Innovation crushing cultural memory: harps in South Cameroon
Résumé
Musical instruments are particular carriers of cultural knowledge and history. Their
variability over time may be a testimony to the individual or collective creativity which is
inherent in a living tradition. Instruments may also be indicators of social, cultural and
religious change. The objective of this essay is to illustrate this phenomenon through the
study of the eight-stringed ngueme harp among the Fang Ntumu in South Cameroon.1 On one
hand, historical sources – recordings, photos and descriptions – going back to the German
colonization at the beginning of the 19th century show some harps with a sculpture
representing a man. On the other hand, the current practice of a harp with a polychrome
female sculpture in the context of the syncretic Bwiti cult (see below, p. 2-3). The difference
between these instruments – all of them named ngomo or ngueme according to dialect –
raises the question of how such a change could have occurred2
This article illustrates and deepens an observation made in 1985 by Pierre Sallée in
his doctoral thesis on the harp in Gabon.3 This French researcher, who passed away too soon,
had noted that, although the Fang no longer remember it, a harp of slightly different
morphology had existed in their culture long before the reintroduction of this instrument
through the borrowing of the Bwiti cult in which the harp is currently practised among the
Fang. I corroborate this finding with material evidence from South Cameroon.
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