KISHI-DANCE.
MASK OF A KISHI-DANCER.
The band was never allowed to perform without express orders from the king, but was required to hold itself in constant readiness; its services were always brought into requisition on his entry into the town, and whenever he honoured any public dances, weddings, or other festivities with his presence. Besides the three kinds of drums, the myrimbas, and the zither-like sylimbas, I noticed that the orchestra included some stringed instruments made of the ribs of fan-palms, as well as some iron bells, one sort being double and without clappers, some rattles made of fruit shells, and various pipes formed of ivory, wood, or reeds. The stringed instruments are used at the elephant-dance, the bells at the kishi-dance, and the rattles at weddings. On the occasion of the Masupia prophetic dance, the king lends a number of hollow bottle-shaped gourd-shells filled with dry seeds, which, when they are rattled, are exceedingly noisy. Rattles, bells, and pipes, as well as guitars of a simple make, were to be found amongst the ordinary population, but all the larger and more elaborate instruments were confined to the royal band, consequently I was unable to get hold of any proper specimen of this class of native handicraft for my collection. In nearly all settlements small drums are kept in the council-hut, and are beaten on the occasion of any successful hunting-excursion, and at funerals.
The Marutse-Mabunda melodies are somewhat monotonous, but they are very numerous, and are of a character that make it evident that a little cultivation would soon effect a decided improvement in them. Of course the ordinary manipulation of the different instruments is purely mechanical; but amongst the king’s zither-players I observed two grey-headed old men, who really displayed some amount of taste. As they hummed I could hear that their voices were precisely in time with their instruments, gradually sinking to a whisper in the pianissimo part, and as gradually rising to a forte when the tune required it. Their performance was a pleasant contrast to the discordant shouts of the head drummer, who strove to compete with the noise of his own huge instrument.
There is one more instrument which I much regret to have met with in the Marutse country at all, but which must not be omitted from the enumeration. I allude to the war-drum. In the council-hall there were four of these ghastly-looking objects. The skins were painted all over with red, to represent blood, and they were filled with fragments of dry flesh and bones, these bones being principally the toes and fingers of the live children of distinguished parents, and supposed to be amulets to protect the rising town of Sesheke from fire and sword, and to guard the kingdom generally from assault and rapine.
Singing amongst the Marutse-Mabunda people is better than amongst the Bechuanas, and may be said in many respects to equal that of the Matabele Zulus, though still inferior in the great songs of war and death.
The dance to which I have said the king invited me on the 26th was called the kishi-dance, and is never performed except by the king’s order. Its main object seems to be to inflame animal passion, and it is danced by two men, one of whom is supposed to represent a woman, or occasionally by two couples. The performers step forward from a group of young people, who are all singing most vigorously, and clapping their hands in time to the great tubular drums that are being sounded. Having turned their faces towards the king, they commence a series of gestures indicating, with many contortions, the advances of one party coquettishly rejected by the other. The costumes being royal property I failed to get possession of any of them. They consist of a mask with a network attached to it, and a peculiar covering for the loins. The masks, which are a specialité in Mabunda handicraft, are modelled by boys from clay and cow-dung, and painted with chalk and red ochre. They are considerably larger than the head, completely covering the neck. Altogether they bear a sort of resemblance to a helmet with a vizor; small openings are left for the eyes and mouth, and sometimes for the nose; upon the top are knobs adorned in the middle with an ornament made from the tail of a striped gnu, and at the sides with bunches of feathers; the tout ensemble is not unlike that of a gurgoyle. Attached to the head-piece, and covering the shoulders, is a long, tight jacket of netted bast, with close-fitting sleeves. Gloves and stockings of the same material are likewise worn. The performer personating a woman wears a woollen skirt, reaching from the waist to the ankles, over which is the skin of an animal hanging down before and behind. The only distinction between the male and female mask is that the ornament on the male is more elaborate, and that a wisp of straw is twisted round the neck of the female. A steel girdle is worn round the waist, to the back of which a number of small bells is attached, keeping up a tinkling upon the slightest movement. The dance is repeated in public almost every fortnight. It attracts a large number of spectators at every performance, but children are not allowed to be present.
On the 27th I saw some people of the Alumba tribe, who had their hair dressed in a very peculiar fashion. Over the scalp it was divided into four rows of tufts, nearly two and a half inches long, which were so thickly plastered over with a mixture of grease and manganese that the mass of the hair was completely embedded, and nothing left to appear but the ends of the tufts. Some of the Marutse wore pangolin scales round their necks, or pieces of a kind of tortoiseshell, with which they are skilful in stanching blood. I was also shown a piece of wood, which is a remedy for whooping-cough, being sucked by children with good effect.