Rhythm, blood sacrifice or civic education? On multiple perspectives on socio-spiritual life in the postcolony.

Vimbuza is a complex cultural practice that, situated in a postcolonial society, engages its practitioners and antagonists in multiple ways. It is considered a medical practice, a musical activity that maintains the tradition of northern Malawi, a bloody ritual, a demonic cult, a politicized gesture of respect, an element of intangible cultural heritage. Actors such as social scientists and ancestral spirits also participate in the creation of these social meanings. In addition to juxtaposing these multiple perspectives and intertwined lines of action, the lecture will ask what are the methodological consequences of participation in the process of meaning-making by an anthropologist.

Dr. Piotr Cichocki – anthropologist, music producer, publisher. His areas of interest include East African sound practices in the context of postcolonial theory. He works at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology of the University of Warsaw, where in 2022 he co-initiated the Interdisciplinary Team for Postcolonial Studies. As part of the 1000HZ publishing house, he produces and publishes recordings of artists from Malawi and Tanzania. Among the texts he has edited and written are, among others, a thematic issue of the journal Ethnologia Polona devoted to the “ethnographic ear”, an issue of the magazine Glissando on music from the Kinshasa-Nairobi-Maputo triangle, methodological and ethnographic articles on sound research methods and religiosity in Africa.