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"In Voice of the Leopard: African Secret Societies and Cuba, Ivor L. Miller shows how African migrants and their political fraternities played a formative role in the history of Cuba. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, no large kingdoms controlled Nigeria and Cameroon's multilingual Cross River basin. Instead, each settlement had its own lodge of the initiation society called Ekpe or "leopard" which was the highest indigenous authority. Ekpe lodges ruled local communities while also managing regional and long-distance trade. Cross River Africans, enslaved and forcibly brought to colonial Cuba, reorganized their Ekpe clubs covertly in Havana and Matanzas into a mutual-aid society called Abakua, which became foundational to Cuba's urban life and music.".
"Miller's extensive fieldwork in Cuba and West Africa documents ritual languages and practices which survived the Middle Passage and evolved into a unifying charter for transplanted slaves and their successors. To gain deeper understanding of the material, Miller underwent Ekpe initiation rites in Nigeria after ten years' collaboration with Abakua initiates in Cuba and the United States. He argues that Cuban music, art, even politics rely on complexities of these African-inspired codes of conduct and leadership." "Voice of the Leopard is an unprecedented tracing of an African title-society to its Caribbean incarnation, which has deeply influenced Cuba's creative energy and popular consciousness"--BOOK JACKET.
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Previews available in: English
Edition | Availability |
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1
Voice of the Leopard: African Secret Societies and Cuba
2012, University Press of Mississippi
in English
1617033197 9781617033193
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2
Voice of the Leopard: African Secret Societies and Cuba
2010, University Press of Mississippi
in English
1621038599 9781621038597
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3
The voice of the leopard: African secret societies and Cuba
2008, University Press of Mississippi
in English
1934110833 9781934110836
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