Gatherings in Zambia: old beer party

Gatherings in Zambia: people held the old beer party (Bwalwa) in a large half-open shelter (nsaka). It revolved around music and dance. In the first part of the previous century the ilimba ensemble was dominant. It played the classical repertoire of cinsengwe made by a few famous ing’omba. They did not only play at important beer parties but also at Cililo, Ipupo and the coming out of the girl initiate (cisungu). Adults started using drums “when people started getting possessed or when they got tired of listening to the ilimba”. Next to the cinsengwe, the adults’ repertoire consisted of hunting songs, possession songs, and, since the 1940s, women’s music and old social dance songs accompanied by the drum ensemble. The youngsters also used drums. At a fair distance, they played and danced their own music, the social dance songs in vogue at that time.

This gathering functioned “as a mode of integrating the community, of confirming authority and social relations, of maintaining individual reciprocal relations, and of redistributing surpluses from wealthy households”¹Hedlund & Lundahl (1984: 62).. But at least as important was its role in the dissemination of news and new behaviour and attitudes.

The old beer party evolved from older rituals and feasts

It is likely that in the past the beer party was always, more or less explicitly, connected either to some form of kupupa, often of the rejoicing kind (kwilimuna), or to the celebration of life energy (kwangala). Other terms used for rejoicing were nsansa for the feeling of joy and kwangala and kusekelela for occasions for enjoyment. The term kwilimuna denoted ritually rejoicing: to open up, recharge the mpanga. The three other terms stood for life energy, ‘not-mourning’ and being clear or open in mind (mano) and heart (mutima). With the lessening of the influence of the local, central cults, the three terms had lost these implications. Many regarded them to mean ‘(just) for fun’.

Singing for Kaluwe at a normal beer party is for rejoicing (pa kwangala) and it is kwilimuna because you try to be granted a continuation of ishuko.
Mika Mwape Chungwa ∵ personal communication, 1986.

Some say that the first time people paid for beer was at the Cilili ca kusekelela (hunting feast for rejoicing). Through the hunter, Kaluwe, the hunting spirit that guided him, was given offerings (meal, beads, money) for the meat he had brought to the village, see Cilili and a possible relation between Bwalwa and Cilili. The size of the offering was according to one’s means.

Paying for beer

At a certain moment, people had to give presents for the beer too, though not for each portion of beer. It is likely that people refer to this change when people say that they had to pay for beer only since the end of the 1960s. But also consider the following social dance song text from the 1930s.

Song 5

A social dance song from the 1930s, as remembered by banaNshimbi, 1987. No recording.

Text of Song 5 ∵ This beer I bought should not be given to the messenger

Ubwalwa ubu nashita tekwesha ukupela meshinga
Engulya uwanjikete ne camba

This beer I bought should not be given to the court messenger
He’s the one who arrested me for marijuana possession

Buying beer to give to others (be it not to the court messenger).

Gatherings in Zambia: the old beer party. Towards the end of the 1960s, the introduction of the foretaste (dyonko) led to further changes. The visitor to the beer party received a rather large, free quantity of beer and had to pay for more. The example for this was the colonial ‘native beerhall’ in the Copperbelt towns, one of which opened in Serenje Boma, the district centre, in the early 1950s. The paying for beer met with resistance from the older people and the number of Bwalwa only gradually decreased. In the 1980s and 1990s, Bwalwa were mainly given by the chief or organised by each of the twenty sections of the chiefdom that the chief visited during his yearly round of the chiefdom.

A new type of Beer and its differences with the old beer party

From the end of the 1960s a new kind of beer party grew in importance, with new behaviour, new relations between people and age groups, and with new music and dance: the Sandauni.

List 1: Differences between the old beer party and the Sandauni

Differences between the old beer party (Bwalwa) and the Sandauni according to the general public in Chibale, Survey 1985/86.²About half of the people mentioned two differences, therefore 407 differences are listed.

Approximately one third of the answers is about the differences in content, music and dance. Two thirds of the answers deal with the signs of the time reproduced in the two types of gatherings.