People from all over the world come to the Oṣun-Oṣogobo festival to celebrate their religion and to celebrate and honor Oṣun. The film talks about the spread of the Yoruba religion through the slave trade and the ways African-Americans are reconnecting with their heritage through religion and pilgrimage. At the beginning when the 16 lamps are being lit there is a mix of traditionalists, non traditionalists, and people who don’t practice the Yoruba religion. One of the women in the film talks about how she was labeled as East Indian as a hard to place baby and that she fought to claim her African heritage. Another of the women talks about how she grew up christian but in her house there were altars for the catholic saints who correspond to different Oriṣas. Native Africans and people of African descent gather to celebrate Oṣun during the festival.
Johnson’s idea of hybridity in African diasporic religions fits some of the women’s experiences growing up. The matching of catholic saints to different Oriṣas and the different aspects of God found in christianity and catholicism speak to the idea of a hybrid sort of religion. The ways in which people of different religions worship varies but according to the priests in the film they are all worshipping the same God.
The festival is a good example of African diasporic religion due to all the different people shown attending the festival, and all their different backgrounds. Yoruba religion is practiced all over the world and all the different people who go to the festival show that the religion is not going away anytime soon. At the beginning of the film a man says that while slaves and people of African descent may have left Africa, Africa did not leave them. That quote speaks to the ways people worship and the immense importance of the pilgrimages that people make to Nigeria to reconnect with their roots. The two African American women who are initiated as priestesses during the film talk about rewriting their destinies, and how at the end of the initiation they felt like they were at home.
The Oṣun-Oṣogbo festival brings people together, whether they’re practitioners of the religion or not, and to those who are it holds an incredibly special meaning. It is obvious that no one is against the ways that African diasporic religions mixed or the way that Yoruba religion mixed with Christianity. Johnson talked about the use of the word “hybrid” in relation to religion throughout history and how different scholars used it negatively, however, the hybridity of African diasporic religions is not a bad thing. The vast diversity seen in the people attending the festival shows the ways in which the Yoruba people worship and how aspects of the religion are similar to those of other religions and yet the ways in which they worship are incredibly different. One of the women initiated as a priestess talks about how she tends to pray quietly but that it feels good to pray loudly so her prayers can be heard and how the bells force her to pray loudly. The Oṣun-Oṣogbo festival brings out aspects of African diasporic religions that are beautiful and interesting while showing how the Yoruba peoples’ rituals during the Oṣun-Oṣogbo festival affect the atmosphere in the town and how they affect all the people in the town, whether they are practitioners, traditionalists, non traditionalists, or people who are just there to celebrate Oṣun.