Celebrate ORGULLO’s 2024 Festival explores how FAITH, FLOKLORE & FASHION affect and inspire us- through Society and Spirituality, Music, Rhythm, Hope & Symbolism
Identifying connections among religious rituals and culturally shared practices and how we interpret them in and through our daily lives, today. These traditions, along with what we each bring to them, to help tell our stories. Our personal Style and Expression. Our Identities. Our Individualism. Our Essence. Our ORGULLO. Becoming a U.S citizen should not mean or require shedding culture traditions.
The late colonial era in the Caribbean and the Americas was marked by an explosion of religious traditions that both drew from and challenged the normativity of Christianity.
The importation of large numbers of Africans for slave labor on the plantations introduced numerous ethnic groups and their cultural heritages to the Americas. To negotiate their own diversity and their contact with Europeans, Africans created religious traditions such as Santeria, Palo Monte, Abakua, and Vodou, with adherents that crossed ethnic lines. Among Spanish colonists, the religio-philosophical system of Espiritismo became an alternative for Catholics who were becoming increasingly alienated. The historical trajectories of Revival Zion in Jamaica and Spiritual Baptists in Trinidad (and other eastern Caribbean islands) provide salient examples of cultural convergence, adaptation, and agency at the Caribbean crossroads. They also emerged from the need of Africans under slavery to fashion a cohesive worldview and a cultural identity that reflected their African heritage and the realities of their lives on the plantations. Once formed, these traditions never became static cultural artifacts but were dynamic, evolving traditions that crossed into all aspects of their lives - Fashion, Food, and Adornment.
Today, our Fashion Foods, Music, Movies and even Video Games – draw from these traditions and iconify much around us, often creating a new ideal of Faith, Folklore and Fashion.