New Year's fireworks over Copacabana Beach, Rio de Janeiro
Around the world there will be firework celebrations for the New Year, and it is doubtful that any of them will top the numbers of people who will gather at Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, which has had crowds numbering well over two million in the past.
What is often forgotten, when non-Brazilians think about Brazil, is that it is the country with the largest black and afro-descended population in the world outside of Nigeria.
Jump below the orange wave for more.
Many cariocas head to the beach, dressed in white, and jump seven waves to bring them blessings for the year to come.
For adherents of Candomblé and Umbanda, the beach and the ocean are not simply water and sand, but are a symbolic representations of the African deity (Orixá), Iemanjá—or Yemoja (Yoruba) or Yemaya (Cuba and the U.S.).
In Brazil she is also referred to as Rainha do Mar (Queen of the Sea).
Many world religions honor the female as the divine mother, symbolic of fertility and nurturing, and water is often the element associated with those deities, as is breast milk. Most of the sculptural depictions carved in Africa of Yemoja, like the one on the right, which is one of many I own, feature her breasts.
When Africans from the West Coast were dragged in chains to the New World, they may have been stripped of their belongings but they were not stripped of their beliefs. The middle passage was across a frightening ocean in the bowels of slave ships, so to wash up on hostile shores enhanced the importance of the figure who represented that vast body of water and the essence of life itself.
Arriving alive, no matter the horrors, the enslaved Africans gave thanks to her for their lives, and up to this day, their descendants bring offerings of fruit and flowers to the sea, placed in little boats, as they light candles and sing songs of thanksgiving and praise.
All of the African-diasporic traditions in the New World honor the Divine Mother under many names like Kalunga (Madre de Agua) in Palo and La Sirene in Voudou.
Take a moment to look at "Brazilians celebrate Goddess of the Sea," a lovely slideshow of photos by Mario Tama.
World-renowned Brazilian singer Maria Bethânia sings a tribute to the Queen of the Sea.
My other favorite songs to Yemaya from Brazil are "Canto de Iemanja," by Afro-Bahian Virginia Rodrigues:
I also love Baden Powell & Vinicius de Morais' "Canto de Iemanjá:"
As a daughter and priestess of Yemaya in the Afro-Cuban tradition, I wish you all her blessings for the year ahead.