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Lindsay Hale, Hearing the Mermaid's Song: The Umbanda Religion in Rio de Janeiro. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009, 208 pages.
Rio de Janeiro's Umbanda religion is rooted in the coming together of diverse spiritual traditions at the turn of the 20th century, including Afro-Brazilian, Spiritist (Kardecist), and Catholic practices and beliefs. The aesthetic and symbolic complexity of its rituals, as well as their personal significance for local practitioners, comes beautifully alive in Lindsay Hale's ethnographic feast of the senses. As he clearly states at the end of the book, while attempting to understand both the ideological and biographic reasons why people may choose to engage with the reUgion, "far more important to me has been the task of conveying something of the richness of Umbanda as lived experience" (p. 161).
Using a phenomenologically informed approach that prioritizes gut feelings over analytical detachment, the work nevertheless sheds Ught on the specific dynamics at the core of a controversial and contested spiritual path. While his embrace of radical empiricism pushes the author to wear his personal Ukes, dislikes and personaUty traits on his sleeve, Hale is also keen on placing Umbanda's beliefs and practice within the broader context of Brazilian racist history. He asks questions about the Unks between BraziUan myths of national identity and Umbanda's spirits, bringing to IUe a colourful description both of the personal journeys leading practitioners to the religion, and of what the latter offers them in return for worshipping a complex array of divine entities, including orixás, pretos-velhos, child spirits (crianças...