newritual

Orixás

Jorge Amorim & Hank Schroy
(2002–2004, released October 6, 2004)

Orixás was recorded and produced between 2002 and 2004 in collaboration with percussionist and composer Jorge Amorim.

Much of the album was recorded and shaped in a Brooklyn apartment, through long sessions of listening, layering, and revision rather than through live performance.

The project grew out of a long period of listening, transcription, and research into ceremonial music associated with Candomblé, Umbanda, and related traditions, approached from the position of curious outsiders.

The album is structured as a sequence of invocations, with sixteen Orixás represented. While the names and archetypes follow traditional ritual contexts, the musical approach is intentionally open. Rather than attempting to reproduce ceremonial practice, we focused on creating contemporary musical settings that could hold many voices and approaches at once—allowing each track to function as both a listening piece and a space for reflection, movement, or quiet attention.

Contributors came from a wide range of musical and cultural backgrounds, spanning Brazil, the Caribbean, West Africa, the United States, and Réunion Island. Voices, percussion, strings, horns, and electronics were layered through an extended studio process, with tracks evolving gradually through collaboration, revision, and careful listening. The production was deliberately intimate and hands-on: recorded and mixed in a domestic space, shaped slowly rather than assembled quickly.

Over time, Orixás has found a life well beyond its original context. The music has continued to circulate across different settings and uses, from personal listening to dance and contemplative practice.

From the outset, Orixás was not conceived as a genre record, nor as an ethnographic document. It was an attempt to work carefully and respectfully with powerful musical material—treating ritual forms not as artifacts to be reproduced, but as living structures that could support contemporary musical expression. The result is a record that invites multiple modes of engagement: emotional, physical, attentive, and reflective.

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Adjacent Collaborative Contexts

During this same period, I was also involved in collaborative and organizational work connected to Afro-Brazilian ceremonial music through a project titled The Candomblé Orchestra (A Orquestra do Candomblé). The full project is viewable below. I served as the producer of the project, overseeing recording, mixing, and video editing, and conducted the interview included in the closing commentary. While the musical material itself emerged from collective practice and living tradition rather than authored composition, my role involved shaping, documenting, and presenting the work with care. The project is mentioned here as contextual background rather than as a standalone authored musical work, and formed part of the broader environment of study, relationship, and attention that informed Orixás, without being subsumed into it.