In Cuba, women batá drummers (bataleras) and Ifá priestesses (ìyánífá) are looking towards contemporary Yorùbáland, Nigeria, as a site or power and promise in translocal ritual practice. In this lecture, Dr. Meadows explores how logics of heightened efficacy—and particularly the efficacy of sound—circulate in Cuba through engagement with the African continent and the broader Américas. Through the efficacy of sound, women carve out access to previously-prohibited, gendered ritual instruments (i.e., the sacred batá drum set) and ritual posts (Ifá priesthoods), ultimately influencing gendered participation in Cuban ritual and popular musical spheres.

Ruthie Meadows is an Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Nevada, Reno. Her research focuses on global circulations of music and sound in the Hispanophone and circum-Caribbean, with attention to transatlantic forms of engagement, queer studies and gender studies, ritual and popular music, and ecology. In 2021, Meadows received the Society for Ethnomusicology’s (SEM) Jaap Kunst Prize, recognizing the most significant article written in ethnomusicology during the first ten years of a scholar’s career. Her first book, Efficacy of Sound: Power, Potency, and Promise in the Translocal Ritual Music of Cuban Ifá-Òrìṣà (forthcoming, University of Chicago Press, 2023), interrogates the contentious Nigerian-style Ifá-Òrìşà ritual movement in Cuba.