Voice of the Leopard: African Secret Societies and Cuba

by Ivor Miller, Bassey E. Bassey (Foreword by)

Overview

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 Ékpè, or “leopard,” which was the highest indigenous authority. Ékpè lodges ruled local communities while also managing regional and long-distance trade. Cross River Africans, enslaved and forcibly brought to colonial Cuba, reorganized their Ékpè clubs covertly in Havana and Matanzas into a mutual-aid society called Abakuá, which became foundational to Cuba's urban life and music.

Miller's extensive fieldwork in Cuba and West Africa documents ritual languages and practices that 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 Ékpè initiation rites in Nigeria after ten years' collaboration with Abakuá initiates in Cuba and the United States. He argues that Cuban music, art, and 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781496801883
Publisher:	University Press of Mississippi
Publication date:	01/06/2010
Series:	Caribbean Studies Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	432
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

Ivor L. Miller is senior lecturer in the Department of History and International Studies at the University of Calabar, Cross River State, Nigeria. He also holds a research fellowship from the African Studies Center at Boston University and is author of Aerosol Kingdom: Subway Painters of New York City and coeditor (with P. González Gómes-Cásseres) of The Sacred Language of the Abakuá, both published by University Press of Mississippi.
Ivor L. Miller is senior lecturer in the Department of History and International Studies at the University of Calabar, Cross River State, Nigeria. He also holds a research fellowship from the African Studies Center at Boston University and is author of Voice of the Leopard: African Secret Societies and Cuba and Aerosol Kingdom: Subway Painters of New York City and coeditor (with P. González Gómes-Cásseres) of The Sacred Language of the Abakuá, all published by University Press of Mississippi.
Engineer (Chief) Bassey E. Bassey of Nigeria is highly regarded in the Calabar community for his knowledge of the history and practice of the Ékpè system and is author of Ékpè Efik.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi

A Note on the Typography and Word Usage xv

Foreword by Engineer Bassey Efiong Bassey xvii

Introduction 3

1 Arrival 37

2 The Fortified City 66

3 Planting Abakuá in Cuba, 1830s to 1860s 89

4 From Creole to Carabalí 103

5 Dispersal: Abakuá Exiled to Florida and Spanish Africa 119

6 Disintegration of the Spanish Empire 140

7 Havana Is the Key: Abakuá in Cuban Music 153

8 Conclusions 175

Epilogue. Cubans in Calabar: Ékpè Has One Voice 179

Appendix 1 Cuban Lodges Founded from 1871 to 1917 183

Appendix 2 Comparing Ékpè and Abakuá Masks and Their Symbols 193

Appendix 3 Abakuá Chants and Their Interpretations in Cross River Languages 201

Glossary 215

Notes 221

References 301

Index 339