The West African Mami Wata Tradition

Record summary

Mami Wata is a flexible family of water-spirit figures associated with beauty, wealth, danger, healing, sexuality, and encounters at rivers or the sea. The tradition became especially visible through twentieth-century religious movements, visual imagery, and transatlantic exchange, while local names and narratives remain diverse. It matters for comparison because encounters often involve crossing between ordinary social life and an alluring aquatic domain. Scholars debate diffusion, indigenous precedents, Christian and colonial influences, and the usefulness of treating Mami Wata as one figure.