THOMPSON Robert Farris. Dance Between Two Worlds, catálogo da exibição no Caribbean Cultural Center, NY.

THE GENERAL PHILOSOPHY

The Kongo-Angola/Atlantic heritage is one of the main classical traditions of the planet. Flowing from the ideal Kongo capital, Mbanza Kongo, where everyone could find a relative, where a spiritually imbued leader dispensed justice in the famous law-courts of the land, Kongo-Atlantic culture in its sacred and religious manifestations has changed the course of popular history ir the Western Hemisphere.
At the core of the culture is belief in Great God Almighty Nzambi Mpunga. Nzambi Mpunga, as we learn from ar inportant text compiled by a Mu - Kongo named Nsemi shortly after the turn of the century, is also known as Funza. Nzambi - Funza is the origin of all minkisi (Figure 1). the sacred medicines of God. God, Nsemi reveals, "gave rise to all the minkisi in order to help the people... therefore the firsy nkisi, called Furza, originated in God, and Furza came with a great number of minkisi which he distributed throughout the country, each with its respective powers governing over its particular domain" (note 1).
God also taught the first healer-priest, Mukulu. how to mix the healing herbs to compose minkisi. Mukulu was shown how plants (and forest roots and twigs, as well) get power, and how to activate this power to defend mankind from the forces of jealousy (kindoki) and disease. One of the powers which Mukulu passed down from God was how to activate the sacred medicine with soul, for as scholar Wyatt MacGaffey points out in a recent study of minkisi (note 2), every human being is thought of by the BaKongo as a vessel for an empowering soul or spirit (mooyo).
The collected elements do not become an nkisi until the ritual expert (nganga) has inserted the proper medicines (bilongo). These medicines are of two kinds: (1) spiritembedding earths, (graveyard earyh, kaolin and so forth), believed to be at one with the spirit, parlicularly earth taken from the gravoe of a person who was very virile and strong in life, and (2) spiritadmonishing material ideographs, for the BaKongo were strong writers with objects and signs, which told the contained spirit what to do. For example, a priesi might insert a muzazu, in an insect's cocoon, within the nkisi bundle, telling the spirit, via both verbal and material punning, to stitch together (zazula) a particular problem or important issue (mambu).
In a sense, the most classical of all minkisi is the grave, the locus ot the spirit of one's immediate ancestors, whose spirit-residing earth can be activated in certain ways by objects laid to rest upon the surface of the tomb a seashell (luzingu) punning on 'live forever' (zinga), a pair of shoes, "walk to God in glory" , an open suitcase " travel well" and so forth.
The close connection between God, minkisi, and the use of the tomb as ultimate medicine for the living leads us immediately into the cosmological context of classical Kongo civilization. The human soul, a spark, a scinlilla, is a ‘second of the sun' . Life's meaning is reincarnation, the wheeling back from departed elders, of God-given talents and inspirations, traced again and again, ir Kongo writing (bidimbu) as the sign of the four moments of the sun, the Kongo cosmogram (Figure 2). The four momerts are birth, efflorescence, the fading, the return in the dawn of a coming day. Bakongo initiates stood upon those chalked signs in order to communicate, at the moment of their initiation into great societies like Lemba, that they understand the meaning of life, its eternal process and the responsibility of the leader to take these sparks of spirit and harness them, like Funza, for the good of the people. They swore also to defend mankind from negative forces, jealousy and envy. Its not enough, then, to talk of nature worship or the veneration of ancestors’ in Kongo civilization. Upright trees are seen as the sentinels of the moral dead. Upright trees are mimed in the famous ‘Kongo pose’ where one stands to begin something important with one hand on hip, the other raised before the body. Trees, twigs, sticks and herbs are communications to the spirit; they are, in fact, the spirit, all acting under God.
The dead are ultimate medicines; their souls can be activated, sometimes, as MacGaffey shows, by arousing their anger with noisy detonations of gunpowder, exploded to attract their attention, like a mighty shoul written in fire. At all times this material center of the religion, the nkisi, with its feathers of plenitude and connection with the realm of Nzambi, and its hidden earths leading to the grave and the accumulated insights of the ancestors traces, materially, the ‘power line’ leading from God to the dead and back again, crossing the ‘Kalunga line’, the body of water, the clump of forest (mfinda), which serve as classically envisioned boundaries between the two worlds. Banganga (ritual specialist), working with these forces for the people, often use mirrors, the flash of which repels the sort of person who would build his security on the insecurity of another person, and the reflections of which become a symbol of his second sight, powers or means of clairvoyance.
In the creole New World the tenets of this classical religion were differentially weighted, blended and continued among persons of Kongo descent in Brazil, Cuba and Haiti, but the essentials of the religion emerged invulnerably intact. Because of the presence of the strong and rival Domain of the Orisha’ religion, a kind of grand table of correspondence was set up in Latin-Catholic America whereby a Roman Catholic Saint of a certain attribute was associated with a Yoruba Orisha of a roughly matching attribute, which in turn were associated with a personified nkisi of roughly matching powers. Lemba, the North Kongo healing society and medicine, sometimes, was compared to the mercy of Jesus and the essential goodness of Obatala. But these essays in cultural camouflage and creolization never deflected the flow of the essentials of the Kongo religion. Spirits are admonished with gunpowder designs, drawn on temple floors, in Belo Horizonte in Umbanda, in the domain of the Mayomberos in Havana, and patterned as Kongo-oriented vévè in Haitian vodun. the minkisi of Haiti, so-called pacquets kongo (Figure 3), are extremely close to Kongo prototypes, albeit lightly creolized with shifts from raffia twine to silk ribbons, and recently metal paper to replace the flash and panache of feathers. (Compare Figure 1 with Figure 3.) the purity and fidelity of some of the more famous mpungu minkisi of Cuba, particularly in Guanabacoa, Perico and Matanzas are such that a Mu-Kongo has but to look at a photograph of one of them, note the equivalent to three cooking stones—medicines bilongo were something God ‘cooked up’ to save us all — in the tripod of the metal pot and smile with cultural recognition.
In the United States belief in the tromb as an ultimate charm of the spirit, as ultimate nkisi, goes on. There are thousands upon thousands of graves with ideographically planted trees satnding for eternity, for healing, for uprightness, for many things. There are graces with shoes for spiritual walking, graves with chairs for metaphysical enthronement, and graves with mirrors to throw back evil and attract the good. In Kongo the banganga (traditional ritual experts) were believed to gain special powers from the dead by initiatory residence in a forest or a cemetery or a cave. In the Old Time Religion of the Black United States postulants sometimes spend the night in the forest to gain spiritual insight and inspiration. A Kongo tradition goes on, under cover of Christianity.

AFRO-ATLANTIC KONGO WRITING

In Kongo, related to the pervasiveness of the concept, nkisi. there were myriad forms of material writing and many of these wore remembered in the Americas. One might 'write' a chalked circle around a tree that it might flourish, which was creolized into placing a metal hoop around the trunk of a tree in Trinidad for the same purpose. This was further creolized in the Black United States by growing shrubs in tire-planters. The latter tradition now covers the landscape of the Black South with a dramatic insistence akin to the raked sand gardens of Japanese Zen Buddhists The tires are often painted a pristine while. repeated and repealed until by visual riffing whole gardens, whole properties, seem set in motion So strong is this aspect of Kongo Atlantic material writing (1 have seen it in Brazil, as well) that it has given rise to a whole U.S. Black cottage industry whereby men cut and decoratively flange the inner circle of a tire, and paint it, calling the finished work a 'crown'.
Kongo metaphysical writing provides a hidden impetus behind various African-American writing systems: pontos riscados (Figure 4) o Brazil, firmas (Figure 5) in western Cuba and vévé petro (Figure 6) in southern Haiti.
From simple Kongo-derived emblems of the cross-roads and the union of the worlds of the living and the dead have evolved an intensely dynamic series of spiritual signatures and signs in Black Rio called pontos riscados. These ‘drawn points’ are often traced by spirits possessing devotees so that we might recognize who has come down. As time goes on, the ‘writing’ spills over into the realm of Western literature. There are Umbanda spirits, like the famous MM. of Belo Horizonte, who possess their priests and chant out whole texts which are taken down and published.
Perhaps the most famous of these " books written n the spirit’ is a text by MM. called Umbanda: the Religion of the Third Millennium in which he laments the proliferation of vaguely comprehended pontos. He calls for a lightening up of our sense of the nuancing of such spiritually written forms Thus, he distinguishes between rectilinear pontos for male Exus and pontos with curved lines for Pomba Giras, the vivid female forms of the Yoruba-Kongo cross-roads spirits The name Pomba Gira is a creolization of the Kikongo term for cross-roads, mpamba nzila. MM. also states that under the rubric of forest residence, the Yoruban hunting deity shelters both caboclos, alleged Amerindian spirits, and Paes Velhos, who are old black ancestors often bearing nicknames hinting of Kongo origin, like the spirit Kongo Grandmother or the spirit Old Father from Cabinda (Cambinda) Since the slang of Rio ‘bango’ [money, cf. Ki-Kongo mbongo], bunda [ass, Ki-Kongo, thigh] muleque [homeboy, young guy, Ki-Kongo, nleke, ‘cadet is heavily influenced by the lexicon of Kongo, it is easy to see how Umbanda, like Kimbisa in Cuba, emerged as a fusion religion in the grip of extremely strong Kongo influence. It is interesting to note that certain minkisi possessed the body of the particular nganga or ritual expert who presided over its specific powers.
Again, in Haiti, when we peel off layers of creolization, in the formation of the ground-signatures vévé of the Mia (also spelled loa), spirits of God in vodun worship, we find that the Kongo cosmogram appears dead-center in vêvè signs for spirits associated with the Petro or Kongo side of the Haitian religion. There are vévé for the Kongo simbi, given as the highest class of the dead These spirits of the dead were also recognized in South Carolina. These vévé include praise epithets in Ki-Yombe, like vévè simbi mpaka. Scraps of KF-Kongo called 'langage' (africanizing ritual language) accompany the drawing of vêvê simbi andezo, like the phrase 'goindaimalo', which is recognizably "kwenda ma lolo" go down to the sacred tree". Again, as in the Kongo use of gunpowder, Haitian fusions of me and fire attract the attention of the spirit.
In Cuba cosmogrammatic signs and symbols took root in the Regla de Mayombe religion As in certain Umbanda pontos, there are "firmas" to throw back the evil by the use of gunpower writing, in which small points of which are detonated apotropaically. Argeliers León ^{( note 3)} in a recent and elegantly detailed article on Kongo writing in Cuba ilustrates the sign of Nkuyo Bueno— two crosses flanking an arrow crossing a hill — and gives the gloss. This calligraph activates a positive spiritual force Two crosses indicate the spirit or soul to be activated in this nkisi-drawing. This firma is supposed to be drawn on the door of the postulants room and on the side of his nkisi-kettle (prenda). the arrow indicates the action of the nkisi ‘which crosses a helmet-like device (casquete) that could symbolize an elevated site from which one could look for the good," This is as pure an evocation as imaginable of the concept of finding justice at the hilltop site of the ancient Kongo capital, Mbanza Kongo the city was deliberately built at a summit as a point of perfection, or a kind of topographic form of writing admonishing the souls of the leaders and lawyers of the and to judge in consonance with the powers and perfections of the second moment of the sun, high noon, the point of ascendancy, the point of authority.

Part of the marvel of Kongo writing is gesture, unfolding with great intensity in classical Kongo sculpture. We see, both in art and life, the arms-akimbo gesture which is so strongly persistent in the United States, with its original Kongo athtelic, aggressive nuances intact. To this day in Black U.S. households small children will be reprimanded for adopting this pose in the presence of their elders. We should also identify a most important gesture, telama lwimbanpanga (Figure 7). Standing with the left arm akimbo, the night hand up and forward, is an openning pose in the Kongo-derived martial art of Martinique, ladjá, where the more mystically inclined of the athletes say that it throws power from the athete againt his opponenlt in a pose there called parade. Yangalala, hands above the head with fingers spread wide, is a famous and farflung Kongo Atlantic gesture signifying ecstasy and the presence of the spirit. We see it in Haitian Rara street parades, in Black United States moments of prayer or worsbip. In the summer of 1990 Isaw a black woman in Buenos Aires praise one of the oldest and finest singers of tango with this pose and it becomes a sign of victory among black athletes everywhere in the Western Hemisphere.
As Latin split into Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese, so a nuclear set of combat moves from kongo, when brought to the New World, differentially creolized into the maní, lada, capoeira (Figure 8) and knockin’-and-kickin black martial arts. These emerged, respectively, in Cuba, Martinique, Brazil and the United States. The originating core from kongo includes special head-butts, which are said to come from close study of male goats buyting with their horns (tuumba), trip-'em-ups (hitting the ankle of your opponent with your foot to make him fall) and kicks (matambi). The head-butts, according to Samba Jean, (a Mu-Lari who is making a systematic study of the combat games of his people) can be classified according to direction: ku matu, straight ahead to the head ,mu ndeko, a blow from the left or right hand side of one's head along the temple of the oppenent: and mu dúmuka, with a lunge up across the chest up into the head or chin of an assailant. Falling to the ground, one leg bent, the other straight out, called negativa in capoeira (in Kikongo kulu ku mosi kwa tílaIa, kwa kaka kwa futámana), is said to be used to protect oneself (swama), even mystically, for this is a pose to protect one's body from witchcraft (vula-vula mu kabísa ba ndoki).
In the New World, the reinstatement of tradition ranged from the core essentials, head-butting and kicking, in USA knocking ( with the head) and kicking; to a mixture of dance, combat and songs in creolized Ki-Kongo in Afro-Cuban maní; to the use of a Kongo-derived drum technique, raising the tone of the drum with the b\naked heel to excite the players to perform their athletic best, in Martinique, ladjá. In Martinique there are many kicks and strong sense, of the Kongo cosmogram: the first thing players of ladjá do is to run in a mystic circle to ' close' their bodies off emanations of jelousy and envy, according to Eugene Mona, himself a deeply versed player with a Kongo tree-shrine to this ancestors in his yard. Brazil takes pride of place for the richest elaboration of the tradition, probably because several Kongo variants were once flourishing simultaneously in proximity to one another, like capoeira in Bahia and batuque boi in the Reconcavo. As a variety of black dances were pulled together in the formation of the Lindy of '30s and the eletric boogie of ' 80s, so brazilian capoeira fused the ancient head-butts ( cabeçadas) and kick (pontapés) together with the one leg bent, the other extended gesture ( Brazilian call it negativa, and it is classically defense, as in Kongo) and so forth.
Unfortunately many Brazilians to this day think their martial art was somehow wholly invented on their soil, this in spite of the fact that the early style is clearly and unambiguously labelled ‘capoeira angola’. They are unaware of the implications of the citation of the Kongo society, Lemba; the Kongo idiophone, olélé; the use of the Ki-Koogo term for monkey, macaco, to describe a move which Black Cubans of the 1 9th century were also executing. Massive emerging evidence, linking maní to ladjá to capoeira will one day reveal one oh the most dramatic Kongoisms of them all. Bonnie Devlin, herself a fully initiated member of vodun society and a practicing drummer, has stated (note 4) that certain Petro dance postures betray their Kongo origin, in their degree of cognation with the moves of capoeira. In addition according to Alejandro Frigerio, a major scholar of African-Argentinian culture, the candomblés of Montevideo perambulated the streets with protective martial artists who went at the front with capoeira-like kicks and moves. It is interesting to note that some oh the drums used in the candombés are remarkably similar to the gwo kwa instruments of Guadeloupe. In closing, one could point out that the feints and dancing moves of US. Black boxing the stutter-steps oh Black broken field running o football and basketball, played like jazz, await the work of future scholars who will be able to document, almost assuredly, a modification of international sports through absorption oh the KongoAngola philosophy of movement.
The Kongo-Angola contribution is already clear and handsomely documented in the rise of major world popular musics of the 20th century, all of whom boar Ki-Kongo-derived names —tango (ntangu), rumba (lumba, lumba) (Figure 9), mambo (mambu), samba (vaana a samba) (Figure lO) ln the process. rotation oh the hips (tiénga) as a sign of life, in sexual continuity became the Kongo grind in US blackjazz dance and is a most important element of traditional rumba and beguine in the Black Caribbean. The Kongo tradition of touching at the waist to end a dance reasserts itself as umbigada in samba and vacunao in rumba, the latter term almost assuredly derived from the Ki-Kongo bakana, to meet, to strike up against someone, but perhaps punning on the Spanish verb, to vaccinate, vacunar, as well. Challenge dances in Kongo, like nsunsa, were spotted as early as 1772 in Suriname ^{(note 5)} (where they were known by the creole name Soesa) and lead to uprock in today’s break-dance. There are myriad styles of breaking’ to the earth in Kongo dance. Midway betlween these traditions and those which captured the attention of world media o 1984 lies the critical kinescope by Thomas Edison, or one of its contemporaries, dated roughly 1895-1910, called Throe Man Dance". This film documents an African-American ' moon- walking’, plus another breaking to the floor. Breaking the beat or breaking the pattern in Kongo is something one does to break on into the world of the ancestors, o the possession state, precisely the rationate of drum-breaks (casée) in Haiti. This in turn, under the pressure of drum-breaks, extended on two turntables, inspired the sonic glossolalia called scratching in hip-hop which car be compared to Kongo in yet another way. For just as Bakongo and Haitians of Kongo descent scratch’ the top of their drums to get a visionary sound (glissade) some associate with some sound of the forest leopard, so young blacks in Now York rubbed their fingers back and forth across the drum’ of the revolving record inventing a technological sound by ancient means And, finally, rap (rhythmized rhyme) reverberates all the way back to kinzoni, the rhythmized parlance found in the courts of ancient Kongo.
In closing, it is appropriate to cite the Kongo saying: Mu kala kintwadi ya tubu i mu zinga! (To be in contact with your origins is to live forever!)

Dr. Robert Farris Thompson
New Haven, Connecticut 1990

NOTES