Instruments Of Ritual Healing As A Nonverbal Cognate Set

We may think of the issues to be addressed here as a puzzle with several interlocking pieces. If the verbal cognate ngoma is nearly pervasive in Bantu languages (with the exception of zones B and C, and in the Khoisan south; see maps, appendix B), how do we account for the limited distribution, within that cultural and linguistic space, of ritual therapeutic institutions named ngoma ? Related to this, how do we account for the even less widely distributed occurrence of the drum type ngoma within that space? The distribution of the set made up of word, behavior, and object will offer clues as to the origin and character of the institution.

There is more to the puzzle. Although the type of music that accompanies therapeutic activities in Central and Southern Africa varies a great deal, well beyond the core area in which ngoma drums are used, the association of musical instrument types with healing is not random. Instrument types seem to be defined by regional sets or traditions, but in such a way as to dissuade any zealous reductionist of an inherent relationship between the ngoma drum type and the therapeutic rituals.

A first step beyond the lexicon, for the purpose of testing the extent to which behavioral or nonverbal culture may align with verbal cognates having to do with healing, takes us into the realm of the material culture of ritual therapy, namely the musical instruments, their names, and the constellations in which they are combined in ritual performance with singers. This evidence, added to the lexical evidence offered above, strengthens the inferences that may be drawn about the origin, history, and character of the institution. As we progress in this analysis of a complex institution, we will examine the relationship of these instruments to voice, song text, rhythm, trance-possession, and the social makeup of therapeutic communication within a sociopolitical context. (appendix C offers a distillation of findings on the formal composition

of instruments, singers, and the overall makeup of the ngoma-type groups, from a range of sources based on observation and the literature.) The research to date is of mixed quality. In addition to my own observations, and the recordings and publications of specialized scholars on particular peoples—for example, John Blacking (1973, 1985) on the Venda, Paul Berliner (1981) among the Shona—a major systematic compendium of great usefulness is the survey of music in Zairian healing rites by researchers Arnaut, Biolo, Esole, Gansemans, Kishilo, Malutshi, and Querson of the National Museum of Zaire in the 1970s and early 1980s (see appendix C). This work is backed up by another, earlier, set of data found in the work of Olga Boone, whose 1951 classic Les tambours du Congo belge et du Ruanda-Urundi identified drum types and their names across Central Africa.

In the belt across the middle of the continent, from Kongo to Swahili, where Guthrie finds the greatest convergence of common Bantu terms, ngoma refers primarily to the elongated wooden drum with a single membrane attached at one end with pegs. Boone noted that this major drum type was distributed along an east-west line roughly at the Southern Savanna/forest border. North of this line was a region of "mixed" drum types, with the pegged ngoma type interspersed with a type that uses cords to fasten the membrane to the body of the drum. Drums whose membranes were attached with cord or string were rarely called ngoma .

In the region of ngoma rituals, ngoma the instrument usually is also identified as a dance drum and a sacred medicine drum. It may also be a drum of state. In societies where trance-possession and therapeutic cults are present, ngoma more than any other drum is used in this therapeutic setting, to the accompaniment of shakers and singing. To the north of the region where this set of practices prevails, stringed and wind instruments are more common in healing rites; ngoma drums are absent.

Therapeutic rituals in the rain forest of Equateur Province of northern Zaire generally demonstrate the typical call-and-response pattern of musical interaction found elsewhere: a sufferer and healer, and a "choir" made up of sets of additional individuals on either or both sides, with the accompaniment of hand clapping, rasps, rattles, whistles, bells, stringed zithers or harps, horns, gongs, and kettle or slit-gong drums, as well as occasionally the xylophone (see appendix C). Spirits that are invoked in these rites are often ancestors ("Elima," "Balimo,"

"Malimu," consonant with the cognate dímu ) or nature or wild spirits ("Wetshi," "Nzondo").

All of the Equateur examples in the Zaire survey are taken from north of the line, established in Boone's Tambours (1951) study, beyond which no lanced-skin drums are said to have been made and used. In other words, the northern forest picture of therapeutics from the Zaire survey demonstrates that healing rituals in Central Africa occur widely without the characteristic ngoma drum. Although Guthrie includes these regions in his Bantu language area, they are conspicuous for the absence of ngoma as a verbal cognate, a pattern that is also true of the eastern Zaire Warega rite "Butii."

By contrast, the Southern Savanna, East African, Southeast, and Southern African examples of therapeutic rituals demonstrate the near pervasive presence of the ngoma-type lanced-skin drum in the performance of the ngoma rite. As one moves south and east, ngoma drums are the rule until one reaches the North Nguni beyond the Zambezi river. They are present in Venda ngoma dza vadzimu rites, in Swazi and Shangan rituals, and in some area royal settings. But among the southern Nguni peoples (Zulu, Xhosa) they are absent from both royal and cult settings. Here, ngoma refers neither to the drums used (cowhide stretched over sticks or oil drums), nor to the dancing, but exclusively to the singing, divining, and the designation of those who do these things. Thus, the Zulu isangoma diviner is literally "one who does ngoma"—that is, sings the songs. Among Xhosa, much influenced linguistically by Khoisan, the role term for the ngoma-singer becomes igqira ; divination is handled not with bones but through contemplation. Group and network support plays a more important place than individualized divining in the work of ngoma. There is thus a host of regional and societal variations around which the notion "cult of affliction" or "drum of affliction" must be analyzed.

Exceptions to this pattern are coastal Swahili, the Shona setting of Zimbabwe, and the western Kongo setting. Generally, in the examples we have from the vast region mentioned, sufferer(s) and healer(s) either constitute or are joined by a choir and other instruments, such as shakers or rattles, gongs, and hand clapping.

In the Shona region the drum is replaced by another instrument, the large gourd-resonating hand piano, mbira , usually played in an orchestra of a dozen or so members, in performances called bira . The Kongo region reveals a mixed picture, insofar as musical instrumenta-

tion of healing rites is concerned, consonant with Boone's determination (1951) that western Zaire was a region of "mixed" drum types. Kongo therapeutic rites utilize a mixture of horns, single and double gongs, whistles, rattles, and a range of drums (including ngoma to drum up major nkisi , "ritual medicine" see appendix C). The Swahili coast features the "pure" ngoma types of healing rites, invariably from the interior, although the Islamic-influenced rites utilize small double-membrane drums and shakers.

This instrument survey, suggestive of type clusters around the widespread ngoma region, belies the impressive musical consistency across the subcontinent in terms of a few features I shall take up later in more detail, but which need to be pointed out here. Throughout the rites cited, the musical scores offer a pervasive use of call and response between the single "soloist"—the sufferer, novice—and the "choir"—the local cell or a group of "significant others."

The patterning of the instruments in therapeutic rites, against this backdrop of the call and response and song-dance, suggests that there are regionally, or culturally, specific constellations of instruments. We may think of these in terms of the common-sense designations of instrument types—harp, zither, whistle, horn, drum—or in terms of the formal designations of musicologists (Marcuse, in Merriam 1977:250): the idiophone , an "instrument that yields a sound by its own substance, being stiff and elastic enough to vibrate without requiring a stretched membrane or string" (e.g., xylophone, mbira, sansa, likembe, rattles, bells, gongs, slit drums); membrophone , "any instrument in which sound is produced by vibration of a stretched membrane, brought about by striking, friction, or sound waves" (e.g., drums); aerophone , "any music instrument in which tone is generated by means of air set in vibration" (1977:252) (e.g., horns, flutes, panpipes, and ocarinas); and chordophone , "any instrument having strings as tone-producing elements, the pitch of the instrument being dependent on the strings" (e.g., harp, zither).

The chordophones—the stringed instruments—although they are present throughout, are used in healing rites only in the northern forest region. Most common in healing rites throughout the Central and Southern African region, is the idiophone, that is, the shaker, gong, xylophone, slit-gong drum, and the thumb or hand piano. Second most common in healing rites of the entire region is the membrophone, the single or double membrane drum. The areophone seems to be more common in the northern forest region than in the Southern Savanna and other southern regions.

In terms of the hypothesis announced earlier concerning the relationship of instrument type to the therapeutic rite, great variation is apparent. Nevertheless, the variation is patterned. It is not merely a reflection of the general stock of musical instruments used in the regional culture. Stringed instruments and horns are widespread but are not frequently used in therapeutic rites outside the forest region. Drums, readily available in forest societies, are not frequently used for healing there. On the Southern Savanna, drums are the primary instrument of healing. The pervasive African hand-piano—nsanza, mbira —is used in major healing rites only among the Shona group of Zimbabwe.

A second conclusion, announced earlier, follows from this finding on the pattern of distribution of musical instruments utilized in therapeutic rites. Thus we must be suspicious of claims that explain a specific pattern of therapy, or possession ritual, in terms of the effects of a particular type of instrument, such as the drum. This is particularly the case given the background of common musical style features such as call and response and polyrhythm, and of the choral nature of African therapeutic song-dance.

One final piece of the puzzle, of those with which we began this section, remains to be put in place. What, then, explains the distribution of the ngoma-style drum and the use of this name for the therapeutic and celebrative song-dance? As we have seen, this distribution is roughly outlined on the north by an arc running southward of the Congo/Zaire River, then northeastward from Lake Victoria across southern Kenya. It extends from the Atlantic to the Indian oceans, and southward to the boundary of Nguni-speakers and the Shona. Plotted on Guthrie's language map, this corresponds approximately to the F, H, K, L, M, N, P, and parts of the S zones (see appendix B). It is absent from the C and most of D zones in the north, present only along the coast of A, and sparse in the R zone; absent in the large Khoisan zone, as well as in part of the S zone, the south Nguni.

A tentative interpretation of this distribution of the associated drum type and therapeutic rite would point to its presence, as a cognate, in early or proto-Bantu, with some kind of amplification in the Eastern Bantu migrations from the lake region, westward across the savanna to the Atlantic coast, southward across the Zambezi and the Limpopo, and eastward to the Indian Ocean coast. The early Western Bantu pattern of ngoma drums is not clear at this point; the identification of both the drum type and the ritual is extremely diverse and needs further study. It is clear, however, that over much of the western Congo basin, as in Kongo society, there is an overlay or melding of presumably East-

ern and Western Bantu elements. It is probable that ngoma techniques and material culture—the ngoma drum—complemented or incorporated the eastward spread of distinctly Western Bantu cultural elements such as the nkisi (known from the Kongo coast to the Luba-ized Nsenga in Malawi and far western Tanzania). The coastal Atlantic rites in Gabon and Cameroon, where the pegged-membrane drum is present, are suggestive of Central African rites. Whether these are due to proto-Bantu or more recent Eastern Bantu impulses is unclear. Our Eastern Bantu origins hypothesis for ngoma must remain suggestive for the present.