Abstract This article discusses how those who experience spirit possession within Bahian Candomblé religion listen to ritual music outside of the ceremonial context. It proposes a theory of aesthetics based on bodily sensations and mythological imagination that initiated dancers develop through experience and socialization. This embodied aesthetics is then linked to discourses of black empowerment, processes of self- fashioning, and issues of secrecy and representation of Candomblé in Bahia