On this site, you will find a large number of articles about music and related dance, text, and ritual in one region of South-Central Africa. They describe and analyse the cultural phenomena in Chibale that are connected with music, and attempt to shed light on the interrelatedness of these phenomena, also from a historical perspective.

The articles on this site have various purposes.

Some are descriptive and contain overviews of repertoires of musical instruments, songs and dances, texts, and feasts, ceremonies, and rituals in Chibale. These fulfil a promise made to the people with whom I collaborated, and others in Chibale, to contribute to the description and historiography of Chibale culture. Attention is also given to the interconnectedness of the genres of songs and dances in Chibale.

Other articles are analytical and aim at a better understanding of how music is understood in Chibale. ‘Understanding’ is taken here in the sense it is used in ciLala, the language spoken in Chibale: kumfwa – to hear, feel, understand.
Subjects include a music theory of older cults and possession cults music, developed in dialogue with a small number of local exegetes; the structural and performative features of music; the relations between physical, mental, and musical qualities; why it is a generally accepted statement in Chibale that song text is the most important aspect when interpreting music; and, lastly, the how and what of the evaluation of music in Chibale.

On top of that, a number of articles are included that help the reader to link more general, abstract themes, such as the relation between music and religion, to the concrete situations and phenomena connected to that theme in one region of South-Central Africa.