Chibale, Zambia: cultural similarities with the areas surrounding Chibale

The Kaonde-Lamba-Lenje-Lala area

Chibale, Zambia: cultural similarities with the areas surrounding Chibale. The Chibale possession cults consider the rather large area, approximately 100,000 square kilometres, comprising the Lala, Lamba, and Lenje regions, as well as parts of the Kaonde and Sanga regions, to be culturally and religiously connected. They do not use a specific name for this area, so we will refer to it as the Kaonde-Lamba-Lenje-Lala area. One argument is that spirits from this large area possess people within it. A second argument is that the people in this area share an extensive repertoire of music. Rituals, songs, and dances have been and continue to be exchanged.

Map C: An impression of the Kaonde-Lamba-Lenje-Lala area, which many in Chibale consider to be culturally interconnected.

The area forms the southern side of the border between regions in South Central Africa where people sing in parallel thirds, such as the Bemba region, and in parallel fourths and fifths respectively.

Parallel fourths and thirds

Chibale, Zambia: cultural similarities with the areas surrounding Chibale. Based on linguistic evidence and also for political reasons²“The fact that Zambia possesses four major language groups, rather than three or twenty, and that each group is located in the parts of the country that it is, is critical for understanding the dynamics of the country’s contemporary politics. The political dominance of the Bemba-speaking community is directly related to its large size and the fact that it came to dominate the politically crucial mining towns of the Copperbelt.” Daniel N. Posner (2003: 130), The Colonial Origins of Ethnic Cleavages: The Case of Linguistic Divisions in Zambia, Comparative Politics 35, 2 (2003): 127-146., ‘the Lala’ (including the Ambo, abena Luano, and the Swaka) and ‘the Lamba’ (including ‘the Lima’) are nationally part of the Bemba group. However, culturally, there is more similarity to ‘the Lenje’, who ‘belong to’ the Tonga language group, and ‘the Kaonde’.
It is true that the Lala language has many similarities with the Bemba language. However, we can deduce from the material on this site that culturally and religiously they are not that similar. In Chibale, Bemba music is considered tenyimbo: “no music”. Or, as somebody put it: “Only their imfunkutu songs enable a person to say: ‘Hey, that’s a song’.”

A brain-racking discrepancy

Chibale, Zambia: cultural similarities with the areas surrounding Chibale. Kubik³Kubik (1988: 44f). offers a possible explanation for this, as he calls it, ‘brain-racking’ discrepancy between linguistic and musical orientation in the Lala (and the Lamba) region. He suggests it may be related to “the transculturative encounter in this region (South Central Africa) between heterogeneous musical cultures, namely, those of the early Bantu migrants associated with the Early Iron Age Industrial Complex and of the San hunter-gatherers once occupying this area” which was ‘cracked’ by the influx of ‘(parallel) thirds people’ on its northern fringes”.
My suggestion is that the discrepancy and the apparent similarities between Lala and San music may be explained by the fact that new migrants (never, in the case of the ‘thirds people’, or only after quite some time, in the case of the ‘fourths people’) may have obtained, or wanted to obtain, control over the (musical) contact between the people and the mpanga. See the section about the encounter with the small-statured people who lived in the Lala region before ‘the’ Lala. Furthermore, not a few in Chibale believe that the area is the producer of local music and culture. The music of this region originates from the mpanga. Therefore, linguistic changes may not have been accompanied by musical changes.

Conclusion

Chibale, Zambia: cultural similarities with the areas surrounding Chibale. The articles on this site are about music and related dance, text, and ritual in Chibale, but they are relevant to a far larger area in South Central Africa.