Southwestern DRC, with Angola border to their west

Yaka

Wood, fiber rope, metal
Late 19th – Early 20th century
Length: 22 in, Width: 7.875 in, Depth: 4.25 in
Idiophone – Struck Directly  – Slit Drum

A late 19^th or early 20^th century Yaka one-piece hand carved ‘Diviner’s’ slit drum depicting a head, that when struck is said to serve as the mouth of the oracle’s voice.  Among the Yaka People this symbolic instrument is called a “Nkoko Ngombo”.

The Kwango River area (southwest of the Democratic Republic of the Congo) is the home to many of the highly artistic Yaka people. Yaka or yakala means “males,” “the strong ones,” thus Bayaka, “the strong people.” The Yaka society is organized into strong lineage group headed by elders and lineage headmen. The chief, which includes the village chiefs and regional overlords, of the lineage had the power of life and death over lineage members. They oversaw the cult of the ancestors and judiciary authority, and it was compulsory that they have a large number of descendants. The chiefs, were believed to have extra-human abilities, ruling the underworld or spiritual realm as well as the ordinary world.

The Yaka use narrow cylindrical wooden slit-drums with a carved head for divination purposes. Sometimes the head is a Janus form. These instruments, the main insignia of the diviner, is the focus of a complex system of ritual institutions concerned with hereditary curses and curing. The slit-drums function in a variety of contexts.  It is used as a container for preparing and serving divinatory medicines, but it is also beaten at the funeral of a diviner.  This magnificent Yaka slit drum shows signs of usage and age with tribal repairs to the head.

Resource: yaka (zyama.com)