Black Drums, White Ears: Colonialism and the Homogenization of Social and Cultural Practices in Southern Mozambique (1890-1940)

ABSTRACT In this article, I analyse how practices referred to generically in the historical documentation as ‘batuque’ (drums) underwent a process of homogenization and scrutinization by diverse Portuguese colonial agents. On one hand, the colonial agents insisted on unifying everything they saw as dance and music under the generic category of ‘batuque.’ On the other hand, the need for a better understanding of the subordinate Africans ended up producing colonial responses that shifted between a dissection of the term in search of a more accurate apprehension of what was being observed and an incorporation of these practices into the colonial enterprise. This process was conceived by the colonial agents as a way of appropriating the dances, songs and music made by the natives of southern Mozambique into the ultramarine Portuguese nationalist discourse.