(Fr. République Centrafricaine).
Country in Central Africa. It serves as a link between the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaïre), the Congo Basin and the Sudanic-Sahelian zone. It has a surface area of 622,436 km2 and a population of 3.64 million (2000 estimate). The west of the country contains the largest concentration of population, while vast regions in the east remain uninhabited. The south-west has dense equatorial forests that receive large amounts of rainfall, favouring the growth of lush vegetation, including various medicinal plants. The people of the country live by subsistence agriculture and forestry. A great many commercial plants are grown, including coffee, cocoa, cotton and rubber, and the forests have been heavily depleted as a result of the exploitation of their wood during the last two decades of the 20th century.
1. Ethnic groups and historical background.
4. Music of the main linguistic regions.
MAURICE DJENDA (1–5), MICHELLE KISLIUK (6)
The population of the Central African Republic belongs to approximately 85 ethnic groups. Primary ethnic groups include the Banda, Manza and the Gbaya-Manza-Ngbaka in the centre and central-eastern part of the country; the Zande and Nzakara in the east; the Gbaya in the west; the Ngbaka, Bogongo, Isongo (Mbati), Kako and Mpyemo (Mpiemo) in the forested regions of the south-east; the Gbanziri and Yakoma along the banks of the Ubangi; and the Sara Kaba, Surma and Runga in the north and north-east (fig.1).
It is difficult to express the representation of various religions within the country in terms of percentages, but as an estimate 35% of the population practise indigenous beliefs, 50% are Christian and 15% Muslim.
In the Central African Republic several so-called pygmy groups travel through the dense forests of the administrative divisions of Lobaye (Bagandu) and the Sangha Mbaere (Nola, Bayanga Lindjombo, the Ndoki forest and Bilolo/Biguene). Today the survival of the ‘pygmies’ is a problem because of modernization and the destruction of their forest ecosystems. The Baaka (BaAka) of the Lobaye region and the Bankombe/Bampencele of the Sangha Mbaere are the best known of these populations.
Through the persistence of Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza (1852–1905) and the initiative of the Committee of French Africa, the French colony of Gabon-Congo had assured direct access to Chad via the Ubangi route. At the end of the 19th century, France was granted a vast territory of 2·5 million km2 between the Belgian Congo, German Cameroon, British Nigeria and Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. In 1910 this territory was given the name of French Equatorial Africa. It had four regions, of which the Ubangi-Shari has become the modern Central African Republic.
In Ubangi-Shari, as in all other territories, a colonial commission distributed still unsurveyed territory to concessionary companies, called ‘Colonization Societies’, which were assigned property rights over all natural resources of the areas. The inhabitants were paid low rates for the time they spent gathering produce, and what payment they did receive was in kind. Searches were often organized to recruit men as workers from the indigenous people who were forced to abandon their villages. Women and children were held hostage in camps along the transport routes, serving as a guarantee that the fathers of those families would work. Within a few years, Ubangi-Shari was ruined and its people plunged into poverty. If there was music and dancing during this period, it could only have been in remote areas. Ubangi-Shari became independent in 1960. Barthélémy Boganda (1910–59) of the Indigenous Clergy had blazed the trail in 1958. The country assumed the name of the Central African Republic at this time. After independence, the tribulations of the country, now a new state, continued under an improvised government. It was an empire in 1976–9, but since 1979 it has been a republic.
In contrast to its colonial history, the history of the rediscovery of indigenous cultures and traditions of the Central African Republic, i.e. music and dancing, proceeded smoothly. The German explorer Georg Schweinfurth (1836–1925) and the Russo-German Wilhelm Junker (1840–92) were the first European observers after the Italian Piaggia to travel in this part of the continent, particularly in the state of Zande. In 1878 Schweinfurth described in detail the musical traditions, dances and musical instruments of the Kingdom of Zande. Similarly Junker's account, published in 1890, contains descriptions of various musical instruments, such as the giant Zande drum. There are other 20th-century analyses of Central African music, for instance by Bruel (1910) and Cureau (1912).
In almost all Central African societies, musical traditions are systems that emerge from ceremonies and recreation. Each ethnic group in the republic has a series of musical repertories performed in distinct social circumstances. In particular, the relationship between music and society is found in ceremonies (such as rituals and initiation ceremonies, ceremonies of divining and healing, of mourning and the end of mourning, exorcism and the stigmatization of sorcerers), unusual occasions for rejoicing (the enthronement of a traditional chieftain, a successful hunt or a good kill of game, the birth of twins etc.) and simple amusements (children's games, friendly gatherings etc.). Besides social music, there is some purely instrumental and recreational music performed by individuals generally for amusement and relaxation. The lamellophone (for instance, played on a long journey) and the harp are the primary instruments for such diversions.
The music of the Central African Republic, like its other arts, is an oral tradition handed down from older to younger practitioners by means of vocal or instrumental imitation and by verbal instruction. While instrumental virtuosos from different villages are renowned and are much admired, there are no professional musicians in Central African societies. Individuals associate themselves with the kinds of performances that stimulate them, and they make contributions according to the quality of their own impulses. However, in certain rituals and initiation ceremonies the parts of celebrant and instrumentalists are taken by well-known performers.
The musicality of the peoples of Central Africa is not governed or conditioned by rigid criteria or metonymic frameworks such as isochronism or periodicity, cadences or scales. All creative impulses that materialize as sound and all melodiously phrased tones are perceived to be music: that is, musicality is free and unconstrained by rules. In the Central African view, music (a term without an equivalent in most Central African languages) is not chronometric but is absorbed by the human body. Even magical incantations and funeral laments are music. Central African ethnic groups have similar attitudes to music, which is usually expressed by the association of vocal and instrumental expression, and in principle it is responsorial in structure, the alternation of soloist and chorus supported by instrumental playing.
In Central African terminology, allusions to ‘music’ are conveyed by the words designating the two typical performance contexts: singing and instrumental playing. That is to say, singing a song and playing a musical instrument (such as a harp) signifies and designates music: dance is considered only an effect of music. In recent years, terms for music (mosoko and ngombi) have been introduced in the standard Sango language spoken throughout the territory. The semantic relationship between music and language can be demonstrated by the fact that many ethnic groups in the country have tonal languages, and this tonality has a considerable influence on songs.
Music in Central Africa is performed individually or in a group, depending on circumstances and the function of the music. An example of individual music is a song sung by a mother to lull her child to sleep, or a woman yodelling as she works or brings in the harvest. In general, music played in groups implies ceremonial or entertainment contexts and involves polyphony and/or polyrhythms. Music also plays an important contextual and accompanying role in the recitation of chantefables and stories.
In European conceptual and analytic terms, vocal and instrumental music are generally performed together and interact within a rhythmic structure. However, these two musical elements can be separated, as with the playing of certain aerophones, such as the giant trumpets of the Banda (Arom, 1967).
Rhythm assumes a primary part in Central African music. The formulae of the various rhythms use proportional durations in a rigorous metric and periodic framework determined by a finite number of isochronal pulses. These pulses may be expressed by accompanying instruments (rattles, hand-clapping, percussion, bells etc.) or may be merely suggested by the dancers' steps (Dehoux, 1992). So far as pitch is concerned, pentatonic scale structures without dissonance are most often used. However, some ethnic groups use more than one type of scale simultaneously. In the east, for example, the Nzakara use a scale consisting of four whole tones, while in the south-west the Mpyemo and Kako use semitones in their scales (Arom, 1967, 1973). Timbre is of great importance in the music of Central Africa, particularly since this music is marked by the richness and wealth of meaning conveyed by instrumental sound colours.
The music performed by Central African ethnic groups consists of a vocal and instrumental plurality. This plurality respects vocal or instrumental singularity, that is, each vocal instrumental entity functions independently. At the same time, they act interdependently as they provide parallel accompaniment for each other and lead to a common rhythmic point, the physical peroration of dance.
Polyphony, or songs with several polyphonic parts, and instrumental polyrhythms employ the same principle in Central African music: the weaving together of homogeneous and heterogeneous vocal and instrumental entities. A xylophone ensemble, for instance, is polyrhythmic with different individual melodic figures assigned to each instrument. The end product is a single rhythm, however, and sometimes indicates an inherent model. The instrumental heterogeneity of a music ensemble will often (as among the Gbaya-Manza-Ngbaka) consist of three xylophones (bezanga: small xylophone; rgiringba: ancestors; kpembe: youngest child), a double-headed drum (bion) and small bells and rattles (ngala), in addition to hand-clapping (Dehoux, 1992). A vocal ensemble is also usually polyphonic except in a responsorial context where several homophonic voices interact (Kubik, 1994).
Polyphony and polyrhythms are of irregular distribution in Central African music. It may be said that polyrhythms are found wherever there is instrumental plurality. In Central Africa, polyphony is chiefly a tradition of the ‘pygmy’ peoples; this tradition does not have song with several homophonous voices. When two ‘pygmies’ sing, the voices intertwine, each developing an independent melody with interjections partly sung and partly spoken. Polyphony and polyrhythms are a profound reflection of the freedom of vocal and instrumental musical expression in Central African societies, a freedom exercised through an indifferent attitude to notions of time and space.
While music of Central African societies has the same basic characteristics, its physical production, namely rhythm with its constituent parts, instrumentation and vocalization, shows a significant correlation with linguistic elements. Characteristics of cultural rhythmic styles are closely linked to well-defined groups or families of languages. This relationship corresponds to the Central African linguistic landscape as demonstrated below:
Musical area A extends over the entire region of the east Adamawa group and is divided into three areas: Gbaya (Bouar–Baboua–Carnot in the west); Banda/Manza (Bambari–Bria–Bangassou in the centre); Nzakara/Zande (Rafai–Zemio–Obo in the east).
Musical area B: Benue-Congo (Niger-Congo); Mpyemo/Kako/Ngbaka/Ngundi/Bogongo/Sanga-Sanga; Pomo (the Congolese Nola–Mbaiki frontier in the south-west).
Musical Area C includes the Marban region: Runga (Ndele–Ouadda–Djallé–Birao in the north).
Musical area D includes the Benue-Congo group: ‘pygmies’ of the Congolese forests of Central Africa in the south-west of the country.
Rhythmic styles are among the clearly perceptible differences between these four musical areas. While the large musical area A characteristically employs a short or sequential rhythmic style, musical area C augments the same rhythmic style with rhythmic pulsations to the point where the musical rhythm literally shakes, as with the Surma people. In these two rhythmically related musical areas, instrumental ensembles consisting of xylophones and drums are often found, for instance among the Zande, Banda and Manza. The rhythmic Runga style of musical area C is heavily influenced by Islamic music.
Musical area B of the Benue-Congo group (Bantu) has a characteristically slower rhythmic style. In this musical area, only the Ngbaka ethnic group uses the harp, an instrument widespread in the region of the eastern Adamawa group (Zande), while the ‘pygmies’, Pomo and Sanga-Sanga play the mvet, a harp-zither from the bordering regions of Cameroon.
‘Pygmy’ music constitutes an entirely autonomous musical area in a region extending throughout the dense Congolese forests of Central Africa. Typical features of this tradition are polyphony and yodelling, and the conical single-headed drum is the predominant instrument. The ‘pygmies’ have a considerable musical influence on their Bantu neighbours, with whom they share the dense forests.
In Central African societies musical instruments have various functions linked to different musical repertories. First and foremost, instruments are used in ritual and initiation ceremonies, notably in connection with a heightened state of consciousness. The beating of musical instruments in particular, along with song, arouses that heightened state, which manifests itself in trance, auditory drive and/or music-colour synesthesia, allowing communication with the supernatural (often under the psychotropic influence of hallucinogens). Then there are such separate functions as sending messages from village to village by a slit-drum and providing entertainment for a group or an individual. The diversity of the functions of musical instruments is not, however, limited to these main contexts.
In the Central African Republic there are musical instruments that belong exclusively to a particular ethnic group, such as the ten-string n'gombi (harp) of the Ngbaka (fig.2) or the giant transverse trumpets of the Banda. Other musical instruments have spread throughout the Central African region as the result of migratory diffusion (the lamellophone, bells etc.). Other instruments exist within ethnic groups (skin drum with one or two heads, slit-drum, instruments for accompaniment etc.).
The instrument types found in Hornbostel and Sachs's classification of 1913–14 – idiophones, membranophones, chordophones and aerophones – are represented in Central African music. Notable among the wide distribution of instruments are the different kinds of xylophones, i.e. mentsiang of the Mpyemo (fig.3), kponingbo of the Zande (fig.4), zanga of the Pana and the Gbaya-Manza-Ngbaka, kalanga of the Banda-Mbiyi and kangba of the Manza, or the various forms of double-headed drums, i.e. ntumo of the Mpyemo, ndumo of the ‘pygmies’, kporo of the Banda Gbambiya, bio of the Gbaya and guru of the Zande.
Central African ethnic groups do not, however, categorize their musical instruments according to the criteria developed by Hornbostel and Sachs, particularly not by the appearance of the constituent elements of those instruments, but more usually according to function. An example of the taxonomy of musical instruments among the Mpyemo ethnic group follows:
Group (a): musical instruments particular to ceremonial dances, dances for entertainment and on specially joyous occasions (skin-head drum and slit-drum);
Group (b): autonomous musical instruments (lamellophones, xylophones and musical bows);
Group (c): instruments used for accompaniment (rattles, short transverse trumpet and large and small bells);
Group (d): musical instruments for children (whistles and ground bows, such as the korongoe ground bow of the Gbaya-Bokoto).
Urban dance music in the Central African Republic is a branch of modern Congolese rumba or soukous-like music, but it has been increasingly defined by local rhythms and vocal styles: for example, Zokela bands from the Lobaye region (1980–present) are rooted heavily in the styles of the Mbati and Ngbaka ethnic groups, and the band Negro Luamé from the Boda area (1975–87) adapted rhythms of the Gbaya and Bofi ethnic groups. The emergence of urban dance music in the 1960s resulted from the introduction of the Spanish guitar and, more importantly, from radio broadcasts of Latin American popular musics, such as the rumba, cha cha cha and merengue.
The early development (1963–5) of urban music in Bangui, the capital, is closely linked with well-known artists in the country, such as Jean Magale (with his song, Pardon, chérie), Dominique Eboma, Maître Bepka (Bekers), André Savat and Prosper Mayele, one of the founders of the band Centrafrican Jazz. More recently (1980s–90s), the late Thiery Yezo of the longstanding band Musiki and Kaida Monganga, the founder of Zokela Original, have had a significant influence on urban dance music in the republic.
One of the most compelling styles is la musique traditionelle moderne played by the band Zokela. Now not only the name of a band, zokela has become a full-fledged style. Zokela bands provide evenings of energetic dancing, social commentary and proverbs set to the bubbling rhythms of the Lobaye region in the south-west of the country. After paying a fee of 500 francs (about £3 in 1995) at an open-air club, one might have found musicians and patrons warmed up by about 9 p.m. Four singers standing in a row, each behind a stationary microphone, would trade lead lines and overlapped choral responses with tight harmonies. Occasionally a singer would withdraw, replaced by another waiting casually along the sidelines.
Though overshadowed internationally by neighbouring urban music styles, such as soukous and makossa from Congo and Cameroon, musicians from the Central African Republic, and the Lobaye region in particular, have developed their own electric band music since the late 1970s, and their popularity with the Central African people is high. The band Zokela captures the insistent and vital sound of Lobayan ceremonies and funeral dances on modern instruments. Accented by a trap set, the bass guitar and glass bottle tapped with a stick catches the texture of village drums. The bass guitar emphasizes high–low contrasts such as the open and muted strokes of a low-pitched drum, while the bottle adds the syncopated triplet rhythmic patterns of a matching high-pitched drum. Two lead guitars build on that rhythmic base, playing interlocking, repeating riffs (sounding brighter than in soukous) jumping octaves and rolling in cycles.
Though Zokela was not the first band to integrate musical elements from Lobaye into an urban sound, it was the first group to combine the melodies, harmonies, vocal quality and especially the motengene regional dance rhythms and energy into the music. After Thiery Yezo, the leader of Musiki, heard Zokela for the first time in 1981, he and a financially successful music lover from Lobaye invited the band to Bangui to perform several club concerts. Zokela exploded on to the Bangui cultural scene, soon playing regularly at Club Anabelle in the Fatima neighbourhood and later at other venues. Despite the increasing economic constraints of the late 1990s, they still play in Bangui, around the country and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; they have also recorded many cassettes sold in Bangui street kiosks. As they established themselves in the capital, Zokela began singing not only about their experiences as Lobayans but also about urban life in Bangui, subjects to which people from all regions of the country could relate. In rhythm, vocal style and lyric, Zokela voiced the contemporary and complex experiences of urban Central Africans.
While Zokela remained in the capital during the early 1980s, several more established Bangui bands (including Musiki, Makembe, Cannon Stars and Cool Stars) began to tempt the Zokela singers to join them; and they often succeeded since they had instruments and more money. Fortunately, the core group of Zokela’s singers and players was so large that there were musicians left to fill the places of those who moved on. Thus Zokela was not only maintained, but it had now infiltrated the sound of most of the other bands in Bangui to varying degrees.
Far from the urban centre, in the forested southern region, BaAka ‘pygmies’ have defined a version of modernity through their music and dance, providing a contrasting though related example of contemporary music in the Central African Republic. One of the most popular BaAka dances of the late 1980s was a hunting dance called mabo. Mabo was a relatively new dance. New dances emerge every few years, some remain for generations, while others fade away. Whereas songs for older dances (such as the spirit dance njengi or the hunting dance ndambo) have been elaborated to the point where underlying melodic themes are often dropped, with newer songs people occasionally sing basic melodic themes, while adding myriad improvisations and elaborations. One of the most common mabo songs is Makala (seeex.1).
A new music-dance genre has recently developed among BaAka in response to the recent appearance of missionaries in the Bagandu region of the Lobaye. This developing expressive form, the ‘God Dance’ (eboka ya nzapa), is a means of addressing modernity. In an effort to reinvent themselves as competent in a changing world, BaAka claim any ‘otherness’ that surrounds them and usually excludes them, and in this genre they mix those elements into a form they can define and control. The dancers, mostly youths, move in a circle, using motengene-like steps borrowed from neighbouring ethnic groups, along with the singing style and drum rhythms of the neighbouring Bolemba ‘pygmies’ (who live more like Bantu villager farmers than do BaAka foragers). Bolemba recreational dances are also emulated by non-‘pygmy’ Bagandu youths in nearby villages, which is probably how the BaAka, in turn, first became familiar with the style.
Grace Brethren Church mission songs are preceded and followed by Bolemba-style interpretations of music from various Christian sects represented in Bagandu village, including Baptist, Apostolic and Catholic hymns. These hymns are blended into the same dance, along with Afro-pop snippets sung in the Lingala language (from radio tunes transmitted from the Congo and received in Bantu villages such as Bagandou).
BaAka initially argued the validity of Christian materials. But by 1992 the controversy had settled, and the ‘God Dance’ had just become one among many beboka (dance forms); they could dance their own dances and still ‘pray to god’, as some BaAka explained.
African ‘pygmies’ have been repeatedly placed in a ‘timeless’ cultural box by scholars, artists, journalists, missionaries, politicians and profiteers of various sorts. Each to a different purpose, and even in dialogue with each other, they have marked the forest people as utopian or backward, savage or sublime. At the same time, urban African musicians such as Zokela have been hurtled into a realm of marketable ‘world beat’ and now face the prospect of being stripped of regional potency. In a flourishing and ever-changing expressive world, Bagandu village youths enjoy performing the dance styles of their Bolemba ‘pygmy’ neighbours, and those village youths in turn inspire BaAka ‘pygmies’ in the forest and Zokela musicians in the city to interpret similar styles, all to different though thoroughly modern, rooted and relevant ends.
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