1. This is one of numerous references throughout this work to the interface of ngoma and Christianity. Later, in the account of Tanzanian ngoma, a similar interface appears between Islam and ngoma. In a survey overview work of this type, I have not been able to explore systematically the many ways in which there has been interpenetration of ngoma with the world religions. Local histories, particular mission policies, reactions of local authorities, and particular decisions by influential individuals would be elements affecting the interfaces.

2. It is possible that the ubulau drink taken by the novices just prior to this moment was a hallucinogen based on a plant ingredient used in the drink. However, I was unable to pursue this or other uses of medication in ngoma in any detail because of the survey nature of the project. The pharmacopoeia of ngoma is of course an entire additional project related to African medicine in general, beyond the scope of this work.

1. Lexicostatistics is the methodology by which phonetic, morphological, and morphophonological features are correlated across a number of presumably genetically related languages. Higher frequencies than random clusters of correlated features are held to demonstrate genetic or historic commonality. The Swadesh list of 100 lexical items, common to all known world languages, has also been used in this research on Bantu languages.

2. The most significant continuation of Guthrie's work has been carried on by the Tervuren lexicostatistical project, initiated by André Coupez, Alfred Meeussen, and Jan Vansina in the 1950s and headed today by Yvonne Bastin of

the Linguistic Department of the Musée Royal de I'Afrique Centrale, Tervuren, Belgium. Additional research work in the Bantu paradigm is being conducted by the Centre International des Civilisations Bantoues, of Libreville, Gabon, including some coastal archaeological research to establish the lower threshold of the Iron Age in the Western Bantu expansion.

3. Obenga's chapter "Tradi-pratique et santé chez les Bantou" (1985:195-217) concentrates on a comparative reconstruction of Mbochi and Mbulu and related languages of Western Equatorial Africa, essentially Western Bantu, and does not benefit from the work of Guthrie.

1. I am indebted to Thembinkosi Dyeyi of East London, South Africa, for translating and interpreting the transcription of this Western Cape event.

2. In some interpretations of Zulu divination, this agreement, contained in the verb vuma , is turned into confession, ukuvuma , which is extracted from the client by the diviner after a series of interrogations. Axel-Ivar Berglund offers a vivid account of a divination of this sort in the context of Zulu independent Christians (Berglund 1989:113-115).

3. Blacking's identification of other song styles in the universe of all Venda initiation music includes: nyimbo dza u sevhetha , songs for dancing round, sung by girls dancing counterclockwise around the drums, including a "song of dismissal" and a "recruiting song"; nyimbo dza vhahwira , songs of the masked dancers, with varying tempo to accompany different phases of the dance and distinctive rhythms to mark various steps; and nyimbo dza milayo , songs of the laws of the school, sung by novices and any graduates present (1973:40é41).

1. The term bugaboo , or boogaboo , has a Central African origin drawn directly from the Western Bantu religion and healing vocabulary. Vass (1979:106) traces it to buka lubuka , to divine, or consult a diviner.

2. In semiotic parlance, appropriately called "shifters."

1. I have explored definitions of health elsewhere (Janzen 1985:64-67; 1989, in Sullivan, ed.; and Feierman and janzen: forthcoming). The first two of these discussions concentrate on a series of health concepts, including "health as what physicians do," "health as the absence of disease," ''health as functional normality," ''health as adaptation," "positive health," and "health utopias," along with "the social reproduction of health." In Sullivan, ed., 1989, these are interlaced with "verbal concepts" in African healing. Positive health indicators are difficult to encapsulate or codify since they depend upon particular programs to carry them out. Most national biomedical health programs are

defined in terms of "the absence of disease" and lend themselves to demographic indicators of mortality, morbidity, and fertility. I have tried to develop the "social reproduction" definition of health because it seems uniquely suited to evaluate ngoma ritual healing.