ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we look at the processes by which Ngoma (traditional drums) as part of the ethnographic collection in the Mutare Museum were in 2016 reconfigured and ascribed with new meanings derived from their everyday use within the contemporary community. The first author, Njabulo Chipangura was involved in developing this exhibition from the position of being a curator of archaeology at this museum. We argue that the museum used co-curatorship and new museum practice as decolonial strategies that recovered and integrated multiple perspectives from the community on socio-cultural uses of the traditional drums. We show how collaboration with the local community in reorganizing drums in the Beit Gallery in the museum gave these previously mute artefacts into live objects, connected with communities and their everyday practices. We posit that the efforts at reinterpreting ethnographic objects gave curatorial authority to local communities, contributed to challenging embedded knowledge practices within the museum and contributed to decolonizing museum practice. These musical instruments were appropriated into the museum's collection from the Hwesa communities in the Manicaland Province during the colonial period when the museum was opened in 1964. Since then, these culturally significant objects were presented in museum dioramas as static objects of ethnographic inquiry, devoid of any real meaning or connections with communities from which they were acquired or collected. Furthermore, displaying the objects in a static format confined them to an ethnographic gaze, where the spiritual values at the cornerstone of their making and use were marginalised. In coming up with a new exhibition agenda entitled “Traditional Aspects of the Eastern Shona” we adopted “new museology” as a concept and methodology and considered a reinterpretation of traditional Shona drums as observed from their daily uses by the contemporary local community. To be able to achieve this, we invited the community back into the museums, and their voices, experiences and performances were marshalled in reinterpreting the traditional drums, subsequently giving them new meanings.
