The kazanga festival

Abstract

This paper explores the cultural dynamics of ethnicity in a context of a post‐colonial African state, Zambia. The opening sections seek to define ethnicity and to pinpoint its central dilemma: while unmistakably constructed and thus selectively empowering the brokers co‐ordinating the construction process, ethnicity yet tends to pose as unchangeable, innate and inescapable. The paper then presents a detailed analysis of the recent Kazanga festival among people identifying as Nkoya in Western Zambia. As an instance of ethnic self‐representation vis‐à‐vis the national state, the annual festival brings out the extent to which cultural reconstruction in ethnicity radically transforms local historical cultural forms towards a global idiom of performance, inequality along class and gender lines, and commodification or folklorisation of culture. Yet such transformation is shown to have a revitalising effect on local expressive culture and on the historic kingship, and is argued to be a survival strategy for local cultural forms in a globalising world.