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Hemispheric Institute of Performance
and
Politics
Spectacles of Religiosities
4th Annual Encuentro
July 11 – 19, NYC/NYU, 2003
Professor D. Taylor
Kuomboka
Wade out of Water
Survival of a Mass Performance Religiosity:
From Bihè to Bahè
A Reflection Paper
By
Wabei Siyolwe
August 18, 2003
Table of Content
1 Cover
2 Table of Content
3 Abstract, Reflection and Commentary
5 Kuomboka: Research and Background
6 Representation and a Place for Kuomboka:
From Bihè to Bahè
10 Nalikwanda: A New Paradigm for the People
14 African Religiosity, Historiography
and Authority
18 Barotse People: Transhumance and Fluidity
20 Kuomboka (Wade out of Water):
Origin, Flood Myth and Nalikwanda
23 Kuomboka, The Camera and the Evangelical Movement
28 Influence of Research at Encuentro 2003
31 A Note on the Literature Review
35 Partial Selected Bibliography
42 Appendix: Photographs, Maps, digital diary Abstract, Reflection and
Commentary
Abstract, Reflection and Commentary
Research for this paper is partial fulfillment
for the MA in Performance Studies for the Hemispheric Institute, Department
of Performance Studies, New York University. The reflection is also a
partial revision and update of a synopsis for a research focus of a dissertation
proposal called Kuomboka (Wade out of Water). This being part of a larger
research focus to produce a trilogy of feature films that address conflict,
ritual and reconciliation. Ethnographic content and analysis resulted
after extensive research at libraries, national archives and museums as
well as by participating in workshops, performances and work groups most
recently at the 4th Annual Encuentro, July 11-19, 2003, Kimmel Center,
New York City. This paper provides the beginnings of an annotated literature
review, which will eventually be a combination of a historiography and
filmography of southern Africa. This foundation of research of relevant
aspects of Kuomboka and other African diasporic and hemispheric religious
performance mass rituals, gives me a solid basis to begin writing, researching
and continue re-writing around my research focus. I will use this reflection
paper to update a synopsis, bringing to life a critique and brief description
of some of the more interesting results of research I have done since
1995 and from ideas I learned and exchanged while participating in Encuentro
2003.
My mission at Encuentro was to find links related to discovering Amerindian
and African diasporic religiosities to compare and contrast to Kuomboka.
Amerindian forms and African diasporic forms of cosmology, creation myths,
flood rituals and migrating religiosities found in the Americas. I was
also interested in ecosystems in The Americas and their influence on human
movement and belief systems. The transhuman nature of the BaLozi according
to Turner [1952: 20], has created a symbiotic relationship between the
people living in the flood plain and the ecosystem around these groups,
which has influenced their religious beliefs and performative rituals.
The cultural undercurrent of this reality is the annual mass migration
as manifested in Kuomboka.This paper is an exploration and discussion
of Kuomboka and theoretical problems of approach, practical problems of
research, of some implications for practice and development of this cultural
phenomena, to advance performance literacy. It is my hope that this future
study will affect critique in the field of performance studies.
Kuomboka: Research and Background
My original motivation and objective since 1995 was to research three
narratives for a trilogy of original screenplays for dramatic films based
on historical events. The fact that the narratives are based on my own
family history is significant and puts me in a unique position as a writer,
scholar and artist. Using my own ”narrative” and “place”
as a point of departure for my research, it puts me in a position of power.
The first narrative is ancestral and manifested in the Kuomboka mass performance
religiosity, which I will share later in this paper. The second narrative
is historical, looking specifically at the pre and post-colonial political
development of southern Africa, with a focus on Barotse, using a large
collection of photographs and ethnographic film from my personal family
collection as primary sources. [See Appendix]. Since 1995 I have had several
writing residencies and have most recently been a writing fellow for the
South African Screenwriters Laboratory (SCRAWL), Monkey Valley, Cape Town.
The lab is the brainchild of Colin Vaines, Director of Development for
Miramax Films in association with the Sundance Institute. This experience
has prepared me to finally present my research in the form of digital
diaries and a screenplay, to a wider audience.
Representation and a Place for Kuomboka From Bihè to Bahè
In a recent unpublished paper titled Kuomboka: Interculturalism. Diplomacy
and the Power of Performance [Siyolwe: 2003], I addressed the problem
with classifying and compartmentalizing African forms of performative
expression with European models. Taking into consideration colonial and
post-colonial political realities, performance everywhere in the world
has been studied with a western lens. This fact has affected the study
and determined the players and authorities of the field of African Studies
and brought to the fore questions of representation and authority. At
the welcoming and opening of the 4th Encuentro, which represented a consortium
of institutions, artists, activists and scholars affiliated with New York
University from the Americas, dedicated to exploring the relationship
between expressive behavior and social and political life in the Americas,
I could barely see a handful of participants of African origin. “Where
are all the Black folk?” I asked across the room. Was our absence
yet another daily moment functioning under the myopia [Dawson: 2003] of
the “Deficit Model” that Robert Farris Thompson elaborates
on in his lectures and conversations since the 1980’s. [Thompson:
1984]. A deficit model which Daniel Dawson, responds eloquently in that,
it presumes that because of their lack of material goods and deprived
social conditions under the yoke of chattel slavery, Africans were unable
to contribute in any significant way, other than their labor, to the formation
of the cultures of the Americas. It is often forgotten that these migrating
groups, in this case enslaved humans, carried with them more than their
bodies. They brought their cultures, religious traditions, artistic forms,
philosophies, social mores, and ideas of governance and political organizations…In
other words, Africans brought with them to the Americas their most important
possession, their minds. Those minds were and are essential in the formation
of the world we now inhabit. Those minds functioning under the terror
of slavery and continued oppression also contained the treasure of African
art, philosophy and spirituality [Dawson: 2003].
We must take the argument further by also taking
a minute to think about the observation by Steve Biko in his chapter titled
Some African Cultural Concepts, In I write what I like, when he says,
One of the most difficult things to do these days is to talk with
authority on anything to do with African culture. Somehow Africans are
not expected to have any deep understanding of their own culture or even
of themselves. Other people have become authorities on all aspects of
the African life or to be more accurate on BANTU life. Thus we have the
thickest of volumes on some of the strangest subjects – even “the
feeding habits of the urban Africans.
The saddest thing about this observation is that
it is true. I question the validity and authority of past studies of certain
aspects of African life and culture. Without triggering a conspiracy theory,
but by taking into consideration issues of race, especially in southern
Africa, is it possible that some anthropologists and ethnographers were
motivated in the past due to the push to determine the “First Man”?
contribute to the “Critical Race Theory” or do research around
the ”Bell Curve” theory? Since the theory of social Darwinism
took its place in the minds of Europeans, is it feasible to observe while
reading all these ethnographic studies, that in many accounts, the “African”
is discredited of any forms of intelligence and not credited to contributing
to any scientific achievements of mankind. It does make me wonder why
even the oldest woman in pre-history, the oldest “discovered of
mankind, “Lucy” is not credited as being of African origin.
If we are to take Judith Butler at her “word”, in the chapter
titled Critically Queer in Bodies That Matter [1993], where she maintains
that the engendered nature for pronouncing, for example, It’s a
girl”, signifies and directs the child to “act out”
girliness all her life. Can we recognize then through Butlers work on
performative utterances, that the authority used in naming “Lucy”
puts into question the rhetoric of gender, race, identity in this “naming”.
“Lucy” cannot have an African embodiment, identity or name
in the current climate.
This example is a reflection of a serious quandary in social science that
has basically given open field for all people, people of African origin
included, to constantly question the authenticity of anything, anywhere
of African origin. A simple glance at the following text about the cosmology
of the Dogon of West Africa from African Worlds, Studies in the Cosmological
Ideas and Social Values of African Peoples also tells this same story,
Finally within and beyond this totality of beliefs appears a logical
scheme of symbols expressing a system of thought, which cannot be described
simply as myth. For this conceptual structure, when studies, reveals an
internal coherence, a secret wisdom, and an apprehension of ultimate realities
equal to that which we Europeans concieve ourselves to have attained.
[Griaul: 1954]
As a start to our reconstruction of the contribution
of Africa to religiosities in the American Diaspora, I will look at Kuomboka,
a continental, African performative religious form that has survived time
over many socio-political changes. My purpose will explore the reach and
power of this African performance that is neither traditional nor pure,
in that it represents the cultural property of many peoples. I believe
there to be remnants of Kuomboka in the Americas. There is a place for
Kuomboka from Bihe in Angola to Bahe in Brazil.
Nalikwanda: A New Paradigm For the People
Western theatre practitioners and anthropologists continue to use European
theatre and philosophy as a yardstick for understanding all performance.
What about large-scale performative events that cannot easily be classified
as belonging to either ritual or theatre or politics? Richard Schechener
asks in Points of Contact: Between Theatre and Anthropology [1985]. Why
is it that there seems to be a blatant avoidance to link any African performance
ideology or cosmology as being influenced within Africa from the Nile
Delta? In a previous paper I thought about, regarding interculturalism,
there are others in the field who argued and went out to prove in the
late 1960’s and early 1970’s, that if enough research was
done, forms of theatre that are similar to European theatre will be found
to exist [Mlama: 1981]. Still the emphasis here is on finding African
models that fit into a European mould. To name a few African practitioners
who set out to prove original African performance forms exist: Wole Soyinka
[Myth, Literature and the African World: 1976] and B. Traore [The Black
African Theatre and its Social Function: 1970].
I am proposing to create a new paradigm in looking
at African performance. In my study I will research epic oral narrative
and material culture to explore the influences of Ancient Egyptian religiosity
on the daily life and belief system and practice of the Barotse. Using
the works of Cheik Anta Diop to direct the study, with texts that include
The Cultural Unity of Black Africa: The Domains of Matriarchy and Patriarchy
in Classical Antiquity [Diop: 1963], as well as The African Origin of
Civilization. This primary source has already given me many exciting scientifically
based reasons to continue to research and prove my hypothesis.
There has been much research and published anthropological literature
linking the Barotse (Lozi) to the Nuer of Sudan. [Gluckman 1941:1]. There
is also unpublished evidence of SeSotho oral epic poetry that heralds
Great Zimbabwe and the Lozi Empire. To support this research I will juxtapose
ethnic groupings of Amerindians in the Amazon Basin, their creation myths,
cosmology, with the belief systems of Afro-Brazilians and their relationship
to KiMbundu, found in Bartoseland, Angola and Congo,.
This commentary and exploration is a very exciting opportunity for me
to finally find a “place” for all this research. During Encuentro
I was able to spend time with very special scholars and artists who included
Daniel Dawson. He along with other mentors elaborated to me the tendency
of scholars to view African cultural contributions as nonexistent, or
at best deficient. Is it that hard to deny the presence of the Other History
of the America’s to borrow from The English is Broken Here: Notes
on Cultural Fusion in the Americas [Fusco: 1995].
I would leave the Hemispheric Institute fully aware
that oftentimes practitioners of African religiosities are seldom the
authority of their own spiritual practice and representation. Would this
now be my cue to state the obvious, that millions of Americans of African
origin in the in the United States, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Guyana
and scattered all over central America and the Caribbean have little representation
at an encounter like Encuentro 2003? Unfortunately the absence of color
at the Encuentro creates a scenario that adds up to the deficit model
Thompson continues to speak about. How is it then possible for us to sit
at the same table, if missing from the table are no representatives to
talk about Negro Spirituals, The Blues, Tango, Capoeira, Jazz, Rock, Swing,
BeBop, Hip-Hop, Samba, Bossa Nova, and the rest of the exhaustive, multitude
of African influenced creative forms of musical and spiritual manifestations
that have shaped political and social life in the Americas? It seemed
curious for me to sit in a room that explores migrating religiosity in
the Americas without the voices of African Americans, Afro-Cubans, and
Trinidadians. Would there be authority and representation to discuss the
great migration in Slavery, The Maroons of Guyana, the migration in the
Middle Passage, Quilts and songs during the Underground Railroad, The
Great Migration of the 1930’s to the north from the south, and the
Gullah? How this human movement changed the face of the America’s
forever?
African Religiosity, Historiography and
Authority
To speak of authority for a moment, I find relevance that the area in
Africa I have chosen to study, Bulozi is my own “place”. It
is indeed a “place” that has already
attracted a wide literature of weighty anthropologists who have explored
the socio-economic history of the flood plain in southern Africa called
by the inhabitants Bulozi. Heavy scholars have contributed to one of the
best-blazed paths in the historiography of central Africa [Prins: 1998].
Anthropologists include Max Gluckman who along with Gwyn Prins forms the
“Manchester School” of thought on Barotseland. Gerald Caplan
leads the Berkeley scholars and Victor Turner stands out as the most prolific
scholar of central Africa from Cornell and the University of Virginia.
I realize the power I have in my research as I am “within”
the community and have sensitivity to the material and people I am dealing
with. However I also realize that I have a certain priviledge that will
either be to my benefit or hindrance. We have a phrase in Silozi called
Likute. It means respect in the same way the word is used in Japanese.
Likute are manners and politeness that are learned inherently. This is
really the simple basis for claiming authority over my future representation
in all my work regarding Kuomboka. I am myself the history I study. While
past research by western anthropologists is "noble" and very
useful and appreciated, it is often painful and sometimes dotted with
racist-kitsch reflections and linguistic imagery of the “times”
in which they were written. I wish to challenge their authority. This
dialectic of oppression has to be “outed”.To illustrate this
point, during the final presentation of African Diasporic Religiosities,
I read a short passage to the audience from, an Ethnographic Survey of
Africa, titled The Lozi Peoples of North-Western Rhodesia, by Victor Turner,
where he writes on page 11 in a small chapter titled Mental Characteristics,
According to Jensen the Lozi are “ simple and gifted, extraordinarily
matter-of-fact, have a rigid discipline and are endowed with warlike qualities;
their men of rank are proud and masterful and somewhat haughty….Kuntz
refers to the Lozi as” great liars.
This information remains permanently in a survey for the Rhodes –Livingstone
Institute. A survey that would influence British Foreign Policy in Barotseland
but also influences the continued negative representation of a people
for over fifty years. This is what is really at stake. That is why I am
claiming authority for my own representation from now on as a writer,
artist and scholar. As a Princess Regent of Barotsi and as an ethnographer
from the inside, I hope to reconstruct Bulozi historiography through researching
Kuomboka in the first person and not though a colonial gaze. I hope to
explore this performance as a political mechanism of interculturalism
and democracy without fear of exploiting my subjects for my own gain and
being conscious of the complexity of the language as well as political
and cultural contexts, mores and nuances of the diverse peoples. As a
future authority to a new kind of cultural anthropology that allows ethnographers
to have a de-colonized gaze, I wish to use the documents I produce in
the future, to further challenge those who claim authority over my representation
and use this dissertation proposal and treatment as a platform to reconstruct
African historiography through performance and thereby find clear connections
pertaining to the African influence in the Americas.
Barotse People: Transhumance and Fluidity
Barotse call themselves MaLozi but the English re-named them the Lozi.
They are a multi-ethnic mix of groups of people, living in the land-locked
interior of southern Africa. Barotse include MaKwandi, MaKwangwa, BaMuenyi,
Matotela, MaSubiya, MaMbowe,MaNyengo, MaMakoma, MaNdundulu, MaSimaa, MaShanjo,
MaMashi, MaMishulundu, MaYei, Old Mbunda, MaNkoya, MaMashasha, MaLukolwe,
MaLushange, MaIla, MaTonga, Matoka, MaLaya, MaLenje, MaSala, and the Wiko
cluster (westerners), BaLubale, BaMbunda, BaLuchazi, BaChokwe, and the
Luba speaking group BaLunda, BaNdemu and the BaMbwela. These peoples over
centuries of movement due to ecological patterns of the flood, historical
alliances, wars, and the slave trade in the neighboring Angola and Congo
Empire coasts, formed into an empire that has had a centralized monarchy
with origins predating recorded history. The most powerful dynasty of
this empire was the Luyana Dynasty first established by a woman, Queen
Mbuyu in circa 1282. At the height of this dynasty, in the 1840’s,
the empire was larger than Germany, Spain and France. After the Berlin
conference in 1884, the empire was sliced and crossed to eventually create
the colonial borders of Zambia, Angola, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Namibia.
It is now a quarter of its size and isolated since 1969 to western Zambian.
In the reign of King Lewanika (1884 – 1916),
the empire is documented to having been approximately 150,000 square miles
in area, and lay between 12° 30” and 18° S. lat., and 20°
and 29°E. long. Comparing many accounts of the boundaries of this
empire, I hope to research further, one could assume with examples from
Turner [1952:9], Prins [1980: 36-37] that the specific region of southern
Africa I hope to study was an empire that was originally bounded on the
south by natural frontiers of the Mashi-Chobe-Linyanti-River and the Zambezi.
On the east it included the Kafue river up to 27°E.long.; while on
the west it stretched along the east bank of the, Kwando river. However
research by Prins disputes this boundary to the Kwito river further west
upstream to its intersection with the 20°E.long. The heart of the
Kingdom is a flood plain, very much like the Nile Delta where the natural
eco-system plays a huge role in the rhythm and belief system of the people
living there. The actual flood plain, Bulozi proper, is shrouded in myth
and imagery. This is the performance space of the Kuomboka mass ritual
that occurs annually between the period of March/April, when the entire
plain is evacuated before the rising waters during the rainy season.
Kuomboka(Wade out of Water):
Origin, Flood Myth and Nalikwanda
Literally meaning, to wade out of water, Kuomboka, has a main spectacle
of a literal voyage of the Lozi King (Litunga)in a huge barge, Nalikwanda,
from his dry-season residence at Lealui, on the Plain, to the wet season
residence at Limulunga, situated on higher ground on the plain margin.
The ceremony is organized in several sections and is a total of five days
and nights of processional and ritualistic performances. A varied and
complex sequence of music directs and coordinates the disparate sections
of the mass ritual into one continuous flow of proceedings.
Legend has maintained that before the time of the
first Queen Mbuyu, circa 1282, there came a great flood called Meyi –
a – Lungwangwa, meaning, “the waters that swallowed everything.”
Most every nation or community in the world has such a legend of a cataclysmic
flood. This story only has power in the telling but I will use the version
in Kuomboka: Ancient wisdom of the Malozi, by Rooke Andrew, and Nalabatu
the giot of Barotseland in the late 1880’s in the oral-retelling
of the myth.
The Myth claims that the vast plain was covered
in the deluge, all animals died, and every farm was swept away. People
were afraid to escape the flood in leaky dugout canoes only, so it was
that the high God, Nyambe, ordered a man called Nakambela to build the
first great canoe, Nalikwanda, which means “for the people”.
Then, as now, the huge barge is created anew every year, with parts brought
from all the ethnic groups along the Zambezi. The MaSubia since immemorial
have supplied the plants and the teak trees for the floating mansion.
The BaKwangwaa collected different types of fiber. The BaMbunda (KiMbundu)
have provided the great masks. All the people collectively own the boat
along the Zambezi. It is a boat that does not belong to the Litunga, King,
it does not belong to any individual, and it belongs to all the people.
The boat is made anew every year and is painted in wavy black and white
stripes. White symbolizing spirituality and black the people.
The myth continues saying that before voyaging
out on the stormy waters the first great canoe, Nalikwanda, the arc, was
loaded with every type of seed and animal dung. At the place where the
first Nalikwanda landed, the seeds were scattered to become the progenitors
of the plants as we know them today, and the animals once again sprang
forth from the animal dung. The striking parallel with similar stories
of a great cataclysmic flood are told in many parts of the world are immediately
apparent. By observing and documenting the ritual as a royal family member,
a character, a spect-actor, I hope to have closer access to the richness
of the symbolism, which I believe will be constructive in the further
study of African performance culture and invigorate my own work as a performer,
scholar and writer.
Kuomboka, The Camera and the Evangelical Movement
During the political development of Barotseland from empire to now being
part of five nation states, Kuomboka has changed little. I have been discovering,
what I believe to be a huge collection of early photographs of my great-great-grandfather,
Lubosi Lewanika, King of Barotseland (1842 – 1916) (taken primarily
by Francois Coillard), where I found clear, visual documentation of the
ritual over a century.
As in many cultures around the world, there is a belief in divine kinship
among the Barotse and royalty play a pivotal role as intercessory between
God and people. It is quite interesting to explore the consequences of
contact between Europeans and the Barotse and the well-documented relationship
between Paris Mission Society Missionary Francois Coillard and King Lewanika
of Barotseland. I would like to explore similar relationships between
Kinship and evangelicals in the Americas.
My research has led me to find photographic documentation
of royal members of the Luyana dynasty in great numbers. In his 1897 autobiography,
On the Threshold of Central Africa, A Record of Twenty years pioneering
among the Barotsi of the Upper Zambezi, Francois Coillard, chronicles
the effect of the camera on the belief system of the Barotsi people and
its’ later use as a resource for continuing to establish the mystique
of royalty. In sharing several accounts of his photography in his book,
Coillard remarks while visiting with the Princess Regent Molena Mukwae
Matauka,
You should have seen her face and her excitement when I showed her
my photographs. At the sight of Mathaha’s, she started back in terror.”
Sefano! Sefano!” She cried; “the infamous wretch! These people”,
(meaning me) “ are dreadful: they carry the living and the dead
in their pockets”.
I have been collecting early portraits of Royal
Bartose family members, and have detailed unpublished ethnographic photography
and films, locating people, and places around the annual mass performance
ritual in Barotseland, along the upper Zambezi, called Kuomboka. As a
writer and scholar I began to explore these very personal photographs
and began to use the epic narrative of Kuomboka to create a dramatic fiction
feature films, based on historical events, using the epic narrative as
the dominant frame of reference for the film. The first screenplay is
about a young woman who overcomes her dark past through returning to her
place in this world.
____________________________________________-
MEKONDJO (6) whose name means, “one who fights without shedding
blood”, is a precocious little girl who has the gift of prophecy.
As a refugee at a transit camp in Angola, one day she warns her parents
and the camp about a raid on the camp she witnessed in her dreams. No
one believes her prediction and she is one of a few survivors of a massacre
at Kassinga by the South African Defense Forces during the struggle for
the liberation of Namibia on May 4, 1978.
Sixteen years later, DAWN (22), is as a ward of the United Nations High
Commission for Refugees. A massive burn on her back and recurring nightmares
are a reminder of a painful war-torn youth she would rather forget but
is forced to remember in therapy. She clings to few people or possessions
save an old ivory bracelet and stories of her ancestor Lewanika. As an
Anthropology student at an American University, Dawn feels invisible and
decides to use herself as a study and has a dream of Lewanika. The following
day the United Nations informs her she is to be repatriated to Namibia
to take part in the first democratic elections.
In Africa, she is repatriated and still feels invisible in the exodus
of returned exiles. Reunited with her father who was missing in action,
she discovers she has been chosen to go on a spiritual journey of renewal
at Kuomboka to heal the people and the land. Lewanika transports her in
and out of historical time and across colonial borders to restore her
cultural memory and find her place in this world.
The most pressing question I would like to answer in graduate school as
a future PhD candidate, is how has an inclusive mass performance religiosity
like Kuomboka, wade in the water, sustained a common identity for the
many diverse peoples of the upper Zambezi. I would like to analyze the
mass performance ritual that is neither “pure” nor “traditional”
as Karen Milbourne observes in Diplomacy in Motion: Makishi as Political
Harmony in Barotseland. She continues in that it represents and is the
cultural property of many peoples. I will use this study to demonstrate
the way this performance ritual with all of its cultural and aesthetic
artifacts is used to publicly display political cohesion and cultural
unity.
Kuomboka has a deeper significance and remembrance for the diverse participants,
or “spec-actors” and provides them with a range of emotions
and aspirations, from spiritual yearnings, through community and family
and royal loyalty, to a closer communion with God and nature.
I am interested in observing and documenting the Kuomboka, ritual and
researching how this cultural phenomenon was formed and continues to be
expressed. I wish to study and document the performance ritual as a diplomatic
and political tool that continues to sustain diverse populations spiritually,
across post-colonial multiple borders and ethnicities along the Zambezi.
The study will be important as a contribution for the search and reconstruction
of African traditional forms of creative expression. Creative forms that
express governance and nation building. Through Kuomboka, I will demonstrate
how an ancient African cultural ritual, unites en masse, a multi-lingual
and multi-ethnic community, scattered over colonial borders in what was
formally an empire named by the Europeans as Barotseland.
The performance ritual has an immediate ecological, social and economic
motivation. It is a performance ritual necessitated by the annual flood
of the Zambezi River, which turns the rich farmlands of the flood plain
into a mighty river, forcing the people to move to higher ground annually
since time immemorial. The collective exodus, which occurs towards the
end of February, takes the form of a ceremonial mass performance. The
river as a backdrop, the people are the “spec-actors” and
the rich, spectacular colors are a theatrical procession of small boats
and dug out canoes, led by the massive royal barge of the Litunga, the
King, of the Malozi. The royal barge bears the name Nalikwanka, “for
the people”. A craft of royal proportions with room enough for the
King and his cabinet, royal musicians, royal family members, over one-hundred
and fifty, traditionally-clad paddlers and huge Maoma drums and Lozi salimbas,
xylophones. The Maoma, giant royal drums, produce a sound immense enough
to call the nation from over fifty miles away to follow to the safety
of high ground and perform in the rituals of renewal of faith.
Influences on Research at Encuentro 2003
During Encuentro I was successful in finding human resources to explore
these interests and was able to engage with two workgroups, Migrating
Religiosities and African Diasporic Religiosities. Both workshops gave
me the opportunity to introduce my short film digital diary #1. A short
film documenting my research methodology and question, “where is
your place?”. Since the working format of migrating religiosities
was already in place since the last encuentro in Peru, there was little
space and “no room at the table” to explore and discuss any
African migratory religiosities and so after sharing a Negro spiritual,
Hush Somebody’s calling my name, which chronicles the epic narrative
of the Underground Railroad led by Harriet Tubman, I began lamenting the
absence of the African body in this workgroup, I left and joined my original
workgroup of African Diasporic Religiosity. Here I was confident to feel
welcome and have a “place at the table”. I shared in great
detail all of my research which included performing the flood myth with
actual props, music, archival photographs and anecdotes and showing my
short film digital diary #1. It was refreshing to speak with a group who
were truly engaged in my research interest and observations. A hypothesis
and conclusion I came to while working with this group is that African
religiosity is inclusive, flexible and fluid. This is what I have been
able to deduce by looking at the Kuomboka ritual in Africa and reading
accounts of other Afro centered religious practices in the Americas.
I participated in several workshops that included Mortuary Dioramas and
Human Alters with Guillermo Gomez-Pena and Juan Ybarra. This was often
very personal as cultural memories of my own experiences crossing borders
and losing family members to genocide were awakened. I was able to explore
Afro-ethnomusicology by singing along with and hearing the Afro-Peruvian
“grain” in the voice of Susana Baca, Juan Mediano Cotito,
Hugo Bravo Sanchez, David Pinto Oinedo, Sergio Valdeos Bensa and Fernando
Hoyle de los Rios during her Ritmo workshop and at Susana Baca’s
live performance on July 15. These musical connections with African poly-rhythmic,
percussive instruments and rhythms from Peru resonated deeply for me.
An Afro-Amerindian Workshop with Zeca Ligeiro was the beginning of a wonderful
collaboration of dance and text with his work using Amer-Indian creation
myth and conquistador and missionary diaries in Brazil. We also engaged
in conversations about Ze Pilintra and his Interactive Alter. Ze Pilintra
is an Afro-Brazilian patron saint of the streets, who first appeared in
popular Brazilian culture in 1938. A teacher and a healer he is adored
by women and is the archetypal street hustler, pimp. A Sportin’
Life prototype he has a cult following of believers in Brazil who wear
and adorn images of him. I exchanged papers with scholar Daniel Dawson
and his thoughts were the impetus for this paper. There was much diversity
in the information and interactions I established, creating what I hope,
will be lifelong relationships.
My offerings are a “call and response”, to these interactions.
Call and response. This is the essence of all performance. Sometimes I
am making the call, sometimes I am responding to a moment of tension where
my African cultural memory, representation and integrity are at stake.
A Note on the Literature Review
From 1995 – 2002 I have researched materials from International
Libraries and Museums that include the Rhodes-Livinstone Museum, Livinstone,
Southern Province Zambia, Nayuma Museum, Limulunga, Western Province,
Zambia; four sites in the United States namely the University of Virginia
(Clemens and Alderman and Law Library); Johns Hopkins University (Eisenhower
Library); American University Library and the Bobst Library at New York
University. National Archives research includes National Archives of Namibia,
National Archives of Zambia and Robben Island Museum.
Primary resources dominating the literature review have been published,
unpublished and oral resources regarding Bulozi, Kuomboka and Lewanika.
Secondary research includes a historiography on the political development
of southern Africa focusing on South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia,
Angola, Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania, the Kingdom of Lesotho, Botswana
and the Kingdom of Swaziland. I followed the history of early Pan-Africanism
from the Ethiopian Movement in Barotseland to Garveyism in Namibia. I
also read deeply into socialism/Marxism from the 1960’s - 1990’s
and the struggle in southern Africa.
All in all I have allowed myself to be immersed in different kinds of
African Philosophy. Primary sources are from books, book chapters, journals,
dissertations, informants, oral epic and poetry, ethnomusicology, linguistics
and material culture focusing on the very culturally specific multi-ethnic
groups in southern Africa who inhabit the Upper Zambezi Flood Plain calling
themselves, Balozi.
The commentary and bibliography to this study are a combination of published,
oral, plastic and visual primary resources collected since 1995. These
are the beginnings of a detailed qualitative study of the performance
ritual spanning creation myth to post modernity called Kuomboka. Using
a model Gywn Prins developed in The Hidden Hippopotamus this study is
divided into four parts chronologically from 1200 - 2000.
Part One will be using informants and published literature I have researched
the cosmology, oral epic and myths, praise poetry and genealogy related
to the oral tradition of Kuomboka. Part Two is focused on the socio-economy
of this performance in its ecological and geographical location. Geological
surveys, maps, historical documents, photographs, archival anthropological
film archeological information have also been included in the bibliography.
I have looked at depth into the production, distribution, exchange and
political modes and development of Bulozi. Part Three will explore the
belief of divine embodiment in royalty, the myth of Kuomboka and the great
barge Nalikwanda, royal and public rituals and beliefs and Part four will
research the consequences of European Contact and the survival of Kuomboka
in post modernity. Topics covered will focus on information pertaining
to the archeological, cosmological, soci-economic, ecological, historical
and visual representation, documentation and performance of Kuomboka (Wade
out of Water), an inclusive, mass performance flood ritual of the Barotse.
The literature review is not complete, as I have still to include over
one hundred journal citations and twenty-five dissertation abstracts,
archival sources and official documents, names and details of a list of
main oral sources and informants, digital video and an abstract of field
research methods I learned as a SiLozi consultant in Linguistic field
research methods, in the Anthropology Department at the University of
Virginia. I also have done extensive work on the music, masquerade and
dances of Kuomboka and have field recordings of the entire musical score
of the ceremony and music used in various other Barotse religious rites.
In the near future I would like to research the Haddon Enthographic Film
Collection at Oxford University and the Archives of the Paris Mission
Society. All these references will also be part of the bibliography created
using RefWorks and are ongoing in my endeavor to write a dissertation.
Why this study?
…the reconstruction of the national personality of his people, distorted
by colonialism... such a study is the point of departure for the cultural
revolution, properly understood [Diop: 1955].
Partial Selected Bibliography and Literature Review
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