Ibeyi introduce the title track off their fourth album with a disclaimer: “I don’t make spells anymore,” says Lisa-Kaindé Diaz. “Now, I make offerings,” adds Naomi, her twin sister. They attribute the shift to an apparition of Yemayá, the mother orisha of oceans and rivers, to Lisa-Kaindé. “Only offerings now,” the deity told her. In one sense, it’s a protective reaction to spells that don’t bear fruit. But it’s also a despojo—a cleansing act that finds freedom in letting go of the control we’re wired to cling to.
The transition is right there in the titles of their albums: 2022’s Spell 31, a record thick with spiritual invocations from across history and geography, was named after an arcane entry in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. A few things stay the same on Offering: The twins sing in English, Spanish, French, and Yoruba, in phrases short in meter, with a reverence for the spiritual and their ancestors. The narratives allude to heartbreak, motherhood, and the memory of loved ones like their father, Buena Vista Social Club conguero Miguel “Angá” Diaz, and their sister, Yanira Diaz. But Offering invites new collaborators into their process, like Haitian-Guyanese producer Michaël Brun and Cuban percussionist Pedrito Martinez. The sisters take control in one crucial way: It’s the first album the sisters have self-released on their new eponymous label after their first three on London’s talent-breaking XL Recordings.
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Musically, Ibeyi flow through a range of intensities. They open by invoking Olokún, whose domain is the deepest part of the sea; their words emerge from a base of breathy vocalizations heavily processed, metabolizing the orisha’s anger and hurt. On “Aset,” Cuban percussionist (and Santero) Pedrito Martinez plays the batá, whose many polyrhythmic textures are the sonic foundation of Lucumí and Afro-Cuban folkloric spirituality. They build in intensity alongside a chorus of “ay, amor,” transmuting the Egyptian myth of Isis into an unmistakably Cuban interpretation. On “Moshpit,” a synthesized clanging like a hot pipe and the pulled-apart batá underpin the distorted refrain, “I am the moshpit,” a chaotic affirmation of internal contradictions and irresolution. Amid a host of synthetic textures, the batá grounds the record in its spiritual reference; only the twins’ perspective changes. Elsewhere, as on “La tendresse d’un mot,” they return to a reverent unison, their voices only breaking into harmony when most resonant. On “The Process,” the image of a machete held to the sky is sung against a sepulchral vocalization, illustrating the twins’ promise, “I’ll be brave/I won’t numb the process.”
The visual language of the album grounds the spiritual core of the record in Cuba—not Cuba, as envisioned by the foreign gaze or in diaspora, but Cuba, the island and its water, where movement is intrinsic to its border. In the video for “Aset,” people dance in an apartment in Havana’s Vedado neighborhood; outside the door, women sweep water down the brutalist hallway of Edificio Girón, framed by the sea.
