Myth in the Mojave

It’s been a somewhat stormy week in the Mojave with lots of dramatic afternoon clouds, rogue winds, high humidity, and a few drops of rain. This monsoon season is a good time to make a bow in the direction of Oya, the Yoruban goddess of wind and storms. 

In this program I tell a story about Oya and Shango. I also talk about the dynamics between masculine and feminine energies in music. This show features a couple short examples of the drumming used to honor and call the goddess Oya.

MITM theme music by Travis Rosenberg. Thanks to Radio Free Joshua Tree for providing MITM a home on internet radio-- and thank you for listening!

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You know the saying, “To the victor goes the spoils.” Well gold and jewels, land, slaves, and beautiful women are fine and good but what is even more valuable is the stories. Whose version of history gets told? Whose culture survives? This is one thread running through this episode.

Part Two contains the conclusion of Prometheus’s story. I also tell a story about Anansi, a West African Trickster spider who brings stories of all types to earth.

MITM theme music by Travis Rosenberg. Thanks to Radio Free Joshua Tree for providing MITM a home on internet radio-- and thank you for listening!

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In this episode we turn to the ancient Greek myth of Prometheus to continue our exploration of the archetypal Trickster. Prometheus is a trickster-like Titan who angered Zeus by giving fire to human beings. The connection between his mythological legacy and our impulse to innovate, create new technologies, and constantly, creatively fiddle with the world is contained in the term “promethean.”

Tricksters aren’t afraid to break the rules or mess with the big gods. But tricky as he is, Prometheus is not quite a Trickster with a capital “T.” He suffers for his love of mankind.

This is Part One of a two-part series. In this program I tell the story of Prometheus and the theft of fire. I’ll also explain this distinction between “Trickster” and “trickster-like.”

MITM theme music by Travis Rosenberg. Thanks to Radio Free Joshua Tree for providing MITM a home on internet radio-- and thank you for listening!

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The archetypal Trickster is a fascinating figure in many mythologies. He is the embodiment of change, paradox, and the tensions in life that keep us moving, growing, vital. Tricksters occupy the middle ground between black and white, and they are divine messengers who move between heaven, earth, and hell (however those realms are imagined).

In this program I tell a couple of stories about Eshu, a Trickster from West Africa. This is a Trickster who knows how to lend you a hand or really mess you up, and the lesson that is conveyed in this story is an important one. You might recognize this motif as it’s popular in African mythologies.

Eshu also appears under different names, Papa Legba, for example, in diasporan traditions like Vodoun and Santeria.

MITM theme music by Travis Rosenberg. Thanks to Radio Free Joshua Tree for providing MITM a home on internet radio-- and thank you for listening!

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This episode includes two stories about one of my favorite mythological characters—the trickster known as Old Man Coyote. Trickster figures are very common in mythologies all over the world because we couldn’t have this lively, ever-evolving, ever changing, perfectly imperfect world that we live in, without him.  This first story is “Coyote Keeps His Name,” based on a version told by the Okanagon people of the Pacific Northwest, adapted from Barry Lopez collection titled “Giving Birth to Thunder.”

The second story is “The Eye Juggler.” I first came across this story in a book titled “Trickster Makes the World” by Lewis Hyde and is attributed to the Jicarilla Apache of northern New Mexico.

MITM theme music by Travis Rosenberg. Thanks to Radio Free Joshua Tree for providing MITM a home on internet radio-- and thank you for listening!

Support the show