o. As a young man,Justin left Bagandou for several years to work in the city for the national post office, but he did not like the sedentary job or being supervised by a boss, so he returned home in the early 1980s blish his own small coffee, banana, and subsistence farm just outside Bagandou.This was an unconventional move among Centrafricans, who, in keeping with a still prevalent French colonial mentality, usually prize office jobs in the city and look down on those who farm the land.

for both practical and moral support during my research. Concerned with in-tellectual issues of culture and politics,Justin speaks and writes well in French and,

Moreover, one protests, f an entire, ever-changing being cannot be reduced to conveniently chosen, sifted incidents or circumstances.

1 1 also arranged to buy a used moped with a double seat, with the understanding that when 1 completed my research Justin would own the moped. In this way we shared a rutual responsibility for the vehicle.

.. Neverthe-less, I had to actively reject a role that both Africans and non-Africans in this country assumed 1 would play because of the color of my skin, my education, and my overseas origin - that of beingJustin's “employer.”

As a result of this history, most Centrafricans tend to assume that anyone coming from the outside will exploit them. Many Centrafricans I encountered believed that I would make bundles of money from a book, photos, or recordings gleaned from my re-

finally discovered that I could not fully escape what history made of me here, f forl had “walked onto a stage . . . set to play to a colonial audience,” as Edwin Wilm-Sen has noted (1989:37). Moreover, the man who made the comment that day in the BaAka camp had been partially right. Not only was the ethnography that I was ex-petted to generate in fact a commodity-an object of potential value and power gained rny being in Centrafrique-but the "experience' itself threatened to be lived as a commodity, as fodder for an ethnography. My presence had an ulterior motive, !even if it was to speak for the nonmaterial value of music, dance,language, and human !relationships. My tenuous aspiration to escape ulterioriry made the man's comment all the more frustrating.
The way to oppose the lingering effects of the colonial past,it seemed to me, was !to take hold of the historically defined relationships imposed on myself,Justin, and the BaAka with whom we would work and knowingly struggle against that history, re-shaping our relationships to fit our respective values and actual situation.Justin and I decided that the money for my project would be available for our collective necessi- I ties instead of my paying him a “salary.” For Justin, this arrangement had several ad-vantages, Itliberated him from a social obligation to give his money to undeserving but }insistent relatives who would otherwise assume, because he was working with me, that \^he always had extra cash. This way we could instead apply the funds to our projects Iq!(my learning, his farming) as required, while keeping on hand emergency resources-first aid supplies and petty cash-for family, friends, and neighbors in need,
Through this arrangement I was spared the untenable role of being my host's em-ployer and was better situated to construct my ownidentity and relationships free from t the weightiest colonial baggage. It might. have been simpler and in fact cheaper just to establish a fixed salary, the way other researchers and business people usually do. Our way, by contrast, would require a constant effort to renegotiate financial matters ac-cording to changing mutualobligations, fluctuating priorities, and emerging circum- ,But,I felt, such negotiation would arise in response to those very real circum-stances and would therefore suit our living relationship.

“1 know sharing is the thing here: I wrote in my journal. After all,they were sharing most of what they had with me (and whar I had with others). ”

He decided to put up a sign warnin mauthorized pilferers, but the sign soon mysteriously disappeared. Finally, he chopped \ down his sugar cane, eliminating the problem altogether.

Mab (pro )mah-bho) is a specific dance form, and in the Bagandou area in the late 1980s it was the most popular of the BaAka dances.9 . Most Bagandou BaAka have learned Mabo from the BaAka of Minjoukou, in the Cong, a village with which some Bagandou BaAka have marriage and travel ties (see Figure 1-1 and chapter 5). The Kenga BaAka,bv contrasL have no snecial ties to the BaAka of the Congo, and consequently the source of Mabo for them is the BaAka of Bagandou.

it is the traditional territory of the Bembangana group, but individuals in r.he Bongboku group are often more successful hunters, drawing accusations of sorcery from the oth-ers. .

in-terviewed a Moaka named Lond, one of many “masters” or “owners” (ba ginda, ba of Mabo.

Being a newcomer, 1 complied. Although l fek good about giving BaAka something they like in return for hospitality and meat, a supply of cigarettes also tended to attract hangers-on who would come around just to mooch a smoke. ThiS one-sided exchange was to me a sign that there was somethinginherently wrong with the practice. Besides,I was uncomfortable giving cigarettes, which I disfike and know to be harmful, and I vowed t.hat when 1 came to stay longer 1 would fmd other means of exchange. Aker-native articles were unfortunately more expensive and heavier to carry through the than cigarettes. But 1 felt better dispensing salt and soap, as well as medicine when necessary, and occasionally giving spearheads and axeheads, cooking pots, and cloth. From the beginning, I tried to explain toJustin thatl did not. want to base my first acquaintances with BaAka on an exchange of commodities for knowledge, but I did want to make it clear that I was willing to give as well as to receive.

He thought that we would suffer at Ndanga for lack of meat and that people would never volunteer to teach me anything. I argued that may'oe l could not buy an of the world of the pygmies without cigarettes, but that 1 did not want to buy it.l rather wanted to earn it. Also, I was gambling on the assumption that once I showed a sincere and sustained interest in cultural matters, people would be drawn ro discussion and sociability. It was upserting for me to hear hirn say he thought l was wrongin taking this gamble, a gamble on which 1 based much of the in-tegrity of my research. That evening, both of us angry after our argument, we were silently preparing some simple spaghetti from our supplies. Suddenly Duambongo, a man soon to become our friend, appeared out of the dark holding two legs of a mo-some duiker from that day's net hunt. One leg was a gift from himself, and the other was from his older brother, Elanga. After a dipiomatic interval,lustin conceded that I had been right about the cigarette business.
An incident many months later underlined my triumph in the cigarette matter. I was walking along the road in the village of Bagandou wit.h Sandimba's son, a young man called Ndanga (named for his birthplace). We were on our way to a BaAka dance in a camp just off the road, and as we walked villagers greeted us. One jovial milo called out that Ndanga is lucky to be with me, because I must be giving him lots of cig-rettes. Ndanga called back that, no,I don't give him cigarettes because cigarettes make you sick with coughing. Of course, were someone to have offered Ndanga a cigarette at he would have gladly accepted, but he showed me he understood and re-spected my position.

During a casual visit at our camp, Mbousalong, a respected elder hunter, told us that at a BaAka settlement called Kpeta in the Congo (near Mopoutou, where Eiamba orig-inated), BaAka acquire Elamba by communicating with the dead. They do “human sac-rifices,” he continued, pledging the life or health of a relative via sorcery in order to ob-tain the power of the dance.imba later told us a similar tale.

We began by asking Sandimba where, in her opinion, the best Elamba dancers live. She answered without hesitation-Mopoutou in the Congo. She had heard, she said, that a woman named Bongoi is t.he ginda and is in fact the mother of the eboka,the one who had founded the dance. Sandimba added that she was planning to take a trip there herself, with her daughter Kwanga and some others, to get the younger and to see how the people in Mopoutou dance the “real dance”

We had the rest of that day free to spend in Mongoumba, and I wanted to meet ' BaAka from this region. This is where Simha Arom had recorded his impressive album Anthologie de la musique des Pygmtes Aha (1978). When I had played a tape of that for BaAkain Bagandou and Kenga, they had not recognized the songs. Yet the album presents the songs as a definitive, classical-type repenoire of “the Aka.”

When we menuoned Mabo, they knew what we were talking about but said that they call the same dance Mondimba, the name of the raffia version of the Mabo mask (raffia is readily available here near the rivers). They also knew Ndamb,as well as another dance known as Edjengiin Bagandou and further to the west. Here,however, they called Edjengi by a more generic term for dancing spirirs, molwndi (chapters 8 and 9). They were not familiar with Dingboku or Elamba but said they have a dance named Lemle, which theylearned from BaAka who live across the Ouban-gui, in Zaire. It was beginning to seem as if the BaAka repertoire is determined largely I by the flow o{ social interaction and travel between groups in different areas but that variations particular to one locality are also common.

I had a tourist visa, which was the only feasible way for me to enter the Congo; of: t fzcial Congolese research permits would have entailed a trip to faraway Brazzaville,which was beyond my means. I had decided to risk not having a permit because.Justin had assured me that this area of the Congo is so remote t.hat we would never be ques-tioned. Unfortunately, times had changed sinceJustin's last visit here ten years earlier,I and there were now police posts in the remotest areas. Hoping to get by, we told the Chef that I was taking a break from my research in Centrafrique so that we could visit Justins cousin Maurice, a prominent man in Mopoutou.

BaAka in Boyele smiled and gathered around excitedly in response to my interest in their be'ooka. Like the BaAka of Mongoumba, they did not know gano or Komba-and they used the term dzambe for “god.” One middle-aged woman did say that she had heard of Komba, but she was among those originally from Bagandou. She added that she did not know much about such things of her parents'generation. They were not fa-miliar with Dingboku or Elamba either but said they did know another women's dance.In fact, there was to be a funeral eboka that very afternoon, and they planned to include }this women's dance-at which timelintended among other things to take note of the name. Unfortunately, the lumber truck arrived in the meantime, and I had to forgo the eboka.

Cousin Etienne, who is fluent in Diaka himself, chimed in amiably, describing to them the possible forest routes from Bagandou to Enyele.I took this chance to ask thero if they knew the women's dance, Elamba. They in fact did but preferred to call it by an older name, Monira When 1 mentioned Komba, they replied, as had the other BaAka along the route so tar, that they did not know Komba or gano. They did know the dances Mabo and Ndamb, however.

of the rnen, who identified him-self as “Jean-Pierre” (pronounced dza-pyerreh), told us that as far as he knew, Bongoi,the mother of EIamba, was indeed in Mopoutou. He also informed us that the BaAka of Mopoutou are familiar with all the dances popular in Bagandou and eveninclude Ed- I jengi, a BaAka spirit dance (chapters 8 and 9) in their active repertoire. He also said }there are some elders who are expert at telling gano that feature Komba. Compared with my impressions of some of the places we had seen along the way, Mopoutou sounded like a rich spot for BaAka culture. Since these men had just come from the large Congo town of Impfond,1 was curious to ask them whatlife is like for BaAka there. They explained thatinlmpfondo the BaAka mix their dances with the bilo. They do Mabo, but not well, they said, and sometimes even bilo join the dance to impmve their own hunting. They said that BaAka in Imfondo speak both Diaka and Lingala. I

While we chatted that first morning sitting in front of Maurice's house, Bongoi was joined by her husband, Kuornbo. They explained how Elamba had come to be: while travelingin an area to the south, Bongoi's older sister, now deceased, had once seen a new dance style that she liked, and, on returning to Mopoutou, she and Bongoi had in-terpreted the interjected that years ago he had seen village women in the Congo perform a dance that reminded him of Elamba; swinging the hips is a move-ment more common among bil, and this aspect of Elamba is somewhat unique among the usually square-hipped BaAka dancing styles. But Bongoi insisted that Elamba was never a bilo dance. Kuombo said, rather, that Elamba is based on r.he style of a now rare BaAka hunting eboka called DjoboIw (see Bahuchet 1985:434.) Boursier notes that for Baka pygmies of Cameroon, Djoboko (Jobolw) is a spirit force that presides over a “rite” called Yeli, blessing the hunt and calling for an abundance of game (1991:26). A connection of Djoboko with womens dances, then, may be more wide-spread than Elamba, taking shape differentlyin various regions and changing over time.
p 68 here, there is more descriptive detail

. Some of the newest songs had not yet reached Bagandou, andllooked forward to bringing recordings of these back with me. There were also some slight differences in the way they sang the background parts and elaborauons for a few of the songs l knew,including “Mama Angeli.”

Over Lime 1 came to understand the Mabo songs by hearing people sing phrases during the day, and 1 often discovered that these melodies were actually isolated parts of Mabo songs One day, 1 was walking to our camp on my way back from the village.Along the pathl came upon Djongi's daughter, Mokoti, and some younger children. As they scurried alongin front of me, Mokoti sang out the phrase of a song. I recognized then that it was the main theme of one Mabo song very popular at the time, “Makala”

Though the trend-setters and song composers of Mabo come from the Cong, local varia|_l also come about in Bagandou as elsewhere.7 Songs fade in and out of popularity with l each season, but melodies from past seasons can come back in waves of fashion after a rest period.

The song was “Makala,” and singingit came more easily to me while I danced. As I moved around the circle, the voices of different people stood out at moments, affecting my own singing and my choices of variations. Ndami sang a yodeled elaboration I had not heard before.I could feel fully the interrneshing of sound and motion and move with /it as it transformed, folding in upon itself. This was different from listening or singing on the sidelines because, while moving with the circle, I became an active part of the /kaleidoscope. I was pan of r.he changing design inside the scope, instead of look-ing at it and projecting in.

I sat beside l<wanga and other women who were taking a break from dancing to sing from the sidelines.l noticed that some singers repeated only one or two variations of a melody dunng a given song, or dropped out For a while and then rejoined the cho-rus later. Other singers skipped around between several elaborate variations and then joined friends in emphasizing and repeating one particular melody fragment.

although Ndambo was being performed on occasion, it was overshadowed by the pop-ularity of the newer dances.

especially regard clothing and other commodities (such as nonfunctioning watches) asindications-primarily f to each other-that they are hip to the modern world. Big dances near the village are fitting opportunities for such expression.

egalitarian social systems ... u “(hose in which the labor or obedience of one adult cannot be coerced by another adult. Members retain the prerogative of withdrawing from untenable relationships or coeKive commands” (Roseman 1984:413, cites Fried, Collier, and Rosaido);r An "egal-this sense makes for a cultural climate of constant negotiation

Here the autonomy aspect of egaluarian practice superseded the sharing aspect;

BaAka women can use the round leaf huts they build as leverage in serious dis-putes with their husbands. During one fight about Bandit's alleged infidelity, Doua took her hut completely apart and went to live in her natal camp with her mother, leaving Bandit with nowhere to sleep. Eventually he made up with her, and she returned. But an angry wife takes her hut apart in stages, depending on how furious she is with her husband. Once this season, Duambongo's wife, Mokpake, upset with her husband's drunkenness, removed all the leaves from their hut. Before going further, 'however, she allowed her neighbors to convince her not to take the next and more se-rious step of dismantling the “skeleton,” the dome frame of saplings. After a few days her anger subsided, and she covered the frame with new, waterproof mongongo leaves.Turnbull tells a similar story among the Bambuti (1961:132-3).

? if sheis not the most skilled dancer in the group, her personality makes her a leader, a socioesthetic steerswoman. When initiative might make a difference, she usually takes it, and when someone's behavior is gettingin the way of a performance, she often chastises the offender.

l Their male identities are therefore suddenly derived more from labor and consump-tion than from production. BaAka men also transport water for bilo households, a task normally performed by village women. BaAka men are thereby feminized in the eyes of the bil, and perhaps in their own eyes as well. follows that some of these men find the assertive, playful women's dances more threatening than otherwise. My preseMy presence and myinterest in the women, under these circumstances, rnay have also heightened the mens envy.

\ do not mean necessarily to link gender tension with gender nequality, but such tension does suggest a time of flux, a struggle between parties to relationships.

be seen as subversive insofar as women,through perfomnance, define and assert their gendered experience within a relatively egalitarian but still periodically male-dominated environment. But BaAka also show roles and gender relationships, various kinds of versive repetition" in response to changing circumstances-

Duxing that long season near Bagandou village in 1988, rumors began to circulate that.some people thought BaAka dances like Mabo were “satanic” (ba sata). Suddenly Elongo and other ardent nzapa followers refused to participate in beboka and started accusing other BaAka of being satanic. A split developed between those

Elanga explained to me that for the dance Edjengi each family has its personalized bedjo. But in 1989 the BaAka of Bagandou rarely performed Edjengi any-nore. In some regions Edjengiis associated with elephant hunting; it may have gained in prominence during the colonialivory trade, and since that trade waned, the dance also faded (cf. Bahuchet 1979:76). But, startingin 1992, Edjengi appeared again in the Bagandou area in revival form (chapter 9).

African pygmies are “conscious of being part of a cultural group that is different. But the extent to which they are treated as socially inferior does not escape them. There-fore, the main reason, as they admit, that . . . 'we want to be like the villagers: is to be-come full citizens” (1991b:12, my translation).

set forth the shrewd,comic moti that,despite the bilo's pretensions to appear so-phisticated and superior, they are apes at heart..

But, my mind protested (1 could her, since1 had to wait until she pushed the “over” button on the radio),individual villagers have vested interests in converting BaAka, whether or not they themselves are sincere believers. Greater access to the cash economy, command of the I:renchlanguage,and controlof the written word allow bilo such as Gombo and Maxim to readily dominate neophyte BaAka “Christians,” while claiming to liberate them (and the false piety of these particular evangelists became plain later; see chapter 9). Fear of

reason might be related to the fiip side of the ape I premise, which is that BaAka, when they die, become white people ("bounjon")-real people, as they say.

In any event, despite the resistance strategies that BaAka have developed over the long term, at Dzanga it looked as if BaAka were culturally unprepared to resist or con-trol missionization,

is new to rhem; their expertise is in hunting. Ironically, what the mis-SiOMries offer, then, canlooklike a way to bypass the bil, to jump ahead into this neW “modern” world of survival and independence-a smiling white woman asserting the

. Although the form of this song was not as dynamic as most BaAka singing, it carried an unmistakably BaAka sensibility.This was the first time l'd seen BaAka reconfigure Christian materialinto their own style.

we had made our comparisons, the women went on to sing something that amazed me.lt was apparently an Elamba song, but it was unlike anything I had heard in Bagandou. Listening to it made my head swirl. This song must have been develop-ing for some time, becoming more abstract as ume went on, the longer themes and phrases now elaborated into flurries of intricate parts (CD 2:12, third song). This made me realize that, had 1 begun my studies in this region, it probably would have been

along the road, and villagers told me about how the coffee industry had been suffering for the past several years. Because of the slump in the international market, many farmers had decided not to harvest their coffee at all this year, and, since BaAka were not needed to help with the labor, most had remained in forest camps.

. We visited with him under a thatch awning where he was resting. As we chat.ted, Gbenda told us that he is a ginda of a new version of Edjengi, now pronounced Njengi. It seemed that a revival of this dance for t.he big game hunt had recently made its way up from Minjoukou in the Congo to the Bagan-dou area.ln fact, he said that Njengi had already surpassed Mabo as the preferred dance in many areas, Gbenda pointed to a leaf-walled enclosure in the bushes behind him that served as the secret preparation place or the Njengi mask.

I observed that many of the most adamant nzapa followers among BaAka are I men like this one and like Elongo (chapter 8), who would otherwise be on the fringes of the community because of a lack of hunting skillor other socialimpairment but who use nzapa as an opportunity to gain influence. These people tend to be the ones who ]repeat most adamantly that BaAka dances are satanic.

He added that an alternate name for the new Njengiis Nyama, meaning “meat”; during Njengi the ginda can determine in which direcuon the spear-hunting party should go and can divine how many animals they will find. I did not quite understand the relation-ship between the old and the new versions of the dance, and there was not always con-sensus on this topic, though some men later explained that Njengi is the “child” of Ed-jengi. Most people agreed that Njengi has new steps and songs but that the drum rhythms and the style of singing are the same as in Edjengi.

In both cases, an eboka can emerge as a mystical, dreamed gift within a family, transferred across genders and across the threshold of death-for ex-

by extension, their entire clan Ndanga-with the negative sorcery rumors. Gbenda at Bopouni had said that Njengi was being rejected by many BaAka on the Bombolongo clan path, where there were nzapa followers. The seeds had been sown, then, for a gnarly conflict related to the nzapa controversy, and the Njengi revival was bringing it into focus.

was confused as lo why the young people of Ndanga were dancingin this sryle untilllearned that they had seen it in Bagandou village, where bilo teenagers too were recreating Bolernba pygmy dances; it had become a teenage trend throughout the re- I gion. But here at Ndanga they were calling this dance the “god dance,” the same name they had used a few years earlier for the informal preaching and hymn singing (chap-ter 8), when many BaAka had been debating the value of the Christian material. Here the overt controversy had been settled by now; Djolo explained to me that the “god dance” is just one among many beboka, and they could dance their own dances and still"pray to god." Apparently BaAka in the area were now performing the “god dance” \regularly at funerals, a response to exhortations by Christians that nzapa be addressed in the circumstance of death so as to avoid bad spirits and evil in general. But the in-creasingly eclecuc “god dance,” about which I would soon learn more, was now poised uneasily within a wider, dynamic BaAka repertoire thar also included Ekpelu and Njengi, all vying to define an emerging identity

The families of Djolo and Elanga had seen too many deaths at Ndanga, and, following a BaAka tradition, they decided to abandon that location,including the new mudwall huts and the fields they had cleared

1 could hear some Grace Brethren songs,which were preceded and followed by Bolemba-style interpretations of hymns from various Christian sects represented in Bagandou,including Baptist, Apos-tolic, and even Catholic hymns. They not only blended all that into the same dance but also mixed in Afro-pop snippets in Lingala (from radio tunes broadcast from Bangui and Brazzaville). I'hey were calling this entire mixture the “god dance.” Puzzling over this transition at Dzanga from hymns in “church” to dancing,I asked a Moaka whether, ,as some had claimed, it was Bala-bala who taught them this dance. He said yes, and ;when, incredulous, I asked how she actually dances, he demonstrated by imitating her body as she piayed the guitar to accompany hymns.

As llistened to this performance at Dzanga,l began to view this developing ex pressive forrn,the “god dance,” as a means of addressing modernity.ln an effort to rein-vent themselves as competent in a changing world, these BaAka were claiming any “otherness” that surrounds them and usually excludes them and mixingit into a form they could define and control.

only to learn that the Congolese national elections, which had been postponed time after time, were actually to take ptace the following day.Justin's cousin Maurice greeted us nervously. Violence often ac-companies elections here, and he was not pleased that two foreigners-Justin and l-

many BaAka have the resilience to use the missionary presence to their advantage, even though some of the BaAka most directly affected might be stripped of the expressive tools to construct a future. I

When I asked Justin his opinion, he observed in private that he was per-plexed; in his experience with BaAka and other local cultures, negative sorcery is never connected to music and dance, which to the contrary is always aimed at positive things like healing, social harmony, or food. A full picture of Njengi as a cultural complex