Ethnographic notes on Kongo musical instruments

African Arts, Summer, 2002 by Wyatt MacGaffey

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The Leiden collection also has an item described as the badge of office of an advocate (nzonzi), in which a piece of basketwork is linked to a miniature bellows (Fig. 5). (12) At judicial hearings the owner would lick it, "the better to make his case." Its function was therefore identical to that of a whisk (mfunka), which was also a status symbol, described by Laman as protected against black magic by "magic knots." The handle of one of the whisks pictured in Laman's volume is carved with textile patterns (Laman 1957:128, fig. 61). We can conclude that the incised patterns of the kunda and dibu bells, like those of the whisk, combine aesthetic astonishment with apotropaic function. As Gell says, "Wherever one finds conflict there one finds abundant deployment of all kinds of decorative art" (1998:83).

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The arts, including song, dance, music, sculpture, and bodily adornment, are essential elements of Kongo "therapeutic" practices, not merely adjuncts. The verb buka, often translated "to heal," should better be read as "to treat" ("to heal" is nyakisa). The aim of treatment is a better condition of life, including but not limited to freedom from physical ailments. Life conditions are the product of competitive manipulation of unseen forces made palpable by art. Treatment includes the application of "medicines," which are themselves mnemonics of the desired result rather than pharmaceuticals. They include decorations applied to the body and amulets for the client to wear, and rules to obey. Riddles, songs, puns, proverbs, lines, colors, rhythms, dance steps, and the sounds of instruments constitute a single artistic repertoire of complementary elements dedicated to the transformation of life.

[This article was accepted for publication in April 2001.]

(1.) Christine Stelzig recently inventoried the ornate Ngoyo style of standing drum, in connection with a remark about them by the German trader and collector Robert Visser (Stelzig 1998). She provides pictures and formal analysis of these extraordinary carvings, which are still little understood.

(2.) The translations of all quotes from the Cahiers are mine.

(3.) The same museum has a Yaka slit-drum of reduced size made as an amulet, stuffed with medicines and hung about with nkisi accoutrements (83-3-4).

(4.) This nkisi was recently put on the market from a private collection, but it was sold in separate pieces.

(5.) Soderberg has written separately on whistles, pointing out that they have often been mistaken for bottle-stoppers (Soderberg 1966). He misses the connection between whistles and both "hunting" for witches and sex; references to sex in these miniature sculptures he reads as reflecting a concern with fertility, which is not the same thing. Mwivi, for example, is an nkisi whose constituent medicines included whistles (zinsiba) and whose function was to bring its owner success both in hunting and in seducing women (Lwamba, Cahier 240).

(6.) Rijksmuseum veer Volkenkunde, Leiden, Congo 337/15.