![]() ![]() Many Cuban practitioners of the religion known as Palo Monte Mayombe (colloquially) Palo Monte or Palo) or Congo Reglas, among other names, (1) refer to their homeland as Ngola (Ngola a Kiluanje, "the land between the lower Kwanza and the Dande"), from which derives the Europeanized "Angola." (2) Through a detailed discussion of Palo Monte initiation, I will discuss the significance of some of the religion's Kongo-derived iconography and show how it finds expression in the work of three Cuban contemporary artists, particularly Jose Bedia, an initiated practitioner. Kongo culture still resonates throughout the Caribbean. Sleep, my little baby, so you can go to heaven and give god - Nsambi - a cigar. A Mayombero friend of mine, his eyes filling with tears as he remembered the Congo mothers he had known in his childhood from the mill where he was born, sang for me the crib song that they were in the habit of singing to put their children to sleep: Tata solele lembaka solembaka Lune nene suati kuame Munu sunga Nsambi lune lune. The "rayados," those sworn into the Congo Reglas, as are the Lucumi descendants and initiates in the cult of the Orishas, consider themselves united by a sacred bond of mystical kinship and, like them, speak and pray in their language.
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