adminAS promised last week today we throw the spotlight on African spirituality with reference to its dynamism. However, we need not forget that our focus of attention is the musical instrument known as the mbira. We indicated in last week’s instalment that there is heated debate regarding claims that it is a spiritual musical instrument whose manufacture should accordingly be subjected to spiritual dictates. Equally, the players of the instrument should be those endowed with spiritual attributes. In fact, the musical instrument should, so the proponents argue, remain entirely within the purview of spirituality.
It is being argued that once the spiritual dimension is strictly enforced the ritual monopoly on the mbira will be maintained. New secular entrants, especially at the level of manufacturing will be elbowed out. The monopolistic economic considerations masquerading as spiritual exclusivity are facing onslaught. Many professional production units have emerged, eg Kwanongoma at the United College of Education in Bulawayo and Mbira Centre in Harare and a myriad others elsewhere.
Several musicians have taken to playing the mbira, not for spiritual reasons but purely for secular entertainment at venues most profane. The mbira instruments that have remained within the purview of spirituality are arguably fewer than those in the secular domain. For the mbira to enter and remain within the sacred domain certain spatio-temporal conditions must be met.
Rituals are by their nature very specific and precise. A ritual is conducted for a reason-there are known outcomes that should emanate from the ritual. Qualified officiating persons are in charge and conduct the rituals in a fixed and predictable way, at a particular time and put on relevant attire or apparel. Rituals are performed at specified and acceptable venues. Where related instruments and artifacts are concerned, these are kept at known places by known, qualified and acknowledged individuals.
The mbira musical instruments that abound these days hardly meet these ritual and spiritual criteria. They belong, it can be argued, to the secular realm just like any other musical instrument. As pointed above, there are mbira instruments such as mbira dzavadzimu that can be said to belong to the spiritual domain. These will have been subjected to ritual migration from the secular to the spiritual domain.
Furthermore, those artifacts, including musical instruments that remain within the spiritual domain must at all times meet the attributes, circumstances and dictates that retain sacredness. Defilement visits a sacred instrument whose conditions for continued sacredness have been violated. Be that as it may, defilement may be reversed through a series of known ritual cleansing procedures. Those familiar with African spirituality will know that the Njelele rain shrine in the Matobo Hills was defiled not so long ago and has remained in that state of defilement to this day. Attempts at cleansing it have not yielded positive results for a myriad of reasons.
We should never think that artifacts do not undergo structural changes. The mbira has been transforming over the centuries. There are several images of the mbira musical instrument during the period when the Portuguese were in the East African Coast. The National Archives of Zimbabwe has custody of these invaluable images. As pointed out in last week’s article, the scope and quality of artistic execution of aesthetic embellishment has changed-for the worse.
The size of the instrument has been changing, as has the size of the resonator. Fibre glass resonators have been incorporated. Now we see mbira instruments bedecked with several bottle tops of household beverages such as Fanta and Coca-Cola. Essentially therefore, we see change in design. It would be a travesty of ubiquitous change to retain mbira songs from the past without coining new ones. Colonisation should not be seen as having fossilised mbira music and its accompanying lyrics. It is our argument that music, indeed all other artistic renditions, are cultural expressions.
Our communities are never stagnant — they are perpetually on the march, changing due to internal and external influences. Surely that change in society should be reflected at the level of the mbira — in terms of structural design, modes of manufacture, instrument playing traditions, the music and lyrics and indeed, the way people dance to mbira music. To do otherwise is to negate the natural march of development and change.
Even those pieces of mbira musical instruments reserved for spiritual functions have not been spared changes. This is as expected. The ancestral spirits do not belong to a fossilized world. What we need to appreciate is the relationship between spirit and material. According to the traditional worldview of the African people a person has two components — material and spirit. It is the living human who is the recipient of and cause for change within the secular realm.
A number of artifacts are introduced within this domain before migration to the spiritual domain. It is critical that we understand the essence of African spirituality. We choose the term African spirituality rather than African Traditional Religion (ATR) as the former better encapsulates and identifies the African spiritual essence and reality. The spirit is at the centre of African Religion.
Even before the acquisition and use of artifacts there was this essence of African spirituality. This was identified as the two way communication system between the living and the living dead characterised by an ascending hierarchy with God at the apex. All that is important is the Word (Message), verbalised or uttered silently. The God-bound messages are received; processed responses sent back — hence the essential two-way communication system.
From this essence there have been added trappings of religion or spirituality that we today think are the essentials of spirituality. Tobacco is regarded as essential to ancestral propitiation — and yet we do know tobacco was introduced by the Portuguese and the Shona word for tobacco (fodya) is of Portuguese origins. Similarly, beer is now perceived to be integral to ancestral propitiation. Again, African spirituality preceded the knowledge of beer brewing.
Glass beads are similarly associated with ancestral paraphernalia. But history tells us glass beads were trade items obtained from the Arab, Swahili and later Portuguese traders at the East African Coast. We could go on and on and include what we think are ancestral amalembu/machira (calico) such as retso (red, black and white) which were also trade goods that were exchanged for ivory, gold and other items from the African interior.
What we should appreciate here is that all these items were used by ordinary secular people usually as items of adornment or as narcotics and beverages. Then they were, just like the mbira itself, items belonging to the secular domain and used by people with no spiritual endowment.
Then upon death the material component of a human body was interred while the spirit lived on. It is the spiritual being or personality who demanded his/her material items that were used by the secular person before material and spirit separated.
The ancestral spirit, having had a material component, demands the material goods used in material life. This is the time when what used to be material goods/artifacts etc become spiritual items. They are now sacred and kept and/or used in a manner that retains their sacredness and holiness. Suppose the phenomenon of spiritual regeneration continues in the present, what new items would enter the spiritual domain?
Clearly, a spirit will demand his gun if he was a soldier, his Bible if he was a Christian. Yours truly would certainly demand his laptop as he lives by writing. My laptop would then enter the spiritual domain and acquire sacredness. Here lies the dynamism in African spirituality if not interfered with by foreign religions!
Online Reporter