Kuba

Population: ≈ 250,000–350,000 (the Kuba confederation of some eighteen peoples) in south-central DRC

Location: The forest-savanna between the Kasai and Sankuru rivers — Nsheng (Mushenge), the royal capital, in Kasai province, DRC

Language: Bushoong (the royal language) and related Kuba tongues

Language family: Niger-Congo → Bantu (C80)

Traditional governance: A confederation of chiefdoms under the nyim (king), of the Bushoong, at Nsheng — an elaborate court of titled officials, councils and a famous system of checks (the king balanced by councils and by law); matrilineal descent; the kingdom is remembered for a sophisticated constitutional order and for making art the business of the state.

Most African peoples are federations of named sub-groups (clans, sections, chiefdoms or sub-tribes), each with its own dialect, territory and traditions.

Clothing: The Kuba raffia textiles — cut-pile embroidered 'velvets', appliqué skirts metres long, and the beaded-and-cowrie royal costumes so heavy the nyim can barely move; the great masks and regalia; everyday raffia cloth raised to one of Africa's supreme textile arts.

Food: Cassava, plantain and forest foods with fish and game; palm wine and palm oil; the court's ceremonial provisioning; the forest-savanna's produce feeding the confederation.

Ceremonies: Royal masquerades — the Mwaash aMbooy (the king's own mask), Ngaady aMwaash (his sister-wife) and Bwoom — dancing the founding myth; the nyim's investiture and court rituals; funerary and initiation ceremonies; the display of the ndop royal portrait-statues.

Marriage customs: Matrilineal descent shaping inheritance and succession; bridewealth and gift-exchange; royal and titled marriages weaving the confederation's chiefdoms; the raffia cloth central to bridewealth, tribute and burial.

Initiation rites: Men's initiation (nkaan) with masks, ordeal and instruction; the craft-guild apprenticeships (weaving, carving, smithing, embroidery) that made the kingdom an art-workshop; court and title service as noble schooling.

Every dish the Atlas publishes for Democratic Republic of the Congo, at national rather than community level — 12 in all: the staple a household eats daily, the dish the country names as its own, street food, what is cooked for a wedding or Eid, regional specialities and a drink. Quantities and method are given for every one, so these are recipes rather than descriptions, and each has a photograph from Wikimedia Commons. The Food page carries the whole continent, searchable by country and by ingredient.

Healing and surgery, oracular systems, and the ordering of courtship and fertility. Historical practice is recorded as heritage; where a practice is harmful or now unlawful, that is stated rather than glossed over.

“The king is carved, but the pattern is the people's.”

Kingship is individual; the art and order belong to all.

“A cloth well-embroidered outlives the hand that made it.”

Craft and beauty are a lasting inheritance.

“Wisdom is what the traveller brings home.”

The Shyaam ideal — knowledge gathered abroad renews the kingdom.

Creation: Mboom (Bumba) and Ngaan, the creator powers, made the world in Kuba cosmology; the royal masks — Woot the founding ancestor and his sister — dance the origin of the people; the nyim carries sacred power, and the ancestors and nature-spirits (mingesh) act in fortune.

Beliefs: The creator powers and the founding ancestor Woot; the royal masks embodying the origin myth; ancestral veneration and the mingesh nature-spirits; the nyim's sacred kingship; diviners and healers treating misfortune; Christianity now present over the court religion and its masks.

Ancestors: The founding ancestor Woot and the royal dead are honoured, the latter present in the ndop portrait-statues; the masks dance the origin; ancestral and nature-spirit veneration underlie the court's sacred order.

Traditional settlements: The royal capital Nsheng (Mushenge) with the nyim's palace of woven-raffia and geometric-patterned walls, audience courts and the treasury of regalia; villages of rectangular houses with the celebrated woven and painted geometric wall-panels; the whole a landscape of pattern.

Building techniques: Woven raffia-panel and mat walling raised to decorative art — the geometric patterns of the textiles echoed on the buildings; carving, smithing and embroidery guild-crafts; the palace as the confederation's art-treasury.

Village layout: The capital ordered around the nyim's palace and courts; villages by matrilineage; the guild quarters of weavers, carvers and embroiderers; pattern and art woven through the built environment as through the cloth.

1. c. 1600

   The Kuba confederation forms in the Kasai-Sankuru forest; the Bushoong nyim at its head; distinct peoples united under the court.

2. 17th c.

   The reforming era attributed to Shyaam aMbul aNgoong — new crops, crafts and a balanced constitution; the golden age of Kuba art and governance.

3. 18th–19th c.

   The kingdom flourishes as an art-producing state; raffia cloth, masks and ndop statues reach a peak; relative isolation preserves the court.

4. 1880s–1960

   Congo Free State and Belgian rule reach the Kasai; the kingdom subordinated but its arts collected and celebrated worldwide; the nyim retained.

5. Present

   The nyim and the Kuba court endure within DRC; Kuba textiles, masks and ndop are treasures of world museums (amid restitution debates); the geometric design tradition remains a living Kuba art.