Beadwork

I have been making beadwork for the orishas in the Afro-Cuban Lucumí religious context since 1997. I wrote about my experiences as a mixed-race anthropologist, initiated orisha priest, and my beadwork practice in the following article:

A vibrant graphic featuring the title '¡Puro Ritmo! The Musical Journey of Salsa', with illustrations of dancers and a joyful woman wearing earrings, set against a colorful background.

April 18, 2026 – ongoing ¡Puro Ritmo! The Musical Journey of Salsa exhibition at The National Museum of the American Latino (1 East Molina Family Latino Gallery)

The National Museum of the American Latino presents its second major exhibition on the origins of salsa music. Featured in the exhibition is beaded regalia made by me and a Shango garment made by Dr. Alexander Fernández. From the streets of Havana to the dance floors of New York and beyond, ¡Puro Ritmo! explores how salsa evolved into a defining sound in the U.S. This bilingual exhibition traces salsa’s roots and rise through nearly 300 objects. Highlighting artists from Tito Puente and Celia Cruz to local legends and hidden pioneers, ¡Puro Ritmo! celebrates salsa as one of America’s great musical traditions.

March 25-26 2026 Healing with More-than-Humans: Environment, Historicities, and Sacred Materialities, ISM, Yale University.

I led a hands-on bead workshop and presentation at the Institute of Sacred Music, Yale University. My event was titled Sacred Beadwork: Adorning the Orishas as Energies of Nature: Osain and Babalu Ayé.

The event Healing with More-than-Humans: Environment, Historicities, and Sacred Materialities was a two-day symposium that brought together scholars in anthropology and practitioners (religious practitioners, healers, dancers, and artists). The event was held in a hybrid format, with speakers attending in person at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music alongside the Yale community, and online attendance was available. The event merged scholarly paper sessions with expressive culture workshops, including dance, storytelling, beading sacred art, and performances centered around the relationship with more-than-humans held by anthropologists-practitioners.

Tsang, Martin. “Jubilant Coral and Jade: How Afro-Cuban Beaded Art Reflects Religion, Heritage, and Anthropology.” Chiricú Journal: Latina/o Literatures, Arts, and Cultures 2, no. 1 (2017): 143–63. https://doi.org/10.2979/chiricu.2.1.11.

Beads in the Lucumí religion are worn by initiates and used to decorate and adorn orisha shrines. All beadwork is created in ritual ways that honor color and number combinations, which honor the particular orisha or deity it was made to represent. The beadwork is then ritually consecrated to imbue it with the spiritual energy of the orishas, called ashé, and to empower it. Once consecrated, beadwork is cared for and treated with respect.

For the Yorùbá-speaking people of present-day Nigeria, the Lucumí of Cuba, and practitioners of Candomblé in Brazil, as well as for orisha priests in many other locations, beaded objects signify the orisha who unite religious practitioners across time and space. These beaded objects can take many forms, covering regalia, crowns, scepters, vessels, and more. One of the most personal and universal forms of beadwork are necklaces worn around the neck and wrists of worshippers, which create a tangible, bodily connection to the divine. These ritually prepared necklaces are called collares [Spanish] or eleké / ileke by Lucumí orisha practitioners in Cuba, guias [Portuguese] by Candomblé practitioners in Brazil, and elekê by Candomblé practitioners in Brazil.

Further, wearing an orisha necklace “is a representative role, and at the same time, a motive for pride, and when worn in public, can be a strategic tool in resistance to religious intolerance. Ana Stela Cunha notes that “locating the orixá through beads means dressing and re-dressing in an unspeakable and unique spirituality” (2014, 18). In recent years, there have been mounting tensions between fervent religious groups, particularly in the persecution of Candomblé practitioners. These encounters, the majority being verbal assaults, have in some instances led to the wanton desecration of sacred Candomblé spaces and the breaking of sacred beadwork under duress. The response by the orixá communities in Brazil, in light of these unlawful breaches of religious open-mindedness, has led to the intentional increase in visibility of Candomblé worshipers, identified by the strategic wearing of orixá beaded regalia. In so doing, practitioners are empowered and educated through public profiles of their beads and dress as emblems of unity, pride, integrity, and peaceful visibility for greater religious tolerance and understanding.

In Cuba and its diaspora, some Lucumí adherents can be identified by wearing a beaded necklace or bracelet, a discreet, coded visual signifier for those who can “read” the beads and understand which orisha(s) the person is being protected by. In such a socialist country as Cuba, which has historically not welcomed any religious activity or organizations since the 1959 Revolution, beads help to gently identify practitioners from one another. Once one’s eyes become attuned to seeing such beads, it is startling to see how many people in public are sporting them!

In addition to making beads for religious use, I have also mounted exhibitions (see Curating page), collaborated on a major exhibition of Lucumí beadwork in 2012 at Florida International University, and convened an opening panel discussion of experts on Afro-Atlantic and native American bead cultures.

My beadwork has also been displayed in several exhibitions. These include a mazo (a large, multi-stranded beaded necklace) for Oshanla in Cuba! traveling exhibition that began at the American Museum of Natural History in New York (Nov 2016 — Aug 2017) and traveled to Colorado and other museums across the US.

A mazo for Oshún was displayed in an exhibition curated by Professor Joseph Murphy at Georgetown University.

Oshún mazo on display in the exhibition, Sacred Arts of Orisha Traditions, Georgetown University Library Special Collections Gallery, Washington DC. July 5 – September 30, 2017.

These magnificent necklaces are worn by new devotees during their initiation. This one marks the wearer as a devotee of Oshún Ololodi, the diviner Oshún. When not worn, the mazo necklaces decorate home altars.

Sacred Arts of Orisha Traditions features objects collected over nearly forty years by Joseph M. Murphy, the Paul and Chandler Tagliabue Distinguished Professor of Interfaith Studies and Dialogue. For devotees of Orisha religions, these items represent and invoke the sacred powers of particular Orishas as emblems. They illustrate religious pluralism, a distinctive and creative feature of many Orisha religions. The creativity revealed by these objects reflects the diversity of the Catholic experience and its embrace of dialogue among religious traditions.

In 2017, I designed and staged a spiritual room with a Spiritist bóveda and altar for Oshun for the immersive theatre experience called Miami Motel Stories in Little Havana, Miami, October 26 – November 19 at The Tower Hotel.

My work has also adorned book covers. Most recently, mazos that I made for Olokun and Erinle adorn the cover of Solimar Otero’s Archives of Conjure: Stories of the Dead in Afrolatinx Cultures (2020):

More subtle yet super important beading work that I have accomplished includes making a coral necklace for the statue of the Virgin of Regla housed in the Cabildo Yemayá in Regla, Havana. Each year on September 7th, the statue is processed through the streets of Regla accompanied by Lucumí batá / Aña drums.