Ethnographic notes on Kongo musical instruments

African Arts, Summer, 2002 by Wyatt MacGaffey

Drumming adds greatly to the excitement attendant on divination, and in so doing makes the result more convincing. Minkisi such as Mbola and Makwende (also called Ngobila) conduct divination by means of a pot set to boil on a fire.

   When Ngobila is composed, they begin by standing a pot upright. It is not
   stood [as usual] on [three] stones, but on three pieces of wood. It is set
   up only at night, after the evening meal. When everybody has gathered they
   send for the ndungu drum to be played, songs are sung and they stand the
   pot up. When it is upright, the people too stand up and sing the same song
   again, as follows: "Eh, not me at all but Kwangu [praise name of Ngobila],
   he did it."

(Makundu, Cahier 254)

Again:

   When the pot has been put on the fire he pronounces the spell: "Mbola, sir,
   test the women, test the men; if you find a witch, male or female, afflict
   him with many sores, man or woman, Lord Mbola." When the pot is on the fire
   the men and women dance around it, while the ndungu-drummer plays the Mbola
   rhythm, bukwimvi, bukwimvi, bukwimvi and they take up the song, "Eh, bring
   up whatever Mbola has seen."

(Konda, Cahier 116)

An account from another district, describing a different function, the composition of Mbola, specifies ngoma and assigns to it a different rhythm. It says that when they test whether the nkisi has been truly composed, or activated, the banganga tremble and the others sing the song: "Oh Mbola, revive the violence of the dead," while the ngoma plays ndebekete mbidimbiti "to aid the trembling" (MacGaffey 2000:126, 132).

A few minkisi are said to be composed not by the living but by the dead. For the composition of nkisi Mbongo, the nganga's assistants, the bamasamba, take two raffia cloths (mbongo), a figurine, and a mirror to the cemetery and leave them there. When the ndungu drum sounds in the village, the dead come to take these things and go to put together the nkisi. After two days the ndungu sounds in the village of the dead to let the assistants know it is time to come and get the bag and the figurine, already constituted with the appropriate medicines and tied up with leaves of matunga nyundu (MacGaffey 2000:95).

The handheld slit-drum nkonzi, often carved with a head at one end of it, is so closely associated with the Lemba cult group that it is called nkonzi Lemba even when it is used in connection with some other nkisi. An initiated Lemba couple receives an nkonzi drum as a sign of their status; it is "an object of prestige and beauty," which they display over the door of their house. It is so much a sign of Lemba membership that miniatures of it are worn as amulets and ornaments, and in Ngoyo (coastal Kongo) carved on potlids (Janzen 1982:142, pls. 15-17). Other small slit-drums called nkonko and the crescent-shaped ngoma Lemba are similar in function. They usually have carved heads. As amulets, these drums may be filled with medicines appropriate to Lemba; miniatures are made as charm-pendants (Janzen 1982: pis. 15, 16). They often appear among the accoutrements of minkisi; for example, on one in the National Museum of African Art (no. 91-22-1), which also carries a single iron bell (MacGaffey & Harris 1993: pl. 64a). (3)