Lela is one of the most important Cameroonian festivals. It is ‘a hugely popular street performance’ (p. vii) taking place once or twice annually in the Bali kingdoms in the Cameroonian Grassfields. The performance derived its name from bamboo flutes, lera, which the Chamba used as musical instruments. When, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Fulbe jihād made large numbers of people migrate, Chamba groups who lived between the eastern end of the Middle Belt and the Adamawa plateau around the Cameroon–Nigerian border, hundreds of miles to the north, began to move in raiding bands to the south and settled in several chiefdoms or kingdoms in the Grassfields. There, Lela was first transformed into a mounted durbar, like those of the Muslim states, and, during German colonial time, into a festival of arms.
What caught Richard Fardon's interest were the resemblances and differences between the Lela ceremony of the Bali kingdoms in the Grassfields and the Lela of the Chamba communities from which the Bali royal families claim descent. The aesthetic preferences in the Grassfields, particularly, differ from those at Adamawa, from where the Chamba and their allies set off. The comparative austerity of the latter's cultic objects, with their plain forms which are difficult to read and surrounded by secrecy, contrasts sharply with the baroque style of the Grassfields and its inventiveness of figurative ornamentation, its performative culture which is all about the display of power. Its material and artistic richness makes the Grassfields one of Africa's great sculptural traditions. In this region, Lela, aside from its inception rite, became public, participatory and accumulative (pp. viii, 101, 134).
Covering almost 200 years of history, Fardon unfolds what may be known about the transformations of the Lela performance. For his analysis, he consulted archival sources of the Basel Mission and the Berlin Ethnological Museum. The documents include texts written by missionaries, colonial officers, traders and anthropologists; Lela flute music and songs recorded on wax cylinders; and the available photographs from the early twentieth century. In addition to published and archival sources, the book gains much from the rich ethnographic research Fardon has carried out among the Nigerian Chamba groups since 1976 and the Bali in Cameroon since 1984.
The Lela ceremony of 1908 and the photographs taken in that year are the main drive of the book. Altogether 44 photographs are reproduced in high quality, in spite of their age. Scholars who have worked with early photographs will know how difficult it is to read them and that they usually open up as many conundrums as insights. Analysis and contextualization of the images run through large parts of the book.
In seven chapters Fardon spreads out a history of Lela. Chapter 1 introduces descriptions of Lela in Bali-Nyonga and gives a ‘thumbnail history’ (p. 3) of the Bali and their coming to the Grassfields, incorporating other groups who joined them on their way. Chapter 2 analyses Lela in 1908. The Lela performance of that year is particularly well documented in words, pictures and sound. The entire European community of the Grassfields at the time must have assembled in Bali for the ceremony. The chapter includes an inventory of the photographic record of Lela in 1908. It illuminates particularly well how the scrutinized analysis of photographs contributes to the development of historical knowledge. Chapter 3 introduces descriptions and photographs of the Lela ceremony immediately before and after 1908 (from 1905 until 1913), which are presented in the frame of contemporary political events, and according to the professional viewpoint of their observers.
Chapters 4, 5 and 6 analyse the historical contexts sedimented into Lela, going back in time step by step: the German–Bali alliance, the kingship of the Grassfields, the heritage Bali-Nyonga shares with the other Bali chiefdoms of the Grassfields, and those features of Lela which apparently came from the northern Adamawa homelands of the Bali-Chamba. The concluding chapter summarizes the history, moving forwards again, from the events around 1908 up to the present, including descriptions of Bali historians.
The challenge of the book lies in its historicizing and constructivist capacity. The entire book is about Lela, though the reader never has the feeling of diving into the celebration. Descriptions of the ceremony by different authors each open up another Lela, their perception being shaped by their professional interests, the Bali themselves included. The Bali royalty indeed intended to make an impression on their African and European guests, and enjoyed doing so. Without exception, the observers have all been fascinated by the combination of religious ceremony, military parade and public entertainment which appeared to them intriguing and threatening at the same time: the Basel missionaries focused on the prayer of the Bali king, and Lela reminded them of stories from the Old Testament; the anthropologist Ankermann aspired to produce a comprehensive ethnographic record (which he never published); the trader Esser and the colonial officer Hutter enjoyed the armed performances, counted the guns and praised the discipline of the Bali warriors.
As in his previous works, Fardon does not make it easy for his readers to labour through his dense writing. However, it is absolutely worthwhile. This unconventional book contains a wealth of insights with far-reaching methodological consequences. It demonstrates how to recover history without even for a moment losing sight of the constructivity of the knowledge produced. Thus, the study should be of interest not only for specialists of Cameroon but also for scholars interested in African history, early photography and the long-term transformations of ritual.
