Lesson plan
Vimbuza
Vimbuza is a spirit-possession complex and healing dance practised chiefly by the Tumbuka people of northern Malawi, and among related communities in eastern Zambia and southern Tanzania. The term covers three related classes of possessing spirits (vimbuza, virombo and vyanusi), the illnesses they are believed to cause, and the drumming, singing and all-night dancing performed to identify and calm them. Vimbuza took its present form among the Ngoni-Tumbuka of the Mzimba and Rumphi districts during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was banned by the colonial administration in the 1920s, and was inscribed by UNESCO on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2008, having first been proclaimed a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2005.
Article summary
Vimbuza is a spirit-possession complex and healing dance practised chiefly by the Tumbuka people of northern Malawi, and among related communities in eastern Zambia and southern Tanzania. The term covers three related classes of possessing spirits (vimbuza, virombo and vyanusi), the illnesses they are believed to cause, and the drumming, singing and all-night dancing performed to identify and calm them. Vimbuza took its present form among the Ngoni-Tumbuka of the Mzimba and Rumphi districts during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was banned by the colonial administration in the 1920s, and was inscribed by UNESCO on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2008, having first been proclaimed a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2005.
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Discussion questions
- Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
- Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
- If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?
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