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people have their whole lives tied up in the sound of drums,
deep throated and mellow irresistable Voodoo drums, has
indeed done a great deal.


 Even the most inaudible vibrations from the lips of
the drums say something to their go'', they say ... beautiful*
sacred things.


 Any tro.uye that can tell the world in rippling
frenzied movements that 7ocdoo is an attitude of the people
toward life and death, a concept ",f ancestor and the after-
world, an understanding of the forces which control man and
his activities ... that it has meanings, subtle meanings
beyond and above the understanding of inquiring: scientific
minds has to be the troupe led by Lavinia Williams.


 Few know about the origin of Voodoo. Few know that
though it was brought from Africa across the seas it also
contains nuances of nrny relijions and the rituals of even
indigenous Ciboneys Indians who ri--inally inhabited the
Island of Hisz:nila, part of which is now Haiti.


 But to really understand FoWdoo we must go back to
the times of the coming of the African peoples to Hispaniola.
Like Colombus and the Conquistadors, they brought their gods
to the New 1orld. And the gods they brought were many.
For each tribe had more than one god and there were some 50
tribes which were c'irried to His .anioln.


 Since all of these tribes came from '.est Africa they
all reflected the same type of religious belief. There were
striking similarities in the use of the drums, songs, and
dancinR in the religious rituals and ancestral worship.
They all believed in the possession of the wrrshir:er by the
god. The result was that deities of the numerically dominant
groups absorbed the deities of the other groups s and gods like
Ogoun of the warlike lTc.-os tribe became powerful in Haiti.
Therefore out of many gods emer:cd Voudcun(the supreme god)
which is made up of spirits (lea) of all the nations that
came to Haiti.


In essence...3/