Gatherings with music in Zambia: beer parties

Gatherings with music in Zambia: beer parties. Most beer parties (Bwalwa) in Chibale consist of a feast, starting in the morning, at the farm of the organiser. The beer is either for sale or the owner hands it around. The history of the beer party shows it was a continuously changing occasion.¹Long (1995:137): “The use of beer and how it is conceptualised is constantly changing, and is negotiably redefined to suit people’s specific needs. On the one hand, it is conceptually or symbolically associated with accepted idioms or norms of social respect, generosity and ‘tradition’; and on the other it is associated with people’s incomes and consequent livelihood strategies.” Alongside its social function²Long (1995:138): “For both rural and urban areas the consumption of beer is an important focus of entertainment, and becomes an appropriate context in which social relationships are re/negotiated, consolidated and maintained.”, the beer party served as a platform for the introduction and assimilation of social innovations. In the 1970s and 1980s alone, five forms followed one another.
Beer is also used in various rituals that the people in Chibale do not consider to be beer parties (Bwalwa, Sandauni, Imbile). These rituals include the coming out of the cisungu, the wedding (Bwinga), cultural heritage and identity festivals, Bwalwa bwa nkombo, rituals of mourning, rituals of problem-solving, and rituals of rejoicing. The latter can be considered the predecessors of the Beer party. This ritual significance of beer underwrites its legitimacy.³Colson & Scudder (1988) in Long (1995:139).

The beer

The woman of the organising household and some of her female relatives brew the beer. Alternatively, one hires one of the few women who are well-known brewsters to do the job. The money that comes in goes to the owner, more often men than women, of the maize (for katata beer) or millet (for cipumu beer) from which the beer is made. About 20% of the profit goes to the brewers. In 1987, the expenditure per drum, including brewing, was about US$ 9.50, and the receipts per drum were about US$ 17 resulting in a profit of about US$ 7.50 per drum of 200 litres. At that time, for most people, there was no other way to earn income that even came close to this amount and input/output ratio.
The relative amount of money spent on beer, mainly by men, is large. In former days, when beer was not sold but shared (among adults only), the consumption of beer was also high, be it mainly in the beer season (August, September and October). Peters⁴Peters (1950: 98f). estimates the consumption per adult for the year 1945 at about 75 litres. And this was the strong, thick beer (cipumu) made of millet that is diluted with boiling water and then sucked up with pipes. This means the actual consumption in litres was more than double the quantity Peters mentions. Considering that women generally drink far less than men and that much of the beer is consumed in the beer season, one gets an impression of the consumption of the men during that season. Peters even writes, though this seems exaggerated: … [in the beer season] “the Lala are but rarely in full possession of their faculties”.

Paying for beer

Gatherings with music in Zambia: beer parties. Cash-cropping and the return of labourers and pensioners from town brought more money into local circulation. More activities and goods could be bought that in the past had been shared or were part of a mutual help or bartering system. This changed the balance of power between the age groups and led to a number of the changes that distinguish the Sambia period from the Fetulo period. Though it seems rather late⁵According to Hedlund & Lundahl (1984: 63), in the area around Chipata, Eastern Province, the first beer was sold during the Forties. , people agree that beer was sold for the first time at the end of the 1960s, the date generally given as the beginning of the Sambia period.

Six main forms of beer parties in the last hundred years

Gatherings with music in Zambia: beer parties. In the last hundred years, we can discern six main forms of beer parties and gatherings related to beer parties. Click for more information.

The predecessors of the Beer party were hunting rituals in which beer played a role. See also the section about its predecessor in the article on the old beer party.

The beer parties that followed, and those modelled on them, were the Bwalwa, ‘the old beer party’.

The beer that gradually superseded the old beer party is the Sandauni, the commercial beer party.

In the 1980s the Takeaway beer began.

And in the 1990s, Chibale saw the opening of Bars and Tarvens.

Another type of Beer is the Imbile, the work beer. It can take the form of the Bwalwa, the Sandauni or the Takeaway beer.