Afrekete - dance
Afrekete (also spelled Afreke) is a deity in the Arará tradition — Cuba's Fon and Ewe-derived religious system, brought by enslaved people from the Dahomey kingdom (present-day Benin) and neighboring regions. In the Arará cosmological framework, Afrekete is the equivalent of Yemayá in Santería: a female deity associated with water, the sea, and the generative powers of nature.
The Arará Tradition
The Arará people in Cuba — descendants of the Fon, Ewe, Popo, and Mahi ethnic groups of Allada and its surrounding kingdoms — organized their own cabildos (mutual-aid societies) and preserved their spiritual tradition under the name Arará. Their deities are called Foddunes (Vodunes in the original Dahomean form), and while they correspond in function to the Yoruba Orishas, they are distinct beings with their own names, rhythms, songs, and dances.
The Arará tradition is concentrated primarily in Matanzas province, where it has survived with remarkable continuity. It is less widespread than Santería but deeply rooted in its home communities.
Afrekete as a Deity
In the Arará system, Afrekete (the Cuban adaptation of the Dahomean Agbé or sea-deity) embodies:
- The ocean and all waters — seas, rivers, rain
- Female generative power — fertility, birth, the abundance of the sea
- Mystery and depth — the ocean as the unknown, the vast, the primordially powerful
Her correspondence with Yemayá (Santería) and Lasiren (Haitian Vodou) connects all three to the same West African source. However, the way she is worshipped — her songs, her rhythms, her dance — is distinctively Arará in character.
Dance Character
Afrekete's dance draws on the imagery of water in motion:
- Undulating arms: the arms move like waves, rising and falling with a fluid, continuous quality — not sharp or percussive but rolling and sustained
- Hip circles and swells: the lower body moves in broad circular patterns, suggesting the movement of the open sea
- Forward and backward weight shifts: the body rocks gently on the ocean's rhythm, never fully still
- Graceful, sustained quality: where some Orisha dances are sharp and sudden, Afrekete's movement has length and flow; transitions are smooth
How Arará Dance Differs from Yoruba-Derived Orisha Dance
Despite the functional equivalence between Foddunes and Orishas, the dances of the Arará tradition have a distinct flavor:
- Different drum vocabulary: Arará uses its own percussion tradition — rhythms, drum types, and call-and-response patterns from the Fon/Ewe musical world, not the Yoruba batá tradition
- Different language: songs are in a Cuban adaptation of Fon/Ewe, not Yoruba (lucumí)
- Heavier, more weighted quality: many observers note that Arará dances have a somewhat more grounded, less aerially dynamic quality than their Yoruba counterparts — the Dahomean aesthetic tends toward depth and gravity
- Smaller community, higher ritual density: because the Arará tradition is more concentrated and less widespread, its ceremonies tend to be more intimate, and the dances are often witnessed by people who know the tradition deeply
Danzón was the first national dance of Cuba — the form that unified the island's popular music identity in the late 19th and early 20th century, and the ancestor of mambo, cha-cha-chá, and ultimately timba.
Lees meer >Cuba is the largest island in the Caribbean and the birthplace of some of the world's most influential music and dance traditions. African, Spanish, and French cultural streams collided here over centuries of colonial history, producing an extraordinary creative culture that exported itself across the globe.
Lees meer >The following dances have their origin in Matanzas:
Vodou (also written Vudú in Cuban Spanish) is a living spiritual tradition in eastern Cuba, practiced by the descendants of Haitian migrants who settled in the provinces of Guantánamo, cuba"> Santiago de Cuba, and Holguín from the late 18th century onward. Cuban Vodou is not an import or a museum piece — it is a functioning religious system, adapted across two centuries to its Cuban context while maintaining deep continuity with its Haitian origins.
Lees meer >Afro-Cuban Orishas are deities from the Yoruba religion, brought to Cuba through the transatlantic slave trade, who embody natural forces and human traits, and are honored through music, dance, and ritual in Santería.
Lees meer >Egungun is the Yoruba masquerade tradition honoring the collective ancestors — the Egun, the dead who remain present and active in the lives of the living. In Cuba, the Egungun tradition survived within the broader world of Santería (Regla de Ocha) and the related Arará and Abakuá communities, though in a form shaped by the specific conditions of the island.
Lees meer >Arará is a vibrant Afro-Cuban dance rooted in the religious and cultural traditions of the Dahomey people, characterized by rhythmic drumming, expressive movements, and deep spiritual significance.
Lees meer >Yemayá is the Orisha of the sea and the mother of all Orishas. She governs the saltwater ocean and all living things within it. As mother, she is nurturing, protective — and when angered, devastating.
Lees meer >Cuban music is built on percussion. The extraordinary density and variety of Cuban rhythmic culture reflects the meeting of West and Central African drumming traditions with Spanish, Haitian, and creole musical practices over four centuries. The instruments below form the core percussive vocabulary heard across Son, Rumba, Timba, Danzón, and their descendants.
Lees meer >The batá drums are a set of three double-headed hourglass-shaped drums central to Yoruba religious tradition and Afro-Cuban sacred music (Lucumí / Santería).
Lees meer >