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by Peter Culshaw
Sometimes you get the feeling you’ve been summoned. In this
case by Yemaya, the Goddess of the Ocean. I’d had a week
in Sao Paulo, doing a radio programme and collecting material
for a compilation of new music from that fantastical, futuristic
city with its 20 million inhabitants, massive skyscrapers, crazy
traffic and favelas of the poor, a tropical flash of the future.
Actually, I liked the city’s crazy energy, and musically
the new scene there is very interesting. Until recently mainly
young people in Third World countries wanted to imitate the West
– be rock stars or rappers, for example. But there is emerging
a whole dynamic scene of new music which uses electronics and
interesting words all with a distinctly Brazilian flavour, a model
to other new global music.
One night I saw a wonderfully inspiring dance group called Grupo
Corpo – blondes, redheads, mulattos, Japanese-Brazilians
and blacks mixed not for some cultural experiment but absolutely
naturally, reflecting the different colours of Brazilian society.
In a world going apparently crazy, this vision of athletic grace
and togetherness was immensely moving, aided immensely by the
brilliant and original music of Tom Ze, a godfather of the scene
I started calling Sampa Nova. Another leading player called Suba
tragically died for his music – rushing in to his burning
studio to rescue his unfinished new album. Sampa is what the locals
call the city – and this was a kind of answer to the Bossa
Nova which was a style associated much more with Rio. I went round
different studios and venues meeting scores of musicians and assembled
enough material for a CD.
But after a week of urban intensity I wanted to go somewhere
else at least for a few days to escape. In London I’d asked
a friend who knew Brazil where I should go; she suggested Fortaleza
in the north-east of the country. What I realized on searching
the net was the day after I was due to arrive was the Festival
of Yemaya, the Goddess of the Ocean. This apparent coincidence
electrified me as I’d recently written a song which included
lyrics about Yemaya, who is also worshipped in Cuba, where I’d
come across her. In Cuba and north-east Brazil there is a mixture
of African and Catholic religions which they call Santeria in
Cuba and Candomble in Brazil – the slaves were not allowed
to worship their own African deities, so found Catholic saints
with similar characteristics. Saint Lazaro, who rose from the
dead is celebrated on the same day as Babalu-Aye, the Yoruba God
of Healing in Cuba, for example. Yemaya seems to correspond with
different saints in different countries.
The next day I arrived with Michelle, a Brazilian friend, on
the beach where the Festival was to take place – at the Praia
Do Futuro (the Beach of the Future). I was met by the amazing
sight of hundreds of people dressed in blue and white, the colours
of this Goddess. Many women were dressed as mermaids and drummers
created a trance-like ambience – all these deities and saints
have particular rhythms of their own. Some politicians were on
the beach also, hoping to get people’s votes for the forthcoming
election.
I asked assorted people who was the priest or priestess until
I found myself talking to a kind of high priestess of Yemaya.
Actually, she was one of the least noticeable of the often outrageously
dressed women on the beach. In my experience, the most interesting
spiritual practitioners are the most modest, spiritual arrogance
being a great trap. Perhaps the most powerful and wise individual
I’ve ever met was a quiet dervish in Istanbul who changed
peoples lives just by being in the same room with them.
I chatted with the priestess about Yemaya. I asked her –
we were after all on the ‘beach of the future’ –
whether she could tell the future. ‘Sometimes’ she replied.
She told me that Yemaya was a very chic Goddess, who enjoyed flowers
and perfume. Indeed, many people were pouring perfume into the
sea and the shore was strewn with roses and other flowers. Part
of the power of the ritual is an immense sense of gratitude to
the Goddess and the ocean for its riches and beauty – gratitude
being a great virtue (they have so much less materially than we
do, but are more thankful – figure that one out).
One of the keys to Santeria and Candomble is that the gods and
goddesses have both good and evil characteristics, in that respect
being similar to the Greek Pantheon. I suspect that the West and
Islam’s split of good and evil is an important part of our
societies’ neuroses and our tendencies towards various fundamentalisms.
Many times in Brazil I found myself thinking how sane these people
are, while the rest of the world seems to be going not so slowly
insane. There is less of a split between the human and the divine,
and between sensuality and sexuality and spirituality and an acceptance
and joy of the human condition (just to hear the music and watch
the dancing was confirmation enough of that). Of course, Brazil
has many problems – particularly the poverty and violence
in the favelas, to which their new President Lula hopes to make
a difference.
At the end of our conversation the priestess said, almost in
a throwaway line, that I should leave the beach by five o’clock.
I wandered around taking pictures and was on my second roll of
film, when Michelle points out that it’s five o’clock
and the priestess had told us we should be off the beach. Give
me few minutes and we’ll leave, I suggest. I pick up one
of the flowers and place it in the ocean.
Suddenly, from nowhere, two kids snatch my camera and tape machine
and run off, Michelle being knocked to the ground. We’re
shaken but physically unharmed, and probably lucky not to have
been injured as these young kids often have knives or guns. ‘She
did warn us’, says Michelle, and I apologize to her.
That evening I decide to track down the priestess in the suburbs
of Fortaleza. She lives in an unassuming house, except that in
the back there is a large room dedicated to Yemaya, with a statue
of the goddess. She mutters something, throws water on herself
and goes into a semi-trance state, shuffles some Tarot cards and
lays them out in front of her and proceeds to tell me my past
and future. I’m curious that Tarot has been mixed in with
this African and Catholic tradition. I can’t understand her
well, but then the local English teacher comes to the house and
begins to translate. She gets my past and present very accurately,
so I’m impressed, but also nervous about what she will say
about my future. Some is about future (which I can prevent or
mitigate) disease, some vague (‘there will be a death in
the family’ applies to nearly all of us), other stuff is
positive, success, children and she describes my wife-to-be. None
of which I know yet whether it’s true. She tells me I am
protected by Yemaya and Chango, the male god of thunder, who will
also protect the ‘powerful’ house I will live in. Many
people have two of these deities protecting them – I’m
inspired it’s these two, as out of the pantheon they were
the ones I was always attracted to, a balance of masculine and
feminine forces. She also tells me I need to let go of my last
girlfriend, that my attachment to her is holding my progress back.
There are other annual Yemaya festivals in other parts of Brazil,
in Salvador, Bahia and on New Year in Rio. It occurs to me that
I hadn’t taken Yemaya seriously enough, ignoring the priestess’s
warning, and instead picking up a flower on the beach. A week
later, on my last day in Rio I buy a bunch of roses and some good
perfume and go down to Ipanema, the beach associated with Yemaya
there. I ask for forgiveness and express my gratitude to the Goddess
as I wade into the ocean. At that point I feel a massive, healing
force go through my body and find myself crying salt tears into
the sea. I realize the priestess is right, I’m still hopelessly
attached my ex-girlfriend, something I’d denied to myself,
except for moments of despair and loneliness. I feel the power
of my love for her, and also my gratitude for our wonderful times
and the years we spent together. For the first time, I’m
able to really feel that I genuinely wish her happiness. Utterly
drained but cleansed also, perhaps twenty minutes later I return
to my hotel and order a taxi to the airport. The next day, I’m
smiling at people in a London bus stop when I get glances from
those waiting that I really should keep my smiles to myself. They
seem to think I am some kind of madman, pervert or eccentric.
In a way, they are right, but I don’t care. I miss the warmth
of Brazil, painfully, for weeks afterwards.
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Sampa Nova
(Sterns)
A collection of innovative and brilliant music I collected on
my trip to Brazil. Including music by Tom Ze and Suba.
SUSHEELA RAMAN
Love Trap
(Virgin/EMI)
British-Indian singer Raman wears different genres of music around
her neck like the goddess Kali wore skulls. African, Indian, flamenco
grooves combine innovatively, even disturbingly to make this one
of the records of the year. Globalization isn’t all bad,
after all.
IBRAHIM FERRER
Buenos Hemanos
(World Circuit)
The veteran Buena Vista Social Club singer comes back again four
years after his debut with an extraordinary, warm, gritty record,
fabulously produced.
MANECAS COSTAS
Paraiso de Gumbe
(Late Junction)
You probably haven’t heard a record from Guinea-Bissau before
– partly because that troubled country hasn’t a single
recording studio. One was flown in to expertly record this hugely
talented singer- songwriter.
JOHN ADAMS
El Nino
(Warner Classics)
Even if ‘contemporary classical’ doesn’t usually
float your boat, this is a work of genius. El Nino is both the
hurricane and the Christ-child. Beautiful lyrics by south American
poetesses make this a landmark piece of spiritual music for our
time. Not a new release but mentioned because the British premiere
of the work will be at the Barbican London on June 26th.
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