The film Karingana Wa Karingana (Once Upon a Time) was filmed over three days in 2018, when a small group of audiovisual researchers from the Mozambican capital, Maputo, took the first cut of their film back to the village where it had been researched and shot. It was filmed as part of my doctoral research into the embodied (and decolonial) construction of knowledge through film and music, and it records the impact of the collaborative audiovisual methodologies on the Mozambican researchers, their participants, and the wider community. The research methods shown in the film build on the country’s revolutionary approaches to harnessing the transformative power of music and film during the 1970s and 80s while developing and testing practical methodologies that could be applied and sustained in the 2020s. When Mozambique gained independence from Portugal in 1975, a plan was developed to decolonize the population’s sense of self and create a proud, unified national identity. In their task of winning the hearts and minds of the largely non-literate rural population, the leadership of the newly independent nation embraced the transformative potential of music and film. Traditional songs from across the country were adapted to share the messages of the revolution and taught at workplaces, schools, and community meetings. Locally produced films were also screened in communities to provide opportunities for self-reflection and discussion in a nationwide initiative known as Kuxa Kanema (The Birth of Cinema). To this day, these creative, non-text-based forms of communication continue to play an important role in knowledge creation, playing their part in the slow process the Kenyan writer Ngūgī Wa Thiong’o famously referred to as “decolonizing the mind” (1986).

The method I present in the film Karingana Wa Karingana could be described as a decolonial approach to “shared anthropology” (Rouch, 1974, 2003), an audiovisual methodology used by anthropologists where film projection is incorporated into the research process. However, it is important to note that even the term “anthropology” itself can be considered a colonial anachronism in some contexts. As the Senegalese writer and filmmaker Ousmane Sembène argued in 1965, the Western anthropological gaze can make its subjects feel as if they are being watched “as if we were insects,” and the “before and after” of this gaze needs to be critically analyzed (Sembène, in Busch and Annas, 2008, 4). Screening collaboratively produced audio-visual research at a karingana, a community gathering where collective storytelling has traditionally been a space for both entertainment and self-reflection, offers an opportunity for this kind of critical analysis to occur.

As a researcher, my positionality has significantly influenced my approach to this work. I am a white dual national who gained technical skills in the UK in the 1980s, learned directorial techniques alongside revolutionary filmmakers in Mozambique in the 1990s, and was later embraced by visual anthropologists, ethnomusicologists, and film theorists in UK academia in the 2000s. This combination of professional, revolutionary, ethnographic, and audiovisual practices informs my methodology. It shapes my search for ethical, intellectual, and creative methods of audiovisual ethnomusicological research and film production from an African perspective.

Upon entering academia in 2008, I was struck by what can only be described as its colonial approach to knowledge construction, something the decolonial scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith describes as “long-established institutions of knowledge embedded in a global system of imperialism and power” (Smith, 2012, ix). In providing a theoretical framework for the methodologies shared in the film Karingana Wa Karingana, I draw on the writings of Ngūgī wa Thiong’o (1986), Solanas and Getino (1970), Salazar (2004), bell hooks (1982), Walter Mignolo (2009), and Obioma Nnaemeka (2004) to provide a decolonial and feminist framing. This is in dialogue with the audiovisual methodologies described and analyzed by MacDougall (1998), Barbash and Castaing-Taylor (1997), Loizos (1993), and Ruby (1991). Pooja Rangan’s (2017) critical analysis of the western humanitarian notion of “giving” the camera to a subject, and “giving” subjects a voice, while maintaining authorial control, has also been particularly influential in my thinking. Using a process Rangan refers to as “mimetic surrender” (Rangan, 2017, 194), my role in the film being screened during the karingana was not as co-author or co-creator, but as trainer, mentor and executive producer. I had long dreamed of making a film that explored the lives of women in the south of Mozambique through their song and dance form of chingomana, yet remained absent during the filming and editing. Instead, through embracing Rangan’s provocation to “surrender” my own authorship, I was not only able to observe alternative forms of collaboration and co-creation between the young urban researchers and their rural subjects, I was also able to gain a more intimate, historical and political understanding of the music and dance form itself. The close relationship between Mozambican audiovisual researchers and their Mozambican subjects offered up new ways of understanding the music. My “gift” of the camera and the shared knowledge of how to use it, was returned in the unexpected form of ‘new vistas of relationality’ promised by Rangan. 

Karingana wa Karingana is often translated into English as “Once Upon a Time,” as it calls listeners together to hear a story and learn from it. There is a conversation in the film where the community hosting the event explains to the researchers that not only have stories, conviviality, and laughter been an important way to share knowledge for generations in Mozambique, but women were traditionally the storytellers, and were held in a position of great respect in the community. They describe the occasions where an inter-generational community, perhaps with some visitors, sits around a fire, sings, dances, and tells stories. “You saw it in last night’s karingana,” they explain, referring to the film screening portrayed in the film.

The film title draws on both senses of the word. It calls the audience to the story about to be shared, then shows a traditional karingana with a difference that incorporates film projection into the storytelling. In this karingana kamena, those physically present, those who live far away, and even those no longer alive, can share their songs, dances, and stories on the screen (kanema), their knowledge, memories, and spirit shared with and perpetuated by those present. 

The film also demonstrates how this practice of conviviality can be incorporated into a continued research cycle. Building on the legacy of Mozambique’s revolutionary approaches to harnessing the transformative power of music and film, the film shows how these practical methodologies can be applied and developed in the 2020s. As seen here, the stories and songs from one karingana kanema provoke further stories, songs, and conversations in the following days. In a research context, the new knowledge gained from one screening can form the basis of more knowledge and more filmed testimonies.

The group Xingomana de Nwajohane is named after the dance form chingomana (also written xingomana), one of the many musical genres adopted by Mozambique’s liberation movement FRELIMO (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique) during the 1960s and 70s to spread their socialist message. It was one of the few popular traditional genres embraced by the movement to be danced exclusively by women and young girls. As such, the chingomana repertoire includes many revolutionary songs promoting FRELIMO’s aspirations towards women’s liberation. 

Many of these songs refer to one of the trailblazers of Mozambique’s women’s movement, Josina Machel. She was active during the early independence struggles of the 1960s and one of the founder members of the women’s branch of FRELIMO, known then as the “destaca feminina,” later, after Josina’s death, as the Organization of Mozambican Women (OMM). Josina was known for her work with communities in the liberated zones, especially in promoting the health and well-being of women and children. Despite being only 25 at the time of her death in 1971, she became known as the mother of the revolution. Her husband, Samora Machel, became the first president of the independent Republic of Mozambique and established National Women’s Day on the day of her death. Many songs promoting women’s “liberation” and empowerment are either about or attributed to her. They continue to be sung by the group Xingomana de Nwajohane today, alongside new compositions from the members addressing their contemporary issues and concerns. 

The original function of chingomana has been lost over the decades. However, over a series of conversations during the research period, recollections were recorded that confirmed the previously undocumented assumption that chingomana was originally a seduction dance where pubescent girls would demonstrate their physical strength and dexterity to prospective suitors. Over the 20th century, with the repression of traditional African religion and ritual by both colonial and communist rulers, chingomana groups were instead called on to welcome official dignitaries. They remained popular in the regional music and dance competitions that continued after independence. The itinerant practices of traveling for hours on foot to attend these dance competitions ended during the civil war (1976–1992) when travel between communities became impossible. However, chingomana dance groups can still be found in many urban neighborhoods and villages in southern Mozambique and continue to be called on to perform at the community’s social and political occasions. The small, unassuming village of Nwajohane, where the group is from, hosts an open-air museum, a small hotel, a tarred road, and even an annual music festival, all something of an anomaly among Mozambican rural villages. This is because it is the birthplace of Eduardo Mondlane, one of the key pioneers of the Mozambican revolution and national hero. While attending one of these festivals, the researchers first came across the group Xingomana de Nwajohane, understood the significance of their songs, and committed to returning with cameras when they next got a chance. This chance came when, as part of my own doctoral research, I called for proposals from prospective participants of the research project Speak My Sister. The young researchers gave their film the title of the song that lay at the root of this idea: Nhenha.

Awansati, Awansati yene i nhenha
A woman, A woman is strong I swear,

Xikolwene alikona, Awansati yene i nhenha
She is at school, A woman is strong I swear, 

Xibedlele alikona, Awansati yene i nhenha
She is in the hospital, A woman is strong, I swear,

Tribunale alikona, Awansati yene i nhenha
She is in court, A woman is strong I swear,

Assembleia alikona, Awansati yene i nhenha
She is in parliament, A woman is strong I swear,

Akufuma alikona, Awansati yene i nhenha
She is in leadership, A woman is strong, I swear

The word Nhènhà is a changana word, spoken in southern Mozambique, that describes a particular kind of person who overcomes adversity through their own inner will. It can be used as both a noun and an adjective and can be translated as “personal determination” or, more simply, as “strength/strong.” In some revolutionary contexts, it is also translated as “victory/victorious.” It is associated with women’s strength in particular. In the film, three generations of women talk about their understanding of Nhènhà and how they manifest their own Nhènhà in their lives. The other two songs performed by the group during the film carry slightly less poetic versions of a similar message: “The Mozambican woman gave her life for Mozambican independence and is the heroine of this country” and “Let’s go to school like Mama Josina who fought to bring us peace and independence.” The conversations between the dancers and the researchers shown in the film Karingana Wa Karingana were catalyzed by these three songs and the testimonies that accompanied them in the screening the night before. Provoked by the film, the women chat while preparing food. They explore some of the promises made to women during the revolution with the researchers and comment on the slow change in women’s lives in Nwajohane over the past half-century.

The Fala Minha Irmã (Speak My Sister) research project involved the research production and exhibition of seven musical portraits of Mozambican women musicians and dancers. These have been curated into a web documentary, which is available alongside filmed musical performances and behind-the-scenes research films that explore the methodology behind the portraits. Karingana Wa Karingana, filmed over three days and nights, combines observational techniques with interviews with the researchers and their subjects. For months after the filming had been completed, I continued to inform my understanding of the history, practice, and context of the dance from chingomana, while translating and editing the material filmed over those three days. Some of the encounters, moments, actions, and reactions that had been captured gave me answers to the methodological research questions I had set out to answer.

I was looking for decolonial approaches to training and research that encouraged a new generation of researchers and filmmakers, especially in countries such as Mozambique with histories of a lack of self-representation, to conduct their own audio-visual research while also ensuring that the films they produce included not only the more familiar male perspective of their history and their culture but also the rarely heard female perspective. The interdisciplinarity of the research was also important and I worked with 30 staff and undergraduate students (20 men and ten women) from the five disciplines taught at the Maputo-based Higher Institute of Art and Culture (ISArC): cultural studies, cultural management, dance, art and design, and film studies. I mentored the young researchers as they produced and exhibited their musical portraits of the Mozambican women, offering technical and methodological training while encouraging the researchers and filmmakers to reflect on their gendered perspectives during each phase of the research, filming, and editing processes.

Karingana Wa Karingana is the most observational of all the research films I made during the Speak My Sister research project.It portrays the research process from my perspective as I seek out the exchanges and connections, not only between the young urban researchers but also between them and their film subjects, allowing me to witness and analyze the impact of the methodology on those from both sides of the camera. I had witnessed a slow shift in the researchers’ attitudes toward the inequalities in gender representation over the months we worked together, but I rarely captured this on film. In Karingana Wa Karingana, I used my own audiovisual research methodologies to assess the impact the research project was having on them. The observational filming process offered the opportunity to capture moments as they occurred, which informed my research findings. 

Early in the film, the conversation between the filmmakers as they travel with the film to Nwajohane, is one such example of the gradual shift in their own gendered prejudices. They muse on the sex of the deity protecting them on the journey and joke that even God may be female. This gained more poignancy when compared to audio recordings made during the brainstorming and pitching stage of the project five months earlier, in which the male participants’ unconscious prejudices had been startlingly apparent. The projects pitched to the selection panel, for example, although satisfying the brief to portray women musicians, were initially all presented from the perspective of male leaders of the female dance groups or male members of mixed groups and duos. The male researchers’ reticence to offer their female colleagues the technical roles of camera or sound, had prompted one group of women to create their own all-women research team. Months later, the men and women were laughing together about the blessings being showered upon them by the Goddess of Speak My Sister!  These were some of Mozambique’s future male and female researchers, filmmakers, and cultural promoters, and witnessing and analyzing these shifts in perspective resulting from the emphasis on gender equality in my methodological design was an important research finding.  It was also important that the young researchers witnessed the impact of their films on diverse audiences, male and female, of different backgrounds and language groups and assessed the audience reception in follow-up conversations with them. This was an essential aspect of my research methodology and often cited by the participants as being the most enlightening, important, and inspiring part of the Speak My Sister research project. 

The screening sequence in Karingana Wa Karingana also shows some of my core research findings played out. There is a moment early on in the screening where the audience laughs at the trainer of the dance group, Rosalina, when she says, “I’m strong because I do everything. There’s nothing I can’t do.” I noticed it while filming but when I was able to replay it and listen to the continued audience response through the rest of the film, I noticed that their collective response had changed by the end of the film. Rosalina had been ostracized by the community when she married a disabled man and took on the traditionally male roles in her family. At the start of the film, the audience’s laughter seemed to be at her and not with her. Over the next twenty minutes, the laughter and jeers were replaced by concentrated silence and quiet murmurs, and when the film ended, the crowd cheered her, some standing to show her their respect. Through sharing her testimony on the screen, alongside the songs and dances she is known for teaching, her community listened and began to understand her better. 

I had wanted this research to test and design a realistic and sustainable methodology that drew on the potential of music and film for knowledge construction. I wanted to build on the decolonial and feminist legacy of Mozambique’s revolutionary past to create appropriate collaborative audiovisual methodologies that could be replicated in other research and training contexts. Here, in this sequence, I trace the journey of a song celebrating women’s strength over a story of more than half a century of social transformation through song. A song inspired by a young revolutionary woman called Jozina in the 1960s, Awansati yene i nhenha (Women are strong/women have nhènhà), is played by a dance group in a village in southern Mozambique. The women who first sang the song would have struggled to imagine a time when women like them would be doctors and judges, as the song promises. Yet, they teach the song to their daughters and granddaughters. Fifty years later, a woman is inspired by the same song to share her own story of personal strength at a community gatheringthat combines the traditional karingana of storytelling and song around a fire, with film screening inspired by the kuxa kanema screenings designed to instill cultural pride and identity in the 1970s and 80s. 

Building on the decolonial and feminist legacy of Mozambique’s revolutionary past, the music, dance, fire, food, and cinema offer an opportunity for the community to learn from Rosalina’s story collectively shared on the screen. The lesson it teaches them about their own prejudice and assumptions is forever connected to the story and the song and embodied through the dance steps. We witness attitudes as they start to shift a little. This moment, alongside many others in the film, demonstrates the impact of the decolonial and feminist research methods applied during the Speak My Sister research project and the ongoing potential of “karingana kanema” to construct new knowledge for both researchers and their subjects.  The film offers an opportunity to witness the impact that incorporating such events can have when incorporated into ethnomusicological research methodology. As we watch the faces of those captivated by the songs and stories on the screen, we imagine the thoughts and subsequent conversations the film may have provoked. These conversations normally go unrecorded. Yet, here in Karingana Wa Karingana, we witness one such conversation unfolding from dawn to dusk the following day. The memories triggered by the film provoke more stories, more discoveries, and more songs. By witnessing this, I hope researchers who watch this film are, in turn, inspired to apply the same methodology in their own future research projects.

The film Karingana Wa Karingana captures moments that demonstrate many of the core findings of the Speak My Sister research. Not only do the minds of the researchers and filmmakers of the future need “decolonizing” and alternative forms of embodied knowledge construction embraced alongside the text-based forms of the western academy, but also a further process of “depatriarchalization” needs to be proactively encouraged, to ensure the perspectives of female subjects and researchers are equally valued and heard with equal regularity as those of their male counterparts ensuring entrenched prejudices are recognized and rectified. This cannot happen by working exclusively with women, telling women’s stories, often to other women. It requires collaboration and understanding between men and women. The film Karingana Wa Karingana demonstrates the benefits of the kanema karingana method in facilitating this collaboration and understanding. Creating a space for shared storytelling and reflection allows for the emergence of new forms of relationality, as seen in Nhenha’s production and exhibition. Sharing women’s stories and songs provoked new conversations, discoveries, and understandings among the researchers and the community, illustrating the transformative potential of this method.