ILE EKO ASA YORUBA NI NEW ORLEANS

A Personal Note to the Community At Large

Many people have asked or advised me to speak on, or share publicly my life, beliefs and passions. To this date, I have been reluctant to do so. In my youth I decided to let my art do the speaking and later in life I decided to also speak through the drums, martial arts teaching and in a more personal setting as an Olorisa Sango but rarely publicly.

That being said, certain luminaries in the community have from time to time encouraged and gotten me to speak out and share. In this case, Wole Ifa aka Derrick Murray, a Traditional Spiritual Culturalist, journalist, media maker and sage, convinced me to sit with him for an intensive interview in the spring of 2015 on the Anu Asato Show. I agreed RELUCTANTLY, however after revisiting the interview I was struck by the profound nature of the show. I now realize and hope that the personal nature of this sit down may help other people, especially descendents of the African/slave trade/colonization holocaust and anyone seeking a new life to find a way to self and family empowerment through returning to our cultural ancestral genius.

There are many fantastic books, videos, links, seminars, etc on Ifa, Yoruba culture, Voodoo, Lucumi and so forth. Yet there are few places where you can find what the journey is like for a descendent of kidnapped and enslaved peoples (African American) who chooses to commit to maintaining Asa Wa (our culture) and be initiated into the cult of Orisa and traditional African societies. Truthfully, numerous people over the last 25 years have asked me about my thoughts on and what it is like being a participant and adherent to Ifa/Voodoo Asa Wa. This interview (see link below) goes all the way to 1982, back to my first reading (in Voodoo) as a teenager and may help those who are interested in building a more powerful way of life.