Vodou Dance

Haitian Vodou organises its lwa into rites, and the two principal ones sound and move differently. The Rada rite carries the older West African inheritance, chiefly Fon and Yoruba, and its lwa are described as cool: measured, benevolent, dealt with through steady rhythm and patience. The Petwo rite took shape in Haiti itself out of the conditions of slavery, and its lwa are hot: fast, demanding, effective, addressed with sharper rhythms and the crack of a whip or a gunpowder charge. A ceremony can move between them, and a house serves both.

The dances follow the rites. Yanvalou belongs to Rada and to Danbala Wedo, the serpent, and is danced with the knees bent and the back rolling in a wave that travels from the shoulders down the spine, which is the serpent's motion made human. Mayi, Zepol and Parigol are other Rada dances with their own steps. Banda belongs to the Gede, the lwa of death and of the cemetery, and is danced with pronounced hip movement and open sexual humour, which is not a lapse from seriousness but the Gede's own theology: the dead are not to be approached with dread. Kongo and Petwo dances are faster and more percussive again. The drums are three in the Rada battery, and it is the smallest, the kata, that holds the pattern the dancers follow.

Possession in Vodou is described in the language of riding. The lwa mounts the person, who is the chwal, the horse, and the lwa is then said to be riding. The person's own consciousness is understood to be displaced for the duration, and they are not held responsible for what is said or done, nor expected to remember it. What the assembly does is practical: they steady the person so they do not fall or hurt themselves, remove spectacles and jewellery, and then work out who has come.

Identification is made from the body. Danbala's horse goes to the ground and moves along it, and does not speak, since the serpent has no words; the person may climb and drink from a basin. Gede arrives with a nasal voice, dark glasses, and a taste for raw rum steeped in hot peppers that would injure an ordinary drinker. Ogou wants a machete and rum. Once identified the lwa is dressed in the appropriate emblems, greeted, and then does what the lwa is there for: giving advice, settling a dispute, diagnosing an illness, demanding an obligation the family has neglected. The visit ends and the horse is left tired and uninformed.

Vodou has been misrepresented in film and in popular writing for a century, and the misrepresentation has had consequences for Haitians. This entry describes what practitioners and the published ethnographic record say, and treats the religion as a religion.