Lingundumbwe: feminist masquerades and women's liberation, Nangade, Mueda, Muidumbe, 1950s-2005

Résumé 0

In the aftermath of the war for national liberation, a group of Makonde women guerillas invented a flamboyant feminist mapiko mask, venturing in a terrain traditionally reserved for men. The invention spread throughout the plateau, becoming the signature dance of a generation of women empowered by the revolution. This essay reconstructs the history and fortunes of lingundumbwe, locating its roots in the experiences of the liberation struggle as well as in the late colonial era, and discussing the conflicts surrounding the invention and its eventual demise in favour of an apparently less provocative genre. The history of lingundumbwe offers a vista into the affective and aesthetic dimensions of the Mozambican gendered revolution - one which escapes the linear temporality and neat binaries established in the scholarship that has so far addressed the theme. Methodologically, the essay argues for a holistic interpretation of song-and-dance that is based on vernacular concepts and that privileges performance and the interplay between its various facets, in order to render expressive and affective complexity