• by IPS Correspondents (khartoum)
• Tuesday, November 08, 1994
• Inter Press Service

KHARTOUM, Nov 08 (IPS) - The civil war that has raged across Sudan for 11 years has forced more than three million southern Sudanese to flee to the north of their divided country.

Among them are the Azande of Western Equatoria, who traditionally live in an area that straddles the border between Sudan, Zaire and the Central African Republic.

Hundreds of thousands of Azande are now forced to live in camps for displaced persons around Khartoum, black Africans in a corner of the world where Arabic Muslim culture reigns supreme.

But the Azande, southern Sudan's third largest ethnic group after the Dinka and the Nuer, have no intention of allowing their own culture to die.

Each week, Azande elders teach the young in the camps to use traditional instruments to make music and to communicate in an effort to keep their culture alive. Young Azande tour other parts of northern Sudan to teach people about their culture, including their use of drums to communicate.

These include the 'guru' or 'moroto' drums made from a hollow piece of wood about two metres long skillfully tapped with ruler- length sticks to produce a percussion sound.

Leading Azande singer Kalisto Lewis, brought his drums with him from Juba to Khartoum where he now lives.

"Like all lost people we move along with our instruments to keep our tradition and culture alive," he says.

Despite the sweeping influence of Western and Islamic cultures, Lewis, 32, mocks at the doomsayers who regard the Azande's way of life as being out of touch with modern civilisation and predict that it will disappear.

Says Lewis: "The Azande culture will never die even if the war continues. This is because we perform our traditional dances and rites at every Azande funeral and marriage which bring together people who have not met for years."

One of the most powerful of the Azande instruments is the 'gbangri', a flute made of deer or gazelle horn and used to scare away potential enemies and wild animals.

When an Azande man blows his 'gbangri' in the night, that means he is frightening a herd of wild animals, especially elephants, from his farm.

"The sound of the gbangri has magical effect which irritates the elephants. It also reminds an intruder that the Azande is not sleeping, that he is alert in his house," Lewis explains. (MORE)

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© Inter Press Service (2014) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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