ISSN: 1570-0178 Volume 11, Issue 3 (19 February 2009) Swahili remembered Two conversations transcribed , translated, and annotated by Johannes Fabian University of Amsterdam address: Amsterdam School for Social Science Research University of Amsterdam Kloveniersburgwal 48 1012 CX Amsterdam The Netherlands   Introduction Text One Text Two

Text Two

A conversation with Kisimba Adolphe (K) and Kalundi Mango (Ka) recorded on June 6, 1985 in Lubumbashi. The meeting took place in Kisimba’s office at the Social Services Department of the Gécamines. Kisimba’s recollections of  the emergence of popular music and theater provide valuable background (and occasionally counter-points) to the more recent material on Mufwankolo (see Archives of Popular Swahili, Vol. 6). For further information, see the Introduction.

Swahili text and English translation

Notes

¹ I had learned the term conducteur when I worked with the Groupe Mufwankolo on Le pouvoir se mange entier: a one-page written/typed outline of a sketch or play. Kisimba probably understood my question as asking about a director (see the end of the following paragraph where he says that they had no promoteur).
² Some general observations on Kalundi’s contribution to this exchange: Because he was probably farther away from the microphone than Kisimba and I many of his interjections were poorly recorded, making transcription difficult or impossible. He seldom raised his voice, often he just echoed Kisimba (affirming by repeating), and often his response overlapped with Kisimba’s. Still, he did make important contributions, for instance when he helped Kisimba with recalling names and events, or when he added information (such as mentioning kiKabanga in par. 18). Notice also that Kisimba deferred to him, calling him "mukubwa Albert" in par. 17.
³ What I transcribe as eeh usually is an affirmation but with a different intonation (high-low) it can mean the opposite ("really?").
⁴ Dom Lamoral was the founder of the Petits chanteurs de la Croix de Cuivre in Elisabethville/Lubumbashi.
⁵ "Rover" is the highest grade in the Boy Scout hierarchy.
⁶ What I translate as "in town" Kisimba calls kizungu, the world of the Whites/ Europeans. In this short fragment of a plot he says that it happened wakati ya wazungu, in the times of the Whites. Most likely it was about a common situation in colonial times when men sought work in the towns and had to leave their families behind in the villages.
⁷ Kisimba pronounced it dyas. Congo Jazz became a generic term for modern Congolese music (one of the famous orchestras was called O.K. Jazz).
⁸ I had heard about Jecoké earlier and thought it meant Jeux Coquets until Kisimba corrected me.
⁹ That is what I hear; I have been unable to find out what the term refers to.
¹⁰ On the Cercle Saint Benoît and its historical role as a forum for educated Congolese in Elisabethville/ Lubumbashi, see Bruce Fetter,"The Luluabourg Revolt at Elisabethville." African Historical Studies (1969), pp. 269-277.
¹¹ Lit. it says "you are three." Kisimba must have sensed that, in his story, he needed to get back to JeCoKe, the comedy team of three he had been part of before he moved on to organize folkloric dance.
¹² My questioning in this passage caused some confusion. Dom Lamoral (see note 3 above) was the founder of the Petits Chanteurs. Joseph Kiwele was his student and successor as director of the choir. Kiwele was a famed church musician and composer of, among others, a "Missa Katanga," not to be confused with the "Missa Luba" (which was on my mind during this exchange), a world hit composed and adapted from traditional songs by Fr. Guido Haazen, a Franciscan at the Kamina mission and performed by the "Les Troubadours du Roi Baudouin" (first recorded by Phillips in 1958; see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missa_Luba).
¹³Kisimba says mu kudya mukate, to eat bread (notice that he uses the Luba verb kudya rather than the local Swahili kula or kulya). Mukate, bread, serves as a metaphor for both the necessities and the joys of life (surviving and living). In the sentence that follows he asserts that the necessities and joys of "every day" (journalier) are not subject to "modernization."
¹⁴ He makes an important theoretical point here: "tradition" as a contemporary process.
¹⁵When I asked these question, I had already read Terence O. Rangers Dance and Society in Eastern Africa, 1890-1970: The Beni Ngoma. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975, and J. Clyde Mitchell’s The Kalela dance: Aspects of social relationships among urban Africans in Northern Rhodesia. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1956. The exchange leaves the impression that neither Kalundi nor Kisimba had clear memories of Kalela (notice that they pronounce it variously as Kanena or Kalena). I have been unable to trace the qualifyer kabolozo or kabolonzo they used with Kalela.
¹⁶Usually a distinction between the varieties of Luba spoken in Katanga and in the Kasai is marked by the contrast between ki- and tshi- (or chi-). One may hear echoes of ethnic strife when Kisimba speaks of thsiKasai (and kiKasai) instead of tshiLuba.
¹⁷ Van Avermaet and Mbuya 1954: 97 describe di-bunga as follows: "jeu consistant à lever le même pied que celui levé par le partenaire."
¹⁸ A casual statement, worth pondering. Why did "kiKasai" not become a medium of popular culture in Katanga? Why were baKasai apparently absorbed in, drawn to Swahili? As a medium of "modernity?’ What does this say about the stereotype of the "progressive" Kasaian? See Kisimba’s earlier observation on Kasaians teaching their children tshiLuba "later."
¹⁹ Three Rhodesias? There was North Rhodesia (now Zambia) and South Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). Since we were talking about kiKabanga, more widely known as Fanagalo, the third "Rhodesia" would have been South Africa.
²⁰ With the verb –changa, to collect, bring together, mix, Kisimba evokes the social history of kiKabanga/Fanagalo. The promotion of these vehicular work languages was tied to the mining industry in South Africa, the Copperbelt, and until the First World War, in Katanga where it was then replaced by Swahili. The managers of the multi-ethnic worker’s settlements (compound, kompun, komponi signified "camp de travailleus") were called changachanga.
²¹ Kisimba used the verb –kutana, to meet. I translate it as "to find" because this seems, short of long paraphrases, to convey the point of Kisimba’ statement: Lingala was already established when we "came upon" it.
²² Kisimba, who had just agreed that Lingala was used in the training of policemen, seems to contradict himself. I have often found such contradictions in conversations with my interlocutors (I remember countless responses to questions I asked or statements I made being met with "Yes, but no"). The problem this presents is solved when one assumes that the contradiction is not logical but rhetorical, reflecting a "dialectical" style of communication.
²³ Who was Memba Prosper? In recollections of the past proper names often serve as mile posts.
²⁴ "Camps de police" were barracks as well as settlements where policemen lived with their families.
²⁵ Lit. "Our Rejoicing." Performed on August 3. 1956 at Leopold II Stadium in Lubumbashi as part of the festivities of the 50th anniversary of the Union Minière du Haut Katanga. The show featured groups of dancers and musicians from the Belgian Congo and Ruanda-Urundi.
²⁶ Jean-Marc Landier, Jacques Huisman; names of stage directors, found on the Internet through the search engine ASP@sia (Active Server Pages - Spectacles Internet Archives).
²⁷ "The reluctant doctor," a play by Molière.
²⁸ "A plan" or "an outline" was the meaning I had in mind when I used the term in paragr. 1.
²⁹ See ki-lolo in van Avermaet and Mbuya 1954: 360 as a term for a person of authority who executes the orders of a chief.
³⁰There was a joke within a joke here: Actually the phonological contrast cha/kya marks the difference between tshiLuba and kiLuba speakers and it is the (often rural) Luba Katanga, Kisimba’s own group, that are made fun of by Lubumbashi urbanites when the phonological rules of their language ruin onomatopoetic effect of Chachacha (the sound of airbrakes on modern busses). Kisimba was not fooled by my deflecting the stereotype on the Sanga (close neighbors and fellow "Katangese") and puts it on the Bemba, a weak attempt given the phonology of Bemba (in which the prefix that serves as the vehicle of the joke is chi- rather than ki-).
³¹ Kisimba and Kalundi are trying to imitate of the Tshokwe "accent" Kalwasha puts on in sketches. In the example phrase they come up with (a person tells his guest to wait a moment so he can grill (some meat) for him) they use prosodic features (intonation and pitch) as well as morphological "mistakes" (with pronouns) that sound funny but cannot be adequately rendered in a translation, which is also always a problem with exchanges that are performative rather than explanatory.
³² Although Kisimba uses only French words in this phrase it is not clear what it means. My best guess is he wanted to say that doing accents worked best in radio shows.
³³ About Kalwasha, also known as Sondashi, see "Le pouvoir se mange entier": http://www.lpca.socsci.uva.nl/laps/lepouvoirsemangeentierintro.html#Members
³⁴ Literally its says "I left them in Europe." The context suggests that he does not refer to people he was touring with; "them" are the people in Europe.
³⁵ This is Lingala, perhaps an echo of some political slogan (tosalisana, we help each other).
³⁶ I came up with the Swahili term because I remembered seeing it on posters in the Zinc plant where I did research in the seventies.
³⁷ I began the question with paka, only, but suggesting that only the parents spoke Swahili would not make sense. So the meaning (caught by Kisimba) was something like "But what about the parents"?
³⁸ Kisimba does not complete the sentence, Kalundi elaborates on the meaning of mushenzi.
³⁹Of the two examples given (lu)pawa is kiLuba (van Avermaet and Mbuya 1954:505) and I never heard an English loan word for kisu.
⁴⁰Kalundi packs this in one word, kimbulubulu, the language of, or the way bulu, whites, talk; from Afrikaans boer. Duplication of term expresses contempt or derision. Perhaps bulu was a more or less neutral designation, the equivalent of muzungu, when it was used, as I assume, in Fanagalo/Kikabanga. The few times I heard it speakers left no doubt that it was an expression of disrespect.
⁴¹ We were disturbed by traffic at the office that kept a door squeaking.
⁴² Kalundi says kashop, English shop+diminutive prefix.
⁴³There is a lack of precision in this part of our exchange. The term cité (which I translate as township or settlement) was used above all to contrast parts of the town inhabited by African with the center that was reserved for Europeans (and their domestic personnel). It could also designate government- from company-administrated settlements. In late colonial and post-colonial times squatters towns were also called cités. Company towns were officially cités de travailleurs; in popular language they were usually but not consistently referred to as compound (kompund, komponi) or camp.
⁴⁴ Because part of Kalundi’s statement is not comprehensible (in the recording) it is difficult to make out why the recruits from Nyasaland were brought up again. Historically, they were among the earliest employees in the local mines.
⁴⁵ I first found the term kipalo (probably Bemba) in the Vocabulaire where it is explained in a footnote. http://www. lpca.socsci.uva.nl/aps/vol4/vocabulaireshabaswahili.html.
Professor Donatien Dibwe of the University of Lubumbashi kindly provided the following information: Kipalo inatokea ku luga ya bemba. "Kipala" mu luga ya kibemba ni kusema "être pris au hasard pour des travaux forcés" (in the Bemba language "kipala" means: being picked up at random for forced labor). See also the Vocabulaire, with a note on recruiters: http://www.lpca.socsci.uva.nl/aps/vol4/vocabulaireshabaswahili.html
⁴⁶This was the popular name of the first mining site of the Union Minière ("behind Ruashi township), officially the Mine d’etoile. On Kalukuluku see the Vocabulaire: http://www.lpca.socsci.uva.nl/aps/vol4/vocabulaireshabaswahili.html
⁴⁷ In my question and in Kisimba’s response we speak of kabila moya, one ethnic group or the same ethnic group. The latter doesn’t make sense unless, the nduku, brother, mentioned a few lines earlier was meant in the larger sense of companion, friend.
⁴⁸ When Kisimba said about a Tshokwe yee hapana kusema, he does not speak, he himself used a pidgin form, an example of "bad Swahili" (but current in Shaba Swahili).
⁴⁹ Kisimba said baliingisha, lit. they caused to enter. Historically it would be more accurate to say they promoted or contributed to the spread of Swahili in the North. The language had already been established by Swahili traders and colonists.
⁵⁰The standard Swahili dictionary has siri, secret. Msirini could be "in a secret place." In a short vocabulary from the Comoros Islands I found it translated as "at the Mosque." http://missngazidjaland.skyrock.com/3.htmls
⁵¹ This is what I hear on the recording but I have been unable to identify the expression.
⁵² The Union Minière/Gécamines company journal, see also: http://www.lpca.socsci.uva.nl/aps/mwanashabaApril1958letters.html
⁵³ I had on my mind a conversation recorded a week before this one with Kalundi and J. Matafari, the retired Swahili editor of Mwana Shaba (see the Text One in this volume of Archives of Popular Swahili).
⁵⁴ Again, this is what I hear on the recording and cannot identify. The context suggest that Kisimba refers to some kind of consultation.
⁵⁵ See note 39 above and the conversation with Matarfari and Kalundi in this volume.
⁵⁶ Sarufi, grammar, was also the title of a widely used text book published by the White Fathers; see the conversation with Matafari and Kalundi in this volume.

[Introduction]

[Text One]

[Text Two]

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