Book, Oriki Orixá[LS]

Oriki is the chant to call to oneself a Yoruban god (the orixá) through an 'ideogrammatic' synthesis of his attributes. When setting out to translate orikis Antonio Risério brilliantly faces a double challenge: that of rescuing and integrating oral poetry from Afro-Brazilian traditions into literary poetics in Portuguese (without neglecting any reference to the socio-cultural context and the ritualistic modus-operandi) ; and, in doing so, seek to reconstruct the rhythms and sounds of Yoruba in our language, in a poetic feat that receives the enthusiastic endorsement of Augusto de Campos in the preface. At the end of reading Oriki Orixá, more than the rescue of an oral tradition that has been diluted, one gets the impression that Risério uncovers strong and secret roots of Brazilian culture.