Dad's an Adze, Mum's a Drum - a Great Lakes Take on Intelligent "Items"

 

Family photo! The star twins Kasajja and Kawuugulu are in the middle of the back row, with their cousins Mpuunyi and Nyoolaevvubuka framing them at their left and right, respectively. The royal spear Kawawa stands in the center, while the youngest and smallest ensemble members - the Nyamitongo drums - wait near the alms basket and beer gourd .

This post has several parents - the proximate cause was my stumbling across stories about the haughty royal drum Karinga while trawling Kagame's dynastic histories of the Nyiginya Kingdom for setting material, but it owes a lot to Sofinho's excellent Blades with Brains and Vulnavia's older (but also extremely cool) post A Family of Evil Swords over at The Lovely Dark. The most direct inspiration was provided by the Kawuugulu ensemble: a powerful collection of item-relatives belonging to the Little White Mushroom (Butiko, Aboobutiko pl.) Clan of the Ganda who fight malignant spirits, ward off drought, "bind hearts together," and perform many other useful tasks for the sake of their kinsfolk. The drums of the Kawuugulu ensemble fall under a category of magic drums called ennoma ez’ensonga - literally, “reasoned drums” or “purposed drums.” The process of making and tuning these drums is unique because it involves consultation with specialized ritual technicians called bagezi. The sages may recommend what items to place inside the drum shells before drum makers and tuners, baleezi, stretch hides over them. These items reflect the drums’ purposes, which in turn determine the foundation of the instruments' personalities...but just the foundation. Reasoned drums were, by definition, people and their personalities developed and changed over the long decades as they grew older. For people interested in intelligent magic items, especially if they're playing/creating games from an animist perspective, this is a very rich vein to mine! I'll focus on one pair of drums within the ensemble - fraternal twins Kawuggulu (who lends her name to the entire group) and Kasajja. 

Drumtalk

The origins of the Kawuugulu ensemble are bound up with those of the Little White Mushroom Clan as a whole, a central role befitting their rank as respected ancestors. The drums of the Kawuugulu make their entrance following the disappearance of Kyebagaba, the woodsy gender-shifting master forager and ritualist who gathered the first members of the Aboobutiko together: 

When Kyebagaba vanished, his surviving relatives approached a sage called a mugezi and expressed to him their grief over the mysterious disappearance of their loved one. The mourners were particularly disturbed by their failure to locate and bury Kyebagaba’s remains appropriately. In response, the mugezi assured the mourners that supernatural forces had carried the remains to the Moon. Before long the grievers saw what they believed to be their deceased relative on the Moon, carrying a bundle of firewood on his head. They also saw what looked to them like the mushrooms he had picked before his attack, strewn all over the Moon’s surface. Now content that Kyebagaba was on the Moon, his family followed the mugezi’s advice to make twin drums that would commemorate the deceased and the mushrooms that had led to his demise. With the mugezi’s guidance, the family identified a tree that had naturally split into two, made a pair of drums from its wood, located Kyebagaba’s umbilical cord from where his mother had secured it at the time of his birth, cut it into two pieces, and placed a portion inside each drum’s cavity before covering them. This procedure served as Kyebagaba’s formal burial.

The placement of Kyebagaba's split umbilical cord (kalira) in the drums as they were being built is very important, especially considering interlacustrine ideas of the umbilicus as the twin of the baby. Umbilical cords being connected to a child or a mother spiritually is not uncommon, but I doubt most societies took it to the level that the Ganda did.  The kalira ties the child to the clan and family of his father for life and helps mystically ascertain true membership in that clan. Lacking a kalira may lead to lacking primary clan membership. A prince may not ascend the throne without his kalira, or if it is in a poor state. The officials in charge of the kabaka’s coronation often place the prince’s kalira in a special drum of kingship that he strikes during the enthronement rituals. One of the top staff members of the katikiro (usually glossed as "prime minister") at court was the keeper of the umbilical cords belonging to the reigning kabaka. In a fashion, the drum twins had collectively become a "twin" of Kyebagaba chilling on the Moon. The investment of the Kawuugulu drums with the umbilicus of their mother/father signaled their membership in the Little White Mushroom Clan while simultaneously imbuing them with the power to protect their family from harmful magics by redirecting curses into themselves. 

Side note: the differences between the clan's own oral narratives and the ones that missionaries and Christianized Ganda authors recorded using the accounts of court historians in the 1800s are profound. Royal chronicles say that the drums of the Kawuugulu ensemble were built for the kabaka, but there's reason to be skeptical, since this same pattern of royal reinvention has been caught elsewhere. Although court narratives which understood Kintu at Magonga as the first kabaka of Buganda and a divine founder of nobility's privileges were the ones that wound up recorded, Neil Kodesh's masterwork Beyond the Royal Gaze: Clanship and Public Healing in Buganda argues that Kintu actually appears to have evolved out of a much older complex of beliefs that featured the hero-ghost-god as a crossclan healer and protector before they were reoriented to buttress the power of the kabaka. Damascus Kafumbe doesn't make this jump himself in Tuning the Kingdom: Kawuugulu Musical Performance, Politics, and Storytelling in Buganda (my main source for this post) but the dissonance between Aboobutiko and royal narratives regarding the birth of the Kawuugulu ensemble might be evidence of a similar process at work. Kings lie, after all. 

The role of the Kawuugulu drums as Little White Mushroom Clan ancestors was reinforced periodically, most famously during their oracular performances:

Since Kawuugulu drums embody ancestral spirits, sharing beer, milk, and ghee with them is also a way of communicating with those spirits. In particular, participants in Kawuugulu events make offerings to the drums as a form of invocation that allows the instruments to meet the participants’ social and personal needs. In fact, pouring beer on the drums is ritually similar to how many Baganda pour libations of beer to their ancestors. During Kawuugulu events, Aboobutiko and individuals with close ties to the clan may offer monetary alms called bigali to the drums while requesting blessings or giving thanks to the ancestral spirits that the ensemble may invite. Those making offers deposit these alms in an open, shallow, bowl-shaped basket called kibbo, with woven strands called bika, literally, “clans.” 

But they were also living family members, with well-defined personalities and idiosyncrasies. The male twin Kasajja doesn't like to be carried in front of his sister Kawuugulu because he gets nervous if he can't see her. Kawuugulu is bossy and often demands better offerings for the pair if the caretakers have been skimping on ghee rubs. They get cold and sick if they aren't dressed in their barkcloth robes. The siblings have different tastes in banana beer. They keep pets and they're visited by other members of their clan when the time for social calls swings around, who then talk with them at length about future plans for Aboobutiko business. The twins enjoy being introduced to new people before they perform, since they prefer to know who they're singing for. They even get ashamed if they aren't dressed properly by their relatives:

To many Aboobutiko, Kawuugulu and Kasajja are living persons, ancestors, and heirs with a twinned and gendered relationship. Accordingly, Kawuugulu performers dress the drums in bark cloth, exposing only parts of their faces.  They ensure that the fabric is intact enough to conceal the drums’ nakedness, and to prevent them from getting very cold or sick, just as the players of the drums wear clothing and take care of their bodies. Dressing Kawuugulu and  Kasajja, a reenactment of the historical practice of wrapping the drums in animal hide, highlights the instruments’ status as living beings. But Aboobutiko also regard the pair as a representation of the clan ancestor Kyebagaba. This is another reason they wrap bark cloth around the pair, reminding participants in Kawuugulu events of how many Baganda wrap the deceased in the fabric.

The twins Kawuugulu and Kasajja, dressed in bark cloth, eagerly await their next performance

The twins were cared for by a paternal aunt, a position named after both the bone drumstick used to strike the twins at the opening of performances and its first wielder: 

They named the drumstick Nsigadde (“I have stayed”), after the woman whom they selected to strike the drums. Serving as the hereditary paternal aunt (ssenga) of the two drums and all subsequent additions to the set, Nsigadde was responsible for taking care of the drums’ shelter. As the meaning of the name Nsigadde suggests, she always stayed behind to guard the house whenever the drums left it for a performance expedition. Her other responsibilities included using the arm-bone drumstick to perform a ritual called okunaga ku Kasajja, “striking initial strokes on Kasajja, the male drum.” ....They carried the female drum ahead of the male one to the compound of their shelter. Here the twin drums’ paternal aunt, their ssenga, performed another ritual called okunaga ku Kawuugulu, “playing initial strokes on Kawuugulu, the female drum.” Following this ritual, the players of Kawuugulu and Kasajja engaged in a welcome-back performance featuring the drum set and its accompanying accessories. The paternal aunt then used the arm-bone beater to perform the final ritual: closing the welcome-back performance by striking cues on the female drum, Kawuugulu. After this cue, Kawuugulu and Kasajja’s players carried the male drum to the pair’s shelter, followed by the female drum, and finally the rest of the set’s accompanying accessories followed. The twins’ paternal aunt had to remain a virgin for the duration of her service, which included overseeing all initiation ritual performances featuring the drums.

Another note: item-people occupying the roles of "honored ancestor" and "living relatives" simultaneously wasn't an issue for Baganda. As Kafumbe points out, "Aboobutiko do not see the drums’ dual identity as persons and ancestors as a contradiction." Sofinho and I discussed this phenomenon a bit in the comments of his post here and it was cool to see yet more confirmation appear while working through this book.

I swear this all has a point 

There's definitely a depth to the drum twins Kawuugulu and Kasajja - human families and friends, the description of birth cries + inclusion of umbilical cord material when the hide was first stretched over them, the need to maintain connections to them through social visits and gift-giving, their relationship with each other - that is missing in my own past uses of intelligent items in games. So, here's the trick: give intelligent items a social identity as well! A drum with cousins, a sword with a wife. Friends or family - if the former, they should be appropriately thick relationships. Items or humans will work, but both is preferred. I've actually tried this out (once, considering the turnaround time from thought to post here) with my usual gang of test subjects and we found that this helped their ability to engage with this segment of the game world in an animist fashion using only a little bit of effort on my end. The Lovely Dark's A Family of Evil Swords gets much closer than I ever have by making the intelligent items in question related-ghosts-turned-weapons (I'm not sure if Vulnavia is insanely well-read or """just""" a creative genius) and - in retrospect - that was probably one thing I really enjoyed about it, but rooting item-people in a "conventional" social world may be more effective at generating the spiritual-surreal vibe I tend to prefer. It's more like a difference of objective here, though? The evil swords slide into the "porcelain masks and tarantula kisses" world of The Lovely Dark perfectly. Sofinho's Blades with Brains is actually pretty great at making the classic thinkin' sword into a person as is. Dude is the undisputed GOAT of O/NSR animism, it's to be expected. Even here, though, I think the Great Lakes Trick that I recommend could refine the experience. The useful change is that placing intelligent items within social networks works hand in glove with a relational definition of personhood, a better-fitting model for most animist societies in Africa historically and probably outside The Continent (tm) as well. Stepping outside our own concepts of personhood is core to any worthwhile exploration of animism, fictional or academic.

A short video covering the recent revival of the Bugandan court's royal ensemble. Very very cool, even if some of the info regarding the Kabaka Affair and the centrality of monarchy in Ganda culture should be taken with a grain of salt.