No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
“How will God hear us?”: Sonic and linguistic difference among Kinshasa’s Églises des Noirs
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 July 2023
Abstract
This article studies how anti-Christian, ‘traditionally African’ organizations, locally known as Églises des Noirs, navigate religious competition in the Congolese capital through sonic and linguistic strategies. It focuses on the understudied Mpadist community, a ‘dissident’ branch of the better known Kimbanguist church. Mpadists mobilize diverging appreciations and meanings of sound and language to set themselves apart from the dominant Lingalaphone Pentecostal loudness of the city. In doing so, they pursue a delicate balance between Kongo traditionalism, the source of their spiritual legitimacy, rooted in colonial prophetic movements, and tactics of ‘modern’ community making in order to remain competitive within Kinshasa’s prolific religious setting. The article argues that ideologies of sound and language should be analysed within the same nexus, for they operate and are operationalized in similar ways. It therefore proposes to expand the sociolinguistic notion of indexicality to incorporate elements of the volume and modalities of sound making. The article also shows that sonic and linguistic ideologies are bound by context. In Kinshasa’s ‘low-fi’ soundscape, the indexical values of the languages Kikongo and Lingala, and of unamplified and amplified sound production, share similar features, yet they are evaluated differently in rural ‘hi-fi’ sonic environments.
Résumé
Cet article étudie la manière dont des organisations anti-chrétiennes « traditionnellement africaines », localement connues sous le nom d’Églises des Noirs, font face à la concurrence religieuse dans la capitale congolaise par le biais de stratégies soniques et linguistiques. Il se concentre sur la communauté peu étudiée des mpadistes, une branche « dissidente » de l’Église kimbanguiste mieux connue. Les mpadistes mobilisent des appréciations et des sens du son et du langage divergents pour se distinguer de la bruyante communauté pentecôtiste lingalaphone dominante de la ville. Ce faisant, ils recherchent un équilibre délicat entre traditionalisme kongo d’une part, source de leur légitimité spirituelle et ancré dans les mouvements prophétiques coloniaux, et tactiques de construction communautaire « moderne » d’autre part, pour rester compétitifs dans le milieu religieux prolifique de Kinshasa. L’article soutient qu’il conviendrait d’analyser les idéologies du son et du langage dans un même nexus, car ils opèrent et sont opérationalisés de façon similaire. Il propose par conséquent d’étendre la notion sociolinguistique d’indexicalité pour incorporer des éléments de volume et de modalités de production du son. L’article montre également que les idéologies soniques et linguistiques sont liées par contexte. Dans le paysage sonore « low-fi » de Kinshasa, les valeurs indexicales des langues kikongo et lingala, et de la production de son non amplifié et amplifié, présentent des particularités similaires, et sont pourtant évaluées différemment dans les environnements soniques « hi-fi » ruraux.
Resumo
Este artigo estuda a forma como as organizações anticristãs e ‘tradicionalmente africanas’, conhecidas localmente como Églises des Noirs, navegam a competição religiosa na capital congolesa através de estratégias sonoras e linguísticas. Centra-se na pouco estudada comunidade mpadista, um ramo ‘dissidente’ da mais conhecida igreja kimbanguista. Os mpadistas mobilizam apreciações e significados divergentes de som e linguagem para se diferenciarem do ruído Pentecostal lingalafono dominante da cidade. Ao fazê-lo, procuram um equilíbrio delicado entre o tradicionalismo kongo, a fonte da sua legitimidade espiritual, enraizada nos movimentos proféticos coloniais, e as tácticas de criação de comunidades ‘modernas’, a fim de se manterem competitivos no prolífico cenário religioso de Kinshasa. Este artigo argumenta que ideologias de som e linguagem devem ser analisadas no âmbito do mesmo nexo, uma vez que operam e são operacionalizadas de formas semelhantes. Propõe, por isso, alargar a noção sociolinguística de indexicalidade para incorporar elementos do volume e das modalidades de produção de som. O artigo também mostra que as ideologias sonoras e linguísticas estão ligadas pelo contexto. Na paisagem sonora ‘low-fi’ de Kinshasa, os valores indexicais das línguas kikongo e lingala, e da produção de som não amplificado e amplificado, partilham características semelhantes, no entanto são avaliados de forma diferente em ambientes sonoros rurais qualificados como ‘hi-fi’.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the International African Institute
References
Alhourani, A. R. (2015) ‘Aesthetics of Muslim public and community formations in Cape Town: observations of an anthropologist’, Anthropology Southern Africa 38 (1–2): 103–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arkette, S. (2004) ‘Sounds like city’, Theory, Culture and Society 21 (1): 159–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arthur, J. (2017) ‘The drum wars: the clash of religious groups in a cosmopolitan city’, Journal for the Study of the Religions of Africa and Its Diaspora 3 (1): 21–35.Google Scholar
Atkinson, R. (2007) ‘Ecology of sound: the sonic order of urban space’, Urban Studies 44 (10): 1905–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Balandier, G. (1953) ‘Messianismes et nationalismes en Afrique noire’, Cahiers Internationaux de la Sociologie 14: 41–65.Google Scholar
Bokamba, E. (2009) ‘The spread of Lingala as a lingua franca in the Congo basin’ in McLaughlin, F. (ed.), The Languages of Urban Africa. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Bostoen, K. and de Schryver, G.-M. (2018) ‘Seventeenth-century Kikongo is not the ancestor of present-day Kikongo’ in Bostoen, K. and Brinkman, I. (eds), The Kongo Kingdom: the origins, dynamics and cosmopolitan culture of an African polity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Büscher, K., D’Hondt, S. and Meeuwis, M. (2013) ‘Recruiting a nonlocal language for performing local identity: indexical appropriations of Lingala in the Congolese border town Goma’, Language in Society 42 (5): 527–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cardoso, L. (2019) Sound-Politics in São Paulo. New York NY: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chandola, T. (2012) ‘Listening into others: moralising the soundscapes in Delhi’, International Development Planning Review 34 (4): 391–408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corbin, A. (1998) Village Bells: sound and meaning in the 19th-century French countryside. New York NY: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Covington-Ward, Y. (2016) Gesture and Power: religion, nationalism, and everyday performance in Congo. Durham NC and London: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
De Boeck, F. (2005) ‘The apocalyptic interlude: revealing death in Kinshasa’, African Studies Review 48 (2): 11–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Boeck, F. (2015) ‘“Poverty” and the politics of syncopation: urban examples from Kinshasa (DR Congo)’, Current Anthropology 56: 146–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Boeck, F. and Plissart, M.-F. (2004) Kinshasa: tales of the invisible city. Ghent: Ludion.Google Scholar
De Coene, P., Luyckfasseel, M. and Mathys, G. (2022) ‘Voices from exile: the Mpadist Mission des Noirs in Oshwe’s prison camps in the Belgian Congo (1940–1960)’, International Journal of African Historical Studies 55 (1): 89–114.Google Scholar
Demart, S., Meiers, B. and Mélice, A. (2013) ‘Géographies religieuses et migrations postcoloniales: déclinaisons kimbanguistes, pentecôtistes, et olangistes en Belgique’, African Diaspora 6: 122–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Witte, M. (2008) ‘Accra’s sound and sacred spaces’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 32 (3): 690–907.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Etambala, Z. (2005) ‘L’Armée du Salut et la naissance de la “Mission des Noirs” au Congo belge, 1934–1940’, Annales Aequatoria 26: 67–164.Google Scholar
Fahmy, Z. (2020) Street Sounds: listening to everyday life in modern Egypt. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferguson, J. (1999) Expectations of Modernity: myths and meanings of urban life on the Zambian Copperbelt. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Gandy, M. (2014) ‘Acoustic terrains: an introduction’ in Gandy, M. and Nilsen, B. (eds), The Acoustic City. Berlin: Jovis.Google Scholar
Garrioch, D. (2003) ‘Sound of the city: the soundscape of early modern European towns’, Urban History 30 (1): 5–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gondola, C. D. (2016) Tropical Cowboys: westerns, violence, and masculinity in Kinshasa. Bloomington and Indianapolis IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Gurney, C. (1999) ‘Rattle and hum: gendered accounts of noise as a pollutant: an aural sociology of work and home’. Paper presented at the Health and Safety Authority conference, York, April.Google Scholar
Hendriks, T. (2019) ‘Queer(ing) popular culture: homo-erotic provocations from Kinshasa’, Journal of African Cultural Studies 31 (1): 71–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunt, N. R. (2013) ‘An acoustic register: rape and repetition in Congo’ in Stoler, A. L. (ed.), Imperial Debris: on ruins and ruination. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Hunt, N. R. (2016) A Nervous State: violence, remedies, and reverie in the colonial Congo. Durham NC: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ibrahim, M. (2022) ‘The clash of sound, image and light: inter- and intra-religious entanglements and contestations during Mawlūd celebrations in the city of Jos, Nigeria’, Africa 92 (5): 759–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Irvine, J. T. and Gal, S. (2000) ‘Language ideology and linguistic difference’ in Kroskrity, P. (ed.), Regimes of Language: ideologies, polities and identities. Santa Fe NM: School of American Research Press.Google Scholar
Jacobson-Widding, A. (1979) Red–White–Black as a Mode of Thought: a study of triadic classification by colours in the ritual symbolism and cognitive thought of the peoples of the Lower Kongo. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis.Google Scholar
Lambertz, P. (2018) Seekers and Things: spiritual movements and aesthetic difference in Kinshasa. New York NY: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Lambertz, P. (2020) ‘Spirit, space and evanescence: anthropological reflections on the charismatic city’. Paper presented at NYU workshop ‘Commenting on Lye Mudaba Yoka’s Signs of Life in Kinshasa’, Abu Dhabi, January.Google Scholar
Larkin, B. (2014) ‘Techniques of inattention: the mediality of loudspeakers in Nigeria’, Anthropological Quarterly 87 (4): 989–1015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Luyckfasseel, M. and Meeuwis, M. (2018) ‘Ethnicity and language in the run-up to Congolese independence in the 1950s: Ba(Ki)Kongo and Ba(Li)Ngala’, Language Matters (49) 3: 86–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mauss, M. (1925) ‘Essai sur le don: forme et raison de l’échange dans les sociétés archaïques’, L’Année Sociologique.Google Scholar
Mbasani, M. (1981) ‘Simon-Pierre Mpadi, étude biographique’, Cahiers des Religions Africaines 15 (29): 103–25.Google Scholar
Mbembe, A. (2000) ‘At the edge of the world: boundaries, territoriality, and sovereignty in Africa’, Public Culture 12 (1): 259–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McLaughlin, F. (2008) ‘The ascent of Wolof as an urban vernacular and national lingua franca’ in Mufwene, S. S. and Vigouroux, C. B. (eds), Globalization and Language Vitality: perspectives from Africa. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Meyer, B. (2007) ‘Pentecostalism and neo-liberal capitalism: faith, prosperity and vision in African Pentecostal-Charismatic churches’, Journal for the Study of Religion 20 (2): 5–28.Google Scholar
Mokoko Gampiot, A. (2017) Kimbanguism: an African understanding of the Bible. University Park PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Molyneux, G. (1990) ‘The place and function of hymns in the EJCSK’, Journal of Religion in Africa 2: 153–87.Google Scholar
Mufwene, S. (2002) ‘Colonisation, globalisation, and the future of languages in the twenty-first century’, International Journal on Multicultural Societies 4 (2): 162–93.Google Scholar
Nassenstein, N. (2015) ‘The emergence of Langila in Kinshasa (DR Congo)’ in Nassenstein, N. and Hollington, A. (eds), Youth Language Practices in Africa and Beyond. Berlin and Boston MA: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newell, S. (2009) ‘Enregistering modernity, bluffing criminality: how Nouchi speech reinvented (and fractured) the nation’, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 19 (2): 157–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Patsarika, M., Schneider, T. and Edwards, M. (2018) ‘If I was king of India I would get all the horns out of cars: a qualitative study of sound in Delhi’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 42: 74–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pype, K. (2006) ‘Dancing for God or the devil: Pentecostal discourse on popular dance in Kinshasa’, Journal of Religion in Africa 36 (3–4): 296–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pype, K. (2009) ‘Media celebrity, charisma and morality in post-Mobutu Kinshasa’, Journal of Southern African Studies 35 (5): 541–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pype, K. (2012) The Making of the Pentecostal Melodrama: religion, media and gender in Kinshasa. New York NY: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Pype, K. (2016) ‘On interference and hotspots: ethnographic explorations of rural–urban connectivity in and around Kinshasa’s phonie cabins’, Mededelingen der Zittingen van de Koninklijke Academie voor Overzeese Wetenschappen/Bulletin des Séances de l’Académie Royale des Sciences d’Outre-Mer 62: 229–60.Google Scholar
Schafer, M. (1977) The Soundscape: our sonic environment and the tuning of the world. Rochester VT: Destiny Books.Google Scholar
Schalbroeck, E. (2022) ‘Belgian Catholic missionaries and the aural critique of the colonial city’. Paper presented at ‘GUHP: Cities, Empires, and their (Dis)Contents’, online, 11 March.Google Scholar
Serres, M. (1982) The Parasite. Translated, with notes, by Schehr, L. R.. Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Silverstein, M. (1976) ‘Shifters, linguistic categories, and cultural description’ in Basso, K. and Selby, H. (eds), Meaning in Anthropology. Albuquerque NM: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Sylvanus, E. P. (2018) ‘Performing ethnicity in Nollywood film music: the power of texted music’, Journal of the Musical Arts in Africa 15 (1–2): 93–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trapido, J. (2013) ‘Forms of fetishism in Kinshasa: historical insights and contemporary practices’ in Espirito Santo, D. and Tassi, N. (eds), Making Spirits: materiality and transcendence in contemporary religions. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Tsambu, L. (2004) ‘Musique et violence à Kinshasa’ in Trefon, T. (ed.), Ordre et Désordre à Kinshasa: réponses populaires à la faillite de l’État. Paris: L’Harmattan.Google Scholar
Vähäkangas, M. (2021) ‘Navigating ethnicity, nationalism and Pan-Africanism: Kimbanguists, identity and colonial borders’, HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 77 (3): 1–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vansina, J. (1990) Paths in the Rainforests: toward a history of political tradition in Equatorial Africa. Madison WI: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Van Wing, J. (1959) Études bakongo: sociologie – religion et magie. Brussels: Desclee de Brouwer.Google Scholar
Weiner, I. (2014) ‘Calling everyone to pray: pluralism, secularism and the adhān in Hamtrack, Michigan’, Anthropological Quarterly 87 (4): 1049–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar