Mami Wata

Arts for Water Spirits in Africa and Its Diasporas

Henry John Drewal
With contributions by Marilyn Houlberg, Bogumil Jewsiewicki, Amy L. Noell, John W. Nunley, and Jill Salmons

• $25.00 paperback (9780974872995) Add to Cart
• hardcover not available

• Published: 2008
• Subject Listing: African Art, Anthropology
• Bibliographic information: 228 pp., 180 color illus., notes, bibliog., index, 9 x 10 in.
• Distributed for: Fowler Museum at UCLA
• Contents

This book traces the visual cultures and histories of Mami Wata and other African water divinities. Mami Wata, often portrayed with the head and torso of a woman and the tail of a fish, is at once beautiful, jealous, generous, seductive, and potentially deadly. A water spirit widely known across Africa and the African diaspora, her origins are said to lie "overseas," although she has been thoroughly incorporated into local beliefs and practics. She can bring good fortune in the form of money, and her power increased between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries, the era of growing international trade between Africa and the rest of the world. Her name, which may be translated as "Mother Water" or "Mistress Water," is pidgin English, a language developed to lubricate trade. Africans forcibly carried across the Atlantic as part of that "trade" brought with them their beliefs and practices honoring Mami Wata and other ancestral deities.

Henry John Drewal is the Evjue-Bascom Professor of African and African Diaspora Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Other contributors include Marilyn Houlberg, Bogumil Jewsiewicki, Amy L. Noell, John W. Nunley, and Jill Salmons.

Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments
Notes on Orthography
Introduction: Sources and Currents / Henry John Drewal

Part I: Mami Wata in a Cultural Context
1. Jolly Masquerades and Mammy Wata in Sierra Leone / John W. Nunley
2. Mami in Baule, Guro, and Yaure Arts and Cultures / Henry John Drewal
3. Dreamscapes: Sacred Arts for Mami Wata along the Togo-Benin Coast / Henry John Drewal
4. The Bourian Masquerade: A Rite of Memory and Identity / Henry John Drewal
5. The Many Manifestations of Mami Wata among the Igbo / Henry John Drewal
6. Mamy Wata among the Annang Ibibio / Jill Salmons
7. Mami Wata / Mamba Muntu Paintings in the Democratic Republic of the Congo / Bogumil Jewsiewicki
8. Surfing Mami Wata's Virtual Watas: Mami Wata Resources on the Internet / Amy L. Noell

Part II: Mami's Sisters in the African Atlantic
9. Water Spirits of Haitian Voudou: Lasirèn, Queen of Mermaids / Marilyn Houlberg
10. Santa Marta la Dominadora - Afro-Catholic Saint and Dominican Vodu Power / Henry John Drewal
11. Celebrating Salt and Sweet Waters: Yemanja and Oxum in Bahia, Brazil / Henry John Drewal

Part 3: Mami Inspirations
12. Mami as Artists' Muse / Henry John Drewal

Notes to the Text
References Cited
Index
Contributors