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Communication dans un congrès Année : 2019

Innovation crushing cultural memory: harps in South Cameroon

Résumé

Musical instruments are particular carriers of cultural knowledge and history. Their variability may be a testimony of social, cultural and religious changes. The present talk is to illustrate this phenomenon through the study of the 8-stringed ngomo harp among the Fang-people in the triangle between Cameroon, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea. On one hand, historical sources – recordings, photos and descriptions – of a male-shaped harp going back to the German colonization at the beginning of the 19th century. On the other hand, a current vivid creation of female-shaped harps within the syncretic Bwiti-cult that has been imported in the area about 50 years ago. Detailed ethnography and formal analysis of forms and colours of the actual instruments and the contexts of their play reveals how the historical anchorage of the practice in the traditional culture has been totally eclipsed by the recent practice. The former harp and its use have been forgotten and memories about it only emerge thanks to the historical sources. The anthropological issue of the phenomenon is that the change of the social and religious background conceals the permanence of the use of this instrument in the culture of the Fang-Ntumu by replacing a former instrument and its function by a new tradition. A secondary issue is the fact that this emic perception questions the validity of the universal organological typology which makes the scholar perceive both instrument-types as being equivalent whereas the culture bearers conceive them as being ontologically different.
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Dates et versions

halshs-03978793, version 1 (08-02-2023)

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  • HAL Id : halshs-03978793 , version 1

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Susanne Fürniss. Innovation crushing cultural memory: harps in South Cameroon. ICTM 45th World-Conference, University Chulalongkorn Bangkok, Jul 2019, Bangkok, Thailand. ⟨halshs-03978793⟩
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Dernière date de mise à jour le 07/04/2024
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