MAFILI
Music from the Baali of the Equatorial forest

The Baali live in the Eastern Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Their territory covers a large region situated on each side of the Kisangani-Isiro road where some important Baali settlements are situated, such as Bafwasende and Avakubi. The proximity of this line of communication allowed the Baali to have frequent and sometime intense contacts (however not always easy and happy) with the external world since the arrival of Europeans in their region.

The Baali, that are estimated to number 30 000 today, belong to the Bantu group but speak a particular language when it is compared to the other languages of this linguistic unit.  It is a mixed language likely coming from the contact with other Bantu languages from the region and from languages spoken by people belonging to the Central Sudanic group. This characteristic shows that the originality of this culture, that was still strong before the tragic events of the nineties, comes probably from the fact that they had numerous and varied contacts with other peoples.

Several features made the Baali famous in the past. One has to start by mentioning the aniota, the leopard man society, who was at the source of many myths and stories during colonization. This closed association had a terrifying reputation, because many ritual deaths were attributed to its activities. While it was classified as a criminal association by the colonial administration others considered that it was an association made to resist changes the traditional society. Whatever their goal was, the aniota made was much discussed and even if nobody can deny the reality of the crimes attributed to the leopard man, it has never been possible to know much about this society, that was probably one of the numerous secret or initiation societies of the people from the region.

Another famous character of Baali society is the initiation called mambela that also regulates all the political, social and religious life. This rite of initiation that seems to have replaced circumcision takes place at quite distant intervals, at least 2 years and sometimes more. Officially suppressed by the Belgian authorities in the 1930’s, it is still preformed nowadays but in shorter forms than those that were made in the tradition.
A last and less known characteristic of the Baali is their ability as blacksmiths.

Music and musical instruments
The music presented on this CD is the result of fieldwork aimed at recording and preserving the repertory of a musical instrument that seemed to have disappeared or that was about to disappear. This is a plank zither called Mafili in the Baali country.

This very particular instrument, which has a rich and delicate sonority, is made of a rectangular piece of parasolier wood, that is very light and very resonant. Two chevalets are fixed to its extremities, perpendicularly to the longest side of the plank. They hold about twenty strings whose pitch is defined by the presence of small sticks between the plank and the strings. The setting of these small sticks divides the string in two parts. Only one of them is played by a finger pinch. The musician sets the instruments on his knees and divides the strings in two groups. One group is played by the left hand and the other by the right hand. This instrument is at the source of a rich and important repertory that uses tales and musical games as well as entertainment songs. Contrary to the expectations one had before the recordings, the instrument had not vanished and it was still used by many musicians who were both young and old. This fact shows an important point about the musical traditions of the Baali and more generally about the traditional societies of the Eastern province of Congo:  their extraordinary vitality. Of course these societies have evolved and the prohibitions of the colonial times changed many things, but, in general, most of the musical traditions have been well preserved and even continue to evolve. The young generation, often without contact with the modern world (only through the missions and the radio) because of the degradation of the means of communication or simply because of the lack of possibilities of travel, has sometimes adapted traditional music instruments to forms of modern music.

It is necessary to understand that if these musical traditions survived through the clashes of the twentieth century, it is because they have a fundamental value for the Baali and also because they are a way to express their identity. Whatever the place one visits, it is always possible to hear musicians animate evening with tales talking of the traditional heroes such as Sibili the tortoise or Tumbele the spider, in addition of the usual entertainment and satiric songs. Several tunes of this type of repertory are played with the Likembe and mouth bows on this CD.