TONGA
A cultural-political expedition in the Austrian Alps.The Tonga belong to the Bantu people and are the third largest language group in Zimbabwe. They are discriminated socially and economically by the two larger groups Shona and Ndebele. On the occasion of a Sunnseitn expedition in 1996 local ethnopop musicians described them as sorcerers, as „beings between human and animal“.
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In 1957 the proud and independent Tonga people went through a social, economic and ecological desaster caused by the construction of the Kariba dam, a white prestige project of the former Rhodesian government. More than 170000 people were driven by armed forced from the fertile valley of the Zambesi river and dispersed into unfertile, arid desert areas without any respect for family ties. 275km of the valley including all the settlements were flooded by the dammed Zambesi. Up to the present day the Tonga have not overcome this traumatic experience, but even hunger and social suffering could not break their cultural tradition. In the frame of Ngoma-Buntibe-ceremonies they perform contemporary music that sounds archaic and at the same time stunningly modern – more exciting than Stockhausen.
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The education system of Zimbabwe still reflects the colonial past, which means that the zenith in an artist’s career is an invitation to a European festival. Therefore we decided to invite Zimbabwe’s „underdogs“ to participate in the 1997 edition of the Festival of the Regions, a regional arts festival taking place every second year in the region of Upper Austria. So all of a sudden prominent Zimbabwe politicians appeared on photographs together with the invited Simonga group, and the Tonga musicians got an invitation to perform at the Harare Bookfair, one of the most important bookfairs in southern Africa.
During their stay in Europe they played only a few concerts, as this would be contradictory to the performance philosophy of their ceremonies. The artistic festival contribution we finally worked out together was the crossing of a high mountain range. Together with 30 Tonga musicians and a train of 200 white participants we started for a 10 day inter-cultural experiment through the mountains of the Totes Gebirge („Dead Mountains“). In the wide space of nature music, dance, singing, ceremonies and talks could develop save from the ususal voyeurism of the cultural and media scene. This high intellectual, spiritual and physical performance contrasted the widespread cliche of the poor and weak Africans and turned into a clear manifesto for the strong cultural life of a people humiliated by our system. A strength that makes us Europeans appear like a developing region in the field of culture.
The latest follow-up Tonga project:
In 2001 an internet-center was set up in Binga with Austrian support (http://www.mulonga.net)
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