Research project P4S/251/TETELA (Research action P4S)
In the 1950s, John Jacobs, a Belgian philologist, was employed by the colonial research institute IRSAC to carry out linguistic research in the Sankuru region (DRC). With the help of a team of Tetela experts he recorded a vast quantity of oral traditions (vocabularies, riddles, proverbs, epics) in Tetela varieties and related languages, as well as gathering material culture objects. Whereas Jacobs research served a colonial agenda aspiring language unification within a larger scramble for scientific ‘discoveries’, today these collections from 75 years ago, constitute a huge wealth of cultural heritage.
The historical collections are, however, scattered across different places and institutions:
1) the RMCA hosting some 150 cultural objects;
2) the UGent archives containing fieldnotes on oral traditions, multilingual vocabularies, multilingual descriptions of the museum objects, and correspondence between Jacobs and his team;
3) the private collections of Jacobs’ heirs including audiovisual materials from the 1950s.
Most of this ‘sleeping’ material is multilingual (Tetela and related languages, French, Dutch), has not been digitized, and is inaccessible to the larger (Tetela speaking) public. So far, only researchers have had some access to Jacobs’ publications. Tetela scholars are keen to access the full collections, while the larger non-specialist public wishes to actively engage with cultural memory.
TETELA, a collaboration between the RMCA, the UGent and the Université Notre Dame de Tshumbe re-imagines these colonial collections to achieve a sustainable, multifaceted restitution of Tetela intangible cultural heritage. The project’s first aim is thus is the creation of a multilingual co-owned and web-based database to make the heritage available to scholars and lay audiences from the region. The second objective of the project is then to organize events in Belgium and the DRC that will make the content of the archives available to the public by creating a space for people to (re)connect with the recorded heritage.
