Oshun is the original mother of twins, which hold divine significance in Yoruba culture. Way before Beyoncé announced she was pregnant with twins, Lisa and Naomi had suspected that Oshun was the singer’s patron saint and that perhaps this was revealed when she and her husband visited Cuba in 2014. “Even before she wore the yellow dress in Lemonade,” Naomi says, referring to the deity’s token hue. Ibeyi appeared in the video project, but they talk about it, and Beyoncé, like fans. “You can tell: she’s the seductress, the queen, maternal,” Lisa says, gushing a little bit. “Her favorite song of ours is ‘River,’” Naomi points out. “And in Lemonade she’s surrounded by water.”

One evening, after spending the day shooting candids of her daughters on-set, Maya is sitting in an armchair in my rented bedroom charging her iPhone. She starts to tell me about her path to Cuba, which began when she discovered Yoruba music and the quasi-ceremonial batá drum at 18, back in France. Later, after falling in love with Anga, the couple came to Cuba and went through the intense Santería initiation process — while Maya was pregnant with the twins. “It was so, so long, and hard. Really hard,” she says, her face collapsing into a red stain. She starts to cry, but keeps talking between gulps of air. Part of the initiation is quite brutal and violent, she explains, clenching her fists and raising her chest. “This wasn’t my country and I was scared, but I felt that going through [the initiation] with Anga was the deepest way to understand Cuba, its ancestors, and Anga himself. It was the deepest love proof I could give to him and his country.” As quickly as she crumbles, Maya recovers. It was all worth it, she says smiling, when her orisha was divined as Oshun Ibu Aña, the mother of twins, “who owns and goes toward the drums.”

Part of Ibeyi’s appeal is Santería’s influence on their music, and how it directly links Cuban culture to West Africa. Aesthetically, the project of siblings remixing and recontextualizing ancestral sounds and rhythms reminds me of the diasporic souljazz developed by Afro-Parisian sisters Les Nubians in the late ’90s and early aughts. “Cuban music is Yoruba music,” says Lisa, emphasizing the generational absorption of African indigenous practices into mainstream Cuba. But Ibeyi’s love for Yoruba music came just a few years before they began to record it themselves.

In Paris, the twins grew up listening to Mozart, jazz, their father’s drumming with Buena Vista Social Club and Irakere, and Maya’s Mos Def and Eminem CDs. When they were 15, Maya asked them to join her at a group of Parisians that practiced batá drumming and Yoruba chants. “The first time we went, we were like, ‘Aww, we don’t wanna go to a choir on Friday, why is she doing that to us?’” says Naomi. “And then, the second we heard the music, it was mind-blowing.” They’d go each week and, Lisa says, began to learn the liturgical music of Santería.

But, Naomi reminds me, “We wouldn’t be what we are if we didn’t grow up in France.” Outside music is only slowly trickling into Cuba via the lucky few citizens granted access to travel, and visiting ex-pats. And because wifi is hard to come by, people get music — mostly Cuban reggaeton — and other media, including American TV shows like Grey’s Anatomy, via black market paquetes: curated data distributed via thumb drives for a few dollars. This is how Ibeyi’s music, specifically the 2015 video for “River,” finally reached Cuba, Maya explains, adding that last September she paid a paquete dealer for three months of promo. By the end of November, “River” was nominated in three categories, including Best New Artist, at Cuba’s annual Premios Lucás video music awards.