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This chapter discusses the ambiguity, contradictions, and controversy surrounding the legacy of African-derived religions in Jamaica, especially with regard to Kumina, a Kongo/Koongo-derived Jamaican tradition. It highlights the dualistic approach to African religions in Black Jamaican culture, especially during the 19th and 20th centuries. On the one hand, African-derived religions and the people who sustain them have been and continue to be stigmatized as dangerous and pathological in Jamaican popular culture. Yet, on the other hand, practitioners of African-derived religions are consulted regularly for healing and crisis resolution. An African-centered womanist “theology of the cross” is developed in this chapter, which shows that Obeah, Myal, Revival Zion, Kumina, Rastafari, and other African diasporic religions share common religious foci that appear to be African-derived and emphasize healing, well-being, and the integration and affirmation of purposeful life experience.

Writing from the cultural perspective of his native Ghana and Ga-Adangme roots, Isaac Nii Akrong looks into complex connections between aspects of Ghanaian culture and that of Jamaica. He discusses the Gome drum and dance of Ghana and its links (through Sierra Leone and Central Africa) to Jamaican Maroon square drums, as well as the Jamaican danced religion Kumina, with Congolese origins, but also influences from Maroons, whose roots include Ghana, and with similarities, he notes, to dance moves and musical practices of Ghana. Above all, Akrong recognizes in the Jamaican spirituality of Kumina an intensely African connection with the spiritual traditions of Ghana.

Cheryl Ryman offers an intensive view of the complexities and richness of Jamaican folkloric dance. She sets up a detailed context for her unusually complete description of the dances, giving insights into ways in which all dance cultures can be identified, the African aesthetics and spirituality that define Jamaican dance, and the way a dance event evolves, reflecting what happens in much of the Caribbean. Ryman's extensive descriptions of such traditions as Jonkonnu, Bruckin Party, Buru, Maypole, Mento, Kumina, the Nine Night dances, including dinki mini and guerre, Maroon Kromanti play nation dances, Etu, Hosay, and Rastafari greatly enhance knowledge of the complications of Jamaica's historic folkloric culture.