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27. Hunting Charm: Slitdrum (N-kookwa Ngoombu)
Yaka, Democratic Republic of the Congo
Wood, metal, seeds, fiber, organic material; H. 31.1 cm (12 1/4 in.)
19th century
Brooklyn Museum of Art, Museum Expedition 1922, Robert B. Woodward Memorial Fund 22.1461

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27. Hunting Charm: Slitdrum
(N-kookwa Ngoombu)

aka beliefs acknowledge a celestial Creator as the originator of life and death who, however, is removed from the concerns of everyday experience. Humankind instead relies on the elders or ancestors for guidance. In Yaka society, people who seek insights into experiences of misfortune, sickness, death, or other unsettling developments may consult any of various divinatory oracles,1 in the course of which the afflicted undergo an initiation and cast aside their condition upon experiencing a ritual death and rebirth.2 Initiates into the Ngoombu cult ultimately become invested with the ability to take on the role of professional diviners. (See part 3 of the Pemberton essay.)

Ngoombu reveals the faculty of clairvoyance to be an innate quality of certain individuals. This calling is manifested through symptoms of chronic illness or hallucinations, which affect men and women whom ancestral diviners have designated to take their place. Ultimately, the symptoms of their vocation are addressed through an extended course of treatment that includes seclusion, initiation, apprenticeship, and the learning of ritual procedures.3

Over the course of supervising a novice's initiation, a master diviner invites a sculptor to carve a figurative slitdrum. Indeed, the human form of the example shown here is characteristic of Yaka slitdrums, which are the province of trance diviners, who value them as indispensable mediums for divine inspiration. Once the artifact is created, the master diviner consecrates it, so that it is transformed into a source of mediation with the ancestral diviner (n-kooku). As a result, the slitdrum comes to incorporate the spirit of the mentoring diviner, and the instrument is designated as n-kookwa. It is the clairvoyance of this ancestor that will direct the novice in his or her own practice, and the slit will serve as the mouth of the oracle's voice when the slitdrum is struck.4 The significance of this aperture is acknowledged by the master diviner, who, by coating the instrument's interior with kaolin, salt, pepper, and other substances to make a ritual tribute, invites the n-kooku to assume his or her role as omniscient commentator.

The diviner is never briefed on cases beforehand. Instead, he or she is presented with a fragmentary clue in the form of an object that has been in contact with the client's person. Drawing on his/her powers of clairvoyance, the diviner uses the object to reveal essential elements of the case. The next morning, after having experienced visionary dreams, the diviner fleshes out a diagnosis in greater detail.

As the source of divinatory messages conveyed by the diviner, the slitdrum is conceived of as the preeminent sacred object associated with revelation in Yaka society, as well as its owner's alter ego.5 It plays a pervasive role in the diviner's professional life and has multiple uses. It is sounded to signal a diviner's arrival in a community to perform a consultation. It may be employed as the platform on which its owner is seated while dispensing insights. Or it can be used as a vessel in which "medicines" are prepared and from which they are ingested.6

Though clearly created to serve as a Yaka diviner's oracular mouthpiece, this particular work features additional elements that suggest it was modified at some point to transform it into a charm (nkisi; plural, minkisi). Its classic design includes a head with closed eyes, a trilobed coiffure, prominent ears, and a cylindrical body bisected by a vertical cavity. Suspended around the neck from a fiber cord are a lock, key, and animal horn. In Yaka society, Ngoombu diviners prescribed minkisi, manufactured by specialists, that enhanced their client's abilities to fulfill some specific need. Hunting has traditionally been the most highly productive activity pursued by Yaka men, and minkisi created for private or collective hunts were in great demand. The visual forest of added elements, which appear to weigh down and restrain this form, symbolically alludes to the idea of entrapment and capture.

1. Arthur P. Bourgeois, The Yaka and the Suku (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1985), pp. 2–4.

2. Devisch 1995, p. 99.

3. Daniel Biebuyck, The Arts of Zaire, vol. 1: Southwestern Zaire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), p. 177.

4. Devisch 1995, p. 103.

5. Ibid.

6. Biebuyck, Arts of Zaire, p. 195.