This arts-based research project focused on four specific communities: the Ewe communities of Dzodze, Ghana; Adjodogou, Togo; and the Arará legacy rich communities of Perico and Agramonte, Cuba, Matanzas Province.

Former enslaved Africans and their descendants who eventually settled in the Perico area, were enslaved primarily at a sugar mill called España now largely abandoned and located about 5 km outside Perico. Those who settled in the Agramonte area were enslaved at a near-by sugar mill called Unión Fernández which is now in ruins.

For Ewe and Fon people brought to Cuba as enslaved Africans, their religious musical and dance expressions were their identities as a people dislocated from Africa under the weight of slavery. In Cuba, they continued their religious practices to the best of their ability.

Thus, Arará ritual practices have many shared attributes with Ewe ritual practices, primarily with those known as the Anlo-Ewe found largely in Southeastern Ghana and Southwestern Togo.

However, Arará is its own reinvention of the Ewe and Fon religious expressions as the people who practiced them endured slavery and later worked together to rebuild a sense of life in Cuba.

Dancing at the Awán Ceremony, image by Brian Jeffery

Arará as a religious expression in Cuba did not adopt a homogenous form across the Matanzas province any more than there are homogenous religious forms across the Ewe and Fon areas of West Africa. The Ewe and Fon peoples had (and still have) multiple variations of music and dance-making (Avorgbedor 2005) along with diverse deities from their respective West African communities. However, there are common and shared attributes across the breadth of the diverse Ewe and Fon music, dance, and ritual traditions.

These shared attributes and diversities met each other in multiple Cuban locations across the Matanzas province. As peoples were isolated in individual forced labor communities, Arará evolved differently at each site.

But across the breadth of Arará traditions, there are also clear shared attributes. These shared attributes include deities, often with slightly different names, and their physical representations imbued by these deities, known as fodunes or fundamentos (Daniel 2005; Fernández Martínez 2005). Shared attributes of these Cuban Arará deities and fundamentos can be discerned between the Ewe and Fon vodu deities and their imbued forms, along with aesthetic similarities in dances, rhythms, and ritual practices.

A key component to this research, in addition to the years of work in Ghana and Togo, was the extensive body of oral history interviews conducted in Perico and Agramonte primarily between 2006-2018. Interviews conducted with elders in both locations revealed rich oral histories. But through each interview runs a shared theme of transformation and retention, pride in African roots, remembered stories about relatives who were enslaved, and insistence on objects arriving "directly from" Africa.

Perico

Streets of Perico, image by Susan Matthews

In general, Perico, located in the Matanzas province, Cuba, was first a municipality that was founded as railroad lines were extended into the area from Cárdenas in the mid 1800s. In 1863, the sugar mill España was officially registered upon production of its first sugar harvest in the Perico municipality and by 1868 all the acquired plots of land of Julián de Zulueta y Amondo, owner of España, belonged to the municipality of Perico. According to residents in Perico and documents located in the Perico’s municipal museum, the first Arará settlement was registered in 1863, although the enslaved most likely arrived around 1861. The majority of the enslaved peoples who labored at España were brought from West Africa mainly from the former Kingdom of Dahomey (present day Benin and parts of Togo, West Africa).

Streets of Perico, image by Susan Matthews

Perico, as a town today, is where freed Africans from España were eventually re-settled. Evocative elder oral history stories illuminate its growth and the rise of its Arará ritual practice. Many of these stories can be found on Susan Matthews' page. These manuscripts are all based on the interviews conducted in Perico by the research team of Jill Flanders Crosby, Melba Núñez Isalbe, and Roberto Pedroso García between 2005 and 2010. Of these stories, Ma Florentina's story is perhaps the most legendary and well known.

As well, Perico is well-known for the stories of Armando Zulueta who had a strong and important San Lázaro, and the annual awán still held every December 18.

Sociedad Africana under renovation in 2006, image by Susan Matthews

Agramonte

In Agramonte, a half an hour drive from Perico where stories of Perico Arará elders are known and shared in Agramonte and vice versa, African roots are as resonant as in Perico. The ruins of Unión Fernández, located outside of Agramonte, once housed a sugar operation. Many enslaved people who labored there eventually settled in nearby Agramonte. In December 2007, the research team all spent an afternoon in Agramonte, sitting on the porch of 93-year-old Hilario "Melao" Fernández Sosa as he narrated stories of Manuela Gose, popularly known as Ma Gose. According to oral history, she and another elder called Coso-Coso were both tricked into getting on board a slave ship and were brought to Cuba to work at Unión Fernández. After her freedom, Ma Gose continued to live at the small batey (community) of Unión de Fernández before moving to Agramonte.

Next, we went to the house in Agramonte that Ma Gose lived in and talked with Ma Gose's great-granddaughter Onelia Fernández Campos and her husband Israel Baró Oruña. When Ma Gose came to Agramonte, they told us, she brought her fundamentos and established an African Society at her house sometime in the late 1800s. Unlike Perico, all the fundamentos that arrived in Agramonte as the formerly enslaved re-located from Unión de Fernández, were not housed in Ma Gose's house. Rather the fundamentos stayed with the individuals who carried them to Agramonte. But interestingly, Israel and Onelia are adamant that Ma Gose's ritual necklaces, still located in her house, came with Ma Gose when she was transported as a slave. Israel says:

Dzodze

Inside Dashi Kemeh Nkegbe's Togbui Anyigbato shrine, images by Brian Jeffery

Adjodogou

Early in the establishment of Adjodogou’s market, it became a target of attacks by thieves. According to Solar, Foli was a strong and powerful man who fought off the pillagers. From him, the town earned its name - adjo meaning attack and dogou meaning nobody can come. There are several important shrines in in Adjodogou, one for Sakpata, one for Da, and one for Yewe.

The stories of all these communities can be found in the book Situated Narratives and Sacred Dance: Performing the Entangled Histories of Cuba and West Africa by Jill Flanders Crosby and JT Torres published 2021 by University Press of Florida. Also reference the following publications by Flanders Crosby and Torres:

Torres JT, and Jill Flanders Crosby. 2018. “Timeless Knowledge, Embodied Memory: The Performance of Stories in Ethnographic Research.” Etnofoor 30(1): 41-56.

Crosby, Jill Flanders. 2010. "The Social Memory of Arará in Cuba: Oral Histories from Perico and Agramonte." Southern Quarterly 47(4): 91-109:4.

Crosby, Jill Flanders. 2010. "Secrets Under the Skin: They Brought the Essence of Africa." In Making Caribbean Dance: Continuity and Creativity in Island Cultures Editor, Susana Sloat. University of Florida Press