LAZARO ROS & OLORUN
SONGS TO ELEGUÁ

Produced by Rachel Faro

Winner Premio Cubadisco - Best Folkloric Recording

This album is an invocation and dedication to the orisha Eleguá, the mischievous child-messenger who opens the gates, rules the crossroads, and without whom no ceremony can begin.

Recorded especially for the opening of Ashé Records, this state of the art recording is the first and and only time an entire cycle of Eleguá songs has been recorded and released to the public.  These songs are sung in their original Yoruban by multiple Grammy nominee Lazaro Ros, Cuba’s foremost akpwon (singer of ceremonial songs which invoke the orishas, deities of the Yoruban pantheon.)  Lazaro Ros is a founding member of Cuba’s distinguished Conjunto Folklorico Nacional.  Beloved throughout the world, he is considered a national treasure and he has dedicated his life to preserving African culture as it exists in Cuba.

Lazaro sings in the nasal Yoruban style taught him as a child by those who had brought the traditions of their ancestors with them to Cuba.  He is accompanied by Olorun, an ensemble of drummers and singers from Ros’ hometown of Guanabacoa, one of Cuba’s most important repositories of African culture.

The rhythms and melodies which accompany these ceremonies – still practiced in Cuba today – are African in origin and present in all forms of Latin popular music and jazz.  Here they are represented in their purest and most profound form.

The cover photo for this album was taken by the distinguished photographer Phyllis Galembo in the town of Guanabacoa in the house of Maria, one of Olorun’s singers.  The child on the cover is Maria’s daughter Amira who has been an initiate of Elegua since the age of six.

Songs for Elegua was recorded in Havana at the Egrem Studios over the course of the evening of June 12, 1996 – June 12^th being the Day of Elegua.  Sometime during that night the great Cuban sacred singer Mercedes Valdes passed away.  This album is dedicated to her memory.

TRACK LIST

Moyugbacion (Homage to the Ancestors)	2:21
Toques del Rezo de Eleguá (Prayers to Eleguá)	19:38
Cantos Arará	12:34
Oro de los Tambores (batá drum cycle)	3:44
Toques a Eleguá	8:25
Cantos Iyesá	4:34

ELEGUÁ:

Ruler of the Crossroads

The Beginning and the End

In the times when the gods took human form and acted like any of us, Olófin came down to Earth and got sick.  It was very, very serious.  It appeared that Babá was doomed to meet with Ikú -- death -- who trembled with the idea of being the one to put an end to the presence of the Almighty on the Earth.

All the Orishas went to Olófin's house to ask him to use his power and drive the disease away, to which he answered: "The Earth and everything on it was made by Obatalá at my request, and my work can't be so imperfect that we can't find someone to cure me.”

Meanwhile, there was a child who kept insisting to his mother that he knew of some plants that were capable of curing Olófin.  Finally, just to please him, his mother agreed to take him there.  He said, “Father, I’ve come to cure you,” and patiently made Olófin drink the brew he had made.  Soon Babá's health showed signs of daily improvement. 

The child cured Babá in seven days.  During that time he looked into that child's soul and after the seven days he convened all the Orishas and said:

"Look carefully at this child: His name is Eleguá and from today onwards he will be the beginning and the end of everything.

The first in all offerings.

He will approve everything that is done in Osha.

He will collect all tributes in every ceremony.

He will be the punisher of all those who don't take him into account and try to do without him. 

I thus give him the keys, which open, close and clear all the roads.

He will be the master of the four cardinal points, of the confusing and guiding swirl, and of the paper kite so that he can raise to me his petitions, invocations and determinations.

He shall be the depository of Destiny with all its vicissitudes; of the timely and the untimely; of the foreseen and the unforeseen, of the right and the wrong; in summary, he shall be the census of the one hundred and one personality archetypes that make up the human family.

He shall be the end of things, to renew them and make them more beautiful.

I endow him with the gift of never losing the innocence of a child, so that he can always judge things for what they are and never for their appearance.

And that's how it was, is, and will be.

 -- Francisco Valdes