East African traditions associated with kingship and ritual

Objectives: To uncover little known aspects of the social and cultural history of the peoples of the so-called Interlacustrine Region of East Africa where the applicants are familiar with the cultures and languages from previous fieldwork. The project will be carried out in three key areas: (I) Buganda, Busoga, Nkore, Karagwe (in UGANDA and TANZANIA), (II) Ubena, Unyakyusa and Unkhonde (in TANZANIA and MALAWI), (III), Chichewa-, Chimang`anja and Ciyao speaking groups in MALAWI. It will concentrate on comprehensive field documentation of oral and performance traditions associated with kingship and chiefship having long, pre-colonial histories in East Africa, and also on ritual such as sacrificial rites for the ancestors, healing ceremonies by traditional medical practitioners, ritual mimes and drama such as the masking traditions in the south. Kingship and chiefship are understood in this project as pre-colonial institutions that have survived in one or the other form to the present, including those whose memory has survived in oral tradition. We intend to build up a broad database through the systematic audio and video recording (plus meticulous fieldnotes: of various forms of oral literature, musical traditions, technologies associated with rulership, healing and/or initiation. Through the analysis of these materials we hope to be able to arrive at conclusions about the social situation and culture-creative aspects during specific historical time-periods. One emphasis will be to study the preserved royal shrines of the Kingdom of Buganda which has been revived.