Journey to Great Zimbabwe: Perceiving deeper messages embedded in the Zimbabwe bird
THROUGH experience I have discovered that the mind works at its best soon after rest, and preferably after some deep sleep. Sleep allows the mind, indeed the entire body, to regain sapped energy. It is time for regeneration which nature makes use of for her continued life. The work-rest pattern occurs, not only in nature, but has been made for us on the cultural plane. This became quite apparent as I was writing our latest book, “Zimbabwe’s Traditional Dances: Mbakumba, a post-harvest dance of the Karanga people’’. Mbakumba is the dance of focus for 2019 and 2020 for the Jikinya Traditional Dance Festival which is jointly arranged annually by the National Association of Primary School Heads (Naph), the National Arts Council of Zimbabwe (NACZ) and Delta Beverages.
The traditional dance marks the onset of a period of rest, both in the natural environment and also at the cultural level. Villagers would have harvested matured crops following hard labour in the fields. Now, assured of food supply during the winter months, they have reason to celebrate as life is guaranteed. Without both food and water life is unimaginable. I needed a well rested mind to perceive the lower part of the Zimbabwe Bird. A sharp and rested mind is, without doubt, one of the ingredients of that demanding mental process.
I was however, assisted in the fascinating journey towards deciphering the Zimbabwe Bird after watching a splendid and marvellous dance performance by Chipindura Primary School at the Bulawayo Amphitheatre either last year or that before during Jikinya. The school pupils performed Jerusarema Mbende Traditional Dance. The dance captures the two elements (male and female as represented by boy and girl that get into some erotic, albeit innocent, entangle which is captured by the sculptor who created the Zimbabwe Bird. The entangle lies at the heart of a natural process that results in replication of human beings, call it sexual reproduction if you so wish. It is a natural or biological process that brings together two opposite bodies. The Jerusarema Mbende Traditional Dance captures just that, so does the Zimbabwe Bird. We have argued before that a particular idea is usually expressed in more arts genres than one. In our particular case sexuality has been expressed through a dance performance and through sculpture. There are indeed several ways in which the same idea has been expressed in various other artistic renditions. This amounts to getting to the same destination through different routes.
Let us get to what I saw two Chipindura Primary School pupils do. It was a boy and a girl as demanded by the biological process that they sought to express through a dance repertoire. The sculptor equally sought, in his own artistic way, to capture the same idea: endlessness, continuity, eternity, perpetuity and immortality of the human species. “Individuals perish, humanity is forever.” The boy and girl danced to the riveting sounds of a single big drum. The pupils’ vigorous dance picked pace and vitality towards a crescendo. At that very moment, the boy lifted the girl up. He had her two legs around his waist so that her waist region was in erotic contact with the boy’s. Remember this is the region that women in Africa engage in exaggerated sways and gyrations. Again this is informed by knowledge of the natural process which plays a critical role in the perpetuation of the human species. Both male and female genitalia are located in those parts of the body.
What in effect the spectator sees are two legs of the girl with her toes, feet and legs facing away from him/ her. What the spectator will also see are the two buttocks of the boy. The girl’s body is concealed behind that of the boy. Her neck and the area immediately below it are not visible from this vantage point. What is clearly visible is the boy’s neck and his head. If you have followed and understood the journey I have taken you through, you will have seen the dance performance as a representation and expression of what the Zimbabwe Bird is all about.
If there were to be challenges in perceiving the Zimbabwe Bird from the above narrative, it is because many people have not been exposed to the Zimbabwe Bird beyond the one which depicts the top part only. Its legs have not been observed, otherwise one would see the five toes in a foot attached to a leg facing the spectator. The artistic rendition is very interesting. The girl is facing the spectator, while the boy is facing away! That produces visual deception of a high order. Besides, are these not the very relative positions of a pair engaging in some sexual act?
What the girl’s legs require in anatomical terms is the chest component in the case of the Zimbabwe Bird. The boy bearing the girl and facing away from the spectator provides the answer. His buttocks have been engineered in a manner that makes them look like the chest of a bird. However, a close scrutiny will reveal that the buttocks have some partition in line with human buttocks that we have come to know. This is a partition that does not exist in the chest of a bird. It is artistic deception, or call it innovative engineering hat deceives eyes of the mind so that they see what they expect to see as a result of conditioning forged from lived experience. Perception and seeing are informed and conditioned by our past knowledge including orientation of body parts. Buttocks assume and are viewed as the chest when it comes to the Zimbabwe Bird.
In any case the prominently present wings guide and direct our perception which is led towards completion of the picture of a bird. It becomes difficult to perceive anything other than a bird. So, a bird it must be, and a bird it is. In the process, what would otherwise be morally anathema to Africans has been sanitised by an ingenious, innovative and creative artist — the sculptor who produced a bird when he actually was expressing some biological process and idea that normally would remain within the private domain and under the tongue. The product is the Zimbabwe Bird which has secured for itself a pride of place in our heritage — silently and innocently perched on silver coins, the national flag and other insignia for both Government and other Government-related organisations and departments.
Hopefully, we have provided the hard facts relating to the Zimbabwe Bird. We have equally analysed the hard components and provided some interpretation that lays bare the Zimbabwe Bird in its innocence and innovative engineering character. Our heritage certainly requires some Afro-centric interpretation if we are to fully appreciate it. We need to see beyond the bird and begin to perceive, in accordance with Afro-centric ideas, the underlying messages and meanings without taking anything away from the Zimbabwe Bird. Even as school pupils execute some dance performances, we shall begin to see beyond the mere movements and seek messages embedded in choreography (movement), polyrhythm, lyrics and indeed, music as produced by drums and other music instruments.
As we take strides into the future by stepping into our past it is imperative that we have the right analytical and interpretive tools with which to appreciate and understand that our past and our heritage. We have pointed out that this has been the glaring omission in the New Curriculum. It failed to capture the essence of African heritage in the form of African Thought and African Cosmology. Emphasis was given to manifestations and trappings of our African heritage, much in the same fold as did early white missionaries and their white colonial accomplices, particularly the native commissioners. To understand a society’s culture demands a detailed and informed understanding of that which informs and underpins its more visible cultural practices.
As architects begin to embrace African architectural traditions as depicted in the Victoria Falls Airport and the proposed new Parliament Building, it becomes all the more imperative to ground ourselves solidly on African Thought and begin to appreciate our heritage rather that its romanticisation that we have been subjected to by many quarters that view our past through their own cultural lenses. Time is fast approaching when Africans shall begin to stand tall and tell their own stories instead of listening to self appointed academic proxies to do it for them.