Xango Music

In the Xango ceremony the contraries of New World African experience find transcendence. From the established, bodily patterns of ritual comes release into the freedom of the spirit; from the exposure of pain comes the possibilities of healing; and for the individual there is both the dread aloneness with the gods and the ‘we-ness’ of community. Simultaneously the rites celebrate the rich, syncretic diversity, the multiple connections of the African person in the New World and enact tragic search for the wholeness of the lost African centre. And there is the god himself, standing at the crossroads, ‘beating iron into the shape of thunder’, both the prophetic voice warning of the fire to command the creator who hammers out sweet sound from the iron drum. Geoffrey Philp finds in Xango a powerful metaphor that is both particular to the Caribbean and universal in its relevance. If his first collection, Florida Bound, was characterised by the exile’s bittersweet elegies of regret, and the second, hurricane center, stared edgily into the dark heart of a threatening world, xango music brings a new sinewy toughness of line to an ever deepening vision of the dynamic polarities of human existence.