Kongo across the Waters
Anthropomorphic Power Figure
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- Bottle, nkisi Maziolo
- Anthropomorphic Power Figure, nkisi Mandombe
- Anthropomorphic Power Figure, nkisi nduda
- Basket, nkisi Mambuku Mongo
- Kongo Musical Instruments
- Decoration of Kongo Graves
- Stone grave sculpture, ntadi
- Terracotta Grave Urn, diboondo
- The Atlantic Slave Trade and Kongo Culture
- Kongo Influence in African-American Arts
- Vodou packet for Damballah ( paket kongo )
Anthropomorphic Power Figure, nkisi nkondi (presumably nkisi Mangaaka) Yombe people Mayombe, Lower Congo, DRC 19th century Wood, shell, vegetal fiber, metal, pigment, glass Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium, EO.0.0.7777 With his wide torso, his hands resting on the hips, his large white staring eyes and his mouth opened, nkisi Mangaaka surely looks powerful and ready to attack anyone who displeases him. Wearing the mpu headdress of a chief, with the geometric weaving designs adequately carved in the wood, he represents public authority. The “medicines” that empower him are incorporated in his beard and in the bulge on his belly. Nkisi Mangaaka was a merciless hunter who at the request of a client went after thieves and witches or took revenge upon violators of agreements that had been sealed in front of him. Several minkisi of this type were collected at the end of the nineteenth century along the Chiloango River that was an important trade route connecting the interior with the Atlantic coast. Bottle, nkisi Maziolo Yombe people Mayombe, Lower Congo, DRC Early 20th century Glass, vegetal fiber, glass, fruit, feathers, textile Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium, EO.0.0.22455 Bell Turned into Ritual Object, nkisi Yombe people Lower Congo, DRC Early 20th century Wood, vegetal fiber, glass, iron Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium, MO.0.0.41231 The range of possible forms for a nkisi was indefinite. Besides the anthropomorphic and zoomorphic forms, many minkisi took the shape of a bag, a basket, a box, a bottle, a pot, a small chest or any other type of container that could hold the “medicines.” The bottle filled with various substances and with other materials added to its surface is nkisi Maziolo, held responsible for dysentery. Ritual experts (banganga) regularly impressed their clients with innovations and unexpected compositions. This is exemplified by the wooden bell turned into a nkisi by the addition of various “medicines” and a mirror affixed Mug Yombe people Mayombe, Lower Congo, DRC Late 19th century Terracotta Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium, EO.0.0.7658 Pitcher Mboma people Lower Congo, DRC Early 20th century Terracotta Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium, EO.1953.74.35 Ceramics in Kongo society reflect ancient traditions, yet potters have been responsive to changes in taste and economic circumstances throughout history. Ceramics have come to reflect European influence both in form and medium. Gourd-shaped bottles bearing lozenges and serpentine motifs are undoubtedly ancient forms, but the addition of brass tacks and multiple handles show the influence of European imports. The addition of white glass seed beads from Europe on the ornate gourd-shaped vessel, and perhaps its dramatically flared handles, demonstrate Kongo potters’ desire to incorporate precious trade items, once used for currency, and an innovative and attractive form to produce a highly prestigious vessel. Basket Yombe people Mayombe, Lower Congo, DRC Early 20th century Vegetal fiber Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium EO.0.0.35819 While baskets made for use in Kongo households are highly functional, they are also exquisitely designed. The shallow basket used for winnowing grain is constructed using the coil technique, as is a lidded basket used for storing small objects. The perfectly aligned coils made from bundled fibers create a subtle spiral pattern, slightly accented by the addition of bands of lighter hues in the cylindrical form. Some scholars have suggested that the spiral motif signifies the path taken into and out of the world of the ancestors and more generally it refers to longevity. Anthropomorphic Power Figure, nkisi Mandombe Woyo people Banana, Lower Congo, DRC Early 20th century Wood, gourds, vegetal fiber, shells, fruit, nuts, pigment, resin, skin Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium, EO.0.0.33956 Nkisi Mandombe was collected by missionary ethnographer Leo Bittremieux in the coastal region of Banana, on the north bank of the Congo estuary. It shows a human figure covered with different sorts of “medicines” that were selected to evoke, through visual or linguistic metaphor, the characteristics of the nkisi. The medicines were mixed into a paste that was applied on top of the head or they were attached with fine cords to the body. The head also has mirrors pointing in different directions that allowed the nkisi to see and detect witches, wherever they may be or come from. Woyo carved lids communicated domestic issues, usually between husband and wife. Food containers were usually covered with leaves to transport from the preparation area to the place where men ate. If a disgruntled wife wanted to communicate feelings about some family concern or dispute with her spouse, a carved wooden disk could be used to cover the pot, thus presenting the matter to the broader community. Sometimes complicated genre scenes conveyed the message, as is the case in these two lids. Each motif might be associated with a proverb, and the entire scene might suggest a narrative reading as well. Proverb Lid Woyo people Lower Congo, DRC Early 20th century Wood Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium, EO.0.0.42871 A woman lies in bed in this example while a man, likely her husband, sits at the foot, his chin resting on crossed arms. Next to the bed another figure sits cross-legged, facing the woman. The scene and its icons could be interpreted variously. It could conceivably be a healing scene with the fourth figure behind the healer displaying a mourning gesture. The presence of the turtle, which lives on land and in the water, and is a mediator between the world of the living and the dead, warns that something serious is going on. Proverb Lid Woyo people Lower Congo, DRC Early 20th century Wood Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium, EO.0.0.37125 Here a man sits on a mat, his meal next to him. Turning to his wife, he points to the plate. The reproach may have to do with the quality of food prepared. While such communication through carved lids was an important part of marital communication among the Woyo in the nineteenth century, it had for the most part disappeared by the middle of the twentieth century. Anthropomorphic Power Figure, nkisi nduda Kongo people Banana, Lower Congo, DRC Early 20th century Wood, glass, feathers, resin, iron Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium, EO.0.0.16674 Many minkisi served to protect their owners against the malevolent actions of witches. They were said to belong to the nduda category, generally smaller sized but merciless witch hunters. They were kept in the house to provide protection against nightly attacks. The little tubes sticking out of the bulges on the arms of the figure are “night guns” to shoot at witches. The metaphor was pushed to surreal proportions: in the morning the owner would point out the bullets in his porch that had been fired during the night! The feathers of a bird of prey sticking out of the figure’s headdress also indicate the nkisi’s effectiveness as a witch hunter.
Yombe people Mayombe, Lower Congo, DRC Late 19th century Wood, shell, vegetal fiber, seed, nut, stone, feathers Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium, EO.0.0.22472 Mambuku Mongo was a nkisi that existed in both anthropomorphic and non-figurative forms. Here is a basket filled with the medicines that empower the nkisi. Mambuko Mongo was essentially a nkisi for divination although it could also afflict someone with headaches or madness. The performance of the diviner included singing and dancing, the shaking of rattles, and sniffing (konga) at the nkisi in order to discover the cause of an illness or misfortune. Mambuku Mongo was often operated by women and the nkisi remained in use at least until the 1940s.
Several types of Kongo musical instruments are of considerable age and were mentioned by early visitors to the region. Their appearance in an early seventeenth-century encyclopedia of musical instruments by German composer and theorist Michael Praetorius, attests to the early presence of Kongo instruments in European collections. A broad variety, many still popular in the region, includes wind instruments such as trumpets, flutes and whistles; strings such as the pluriarc; numerous percussion instruments – various drums, xylophones, bells, rattles and gongs; and plucked instruments like the sanza or lamellophone. Whistle (Human Figures) Woyo people Lower Congo, DRC Early 20th century Wood, horn Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium, MO.1951.50.190-1 Whistles made of small antelope horns ornamented with tiny sculptural forms were used by hunters to signal each other during the hunt, but they were believed to have mystical powers as well. They could charm prey and thus control their movements. Diviners used whistles in ceremonies to gain the attention of assisting spirits, especially for healing. Lamellophone Solongo people Lower Congo, DRC Early 20th century Wood, bead, iron Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium, MO.1953.74.551
Kongo people Lower Congo, DRC Late 19th century Wood, leather, pigment Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium, MO.0.0.3400 Ngoma is a generic name for drums in most of Central Africa. Kongo ngoma drums are crafted in a variety of shapes – cylindrical, chalice-shaped, or supported by figural sculpture. The skin membrane is tacked to the body. This example is an unpretentious cylinder, but its surface is covered with geometric and colored patterns. Ngoma is played in an orchestra consisting of three to four drums for festivities, for entertainment or at weddings, to announce a death, and accompany funeral ritual. A spirit was thought to reside inside the drum and to represent an ancestral voice that responded to crises, thus playing a role in the communication between the two worlds. Long Drum with Support Kongo people Lower Congo, DRC Early 20th century Wood, skin, pigment Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium MO.0.0.35998 (drum) and MO.0.0.6558 (support) The ndungu is an impressive long and narrow drum. This example is provided with a carved drum support (dikalu di ndungu) that shows four dancing human figures. Ndungu drums are usually played in pairs, one referred to as the ngudi (the mother, with a lower tone) and the mwana (the child, a higher tone). While their primary use is for dancing, they perform in ritual, public events and political occasions. Decoration of Kongo Graves In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the increasing economic and political competition around important trade centers, like Boma, and in parts of Mayombe favored innovation in the rituals of burial and the decoration of graves. Graves were adorned with stoneware pitchers, glass bottles, figurative jugs and other status symbols. In addition, artists were commissioned to make anthropomorphic figures in stone or wood. Graves were also decorated with beautifully woven mats, and printed textiles imported from Europe. Initially graves were protected by shelters made of banana leaves but these were gradually replaced by true monuments made of bricks and cement, on which the name of the deceased was painted. Figures of humans continued to adorn such graves, as did additional creatures like lizards and turtles, all made in cement and painted with bright colors. Wooden Grave Figure Yombe people Mayombe, Lower Congo, DRC Early 20th century Wood, pigment Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium, EO.1953.74.1330
The male figure with European style jacket, military helmet and medal holds in his hands a bottle and a glass that refer to the imported liquor that Europeans offered in exchange for African products. The circular medal around his neck is a sign and symbol of his alliance with the colonial state, which granted him new rights and privileges but also subjected him to a number of duties. Wooden Grave Figure Yombe people Mayombe, Lower Congo, DRC Early 20th century Wood, pigment, glass Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium, EO.1979.23. The female figure wears a necklace and has scarifications reproduced in bas-relief all over the upper part of her chest and her back. She pours out of a four-sided jenever bottle. Thousands of bottles of this type were imported in the nineteenth century and used to decorate graves. This figure holds an identifiable object of European import, a jug produced in Westerwald, in Germany. The type often had the inscription “GR,” referring to one of the several English kings named George in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Kongo were particularly fond of the Westerwald jugs and used them for a variety of purposes. Stone grave sculpture, ntadi Mboma people Lower Congo, DRC Late 19th century Steatite Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium, EO.1955.45.6 At the end of the nineteenth century in the region of Boma, Kongo artists made anthropomorphic statues in soft stone, to be put on the graves of important members of the community. They were called mintadi (sing. ntadi, stone) and generally measured about fifteen inches high. They were not portraits of the deceased but represented particular abilities or traits that were considered remarkable or prestigious. Literacy was a new skill that commanded great respect and this explains the male figure holding a board or piece of paper on which an indecipherable “text” is incised. The other ntadi wears a necklace and chief’s hat, with leopard claws carved in stone. This type has been described as “the thinker,” with a wink at the French modern sculptor Auguste Rodin. Woven Mat Kongo people Boma, Lower Congo, DRC Early 20th century Vegetal fiber Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium, EO.0.0.29225 The raffia mats used to wrap corpses and those displayed on graves in late 19th and early 20th century Kongo feature a variety of designs. Some were figurative, while others used variations of the interwoven geometric patterns. Complex geometric patterns have been used in all mediums of Kongo art since at least the early sixteenth century. These patterns may function as abstract expressions of ideas about regeneration that are part of Kongo cosmology, but most likely refer to a historical Kongo aesthetic related to ideas of status. Woven Mat Kongo people Luvituku, Lower Congo, DRC Early 20th century Vegetal fiber Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium, EO.0.0.29259 The figurative motifs on this mat relate to Kongo concepts of power and the afterlife. The leopard was an important symbol of power, and leopard skins and teeth were an integral part of a chief’s regalia. The portrayal of leopards and bottles had a spiritual dimension as well. The chief was equated to the leopard, a leader in the land of the dead, and bottles could be used as containers for nkisi spirits. The bottle types on this mat, however, also evoke the successful participation of the deceased in the Atlantic trade. Woven Mat Kongo people Lower Congo, DRC Early 20th century Vegetal fiber Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium, EO.0.0.29088 Woven raffia mats were used for funerary purposes. Mats served as wrappings for the body in preparation for burial, and they were displayed on graves in commemoration of the deceased. The number and quality of the mats used in the burial indicated the deceased’s status. The addition of the dancing figures on this mat indicates the funerary ceremonies that took place upon the death of important individuals. Terracotta Grave Urn, diboondo Kongo people Boma, Lower Congo, DRC 19th century Terracotta Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium, EO.1973.62.1 Hollow terracotta cylinders called maboondo (sing. diboondo) adorned graves of important individuals around Boma and in Mayombe. Acting as memorials they demonstrated the wealth of the deceased. Their average size is about sixteen inches high, eight inches in diameter. The exterior of the largest diboondo here is typical. Raised bands divide it into richly decorated registers with openings and crisply incised geometric patterns reminiscent of textile or basketry motifs. Some maboondo had human figures applied, raised in relief, cut into the sides or placed on lids. Here, the figures seem to move through the openings in the surface. Basket Kongo people Banana, Lower Congo, DRC Early 20th century Vegetal fiber Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium, EO.0.0.1989-2 Kongo coiled basket forms and techniques are almost identical to those of African Americans in the Sea Islands of Georgia and South Carolina, as seen in these two stepped lid baskets. The Gullah people of the Sea Islands, who have both Kongo and other African ancestors, have produced coiled grass baskets since the eighteenth century. For the Kongo, the coiled form may refer to the spiral, a Kongo symbol for the connection of the living to the world of the ancestors. The tiered form of the lid may symbolize three key points in life: birth, adulthood and death. The Atlantic Slave Trade and Kongo Culture Kongo culture was transmitted to the United States as a result of the transatlantic slave trade, which began in 1619 and ended two and a half centuries later, in the 1860s. In this period, an estimated 92,000 enslaved individuals were carried from West Central Africa to mainland North America, mostly by British and American slavers. The overwhelming majority arrived between 1720 and 1808, when their labor supported the growth of tobacco in the Chesapeake, and the expansion of rice, indigo and cotton plantations in the Carolinas and Georgia. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Kongo channeled slaves from the interior of the continent to the coast and sold few of its own subjects into the Atlantic slave trade. This drastically changed in the eighteenth century as the political instability of the kingdom made the lives of freeborn Kongolese increasingly vulnerable. Political opponents enslaved each other’s followers and people found guilty of theft, adultery or witchcraft were frequently sold into slavery. Kongo Influence in African-American Arts Kongo people who came to America via the Middle Passage plied their skills as artists — metal smiths, woodworkers, ceramists, basket makers, dancers and musicians — and passed on their knowledge to their descendants. Early African American art works in the United States that demonstrate Kongo aesthetics, beliefs and techniques include ceramic vessels with faces sculpted in the mid-nineteenth century, canes from the post-Civil War era, and coiled grass baskets that originated in the eighteenth century. Yards and cemeteries across the southeastern United States reflect Kongo culture and artistic practice. Objects, music and performance that were used to manipulate spiritual forces in Kongo, were creolized in the United States, and are seen in art forms associated with practices of conjuration, in Voodoo derived from Haitian Vodou, and in Palo Mayombe from Cuba. Many of these Kongo-inspired arts have adapted and changed but are still thriving in America today. African-American Canes Finely carved African-American canes are prestigious and protective accoutrements. In both respects they emulate Kongo chiefly staffs and have similar iconography. African-American canes often feature images of reptiles such as lizards and alligators, and other animals that the Kongo identify as inhabiting spiritual realms. Commanding figures on the finials correspond to Kongo staffs depicting leaders who control spirit forces. African-American cane makers embed nails, tacks, rhinestones, organic materials and other objects in the canes as means of enhancing and engaging spiritual powers, just as Kongo staffs are sometimes studded with metal bosses, wrapped with wire or fibers. Spiritual Objects Hoodoo, conjure and rootwork are all terms applied to various African American folk practices developed from blending beliefs and customs from different African, Native American and European traditions. Voudou as practiced in New Orleans, on the other hand, was a New World Afro-Catholic religion with a structured theology, a pantheon of deities, saints and ancestors, a priesthood and a congregation of believers who met for regular worship ceremonies. In addition to these American variations, Kongo-related practices from the Caribbean such as Haitian Vodou and Palo Monte Mayombe, a Kongo-based religion formed in Cuba, are now firmly rooted in Miami and elsewhere in the United States. In all of these religions assemblages of various materials are effective in calling the attention of ancestral spirits and other spiritual beings and beseeching them to solve problems. Such tools combined animal, plant, and human-made materials. These customs can be linked to the Kongo practice of composing minkisi, in which substances are added to enhance the efficacy of the object. Vodou packet for Damballah (paket kongo) Haitian-Floridian 2012 Cloth, glass, unidentified substances Collection of Robin Poynor Bag, nkisi Mbumba Mbondo Yombe people Mayombe, Lower Congo, DRC Early 20th century Vegetal fiber, metal, beads, feathers Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium, EO.0.0.22435-4
As Kongo culture blended with other cultures across the Atlantic, various nkisi–like forms developed, ranging from the caches under the floors of colonial mansions or cabins, to bundles used in “hoodoo” in African American folk culture and objects used in Afro-Caribbean religions such as Vodou and Palo Mayombe. Directory: uploads uploads -> 587 Return function, r i(X) r i(0) r i(1) r i(2) r i(3) 1 0 2 4 6 Thermal Station, I 2 0 1 5 6 3 0 3 5 6 10 uploads -> Department of science and humanities department of mathematics part-a questions and answers uploads -> The Case Against the nypd’s Quota-Driven ‘Broken Windows’ Policing What Is It? uploads -> For want of a nail uploads -> Ownership Models There are two different types of ownership models uploads -> Police Militarization uploads -> City of rising star regular meting thursday, july 14, 2016 uploads -> Township of winfield uploads -> Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act of 2014 uploads -> The Black Panther Party’s Ten-Point Program What We Want Now! Download 251.2 Kb. Share with your friends:
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