# The idiom of nations in regional variations of Afro-Brazilian religions  
We shall now examine how the phenomenon manifests itself in some of the most well-known regional variations of Afro-Brazilian religions, bearing in mind that owing to a lack of space the Macumba of Rio de Janeiro, the Batuque of Pará and several others will not be treated here. In São Luis, capital of the northern State of Maranhão, Afro-Brazilian religion is known as Tambor de Mina (Mina Drum), an allusion to the above-mentioned Mina Coast. The two oldest existing houses there, both founded by Africans in the late 1840s, are the Casa das Minas (House of the Mina [women]) and the Casa de Nagô (House of the Nagô). While the former is famous for the worship of royal woduns from the Dahomey kingdom, and is often referred to as Mina-Jeje, the latter, inspired by the Yoruba traditions of orixá worship, became the major ritual model for the organization of Tambor de Mina as a distinct religious institution. The alignment of these two congregations with African 'nations' is explicit in their names, but in the majority of other houses - where the worship of nonAfrican deities such as the caboclo is dominant and where the singing is mostly in Portuguese - the idiom of nations is less central. Yet houses that diverge from the Nagô or Mina-Jeje liturgical pattern are dismissed as bêta and sometimes referred to as houses of 'Tambor de Mata', 'Mina de Caboclo' or Pajelança (Amerindian healing tradition). In Tambor de Mina the house Fanti-Ashanti, founded in the 1950s, is also famous. However, the use of this 'nation' could be seen as a case of 'invention of tradition' which served its leader to establish a difference with the Nagô and Jeje main houses (Ferretti, 2001, pp. 75-94).