The community of Ẹgbẹ́ Ọmọ Alairá of Oakland is dedicated to the practice of Candomblé de Ketu, an African descended tradition of healing, celebration, and transformation.
We offer weekly classes in drum, song, dance, and orixa culture, and hold seasonal celebrations throughout the year.
Ẹgbẹ́ Ọmọ Alairá began as a group of friends around our teacher, Jorge Alabê, and have grown into a spiritual family seeking to celebrate the power and beauty of Òrìṣà, the creative Spirit of Nature in Humanity, as remembered and celebrated in Yorùbá, Brazilian, and North American culture. Our mothers and fathers, teachers and mentors, bringing this tradition to us hail from the family of the Axé da Casa Branca do Engenho Velho, also known as, Ilê Axé Iyá Nasso Oka, in Salvador da Bahia. Our primary mentor and teacher here in Oakland is Jorge Alabê, chief drummer in the house of Iyá Iyaloxundê (Areonite da Conceição Chagas) in Miguel Couto, Rio de Janeiro. Ẹgbẹ́ Ọmọ Alairá is founded in and exalts the Spirit of Thunder, Òrìṣà Airá, and follows his invitation to learn and share the traditions of Candomblé de Ketu here in Oakland; we of Ẹgbẹ́ Ọmọ Alairá thus seek to heal ourselves and the community around us, to work towards social justice, and to celebrate the sacredness of life.
What is Candomblé de Ketu?
The spiritual tradition from Brazil, today known as Candomblé de Ketu, evolved from the inheritance of people from the ancient African kingdoms of Ketu, Oyo, Ijesha, and Ife, of what is now called Yorubaland, in Nigeria and Benin, brought as slaves to Brazil in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, during the colonial and imperial eras of Brazil, 1700s - 1888.
In the mid-1800s a group of enslaved and freed Yoruba speaking people formed around the shrine established by a woman called Iyá Nassô, likely from Oyo, a man called Babá Asipá, from Ketu, and another called Bamboxê Obiticô, and dedicated themselves to the perpetuation of the spiritual legacy of the Ketu people. This community worshipped the Orishas called Oshosi, spirit of the hunt, and Shango, spirit of Thunder and Lightning, and soon, under the leadership of Iyá Nasso’s successor, Iyá Obatossi, the community moved, sometime in late-1800s, to where it remains housed today, at the Casa Branca do Engenho Velho. The temple of Casa Branca is today acclaimed as one of the oldest standing Orisha communities in Brazil and remains one of the most reputable and well established.
Life in Candomblé de Ketu centers on the worship of the Orishas, divine Forces of Creation embodied in Nature and evoked through the legends and history of Yoruba cultural memory. We see every part of Nature, including humanity, as a manifestation of a particular Orisha, and every Orisha, as a manifestation of Olodumare, the “All that Is,” called by many, “God.” Thus, the ritual life of Candomblé is both a recovery of power, medicine, as well as a celebration of immanent, divine Presence in our lives, in our family, in our larger communities, and in the World.
Candomblé de Ketu is a family, descended in both the biological offspring of its founding members, as well as in the family created by initiation into the tradition. This spiritual family of initiation spread the worship of the Orishas, first to the African descended population of Salvador da Bahia and Rio de Janeiro, and then beyond, to include any and all called by the Orishas. It was Iyá Nassô who initiated Obatossi, becoming her spiritual mother, and Iyá Obatossi who initiated, Iyá Massi, and it was Iyá Massi who initiated Iyá Nitinha, who would later initiate, as her spiritual sons, both the founding members of Ẹgbẹ́ Ọmọ Alairá, first Jorge Alabê, (Jorge Bezerra) as the Alabê, chief drummer, of her house, and later, Aníbal Daniel Mejía, as an olorixá, priest, dedicated to Oiá Iyansã.
Over the last decade, after the arrival of Jorge Alabê to the San Francisco Bay Area, from a group of music students, spiritual seekers, and friends around him, the Egbe Omo Alairá of Oakland has emerged. “Nós aguarde.” Watch us. More coming.