Tambor de Mina

Tambor de Mina (or Mina) is a regional variant of the African-Brazilian religion in northern Brazil. Two cult houses founded in the first half of the nineteenth century in São Luís, Maranhão, are still in existence. The Casa das Minas, probably established by members of the royal family of Abomey, who were sold as slaves, is the rare case of a dominant Dahoman tradition in Brazil. Members worship a pantheon of voduns (deities) and tôbôssi (female child entities) organized in extended families, the most important of which are the Real (Dahoman) or Davice family, the Dambirá family, and the Quevioçô family.

The Casa de Nagô, originally a Yoruban cult house, formed strong ties with the nearby Casa das Minas. Its gods are called voduns (not orishás), and several jeje deities are worshipped. Six Mina cult houses were founded between 1910 and 1920. In the 1990s their number reached about 1,000 in São Luís, and dozens of others were established in the interior of Maranhão, as well as in Pará, Amazônas, and Piauí.

Tambor de Mina is distinguished by the integration of caboclo (indigenous) deities, the fidalgos (Portuguese kings), and the gentilheiros (Turkish warriors), as well as by particular forms of ceremonies, dress, music, ritual language, and spirit possession.

See alsoVodun, Voodoo, Vaudun .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Octávio Da Costa Eduardo, The Negro in Northern Brazil: A Study in Acculturation (1966).

Manuel Nunes Pereira, A Casa das Minas: Culto dos voduns jeje no Maranhão, 2nd ed., enl. (1979).

Sérgio Figueirado Ferretti, Querbentam de Zomadonu: Etnografia da Casa das Minas (1985).

Mundicarmo Ferretti, "Rei da Turquia, o Ferrobrás de Alexandria? A importância de um livro na mitologia de Tambor de Mina," in Meu sinal está no teu corpo: Escritos sobre a religião dos orixás, edited by Carlos Eugênio Marcondes de Moura (1989), pp. 202-219.

Sérgio Figueirado Ferretti, "Voduns da Casa das Minas," in Meu sinal está no teu corpo: Escritos sobre a religião dos orixás, edited by Carlos Eugênio Marcondes da Moura (1989), pp. 176-201.

Additional Bibliography

Ferretti, Mundicarmo Maria Rocha. Desceu na guma: O caboclo do Tambor de Mina em um terreiro de São Luís, a Casa Fanti-Ashanti. São Luís: EDUFMA, 2000.

Mann, Kristin, and Edna G. Bay. Rethinking the African Diaspora: The Making of a Black Atlantic World in the Bight of Benin and Brazil. London, Portland: F. Cass, 2001.

Moura, Carlos Eugenio Marcondes de, and João Batista dos Santos. Somávo: O amanha nunca termina: Novos escritos sobre a religião dos voduns e orixás. São Paulo: Empório de Produção e Comunicação, 2005.

                           Matthias RÖhrig AssunÇÃ o