Ebuamba Suzanne listens to Bagyéli healing songs. Kouambo near Bipindi, Cameroon, September 23, 2012.
© Suzanne Fürniss, 2012.
1In early 2022, the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv released the CD Wax cylinder recordings from South Cameroon, 1907–1909 (Fürniss 2021), featuring fifty-four recordings made in the early twentieth century. In the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv, South Cameroon is represented through five collections, totaling one hundred eighty-six cylinders recorded between 1907 and 1909. Three of these were made in the former German protectorate of Kamerun by Georg Zenker, a botanist and important member of the colonial administration, by colonial physician Hans Waldow and by Günter Tessmann, leader of the Lübecker Pangwe-Expedition. These recordings are a valuable companion to Tessmann’s 1913 book Die Pangwe (Laburthe-Tolra and Falgayrettes 1992). Two other collections were recorded in Berlin by the director of the Phonogramm-Archiv, Erich Moritz von Hornbostel, of Cameroonians who had spent time in the German capital (Ziegler 1998 and 2006).
2The CD, which presents a selection of these recordings, took almost thirteen years to prepare, with several visits to different parts of southern Cameroon. My position in this field has not always been a straightforward one, since, as a researcher in ethnomusicology, I produce and use sound archives, but I am not myself responsible for such collections. Moreover, I am of German origin but attached to a French public research organization. My professional position means that I do not represent the country that owns and initiated the recordings, nor do I work on the colonial history of the country that employs me. My approach was to capitalize on my knowledge of contemporary traditional music in southern Cameroon on the one hand and my German socialization on the other to deepen the study of German-Cameroonian cultural history—away from the official representations put in place by states in their difficult memory work on past colonial relations.
3By conducting work in a distant, formerly colonized country, the European researcher in historical ethnomusicology forges multiple relationships with musicians, community leaders and local academic or political representatives, as well as with archive managers in the countries of the former colonizers. This network of actors confronts us with several types of restitution that do not necessarily involve institutions. The informal restitution of recordings thus takes many forms, enabling the reappropriation of music and the knowledge associated with it to varying degrees.
4The restitution of sound archives does not necessarily involve the physical restitution of the original storage medium. This is the advantage of recording on an artifact: the medium preserved at the Phonogramm-Archiv allows copies to be made without altering the sound quality. The sound goes from the wax cylinder to a digital file that can be reproduced at will. Yet the copied sound is of the same ontological nature as the sound originally recorded; it was extracted from its cultural context as soon as it was recorded.
5As with African artifacts in European museums, colonial sound archives are rarely well documented. As a result, there is a strong risk that the “bare” sound—without the information contained either in an announcement engraved on the cylinder or in the metadata kept in the Archives’ files—will no longer be identified and that its cultural significance will remain unknown. It was first essential to determine what was being heard and what should be restituted in the case of several recordings. This meant working with the custodians of traditional knowledge in Cameroon to identify the recordings’ content and their cultural value for society at the beginning of the twentieth century, as well as for today.
6Contextualization is a major challenge for the valorization of these recordings, involving not only their content but also the circumstances in which they were made and - as far as possible—the history of the Cameroonians heard on these recordings.
7But restitution to whom? This question is particularly relevant when, as in this case, the collections include music from several communities. The Phonogramm-Archiv collections include pieces recorded by the Bagyéli, Malimba, Bakoko, Mabi, Batanga, and Ngumba peoples. The question of their origin is therefore added to that of their content, as the metadata is not always explicit on this subject, and even mixes up ethnonyms.
8Once the language or cultural origin of a song had been determined, the people to whom these recordings should be returned still had to be identified. This issue was only partially resolved. I was unable to initiate official handovers at a community or national level.
9The search for answers to these questions led to lengthy listening sessions and discussions around the recordings. At each location identified in the metadata—Malimba (Édéa), Kribi, Bipindi, Kouambo, and Meko’omengona—the interlocutors were traditional chiefs and culturally competent individuals. The numerous group and individual meetings led to discussions on both the pieces’ musical and textual content and the repertoires’ social and religious context. These sessions brought to the surface knowledge about these pieces and their place in traditional society. On several occasions, the elders pointed out that they were no longer consulted on the subject, due to the social and religious changes of recent decades. Discussions around these historical recordings were therefore an opportunity to go beyond the initial investigation situation and quickly became a moment of transmission between the various participants and generations.
10While much of this traditional music is no longer performed, it is important to understand the ways in which it can still relate to contemporary realities. My experience provides examples on two levels: that of the pieces themselves and that of the people involved in the recording.
11Only three pieces are still alive today in people’s minds and practices in this corpus. Their identification has given rise to some radiant moments. A song welcoming the Ngumba bride to her husband’s village inspired a dance session demonstrating the rich repertoire of these songs, still alive today. A song of praise, recorded by Tessmann among the Ntumu at the end of the So initiation, is today addressed to brides, mothers who have given birth, people who have passed the baccalaureate, etc. Finally, listening to a Bagyéli song delighted the Bikanda healer from the village of Kouambo: “But this is a melody that my parents taught me! It was created in my grandfather’s time by Dungu Joseph, who was a Bagyéli healer in Mpala. Yes, yes, I know this song well.” It turned out to be a healing song, and—without any special coordination or request—all the interview participants spontaneously launched into the central invocation, along with the recording: “nzambe ve me ngule” (God, give me strength), an invocation uttered as the sick person lies before the healer in the ceremonial space.
12Almost none of the recordings made in the territory of the Kamerun protectorate or in Spanish Guinea provide names of musicians, only the mention of an ethnonym, sometimes the name of a clan or village, with the exception of the name of Eneme Efoan, the Ntumu chief of the village of Meko’omengona, mentioned as a storyteller by Tessmann. On the other hand, the two collections recorded by Hornbostel in Berlin in 1909 identify two Cameroonians, Jakob Malapa and Paul Mukeke, recorded during their stay in Germany. We know their names, ages, ethnic groups, clans and places of origin. My work has enabled the personalities of these distant voices and fragments of their lives before, during and after their stay in Berlin to be brought to light. My investigation also involved looking for descendants of these men or people who had heard of them. I was not expecting to meet people in 2012 who had known these singers personally. And yet! It was an emotional experience to meet in Meko’omengona Mekui Akyeme Suzanne, Eneme Efoan’s daughter; in Yaoundé, Ewala Yvette, Jakob Malapa’s second wife’s daughter who lived with him during her childhood; in Kribi, Ngalli Taddée Célestin, a schoolmate of Jakob Malapa’s son; and in Édéa, the Moukeke brothers Philippe and Jean-Antoine, grand-nephews of Paul Mukeke, whose letters written from Germany had been read to them by their father.
- 1 This form, which mentions the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv as the owner of the originals, stipulates (...)
13It was clear that copies of the recordings had to be given to all these people. Similarly, as villages had been clearly identified in the archive’s metadata, I was able to return the recordings to the chiefs of the Ntumu villages of Meko’omengona and Ebengon, as well as to the Bagyéli district of Kouambo. However, this required the official signature on a form that Susanne Ziegler, in charge of the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv at the start of my fieldwork, had given me for such cases.1
14Finally, once the CD had been released, a copy of the sound files (in WAV and MP3 format) and the accompanying booklet (in PDF format and as a bound hard copy) was made available to all collaborators who had participated in the investigations in any significant way.
- 2 In addition to Régis Ollomo Ella and the author of this text, the group includes Jean-Émile Mbot, B (...)
15This research was partly carried out with researchers of Fang origin. Long-standing colleagues who teach and research at the Université Omar-Bongo in Libreville (Gabon) were particularly interested in these archives. Linguist Régis Ollomo Ella is co-author of chapter 4 of the CD booklet, “Les enregistrements de musique fang-ntoumou.” This was a different type of restitution, as transcribing and translating the song lyrics threw my colleague into unsuspected aspects of Fang cultural history and thought. Other colleagues had to be consulted in order to ensure that not only the words delivered were properly understood but also their meaning. This led to the creation of an international working group on the history of Fang2 social institutions, culminating in a longer-term research project. A collective visit to the Cameroonian villages from which Tessmann’s musicians came gave rise to fascinating discussions about yesterday and today, the songs and their lyrics, the instruments, Tessmann’s writings and photographs, on the one hand, and the memory of one of Tessmann’s collaborator’s nephews, as well as a former member of the Ngii initiation society, on the other.
16The first results were presented at four public conferences at the Université catholique in Yaoundé and the Yaoundé, Douala, and Libreville Instituts français. My interlocutors, traditional chiefs and professionals from the contemporary cultural and musical scenes, took part in two round tables devoted to assessing the cultural value of these sound archives today. Several traditional chiefs emphasized how these recordings have enriched their cultural and historical knowledge and prompted them to view their own ritual practice in a new light.
17In Kribi, Majesty Tsagadigi Jean-Blaise immediately used the synthesis of my investigations and some recordings in a community radio program he regularly hosts to promote Mabi traditions.
18These sound archives have given rise to a final form of reappropriation through the work of an artist who works with an archived heritage that hence establishes itself in the contemporary artistic and musical landscape. The Memory of Understanding sound installation by German-Cameroonian musician and artist Elsa M’bala is based entirely on recordings from the CD published in 2022. It was shown at the Musée National du Cameroun in 2023 as part of the “Memoria Yaoundé” exhibition (Hounkpatin and Seror 2023).
19The aim of her approach is not restitution to a particular community or the tangible transmission of local knowledge, but rather the inclusion of historical recordings in the search for a broader African identity. The rough sound of wax cylinders is combined with elements of the African collective imagination—gourds, cowries, and mats—to create an atmosphere of soothing reverie. As the artist puts it:
This work places me in history and allows me to move forward in a more emotionally stable way. I really feel I can take part in the collective healing we all need, not only on a colonial level but also personally, emotionally and as an African woman. We should listen to ourselves a bit more and believe in our own abilities; that’s the idea I’d like to convey in this piece (Fürniss and M’Bala 2023, 115).
20The installation illustrates the path a publication can take once edited and distributed. It lives its own life and sparks new dialogues. Finding myself in Yaoundé at the same time and in the same hotel as Elsa M’bala was pure chance. She had heard about my CD in Berlin at the Phonogramm-Archiv and was preparing her installation for the Musée national du Cameroun while I was giving lectures about the CD in the country.
21The use of the CD for community radio broadcasts in Kribi, the sound installation at the Musée national and the requests from traditional chiefs to young people in their communities to continue in this vein are valuable for several reasons. They demonstrate the interest in an approach that seemed to run completely counter to the injunctions of contemporary ethnological research and show that people interested in their traditions are appropriating sound archives made accessible according to their needs. I now have the immense pleasure of being able to pass the baton on.