her mystery. She occupies the heart, and whatever the paucity of your circumstances or the grim surroundings you may inhabit, if you can locate Erzulie in your heart, she will transform that which you experience with a wave of her fan. You only have to meet her halfway.

When I put the needle down on the Lady Dub 12", it felt like listening to a spell that had been sent out to redress that balance and to bring Erzulie to where she was most needed. All soundsystem needs The Lady. She's the beating heart of any night out. Queen of the dancehall, captivating and enchanting, turning the night into something you'll remember for the rest of your life. Lady Dub was an invocation. A VIP invite to the Voodoo Love Goddess, seamed stockings and high heels, French perfume and eroticism. Our city groans beneath the weight of inequality and corruption, we've been robbed blind by bankers and politicians, disenfranchised and made to live in fear of one another, taught to be grateful for whatever meagre living we can scrape by. But Erzulie's dream is greater than all of this and will not be denied. In her world, every moment is like the first kiss of an ideal lover, and her presence reminds us of how beautiful nature is, how amazing and filled with possibility London can be, and how much magic there is to be found in a night out. 

Like all good witchcraft, the Lady Dub spell seemed to both echo and give solid form to certain yearnings that were already in motion in the culture. Strong magic simply irrigates and gives shape to unformed desire, and suggests an appealing direction in which existing energy and intention might be encouraged to flow. Since its release there has been a significant garage revival, and the unstoppable rise of UK funky, that brings back girly vocals, smart dress codes, and a female audience to a scene that has been dry of these mysteries for too long. Erzulie has re-entered the building, and wants you to buy her a bottle of champagne.

You can listen to Lady Dub at its dedicated myspace page:

http://www.myspace.com/devotionaldubz

Or download the entire Devotional Dubz mix put together for FACT magazine.

Then buy one of the remaining 12"s and play it through a proper system like it deserves.

St John's Eve

The swamps are alive with spirits tonight, and so is the Borough of Lewisham. 

Spotify link:

Dr. John – Croker Courtbullion

Voodoo by Emy de Pradines

One of the main things I want to do with this blog is write about my current obsession with Voodoo-related music, specifically obscure Voodoo-related vinyl, such as the shockingly good record above – which I managed to score on Ebay last week. 

It's an extremely rare 1953 recording of "Authentic music and rhythms of Haiti" by Emy de Pradines and the Haiti Dance Chorus and Orchestra. According to the liner notes, Emy de Pradines is the daughter of a Haitian poet, composer and author who wrote under the name of Candiau. I so far haven't been able to turn up any further information about either of them on the internet, but the liner notes are pretty extensive. Apparently, the Haiti Dance Chorus consisted of "12 girls who both dance and sing", and the Haiti Dance Orchestra consisted of Rada drums, bamboo horns, sticks clacked together, cha-cha shakers, and – unusually for Voodoo rhythms – flute and guitar. 

The seller included some information about the record label, which also gives it a bit of context:

"Sometimes a record is so far ahead of its time that it’s almost impossible to believe a U.S. record label would press it. This is truly one of those records. This is an incredibly rare New York City Mono 1st pressing on the Deep Groove Remington Label from 1953. In the early fifties, the Remington Label was billed as a “budget” label, although part of the reason was that much of the material on their records was not mainstream and it was cheap to produce at that time. Because of the nature of their material, these records were produced in small numbers and even then did not sell well. However the material on most of the records was outstanding for its field, and the one we are offering here is exceptional.

It could broadly be defined as Haitian Vodou ritual music, and a lot of the tracks are songs for various Lwa, but it's nothing like any of the more widely available recordings of ritual music that I've encountered, such as the various releases available on Soul Jazz. It's almost like a weird Haitian version of a 1950s exotica record in places, mostly due to the very non-traditional presence of the flute and guitar, and the delightful vocal stylings of Ms de Pradines and her chorus. 

The tracks themselves are extremely varied, opening with a "Banda" drum rhythm, and then going into a track called "I Man Man Man", in which the names of various Lwa are called out one-by-one until a possession occurs. I recognise Simbi, and Ogoun Badagris, and a couple of others who get name checked, but I've never heard of some the names called out, which are all presumably local line of transmission Lwa specific to whichever region of Haiti the record was recorded in.

The next track is called "Choucoune", a love song of the romantic period dating to around 1900 and based on a Meringue rhythm. This is followed by "Negress Quartier Morin", which is a call and response number where one singer says: "I am going to dance Voodoo, but I cannot dance in these old clothes – lend me your skirt!", and the answer comes back: "No, I will not give you my skirt!" and so on for various items of clothing. 

Side A closes with a beautiful song for Erzulie Freda Dahomey, the goddess of love. As the liner notes say: "The singer calls Erzulie until the Goddess enters her body and possesses her. Then perfumed and arrayed in the robe and jewelry of Erzulie, the possessed takes on the characteristics of the Goddess. Erzulie represents love in spiritual form. She is sweet and good and can do no evil."

Side B opens with a lullaby called "Dodo Titit Maman", probably of French origin. It's a funny sort of a lullaby though, given that it is based around the comforting refrain: "If you do not sleep, the crab will eat you; if you do not sleep, the cat will eat you."

Next up is "Rasbodail rhythm", which is probably my favourite track on the record. The notes say that it is influenced by the Taino and Arawak Indian rhythms, the original inhabitants of Haiti whose rites were incorporated into Vodou. I can hear it, as it has that fiery Petro quality to the drums, which tends to signify the Taino or Arawak inspired rites. It's carnival music, and conjures up images of wild, dangerous and otherworldly torchlit processions. 

The next track is called "Loa Azaou" and is an invocation to a feared deity of black magic, whose name I've never encountered before. This one is spine chilling. I'm actually a bit uncomfortable about casually playing this track in my house, given what it seems to be calling on and what the notes imply about the personality in question. You sometimes have to be a bit careful with some of these mysterious invocatory spirit rhythms recorded onto old vinyl...

It is followed by "Panamam Tombe", a humourous song about a Haitian president who was forewarned that if he lost his Panama hat, he would also lose his presidency. The song tells the story that on the way to Jacqmel, a wind blew the hat from his head and he simultaneously lost his power. There's lots of stuff in Haitian songs and folklore about hats, and they often seem to function as a metaphor for consciousness or control of oneself. I guess this comes from the importance of one's head as the seat of spirit, and also connects to the importance of haircuts in a lot of African Diaspora trads. There's a well known song for Erzulie La Sirene that has a line about being careful that your hat does not fall into the sea, as that is when she might snatch you away beneath the waters.

The final track is another great one called "Mrele, Mrele, Mrele", the defiant and triumphant cry of a girl whose father is a Voodoo priest and whose mother is a priestess of the mysteries. "No evil spirit can touch me! I call, I shout, I challenge! None can hurt me!" she sings.

 

The chap I bought the record from was kind enough to put some sound clips up on his Ebay page, which are still live, so I thought I'd embed them here to give a taste of this fantastic treasure. I wouldn't say they are the best tracks on the record, but I'm not set up to convert from vinyl to mp3 myself at the moment so at least its a sample. Enjoy! 

Banda drums:

Panamam Tombe: