Dead
Media | 0.01-02.0 | 02.1-04.0
| 04.1-06.0 | 06.1-08.0 |
08.1-10.0 | 10.1-12.0 |
Subject: Dead Media Working Note 07.6
Dead medium: The Luba Lukasa
From: "Jael" of HARDCORE magazine, PO BOX 1893, London
SW16 2ZB, Britain c/o marks_AT_ayla.avnet.co.uk (Mark
Simpkins)
Source: STAFFS OF LIFE (ed. AF Roberts, Iowa City 1994)
Oi, Bruce! If you think the Quipu is extinct here is a
media deader than disco.
The Lukasa was a mnemonic device once used by the Luba
people of Zaire.
The Lukasa is a hand-held flat wooden object. The
flat part is divided into male and female sections, and
either studded with beads and pins, or covered with
incised ideograms.
It was used to teach lore about cultural heros, clan
migrations and the introduction of sacred rule. It was
also used to suggest spatial positions of activities and
oracles within the kingdom or inside a royal compound.
Lukasas were used to order the sacred prerogatives of
officials with regard to their contact with earth spirits
and the use of natural resources. Each Lukasa elicits some
or all of this information but the narration varies with
the oratory skill and knowledge of the reader. The
Lukasa encodes not a symbolic representation of the
information, merely a mnemonic, or spatial representation
map of it.
The kinds of information encoded may include
journeys, kings and courtiers, genealogies, and lists of
clans.
The instrument was used by an association called the
"Mbudye," who trained men of memory who could recall
genealogies, royal lists and episodes in the founding of
the kingdom.
It seems to me that this is not merely a single
medium but an entire approach (mnemonic encoding as
opposed to symbolic representation) that is disappearing
from living media.
Jael
Dead
Media | 0.01-02.0 | 02.1-04.0
| 04.1-06.0 | 06.1-08.0 |
08.1-10.0 | 10.1-12.0 |