Draft:Convince

‹ The template Infobox religious group is being considered for merging. ›
Convince
An entry was removed here. Please see here for what to do.

Convince (also known as Bongo or Bongo Convince) is a Jamaican spiritual and governance tradition practised primarily in Portland, St. Thomas, and St. Mary parishes in eastern Jamaica. Donald Hogg's fieldwork for Yale University in 1960 described it as "an ancestral and priestly society functioning across time."[1]

Etymology and nomenclature

Convince

The term "Convince" is not etymologically explained in the main scholarly sources on the tradition. Hogg (1960) uses it throughout his study as the standard name without commenting on its derivation.[2]

Bongo

Warner-Lewis (2003) derives "Bongo" from Kikongo mbongo, meaning kinship network or wealth held in common by a lineage.[3] She notes that among Kumina practitioners the word "Bongo" functions as a "positive self-ascription," indicating shared institutional identity with the Convince community.[4]

Flenke

Hogg's 1964 doctoral dissertation at Yale records a figure known as "Mother Flenke" in Portland Parish, described as "a well-known convince worker of the distant past."[5] Pullis (1999) reproduces this record in his study of Jamaican religious traditions.[6] In the Convince community the name is held as "Flenke"; academic sources record it as "Flinke," a phonetic rendering by English-language observers. Both forms designate the same custodial lineage. Hogg notes that convince mediums and practitioners "today are overwhelmingly male," marking a contrast with the historical figure of Mother Flenke.[7]

Origins

Central African roots

Heywood and Thornton (2007) argue that Central Africans transported to the Caribbean before 1660 were frequently carriers of "an 'Atlantic Creole' culture that included Africanised forms of Catholic Christianity, elements of European languages (especially Portuguese and Spanish names), and institutional knowledge derived from the political culture of the Kongo kingdom."[8] Vansina (1990) documents the Kingdom of Kongo as a mature political institution by approximately 1440, with matrilineal succession and provincial governance structures.[9]

Gouveia (2024) describes the 1511 relationship between Portugal and the Kingdom of Kongo as a confederation under the principle of aeque principaliter, in which the two kingdoms retained separate identities as co-equal sovereigns.[10]

The kilombo and palenque

Schmitt (2022) documents the establishment of palenque communities — autonomous, self-governing settlements — in Spanish colonial territories of the Caribbean during the seventeenth century, linking their governance structure to the Central African kilombo tradition.[11] Cundall and Pietersz (1919) document the Juan Lubolo (Juan de Bolas) palenque in St. Mary Parish as the most extensively recorded Jamaican example, operating from the mid-seventeenth century.[12]

Warner-Lewis (2003), citing Larduet (1988, 1995), identifies the Spanish colonial term palenque as derived from the Kikongo compound pa-lenge (locative prefix pa- + governance root lenge), meaning "place of the Lenge community."[13]

Bongo as ancestral governance fraternity

Hogg (1960) documented the following institutional functions within the tradition: annual ceremonies involving animal sacrifice; memorial services on the anniversary of each past member's death; ceremonies to pacify or give thanks to ancestral spirits; and a bongo-man who simultaneously holds what Hogg calls a "priestly role" and serves as organisational head.[14] Ryman (1984), cited in Warner-Lewis (2003), notes that the bongo-man serves as both governance authority and Master of Ceremonies.[15]

Myal

Warner-Lewis, drawing on Laman's authoritative 1936 Kikongo dictionary, derives the term "Myal" from the Kikongo term mayaala, defined by Laman (entry L 1112) as "physical representations of power" and "agents of a paramount chief's authority," from the root verb yaala, "to govern."[16] The earliest printed record of the word "Myal" in Jamaica is in Edward Long's History of Jamaica (1774), written fourteen years after Tacky's War (St. Mary, 1760).[17]

Bilby (2005) identified the ceremonial language of the Bongo Convince tradition as "an entirely new creole argot" with Bantu noun class prefixes, pronoun paradigms, and cosmological vocabulary distinct from Jamaican Patois.[18] The community name for this language is Flenke (or Kilenge, the Bantu-derived autonym). Bilby (1999) provides additional documentation in his study of Kumina and the Convince religion.[19]

Mother Flenke and the matrilineal structure

Hogg's 1964 fieldwork in Portland Parish recorded the figure of "Mother Flinke" — the community's "Mother Flenke" — as a named authority of the tradition, already identified as of "the distant past" at the time of Hogg's research.[20] Pullis (1999) reproduces Hogg's observation that "although at least one well-known convince worker of the distant past, known as Mother Flinke, was a woman, convince mediums and spirits today are overwhelmingly male."[21]

Vansina (1990) documents matrilineal succession as a foundational governance principle of Kongo political structures, in which female governance figures held institutional authority within the kilombo.[22] Warner-Lewis (2003), drawing on Larduet's documentation of Cuban Palo Monte, records the title yayi (from Kikongo yaya, "mother") as the female institutional head of the governance family across the documented Palo branches.[23]

Convince, Kumina, and Cuban Palo Monte

Warner-Lewis (2003) compares the Convince tradition directly with Kumina and Cuban Palo Monte, writing: "In Convince, then, as in Kumina and Cuban Palo Monte, one notes a reconstitution of family relationships akin to those established on the basis of shipmate solidarity."[24] She identifies the governing model as the Kongo "governance family," and notes that "the term 'family' is actually employed in palero parlance to signify the Palo Monte confraternity in Cuba."[25]

Larduet (1988, 1995), cited throughout Warner-Lewis (2003), documents the following hierarchy within Cuban Palo Monte:

Title Kikongo derivation Function
Palanquero pa-lenge ("place of the Lenge") Base community member
Yayi yaya (Kikongo: "mother") Female institutional head
Taata tata (Kikongo: "father") Head of the governance family
Taata kisi tata + nkisi Practitioner who has initiated others
Taata nganga tata + nganga Senior practitioner, third-generation authority

Warner-Lewis notes that the base initiate title palanquero designates membership in the PA-LENGE community, documented in all four Palo branches by Larduet.[26]

Of the four documented Palo expressions, Warner-Lewis (2003) identifies Kimbisa as distinctive in having a written constitution and a supreme leader with formally graduated degrees of initiation — features she documents separately from Palo Monte/Mayombe, Briyumba Congo, and Kimfwiti.[27]

Relationship to the Liberated African arrivals

Schuler (1980) documents that between 1841 and 1869 approximately 8,000–10,000 Liberated Africans — self-identifying as Kongo, Nsundi, Yaka, Ambaka, Bobangi, and Ndongo — arrived in Jamaica and settled in St. Thomas and Portland parishes.[28] Warner-Lewis (2003) documents that Convince and Kumina share vocabulary items including mayaal, malaavu ("rum"), and bongo, and identifies Bongo Nation subgroups within Kumina — Muyanji (Yansi), Munchundi (Nsundi), Mumbaka (Mbaka), and Mondongo (Ndongo) — as representing national identities of those arrivals.[29]

Geographic distribution and historical record

The Convince tradition is centred in the eastern parishes of Portland, St. Thomas, and St. Mary. Allsworth-Jones and Wesler (2012) document Taíno institutional occupation at the Guayguata complex in St. Mary Parish from approximately 1440 CE.[30] Cundall and Pietersz (1919) record the founding of Melilla (Annotto Bay, St. Mary) as one of the first Spanish settlements in Jamaica in 1509.[31]

Dallas (1803) documents a community known as the Congo Settlement in the Cockpit Country during the 1770s, composed predominantly of Kongo-descended people, which was suppressed by Accompong Maroons acting under treaty obligations established in 1739.[32]

Brown (2020) documents Tacky's War (April 1760) as originating in St. Mary Parish and constituting the largest armed resistance in Jamaican history before the Baptist War.[33]

Sloane (1707) published a song identified as "Angola" from a 1688 festival — the earliest documented Kongo-Angola musical expression in Jamaica.[34] Aranzadi (2012) documents the gumbe drum as having travelled from Jamaica to West and Central Africa following the relocation of Trelawny Town Maroons to Sierra Leone in 1800, establishing Jamaica as a point of Kongo cultural transmission rather than solely a receiving community.[35]

Institutional continuity: Ethiopian Baptist to Convince

George Liele established the Ethiopian Baptists of Jamaica in 1783, with a church covenant recorded in 1792.[36] Morrison (2014) documents that the Ethiopian Baptists "began a path that led to the emancipation of enslaved people in the Caribbean and the founding of indigenous religions" in Jamaica, identifying Convince and Revival Zion among those traditions.[37]

Turner (1982) and Holt (1992) document the Baptist War (December 1831 – January 1832), led by Sam Sharpe, a deacon in the Native Baptist tradition, as involving approximately 60,000 participants.[38][39] Pullis (1999) places the formal naming of the Convince tradition at around 1861, at an institutional separation from the Native Baptist movement.[40]

Lenge/Flenke root across geographic contexts

Warner-Lewis (2003), drawing on Larduet and on Guthrie's (1967–1971) comparative Bantu documentation, notes that Bantu noun class prefixes mark grammatical category without altering the semantic root, so the same root appears with different prefixes across Bantu languages.[41] The root lenge/lengu appears in Jamaican attestation as Flenke (via Kikongo prefix variation) and in Cameroon as Liengu or Jengu among the Duala, Bakweri, and Sawa coastal peoples.[42]

Ardener (1975) and Austen and Derrick (1999) document the Liengu/Jengu tradition in Cameroon as involving female institutional authority, water-boundary governance, and specialist hereditary knowledge.[43]

Joseph Merrick (born Jamaica, 1808) arrived in Cameroon as a missionary in 1843.[44] Joseph Jackson Fuller (born Spanish Town, Jamaica, 1825; died Cameroon, 1908) was ordained in 1859 and served over thirty years in Cameroon.[45] Victoria (now Limbé) was founded in 1858 by Alfred Saker with Jamaican settlers as a core component.[46]

Nkisi and the Kongo tradition in Cuba

MacGaffey (1991) analyses Kongo minkisi as governance instruments, arguing that the nganga nkisi specialist held political authority through control of the nkisi.[47] Brown (2003) documents the Cabildo Rey Mago San Melchor, established in Cuba in 1792, as the earliest formally documented Kongo religious organisation in the Americas.[48]

Contemporary recognition

San Basilio de Palenque, Colombia — a community of similar Central African palenque origin — was designated a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2008 and achieved full autonomous municipality status under Colombian Law 2379 of 2024.[49]

See also

References

  1. ^ Hogg, Donald. The Convince Cult in Jamaica. Yale University Publications in Anthropology, No. 58. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960, pp. 100–101.
  2. ^ Hogg 1960, pp. 3–5.
  3. ^ Warner-Lewis, Maureen. Central Africa in the Caribbean: Transcending Time, Transforming Cultures. University of the West Indies Press, 2003, p. 92.
  4. ^ Warner-Lewis 2003, p. 92.
  5. ^ Hogg, Donald W. 1964. Jamaican Religions: A Study in Variations. PhD dissertation, Yale University, p. 437, cited in Pullis 1999.
  6. ^ Pullis, J.W. "Myal, or, A Trickster in the Archives." In Pullis, J.W. (ed.). Religion, Diaspora and Cultural Identity: A Reader in the Anglophone Caribbean. Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach, 1999.
  7. ^ Hogg 1964, p. 437, cited in Pullis 1999.
  8. ^ Heywood, Linda M. and John K. Thornton. 2007. Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585–1660. New York: Cambridge University Press.
  9. ^ Vansina, Jan. 1990. Paths in the Rainforest: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
  10. ^ Gouveia, Jaime Ricardo. 2024. "The Confederation between the Kingdoms of Portugal and Kongo, 1511–1665." Religions 15(1): 38. MDPI.
  11. ^ Schmitt, Casey. 2022. "'Brought from the Palenques': Race, Subjecthood, and Warfare in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean." Early American Studies 20(4): 695–713.
  12. ^ Cundall, Frank and Joseph L. Pietersz. 1919. Jamaica Under the Spaniards. Kingston: Institute of Jamaica.
  13. ^ Warner-Lewis 2003; citing Larduet, Abelardo. 1988, 1995.
  14. ^ Hogg 1960, pp. 100–101.
  15. ^ Ryman, Cheryl. 1984. "Jamaican Festival: Roots and Branches." In Rex Nettleford (ed.), Jamaica in Independence. Kingston: Heinemann, pp. 90–91. Cited in Warner-Lewis 2003.
  16. ^ Warner-Lewis, Maureen. SCL Occasional Paper No. 40. Society for Caribbean Linguistics; citing Laman, Karl. 1936. Dictionnaire Kikongo-Français. Brussels: Institut Royal Colonial Belge, entry L 1112.
  17. ^ Long, Edward. 1774. The History of Jamaica. London: T. Lowndes. Vol. 2.
  18. ^ Bilby, Kenneth. True-Born Maroons. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005, pp. 388–389.
  19. ^ Bilby, Kenneth. 1999. "Grasping the Roots of the Jamaican Religious Complex: Kumina and the Convince Religion." In Pullis, J.W. (ed.), Religion, Diaspora and Cultural Identity. Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach, pp. 313–348.
  20. ^ Hogg 1964, p. 437, cited in Pullis 1999.
  21. ^ Pullis 1999, citing Hogg 1964:437.
  22. ^ Vansina 1990, pp. 73–80.
  23. ^ Warner-Lewis 2003; citing Larduet 1988.
  24. ^ Warner-Lewis 2003.
  25. ^ Warner-Lewis 2003.
  26. ^ Warner-Lewis 2003; citing Larduet 1988, 1995.
  27. ^ Warner-Lewis 2003.
  28. ^ Schuler, Monica. Alas, Alas, Kongo. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980, pp. 34–36.
  29. ^ Warner-Lewis 2003.
  30. ^ Allsworth-Jones, Philip and Kit W. Wesler. 2012. The Taíno Settlement at Guayguata: Excavations in St Mary Parish, Jamaica. BAR International Series. Oxford: BAR Publishing.
  31. ^ Cundall and Pietersz 1919.
  32. ^ Dallas, Robert Charles. 1803. The History of the Maroons. London: T.N. Longman and O. Rees. Vol. 1.
  33. ^ Brown, Vincent. 2020. Tacky's Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
  34. ^ Sloane, Hans. 1707. A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica. London. Vol. 1, pp. xlvii–xlviii.
  35. ^ Aranzadi, Isabela de. 2012. "A Drum's Trans-Atlantic Journey from Africa to the Americas and Back After the End of Slavery." African Music 9(1): 38–75.
  36. ^ Rippon, John. The Baptist Annual Register, 1793, pp. 332–337; Gayle, Clement. George Liele: Pioneer Missionary to Jamaica. Kingston: Jamaica Baptist Union, 1982.
  37. ^ Morrison, Doreen. Slavery's Heroes: George Liele and the Ethiopian Baptists of Jamaica, 1783–1865. 2014.
  38. ^ Turner, Mary. 1982. Slaves and Missionaries: The Disintegration of Jamaican Slave Society, 1787–1834. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
  39. ^ Holt, Thomas C. 1992. The Problem of Freedom: Race, Labor, and Politics in Jamaica and Britain, 1832–1938. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
  40. ^ Pullis 1999.
  41. ^ Warner-Lewis 2003; Guthrie, Malcolm. 1967–1971. Comparative Bantu. 4 vols. Farnborough: Gregg Press.
  42. ^ Ardener, Edwin. 1975. "Belief and the Problem of Women." In S. Ardener (ed.), Perceiving Women. London: Malaby Press; Austen, Ralph and Jonathan Derrick. 1999. Middlemen of the Cameroons Rivers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  43. ^ Ardener 1975; Austen and Derrick 1999.
  44. ^ Clarke, John. Memoirs of Joseph Merrick. London: Carey Kingsgate Press, 1850.
  45. ^ Saker, Helen. Alfred Saker: The Pioneer of the Cameroons. London: Religious Tract Society, 1908.
  46. ^ Saker 1908.
  47. ^ MacGaffey, Wyatt. Art and Healing of the Bakongo Commented by Themselves. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.
  48. ^ Brown, David H. Santería Enthroned. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003, pp. 44–48.
  49. ^ República de Colombia. Ley 2379 de 2024. Diario Oficial.

Further reading

  • Bilby, Kenneth. True-Born Maroons. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005.
  • Brown, Vincent. 2020. Tacky's Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
  • Chevannes, Barry. Rastafari: Roots and Ideology. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1994.
  • Gouveia, Jaime Ricardo. 2024. "The Confederation between the Kingdoms of Portugal and Kongo, 1511–1665." Religions 15(1): 38. MDPI.
  • Heywood, Linda M. and John K. Thornton. 2007. Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585–1660. New York: Cambridge University Press.
  • MacGaffey, Wyatt. 1986. Religion and Society in Central Africa: The BaKongo of Lower Zaire. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Schuler, Monica. 1980. Alas, Alas, Kongo. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
  • Thompson, Robert Farris and Joseph Cornet. 1981. The Four Moments of the Sun: Kongo Art in Two Worlds. Washington: National Gallery of Art.
  • Vansina, Jan. 1990. Paths in the Rainforest: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
  • Warner-Lewis, Maureen. 2003. Central Africa in the Caribbean: Transcending Time, Transforming Cultures. University of the West Indies Press.

Content Disclaimer

Informasi ini disarikan dari Wikipedia dan disajikan kembali untuk tujuan edukasi. Konten tersedia di bawah lisensi CC BY-SA 3.0. Kami tidak bertanggung jawab atas ketidakakuratan data yang bersumber dari kontribusi publik tersebut.

  1. The information displayed on this website is sourced in part or in whole from Wikipedia and has been adapted for the purpose of restating it. We strive to provide accurate and relevant information, however:
  2. There is no guarantee of absolute accuracy. Wikipedia is an open, collaborative project that can be edited by anyone, so information is subject to change.
  3. It is not intended to constitute professional advice. The content displayed is for informational and educational purposes only. For important decisions (e.g., medical, legal, or financial), please consult a professional.
  4. Content copyright. Wikipedia is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License (CC BY-SA). This means that content may be reused with appropriate attribution and shared under a similar license.
  5. Responsible use. Any risk arising from the use of information from this website is entirely the responsibility of the user.