African Minkisi and American Culture Essay -- essays research papers

African Minkisi and American CultureI. Introduction     African Minkisi have been used for hundreds of years in atomic number 74 Central Africa, This area where they are tradition solelyy from was once known as the kingdom of Kongo, when Europeans started settling and trading with the BaKongo people. Kongo was a well-known state throughout a lot of the world by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The BaKongo, however, had probably long used minkisi before ethnographers and anthropologists ever recorded them. Minkisi are complex items that are used to be cured _or_ healed and to harm people, and there is no equivalent term for nkisi in any European language. A seventeenth century Dutch geographer first wrote of the nkisi, and said that, These Ethiopians that is, the BaKongo see moquisie minkisi everything in which resides, in their opinion, a secret and incomprehensible virtue to do them good or ill, and to reveal event of past and future (Williams, 13). T he term illness, in this context, is quite different than what we refer to illness. Illness, to the BaKongo, meant anything from sickness, to loss of property, and the inability to succeed in things like school and work. . The perpetual struggle with the unseen forces that cause illness and misfortunes was (and is) called struggle in Kongo (MacGaffey, 98). A war is ended when one side of the struggle proves that they have better magic. The objects themselves are extremely complex, and most of them require hours of, painstaking childbed to construct (MacGaffey, 33). All minkisi, whether in the form of wooden figures, snail shells, raffia bags, or clay pots, are containers for medicines that empowers them (MacGaffey, 43). The usual containers included the shells of large snails, antelope horns, cloth bags, gourds, and clay pots. Although minkisi in museums are usually wooden figurines and statues, containers of this kind may well have been the minority (MacGaffey, 63). Without medi cines, the minkisi are nothing, they are not alive, nor can they perform their functions. To BaKongo, all exceptional powers result from some sort of communication with the dead (MacGaffey, 59). Chiefs, witches, diviners/prophets, and magicians could all do this, especially through and with the help of the minkisi. There are rules and ways of doing things with them, to them, that interpret so many aspects of Kongo cultu... ...t, with a mirror-stoppered cow horn of clairvoyance (vititi mensu), musical instruments used in sacred ritual, and elaborate beaded artwork. A red let up with protective signs hangs on the wall behind the nkisi to protect the altar, its owner and his family from harm.The basic Kongo cosmogram is a cross within a circle, dikenga, that is a symbolic chart of the sail of the soul. As a miniature of the sun, the soul is thought to have four moments -- birth, efflorescence, fading and the return in the dawn of a coming day. Triangles, diamonds, spirals, or criss crosses have-to doe with this cyclical movement. The soul, which is thought by the Bakongo to reside in the forehead, is often represented in diamond form and can be seen on many African masks. The exhibition includes such masks -- 19th century Punu, Teke (Tsaaye), and Chokwe masks, and a 20th century Vili mask ringed with feathers. In addition, a fully feathered Mardi gras "Wild world" costume from New Orleans, reminiscent of Kongo feather masks and headdresses worn by healers, is a living example of the creolized Kongo traditions found in the United States.http//www.art3st.com/various_pages/faceofthegods.html