Partii The Rituals of Lemba: Management of Reality "Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? There is not one." —Job in Job 14:4 "Those who suffer He rescues through suffering and teaches them by the discipline of affliction."—Elihu in Job 36:15 Introduction The present section examines Lemba's rituals and their role in Lemba's influence over society and its material resource. The authority of Lemba's adherents rested on the right of the most pure to levy fines for moral transgressions. The high level of rhetorical skill and influence of Lemba priests and priestesses created an effective governing order over a network of markets, alliances, and trade routes. The Lemba priesthood thus usually coincided with the bases of economic and political power in the wider society and with the possession of crucial knowledge. Songs, puns, legends, and rites indicate that the authority wielded by Lemba was rooted in an ideology of esoteric and mystical sources such as ancestors and spirits. Practitioners of Lemba thus consolidated its governing capability and coordinated public resources by manipulating ritual symbols effectively. This is why a closer examination of Lemba rituals, the task of this part of the book, is important for an understanding of Lemba's overall impact on seventeenth- to early twentieth-century Congo coast society. The major source of evidence on theLemba rituals is a set of largely unpublished indigenous texts, with supporting evidence coming from ethnographies and the mute records of museum artifacts. These textual, ethnographic, and artifactual—art historical—sources will be presented in the form of four Lower-Congo, regional variants and a composite profile of Lemba in the New World. Chapter 4 presents the northern variant among the Kamba and the Yaa people living to the right and the left of the Kwilu-Niari River valley in today's Republic ofCongo. Chapter5 presents the eastern variant among the Lari north of today's capital of the Congo, Brazzaville. Chapter 6 depicts the central variant of Lemba, among the so-called Bwende and Nsundi peoples of the Manianga region of Lower Zaire. Chapter 7 provides the western variant from the inland Yombe and the coastal Vili and Woyo, the former living largely in Zaire, the latter in Cabinda and Congo. Chapter 8 presents the New-World extension of Lemba with material from Brazil and Haiti. Unique characteristics and problems in the source materials will be discussed at the opening of each chapter; a more general methodological and theoretical critique of the issues in analyzing rituals needs to be explored first. 95 96 RITUALS One issue concerns the varied nature of the evidence and the random manner in which it was collected. A set of old ethnological questions may be asked: Are the variations spurious or significant? What are their underlying determinants? Are the varied song texts, ritual acts, and symbolic forms and combinations "free variations" which reflect individual creativity within a latitude of more structured limits? Or are they due to structural variations in social, economic, possibly even ecological zones described in foregoing chapters on the Lemba region? The four regional variants are in part grounded in a quite self- conscious differentiation made by the indigenous writers between "schools" or"styles" ofLemba ritual. The author of Text 1 (northern variant) speaks of a distinctive "Kamba" style which is contrasted to a "N'tini a Mongo" style with which he is more familiar. Similar allusions are made in the indigenous accounts of" Yaa" and "Lari" Lemba rites which have, in the eyes of the authors, distinctive features. These "ethnic" diacritica will be used where appropriate, but cannot however be systematically applied. In fact they seem to be used by authors outside their home areas, and these latter, such as "Nsundi" and "Bwende," do not appear in the indigenous accounts, nor do "Yombe," "Vili," or "Woyo." It is possible that these ethnic designata, which I have critiqued in Chapter 2, were and are intro­ duced by Europeans and are not part of the indigenous culture at all. Or if they are, they pertain to distinctive Lemba zones or stylistic characteristics. Some stylistic variations not consciously announced by the indig­ enous writers are however significant in terms of structural variations in the societies of the Lemba region. For example, as will be explained in more detail later, coastal Vili and Woyo Lemba shrines reflect a less elaborate initiation rite and a less complex nkobe than is found farther eastward; this is combined however with an extensive backyard grove and sometimes a fixed "house" shrine. Such a gradual transition from the portable nkobe to the backyard shrine may be correlated with a gradual transition in local political structure from the market governing committee without chiefs, historically, to the presence of prominent local chiefs and even kings nearer the coast. The western variant of Lemba seems warranted then because of the unique set of symbols correlating with a specialized type of political structure. Other variations of importance in understanding social change are not of a regional nature. All writers describing Lemba initiations Introduction 97 meticulously detail the type and quantity of economic object ex­ changed. Thus it is evident how the economic levels of the initiations vary from the opulence of the Kamba area near copper mines and rich agricultural lands to the relative poverty of the Lari area on the sandy Teke plateau, and from dues paid in traditional goods to the use of colonial tax currency in the Western variant Changes introduced with colonial currency are not to be explained as mere regional variations, they are part of the eroding exchange economy of the early colonial period in which Lemba had by 1930 been destroyed. Another important variation in Lemba ritual which is not regional is the differential reference to widespread patron spirits such as earth goddess Bunzi, dualist demigod Mahungu, trickster Moni-Mambu, and numerous ancestral figures. It is not easy to account for alternating uses of these spirits in Lemba since they exist throughout much of the region in most local pantheons. Differential reference to the one or the other may reflect a "sectarian" preference, or the subordination of one figure to another. To adequately capture variations bound both by regional con­ siderations and those spanning regions or those having no particular regional articulation requires an analytical approach which can combine both local, concrete and more abstract issues. For this reason the chapters of this section will each begin with a portrayal of local rites based on textual accounts, but will then in the latter part of each chapter pick up themes which may figure more widely such as the social structure of clan alliance, the logic in Lemba medicines, Lemba naming, or the characteristics of Lemba? s patron spirits. Related to the variation of Lemba'% rituals is the issue of the assessment of type and quality of data, and the determination of which is the best analytic framework for the uneven assemblage of lyrics, medicinal recipes, lists of rules, etiological myths, historical and ethnographic interpretations, and artifacts. In other words, which theoretical model best bridges all the textual, ethnographic, and art historical (artifactual) data? An initial determination of types of available data and their locations of origin was made in Figure 1 (see also the essay on sources, below). Sources were divided into "artifactual" objects derived from authentic Lemba settings and events; "etiological texts" derived from authentic Lemba events and explanations in KiKongo; and "ethnographies," that is attempts to describe Lemba and to relate it to its social and physical environ­ ment Despite the high quality of these sources, they are of varied scope. The ethnographies of Lemba initiations range from those 98 RITUALS which are event-specific, probably even based in a few instances on eye-witness or participation, to those which describe norms or customs or even ideals. Among the lyrics, some appear to be highly original and individualized, whereas others, or parts of all of them, appear to be standardized phrases which occur widely. In the case of the artifacts, some are crude whereas others reflect great craftsman­ ship. It is necessary to exercise a critique of quality which delineates the type of data, its inner form as intended by the actor or as interpreted by the analyst, as well as its quality as an aesthetic object or performance. These concerns for assessing the data and analyzing the various kinds of evidence of Lemba ritual will be met through the use, in each of the following chapters, of a limited number of expressive domains drawn out of textual and artifactual evidence. These expressive domains will for the moment be defined as areas or modes of behavior with a high degree of consistency in form and meaning and a considerable specificity in the vehicle used, because they are based upon a cultural consensus or are inherent in the sensory capacity of all actors. Expressive domains to be used in following chapters are: (a) the spatial and temporal distribution of events in the seances, that is the formal events structured by an apparent sense of the sacred; (b) the exchanges of goods and symbols in these events, tied to the local economy of subsistence production as well as the regional and worldwide commercial economy; (c) the social organizational idioms used in Lemba, often based on kinship, with special emphasis on modes of achieving public order; (d) the sacramental objects (min'kisi) composed for the seance and given meaning in the context of the culture's classification system; (e) verbal categories of ritual process as found in indigenous exegeses and descriptions of the institution; and (f) lyrical scores of songs and etiological myths of Lemba.