Inside International Vodou Day in New Orleans

Inside Kingsway — a historic, gorgeous New Orleans residence that legendary producer Daniel Lanois turned into an idiosyncratic recording studio in the late ‘80s and ‘90s for Bob Dylan, U2, R.E.M., Emmylou Harris and others — Afro-Caribbean rhythms are vibrating and Vodou priestesses are singing.

Although it’s loaded with instruments (and a Senegalese fertility bed for those in need), Kingsway is no longer a recording studio these days, but the sound of music still hits different in the house. Built in 1848, this French Quarter home reverberates with history, even when music isn’t filling its 12,000 square feet. (Depending on who you talk to, including a few rock stars who have refused to sleep there, it’s haunted—but then again, what historic house in New Orleans isn’t?) Thanks to Kingsway owner/hotelier Sean Cummings, a man with a deep love for the music, food and foibles of his city, Kingsway opened its wrought-iron gates on a rainy Friday night to Vodou practitioners, storytellers, priests and priestesses hailing from Haiti, Benin, Cuba, Congo, Martinique, Angola, Ghana and, of course, New Orleans. It’s the night before the third annual New Orleans International Vodou Day on Saturday (May 23), and the attendees are gathered to greet, eat, drink and mingle.

In a spacious room next to the foyer, Mami Moun — a Manbo Asogwe (high priestess) and powerful singer — and Malou Beauvoir, a Haitian-American singer-songwriter, are blending their voices for an impromptu performance. Elevating the last-minute performance is Andrew Wiseman, a nimble local drummer and an instinctive conduit to rhythm, as well as the room itself, a space with a warm, vintage acoustic personality.

Traditional Vodou songs are intended to awaken the Lwa (also spelled Ioa), spirits created by Bondye (the supreme deity) to help humans in their daily lives. But when delivered by gifted singers such as these two, the music reaches deep into the spirit of anyone within earshot, whether they’re a believer or not. The music seems to evoke centuries of power and pain, soaring with an indomitable strength despite everything the African diaspora has been subjected to.

In case you’re wondering, yes, this is Vodou — spiritual practices and beliefs in Haiti, parts of Africa and the African diaspora — not voodoo. The latter term, often associated with a Westernized caricature of the practices, is rejected by some practitioners of the Afro-Caribbean religious practices who are hoping to shed misconceptions thrust upon them by Hollywood.

For many, keeping alive (or rediscovering) these traditions is personal, spiritual, artistic and academic all at once. During Saturday’s International Vodou Day Symposium, a dozen speakers gathered at Xavier University of Louisiana to share historical knowledge and present experiences.

Ethnomusicologist Houngan Collin Edouard was one of them. Like many collegiate lectures, the word “ontology” made an appearance; unlike most academic gatherings, attendees occasionally shouted out “ayibobo!” (a Haitian Creole affirmation) while he was speaking. Edouard, a PhD student at Yale who studies music in Vodou ceremonies, explored the transtemporal idea of music as a means of connecting with ancestors and Lwa spirits. In his heartfelt, well-researched presentation, he placed the musical Vodou voice in the context of the slavery these Afro-Caribbean traditions began to codify within, noting that “the voice travels if the body cannot.” Of traditional Vodou songs that people, himself included, still sing, he wondered, “Which one of my ancestors tried to sing that song while someone silenced him?”

Outside the presentation, Malou Beauvoir, who sang at Kingsway the night before, sat next to a table of her artistic output, from caftans to a children’s book meant to destigmatize the religion (Our Vodou: A Vodou Bedtime Tale) to her 2018 album Spiritwalker, which finds her powerful, alchemic voice exploring traditional Vodou songs in contemporary musical contexts. One of the songs on her album, “Papa Damballah,” is about a powerful Lwa spirit who became linked to St. Patrick due to their shared association with snakes. Of the cross-pollination, she noted that Irish Catholics headed to America for indentured servitude were often on the same boats as enslaved Africans headed for an even worse fate. “They were all on the same boat, praying together just to survive,” Beauvoir says.

That hope for survival — as Edouard puts it, the voice can move even when the body cannot — was felt in the singing and dancing of a post-symposium Vodou ceremony the next day. After a processional through various locations in New Orleans where enslaved peoples were sold, brutalized and massacred throughout the city’s complicated history, a proper Vodou ceremony had been planned to take over Congo Square, where enslaved Africans sang, danced and traded on Sunday afternoons beginning in the 1740s. Due to the rain on that particular Sunday, however, the Vodou ceremony was moved inside the Ninth Ward’s New Orleans Healing Center lobby.

The air hung heavy with incense as 20-some practitioners, dressed in immaculate white, participated in an hours-long ceremony, dancing around food and drink offerings and battery-powered votive candles (hey, it is 2026). Men on drums teased out centuries-old rhythms and the ceremonial lead singer (called houngenikon or adjenikon) directed the oceanic rising and falling of voices, most of them female, which seemed to ebb and flow through the room.

Aside from those directly involved in the ceremony — an eclectic group that included Divine Prince Ty Emmecca, who has appeared on Big Freedia: Queen of Bounce and is the Gulf Coast Godfather of the Royal Iconic House of LaBeija (Vodou is much more accepting of LGBTQ people than many religions) — or the symposium, locals from the community stopped by to participate and observe. A family-friendly gathering, many people brought their kids, some of whom danced along joyously to the music while others retreated into their iPads (much the same as one might find at any communal religious gathering these days).

Curious onlookers who stopped by weren’t met with any preaching or recruiting efforts. The participants in International Vodou Day seemed more interested in connecting, sharing and learning from each other. To pull back the curtain a bit, yes, but not to demystify Vodou — like any religious belief system, the undefinable is inherently part of it. Rather to demonstrate that these traditions, so inextricable from the city’s past, are about hope, seeking help and finding spiritual sustenance.

The difficult-to-pin-down artistic and spiritual energy of Vodou continues to permeate New Orleans culture and the music that’s come out of it. It’s a rhythm that runs strong through the Delta blues and beyond, present in everything from Jimi Hendrix to Beyoncé to Dr. John to Big Freedia. Like gospel, the voices of Vodou express hope, pain and joy all at once, connecting the present to the past in one of America’s great music cities — a cultural hub where people still fuel the rhythms.

Billboard’s airfare was covered by New Orleans & Company.