Changó, Decolonizing the African Diaspora

Manuel Zapata Olivella, Jonathan Tittler

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000409734
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Literarische Sammlungen

The crowning achievement of Afro-Colombian author Manuel Zapata Olivella, Changó, Decolonizing the African Diaspora depicts the African American experience from a perspective of gods who stand over the world and watch.

The centennial anniversary release of this ground-breaking postcolonial text remains a passionate tour de force to make sense of our past, present, and future. A new introduction by Professor William Luis positions the book in contemporary politics and reasserts this book's importance in Afro-Spanish American literature. Ranging from Brazil to New England but centered in the Caribbean, where countless enslaved people once arrived from West Africa, this book recounts scenes from four centuries of involuntary displacement and servitude of the muntu, the people. Through the voices of Benkos Biojo in Colombia, Henri Christophe in Haiti, Simon Bolivar in Venezuela, Jose Maria Morelos in Mexico, the Aleijadinho in Brazil, or Malcolm X in Harlem, Zapata Olivella conveys, in luminous verse and prose, the breadth of heroism, betrayal, and suffering common to the history of people of African descent in the Western hemisphere.

Readers and critics of postcolonial literatures will relish the opportunity to experience Zapata Olivella's masterpiece in English; students of world cultures will appreciate this extraordinary tapestry, woven from equal strands of myth and history.

Part One

Origins

Land of Ancestors

The Orichas: Let the Kora Sing

DOI: 10.4324/9781003163428-2

Ears of the Muntu, hear!

Hear! Hear! Hear!

Ears of the Muntu, hear!

(The Kora laughs,

The Kora cried.

Its sister strings

Tell one lone tale:

The story of Nagó,

The tragic trip of the Muntu

To the exile continent of Changó.)

I am Ngafúa, son of Kissi‑Kama.

Give me, Father, creator of images, your voice,

Your voice so often heard in the shade of the baobab.

Kissi‑Kama, Father, awaken!

I invoke you here tonight,

Fill my voice with your wise tales.

Great is

my pain!

(It is a sob,

The tempered string of the kora,

A sharpened blade

Wounded,

Loosened,

Will stab

My pain.)

Father Kissi‑Kama, awaken!

I want you to fill the kora’s taut strings

With valor,

Beauty,

Strength,

Noble heart,

The penetrating glance of

Silamaka capturing the serpent

Of Galamani.

I am Ngafúa, son of Kissi‑Kama.

Recognize me, Father,

I am the little one you carried

In the shade of the deep‑rooted baobab,

On whose heavy limbs slept and sang the heroes

Of the Mandingo.

(The kora narrates.

It will sing

The long history,

The short history,

The long

History of Nagó the Navigator.)

Give me, Father, your word,

The word evocative of Soundjata’s sword,

The bloody sword sung of by your kora,

The one that bathed in blood Krina’s soil

Only so that Changó‑Sun

Every afternoon

Could stain his red mask there.

Father Kissi‑Kama, awaken!

I invoke you here tonight,

Fill my voice with your wise tales.

Great is my pain!

(In the kora lurks a vodou,

An ancient suffering.

Someone weeps.

A mother’s pain when she loses a child,

Someone weeps.

Pain of a widow erased with the dead one’s

Sheets,

Someone weeps.

An orphan’s pain,

A pain that closes eyes

When the sun sets at midday.

A vodou lurks in the kora,

An ancient suffering.)

Shadows of My Elders

Ancestors,

Shadows of my elders,

Shadows so fortunate as to converse with the Orichas,

Accompany me with your drum voices.

I wish to give life to my words.

Come nigh, footprints without footsteps,

Fire without firewood,

Food of the living,

I need your flame

To sing the Muntu’s exile,

Still slumbering the seminal dream.

I need your joy,

Your song,

Your dance,

Your muse,

Your weeping.

Come all this evening.

Draw near!

Let rain not soak them,

Nor dogs bark,

Nor children fear.

Bring the charm that enlivens my song!

Dry the tears of our women, of their husbands

Bereft,

Orphans of their children.

Let my song,

Echo of your voice,

Help sow the grain

So that the new American Muntu

May relive the pain,

May learn to laugh amid the anguish,

To turn ash into fire,

Into spark‑sun the chains of Changó.

Eía! Are you all here?

Let no ancestor be missing

At the time of the great initiation

To consecrate Nagó,

The chosen sailor,

Captain in exile

Of Changó’s condemned.

Today is the day to depart,

When the unforgotten trace

Alights on the morning dust.

Let us hear the voice of the wise ones,

The will of the Orichas riding

On their horses’ backs.

Today we bury my son,

The sacred seed,

In the navel of Mother Africa

So that it may die,

Rot in its womb,

And be reborn in the blood of America.

Mother Earth, offer to the new Muntu

Your scattered islands,

The welcoming hips of your coasts.

Offer him the tall mountains,

The plateaus,

Your hard spinal cord.

And to nourish him with your sap,

The newborn son in your valleys,

The broad rivers regale him with

Spilled blood

That pours into your seas.

Ngafúa Recalls the Unbreakable Bond between the Living and the Dead

Forgetful Muntu,

Remember those times

When the unborn Orichas

Lived dead among their children

And silently let their images

Invent roads to the rivers

And mornings to the winds.

In the first hour …

—Ancient the instant,

The burning fire

Into ashes changed‑-

Father Olofi,

With water, land, and sun

Still tepid from the warmth of his hands,

Etched the mortals’ fate,

Their passions,

Their doubts,

Their unbreakable bond with the dead.

Mystery of the tinder and the spark

He places in their fingers,

The net and the hook,

The spear, the hammer,

The needle and thread.

Horses, elephants, and camels

He made subordinate to your fist.

And in the waters of ocean and river

He will push his rafts with your oars.

To establish balance and justice

The prodigal earth among all did he divide,

Including plants as well as animals.

Men he made to perish

And the dead, lords of life,

He declared forever immortal.

I sing not for the living,

Only for you,

Powerful Orichas,

Eyes, ears, tongue,

Naked skin,

Open lid,

Deep stare of time,

Disembodied owners of the shadows,

Owners of the light when the sun sleeps.

Let my ear see your voices

In the falling leaves,

In the birds’ swift shadow,

In the light that does not grow damp,

In the seed’s breath,

In the earthen oven.

Here shall I name you

Where our children were born,

Where your bones find repose,

In the terrible moment

At the time of departure,

Hurled by Changó

To unknown seas and lands.

I shall speak to your hierarchs in order.

First to you, Odumare Nzame,

Great procreator of the world,

Spirit of birth, never death,

Fatherless, motherless.

I speak to your shadow Olofi,

Projected over the earth.

And to your other flame,

Your invisible light, your thought,

Baba Nkwa.

Disperse

Your light-gusts

Throughout sidereal space.

The three separated,

The three united,

Three immortal spirits.

I repeat your name, Olofi,

Shadow of Odumare Nzame,

His hand, his light, his strength

To rule the earth.

I shall invoke your son Obatalá,

In black mud

Kneaded by your fingers,

With astral eyes and luster,

Manual wisdom,

Inventor of the word,

Of fire, home,

Arrows and bows.

Come here, Mother Odudúa,

First woman,

Also by Olofi created,

In the ample

And uninhabited mansion,

Lover of his son to be,

His shadow by day,

His moon by night,

Forever

His sole companion.

I shall name your only children:

Aganyú, the great progenitor,

And his sister Yemayá,

Who alone roamed the world,

Sharing the moon, the sun,

And the sleeping waters …

Until one night,

More beautiful than their father,

A lightning flash in their eyes,

From the bowels of the Oricha

Emerged Orungán.

And Aganyú himself,

Their repentant father,

Filled with jealousy,

Agitated by their light

Slowly,

A simmering log,

Extinguished his life.

Later …

Years, centuries, days,

An instant …

Ravaged by his son,

With sorrow and shame

For the incestuous engenderment

In the mountains high

Yemayá sought refuge.

And seven days expired,

Amid thunder, storm, and flash.

From her entrails removed

Were born the holy ones,

The fourteen Orichas.

Hear me,

Tormented,

Lonely

Orphan Yemayá!

I shall safeguard the aqua‑rhythm you made to voice

The tone of falling rain,

The shine of stars that moisten our eyes.

My word will be an incendiary chant,

A crackling fire,

A melody that arouses your ear.

These odors of damp earth,

Sea,

Rivers,

Swamps,

Cascades,

Odors of furrows, clouds, jungles, and crocodiles,

Odors of earth fertilized

By the waters of Mother Yemayá

After giving birth to the Orichas,

Her fourteen children

In a single, tempestuous delivery.

Invocation to the Great Orichas

I name you, Changó,

Father of storms

With your bull’s phallus,

Colossal lightning bolt.

Oba, Oshún and Ohá,

Your sister concubines,

Goddesses of the rivers

You impregnate in a single nuptial night.

I invoke you, Dada!

Oricha of life,

Your breath you hide in your seed.

Protector of fertilized wombs,

Childbirth vigilante,

Blood of the placenta,

Incipient waters you guide.

Children all,

Children of Yemayá!

Butch‑dyke Olokún!

Husband...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Series Editor’s Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• To the Fellow Traveler
• Part One Origins
• Part Two The American Muntu
• Part Three The Vodou Rebellion
• Part Four Rediscovered Bloodlines
• Part Five Ancestral Combatants
• Book of Navigation: Mythology and History