Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 386
Discussion of dress codes and other performance elements of dzum zugune
During the 1996 field session I made some rough sketches to remind myself of how the
various participants of the different stages of dzum zugune might have looked. In this section
we will try to make a descriptive sketch using what we know so far from the objects of
material culture presented in the previous section. We start with the married and unmarried
young men (gabajuwala) dancing at the place called Sarara. We know they also danced the
following day at Fkagh ga Maruwa, and we mentioned that they might have given some of the
objects they wore to unmarried females (vardghawa), such as the brass armlets for the upper
arms known as zawya (see Plate 50a).
Quite a few of the keen young men who participated were unmarried, and were most likely
already committed to a girl through a marriage by promise. Such a promise was not
necessarily romantic but was based on the friendship the son's father had initiated with the
girl's mother on the birth of her daughter (see Chapter 3.20). We do not know how serious a
girl who had been promised in that way might have been, despite her family already having
accepted the gifts the father of the boy had given as an investment in her becoming a member
of his patrilineage. It would have been a completely different courtship scenario for married
men and unmarried women if the men were looking for a secondary marriage. Besides, dzum
zugune was very much a family event, and especially in its initial stages it mattered whether
or not senior extended family members had started it. The fact that a brother could not
advance beyond the stage of his older sibling was presumably a ritual management of socioeconomic ambition.
In a similar sense, dzum zugune also had a strong religious component, shown by the fact that
a new candidate had to prove his socio-economic independence by performing kaɓa before he
could show honour and reverence to his deceased father during har ghwe. Kaɓa required the
sharing of much beer with neighbours and extended family members by such a man aiming
for ritual independence. This would have required him to at least have a first wife who would
hopefully give him a seventh-born son (thayagha) at some point in his future career as a
successful mountain farmer. In that sense dzum zugune was designed to maintain a certain
social order, which it was necessary to defend and which was embedded in the cosmology
and worldview of the Dghweɗe.
We will return to the Dghweɗe worldview expressed by ritual culture, and the wish for socioeconomic independence in the performers, when discussing the dress codes of the various
stages of dzum zugune. Questions will arise from ethnographic uncertainties, due to the
fragmentary nature of our data. We begin with the dress code of those to whom I referred as
the 'keen young men', because their eagerness seemed to us to give an additional sentimental
flavour to the documentation, bringing it alive a little, hopefully rendering it more than simply
a reconstructed socio-economic event to be imagined in late pre-colonial Dghweɗe:
Dress code for married or unmarried young men (gabajuwala) dancing for dzum zugune:
• Kwatama
– leather cap of cow or bull hide (Plate 56b)
• Wushighwe
– facial makeup across nose (Figure 23a)
• Difirfira
– rope to cover leather cap (Plate 56b, detail: a)
• Sambala
– neckband made of beads (Plate 48a)
• Gwargwara
– glass beads worn over both shoulders on the back (Plate 57g)
• Jilɓa lge
– metal chain worn diagonally across the chest (Plate 57f)
• Jilɓa gargra
– originally fibre, worn diagonally over neck and chest (Plate 57g)
• Ding dva
– general term for wrist bracelets (e.g. ding dawana, Plate 49b)
• Zawya
– bracelets around upper arms (Plate 50a)
• Vighita’a
– skin of cow or goat for hips (no illustration)
• Gwambariya – black and white cotton used to tie the gwargwara (Plate 58a)
• Khwa khwa
– brass crotal bells worn around ankles and waist (Plate 58d)
• Dzadza
– palm tree, young leaves, worn on ankles (Plate 58e)
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