Paper short abstract:

At the core of Batwa realities is musicking. By closely examining how daily and occasional musickings are practiced, this paper demonstrates how their corporeal image constructs 'happy' actualities, realities and futures in correspondence to modern developing nation and forced resettlement.

Paper long abstract:

Almost 20 years have passed since the Batwa people of Central Africa have been evicted from the Virunga forest. Their traditional way of living, hunting and gathering has been prohibited, obliging them to adapt as peasants, yet another of their traditional practice, musicking (Small 1998) still thrives. Living together with their new neighbors, long-time peasants, under the umbrella of modern nation, their musical ‘actualities’ (Kimura 2001) is not immune to the ‘realities’ diffused by Protestant church songs, industrial pop songs and governmental publicity songs through radio, tv, digital media and social interaction. Together with traditional Batwa songs, this musical universe consists of a complex compound distributing the population on a matrix of different music styles and rhythms. In other words, this paper demonstrates different visions of constructed actualities, realities and futures among the community, by empirically examining their daily improvisational musicking and monetized traditional musical performances presented; when it occurs, with what songs, by whom, when and how. Data is gathered not only through participant observation and casual interviews but also filming by the researcher and the Batwa themselves. This is to consider actualities, realities and futures not only through linguistic concepts but through corporeal image (Belting 2011). Happiness 'kwishima' is said to be the drive for Batwa musicking, and so, this paper argues what kind of ‘happy’ visions are expressed in their musicking corresponding to ‘development’ promoted by the government and the un-easy relationships with their relatively new neighbors.