Iyesá Complexes: Reexamining Perceptions of Tradition in Cuban Iyesá Music

Kevin M. Delgado

This essay examines specific music and religious rituals within the Cuban religion commonly known as Santería or Regla de Ocha/Ocha. Focusing upon the rhythms, liturgy, musical instruments, and traditions introduced to Cuba by the Iyesá (the Cuban descendents of the Ìjès· à people of Nigeria), this work attempts a critical historiography of one ethnic component of the Santería/Ocha religion. In Cuba, two Afro-Cuban cabildos (family-based, lodge-type ritual associations) affiliated with Iyesá ancestry preserve music traditions that were established in Cuba by their ancestors during the midnineteenth century. In addition to summarizing the cabildos' traditions, this study pursues questions regarding the origins and (re)formations of Iyesá culture vis-à-vis the mainstream Santería milieu. Because modern Iyesá traditions are linked to Santería yet in many ways remain distinct from its mainstream practices, differences embodied by Iyesá traditions are sometimes viewed as evidence of an incomplete tradition, one marred by erosion and loss. I view the specific ethnic origins of these Iyesá cabildos and their relatively old age as a unique perspective from which to view Santería/Ocha practices and liturgy, arguing that select Iyesá cabildo traditions may not reflect loss but may predate the modern Santería religion itself. Through a comparison between the two extant Iyesá cabildos, I examine how Iyesá liturgy is represented within the Santería/Ocha religion and in Cuban folkloric music expressions, exploring why one cabildo is portrayed as the exclusive bearer of "true" Iyesá liturgy at the expense of the other. Finally, through an interdisciplinary triangulation of ethnographic data, organology, and previous scholarship on Cuban and Nigerian history and religious traditions, I offer hypotheses that attempt to mediate two seemingly incompatible Iyesá traditions, ideas that hopefully suggest ways of thickening our description of the Afro-Cuban past.