Candomble is not one liturgy but several, grouped into nacoes, nations, which preserve the distinct African origins of the people who built them. The term no longer refers to the ethnic descent of members, who may come from any background, but to the ritual tradition a house follows.
Ketu, also called Nago, draws on Yoruba practice from the region of Ketu in present-day Benin and southwestern Nigeria. It venerates orixas, sings in a Yoruba-derived liturgical language, and is the most prestigious and best documented nation, which has led outside accounts to treat it as Candomble entire.
Jeje derives from the Fon and Ewe traditions of Dahomey and serves voduns rather than orixas, with its own pantheon, drum patterns and vocabulary. Angola and Congo houses come from Central African, largely Bantu-speaking sources, serve inquices, and use terms derived from Kikongo and Kimbundu. Caboclo entities, spirits understood as Indigenous Brazilian, appear in some houses, especially Angola ones, and are marginal or absent in others.
The nations exchanged material heavily, and many houses are mixed in practice while claiming a single identity, so the categories describe tendencies rather than sealed compartments. The prestige ranking is itself a historical artefact: Ketu houses were favoured by the twentieth-century scholars and writers who made Candomble respectable, and Angola practice was correspondingly treated as less pure, a judgement practitioners of Angola houses reject.
The Casa Branca terreiro in Salvador, conventionally dated to about 1830 and the oldest house whose descent can be traced, is a Ketu foundation. The two other great Bahian houses, Gantois and Ile Axe Opo Afonja, descend from it through splits over succession.