The function of music as a message vehicle is ancient in Africa. The example of drums communicating from village to village in the past is one of the most known in the West. Today, the musical traditions in the rural areas are an element of unity in torn Angola. They convey messages of tolerance and represent a potential for developing a media model at grass roots level. An introduction to Tsikaya.

The Tsikaya project is a partnership among organisations working in the area of culture and development, human rights advocacy, civic education and media freedom in Angola. It proposes a holistic approach in the struggle for peace building against poverty and exclusion through the preservation and rehabilitation of the Angolan rural musical heritage.

Open microphone

Victor Gama initiated Tsikaya in 1997 on a field trip to Cuito-Cuanavale in the Cuando-Cubango province in Angola. The musicians who participated then, took the opportunity of Gama’s open microphone and a tape recorder to send out messages to other parts of Angola, as this was the only means at that moment to do so.

One of the songs recorded is called Mensagem a Luanda, (Message to Luanda). The singer expresses his worries and concerns about the situation and problems afflicting his remote village and peoples, and asks for assistance from the capital city.

Tsikaya aims at opening a channel to freely express aspects of cultural identity, promote family and community traditions. It wishes to contribute to the rehabilitation and promotion of the national cultural heritage by providing the tools and mechanisms of returning that heritage to those people in the rural country.

It gives a voice to communities while stimulating productive activities in the field of sustainable cultural economies with activities such as recordings and CD sales, instruments and handcrafts building, workshops, exchanges and performances by master musicians.

The role of memory

The intention of the project is to preserve and strengthen threatened traditional musical forms. This means both instruments and musical repertoire of all kinds. By doing so, Tsikaya wants to help communities recover and interpret their cultural values, and to examine the role that memory, history and imagination play in helping communities withstand and overcome poverty, exclusion and violence.

Tsikaya represents a platform at grass roots level, working with culture as a means to understand and be understood and lay down the foundations for development work in the particular context of Angola.

The project brings together the main cultural actors at community level such as, the regedor, the soba, the musicians and composers. But it also involves the municipal administrator, primary school teachers, the women who co-ordinate choir groups, officials who represent the Ministry of Education. These are the very same people that form the web through which messages, communication and information flow in and out of the commune.

Women percussionists

The target group of Tsikaya are musicians, singers and composers in rural communities in the province of Benguela. These are women, men as well as children. It must be taken into consideration, though, that there are rarely any professional musicians present. Therefore most of these artists are peasants, some work for the local administration, some are traditional therapists, others deal at the local market.

The activities of music-making involve mostly the family of the composer or musician and neighbours. Women and children are often part of the choir that accompanies the musician and in many cases the composer is the lead-singer in the choir.

In Hanha do Norte we encountered a rich musical scene with several groups and many with exchanged participants like drummers or singers and dancers. Some of these groups are lead by women who create themselves the songs and dances for the group in line with ancient traditions such as those of women percussionists, for example.

Network

The implementation is based on the constitution of an interactive network. This consists of local community co-ordinators, local musicians in the rural communities, local traditional authorities like the regedores and sobas, the co-ordinators of the cultural association Bismas in Benguela, the association’s members, performing artists, radio programmers and journalists in Benguela and throughout Angola.

This network benefits greatly from linking with existing programs created and run by the Angolan NGO ADRA in the areas of civic education and civic rights advocacy and the partnership on an international level with the cultural association PangeiArt, initiator of this project.

Victor Gama (Angola/Portugal) is a musician and composer. To date he has recorded and produced 4 CDs. He has done extensive field recordings in Angola, Namibia, Cuba, Colombia and has performed and exhibited his instruments world-wide. victorgama@pangeiart.org