PHOTOGRAPH | BILL STEBER

HOUSTON INSTITUTE FOR CULTURE | FEATURED ARTIST

Skeleton, Clarksdale, MS, 1995
Talismans, mojo hands and charms to create or eliminate hexes are the frequent subject of African American folk tales and blues songs. "Conjuring" and other forms of folk medicine arrived in the South through the Voodoo and Santeria practices of Haiti and the Caribbean, brought to this hemisphere by slaves from West and Central Africa and subsequently adapted into American beliefs and customs. Authors Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison have used folk magic in their work as have countless blues singers. Muddy Waters, in his 1954 recording of "Hoochie Coochie Man," sang: "I've got a black cat bone/ I got a mojo too/ I got the John the Conquerer root/ I'm gonna mess with you/ Make all you pretty girls/ take me by my hand/ Then the world gonna know/ I'm the Hoochie Coochie Man."