To produce Efficacy of Sound, Ruthie Meadows spent four years conducting multi-sited ethnographic work in eastern, central, and western Cuba, in addition to taking a trip to Nigeria to study the efficacy of sonority and music in the Nigerian-style ritual movement of Cuban Ifá-Òrìṣà. Using grounded theory, Meadows centers the perspective and words of her interlocutors. She explores links between use, affect, and orientation, applying queer and feminist critical theory when applicable. Overall, Meadows argues that efficacy in Cuban Ifá-Òrìṣà operates through sound mediated by ritual potency and power within social ecologies of Cuba.
Chapter 1, “The Global Ifá Missionary: Revisionism and Nigerian-Style Ifá-Òrìṣà in Cuba,” begins with the story of Juan Manuel Rodríguez Camejo, who was arrested at the US border as a self-proclaimed double agent for the CIA and the Cuban equivalent, the Dirección General de Inteligencia. Rodríguez was granted asylum in Spain, but he traveled extensively in Latin America, Europe, and Africa, particularly Nigeria. Meadows recounts the intriguing story of Rodríguez’s transformation from double agent in the Cuban counterintelligence to a global missionary and entrepreneur for Yorùbá-centric ritual revisionism, founding the Odùgbemi International Association for Traditional Yoruba Religion (OIATYR) and changing his name to Ifáshade Odùgbemi. This is significant because Ifáshade becomes the first foreigner to establish a traditional religious lineage in Yorùbáland and is viewed as an emblem of efficacy. Meadows argues in this chapter that race is a factor in ritual inclusion, belonging, and leadership in Nigerian-style Ifá.
In chapter 2, “Yorùbá Geographies and the Efficacy of the Far: The Dùndún ‘Talking Drums’ and Transatlantic Institutions in Havana,” Meadows shows how African-traditionalist men use the dùndún drum to achieve personal efficacy and ritual authority in Cuba. She explains how the dùndún has advantages and flexibility in mimicking tonal properties of Yorùbá speech, and how these drums become reintroduced to heighten the efficacy of communication. The dùndún are renamed as the drums of Ifá in Cuba and become a tool for reimagining Cuban Ifá along traditional African lines.
Meadows explores ways African traditionalists break gendered restrictions of ritual drumming in Cuba in chapter 3, “Revolutionary Feminism and Gendered Translocality: Women and Consecrated Batá.” Meadows provides the story of Enrique Orozco Rubio, who took an academic approach to Yorùbá traditional religion by developing a thesis and academic conference on women’s emancipation to help them gain access to sacred instruments of Nigerian-style Ifá-Òriṣà. One such woman, Nagybe Madariaga Pouymiró, receives secret batá lessons from Bell Morales, who also helped her obtain her first set of drums. Pouymiró becomes a major player in feminist pursuits. She is brutally beaten and continues to play drums in public, and her writings link national freedom fighting with women’s battle to play batá. Meadows explains that Pouymiró’s story demonstrates the ways perceived efficacy of Nigerian-style Ifá opens spaces for female potentiality, breaking the norm of male-controlled knowledge.
Through an analysis of the Letter of the Year divination ceremony, Meadows explores racial, gendered, and sexual complexities in chapter 4, “Ìyánífá: Gendered Polarity and ‘Speaking Ifá’.” After explaining the exclusion of women and homosexuals, showing how tropes of universalism have allowed for racial but not sexual inclusivity, the rituals in the Letter of the Year ceremony are described by focusing on the voice of the Yorubá language while preparing the plant for the ritual herbal bath. Meadows argues that the correct Yorùbá language is the only way to guarantee a connection with òrìṣà, thus becoming central in the efficacy of sound.
Chapter 5, “The Efficacy of Pleasure and the Utility of the Close: Regionalism and All-Male Egúngún Masquerade,” explores the three-day celebration of the Egúngún masquerade, a sacred mask ceremony of the ancestors. Meadows shows how the efficacy of sound, or more specifically, the human actions of bàtá and dùndún drumming and chanting incantations, invite egúngún on their journey to the land of the living, move the ceremony into the ritual of trance mediumship, and cause the success of the òriṣà ritual through the pleasure of festivity. Success of the African traditionalist ritual, Meadows explains, comes from festival pleasure of the human and the nonhuman, causing the efficacy of ritual to successfully work with Egúngún, ancestors, and òriṣà.
Efficacy of Sound is the first monograph for Ruthie Meadows, an assistant professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Nevada, Reno. She draws from prominent scholars of Afro-Cuban traditions, including but not limited to William Bascom, Lydia Cabrera, Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús, Todd Ochoa, and Solimar Otero. Her writing style and storylines draw in the readers to explain the history and living traditions of a multifaceted religion. This book would be a great addition to classes taught in the departments of African studies, anthropology, ethnomusicology, folklore, Latinx studies, and religious studies. I would also highly recommend it to anyone wanting to understand the complex tradition of Cuban Ifá-Órìṣà.
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[Review length: 798 words • Review posted on February 6, 2025]