Musical instruments in Zambia: wooden boats

Musical instruments in Zambia: wooden boats. The set of three wooden boats is called mankubala¹One wooden boat: ilinkubala.. One player plays with two sticks. Rarely, a second player plays with one stick. The wood is the core of the stem of the chisungwa tree.

Musical instruments in Zambia: wooden boats. Adolescent boys played the mankubala to scare birds from picking out sorghum grains.²Anonymous (1945: 8) contains a reference to the mankubala for the Congo part of the Lala region, with picture. Doke (1927: 525 and 1931: 363) mentions it for the Lamba region but there it consists of only two boats. Doke also gives nine mankubala songs. In former days the scaring of birds (kwamina) was a prominent part of the annual cycle. The women and children would do this by shouting and striking iron bars (nyenjele). The adolescent boys would sit on specially constructed towers (citeba) and play the mankubala there.

Song 93

A mankubala song played and sung by Mika Mwape Chungwa (two sticks) and Alube Mika (one stick), 1985.

Text of Song 93 ∵ The hunger chaser

Kalya akalebule nsala
That which chases hunger away

“The hunger chaser, of course, is food. But food can continue to remove hunger only when a person works hard enough. So, working hard is the hunger chaser. And hunger finishes strength (maka).”
Mika Mwape Chungwa ∵ personal communication, 1985.

Musical instruments in Zambia: wooden boats. They played songs from a special repertoire of songs giving sarcastic commentary on events. Or dreaming about what could happen ‘at the far end of the field’, listen to Song 94. The instrument disappeared with the decrease of sorghum cultivation caused by the coming up of maize cash-cropping. However, some of these songs were still known in the 1980s. Like the ilimba the instrument has a certain cultural heritage status and is built sometimes for agricultural shows.

Song 94

A mankubala song played and sung by Angelo Ngosa, 1981.

Text of Song 94 ∵ What happens at the far end of the field?

Ku mpelo ye bala
Kanshi ne ngulube ilayo lubilo

At the far end of the field
Even the bush-pig runs away

Musical instruments in Zambia: wooden boats. The adolescent boy playing the mankubala dreams or wonders or knows what is beyond the small area to which he is confined to scare birds. Without doubt a particular person was meant with bush-pig but who this was is hidden in the mists of time. Just as what particular action is referred to with ‘running away’.

Inyimbo sha nkama – songs with hidden meanings

Musical instruments in Zambia: wooden boats. The songs often had second or even more meanings that were known to the family of the boy, who learned the songs from his grandfather. The texts were applied to events that had recently happened. When talking about the indirect meaning of a song, people often mention the mankubala repertoire as typical for nyimbo sha nkama (songs with hidden meanings). The circumstance that the texts of the songs that the boy was singing often could not be heard by the listeners because they were too far away – in their own (adjacent) fields – will have contributed to the secrecy of the songs. So, basing oneself on the clearly audible sounds of the mankubala, one had to guess what the exact text was. Hence, getting the first meaning already was a sport. See also the article about proverbs.

Musical instruments in Zambia: wooden boats.