Folk Tales of the Congo — Part 2 (The Two-Coloured Coat · The Crafty Woman Overreaches Herself · How the Fetish Sunga Punished Basa · The Fight between the Two Fetishes, Lifuma and Chimpukela · The Fetish of Chilunga · The Bird-Messengers · Nzambi Mpungu's Ambassador · Why the Crocodile Does Not Eat the Hen · The Three Brothers · The Story of a Partnership) | KacheliTV World Classics
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
Ten more tales from the Fjort country of the French Congo, gathered by R. E. Dennett and first published in 1898, read here in a second complete sitting: a fisher's coat of two colours that speaks, tames the bush and knows his wife's thoughts; a wife who tries to tempt a fetish with plantains and is seen through at once; the sunken town of Boio beneath the river, where the fetish Sunga keeps his feast and punishes a greedy guest; two wonder-working fetishes, Lifuma and Chimpukela, at war over a stolen kite; the bush fetish Chilunga, whom no hangings of cloth can charm; the doves Nzambi Mpungu sent to learn why men live and why they die; his ambassador, sent across the seas for dolls that walk and speak; why the crocodile never eats the hen; three brothers who learn the speech of beasts and birds; and a trading partnership of three that greed divides. Narrated by Violetta. An instrumental theme — Midnight Forbidden Saxophone — opens and closes the program and is heard briefly between the stories.
Chapters:
0:00 Opening theme — Midnight Forbidden Saxophone
0:37 1. The Two-Coloured Coat
2:42 2. The Crafty Woman Overreaches Herself
4:26 3. How the Fetish Sunga Punished Basa
6:57 4. The Fight between the Two Fetishes, Lifuma and Chimpukela
10:07 5. The Fetish of Chilunga
13:24 6. The Bird-Messengers
14:35 7. Nzambi Mpungu's Ambassador
15:37 8. Why the Crocodile Does Not Eat the Hen
17:37 9. The Three Brothers
19:54 10. The Story of a Partnership
21:45 Closing theme
Register of the book's remaining matter: of the tales in Notes on the Folklore of the Fjort not heard in Part 1 or here, fifteen stand excluded under this shelf's standing exclusions (death staged for amusement, revenge killing played for satisfaction, scenes of maiming and torment, tales turning on combat or endurance ordeals, a duelling challenge, a child beaten to death, a terrorised child, a child endangered in the bush, an adultery accusation that endangers a wife, a grisly childbirth rite, a fumbling sorcerer tale whose obscenity lies in euphemism, and extended phallic trickster obscenity), and two — a fetish-driver's tale and a charm against a husband, both carrying bare period caste and race terms — stand on the bench awaiting the owner's sight; one tale of two brothers is held for a ruling. No claim of completeness for the book is made.
From Notes on the Folklore of the Fjort (French Congo) by R. E. Dennett (1898), public domain — the closing specimen tale of Chapter II, tales XXI, XXII, XXIV, XXV, XXVIII, XXIX, XXX, XXXI and Appendix I complete and in book order. Narrated by Violetta. Theme: Midnight Forbidden Saxophone.
