In Rwandan, Ugandan, and Tanzanian history, Nyabinghi or Nyabingi was a queen. Her given name was Muhumuza, which means “peacemaker.” After that, she was given the name Nyabingi, which means abundance in the Runyankole language of the Ankole kingdom, which is now in western Uganda.
She employed fire, water, earth, and air to combat the colonialists.
A 1930s essay is most likely where the term “Nyabinghi” was first used in Jamaica. There, it was taken by Rastafari, a new religious movement that used the word to identify its gatherings and later a drumming style used in religious rites.
Origins
According to legend, Nyabinghi was a prominent Rwandan, Ugandan, and Tanzanian woman whose name meant “plenty.” Her date of birth and where she was born are both disputed. According to Jim Freedman, an anthropologist who studied the Nyabinghi movement in Rwanda and Uganda, the ‘birth’ of Nyabinghi took place between 1750 and 1800.
Religion
Rwandans began to respect or worship Nyabinghi, the lady’s deity or spirit, around 1800. In ordinary life, she was considered as a formidable force. Religious rituals were performed by a medium in touch with Nyabinghi’s soul.
Believers sent money to the medium, who would then negotiate with the ghost on their behalf in order to appease her spirit.
While certain mediums engaged directly with Nyabinghi, Nyabinghi could also possess ordinary people who were not leaders or certified mediums within the cult.
The southern regions of Uganda and the northern parts of Rwanda, which were originally part of the precolonial kingdom of Ndorwa, were the most common places to practice this religion.
Muhumusa
Nyabinghi was said to have been possessed by Muhumusa, a prominent Nyabinghi medium who was Rwandan/Ugandan in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Muhumusa mounted a campaign against Rwanda’s Yuhi V, claiming to be the legal heir to the Rwandan throne.
She also conducted anti-colonial movements in East Africa, which she later inspired, resisting European colonial forces. After Nyabinghi was apprehended in 1913, her alleged things were found all throughout East Africa. (It usually affects women.)
The bloodline of the true Nyabinghi warriors is claimed to have settled in the heart of Dzimba dze Mabwe, now Zimbabwe.
Influence on Rastafari
A Nyabinghi drum is a type of African drum.
The term “Nyabinghi” may have been popularized in Jamaica thanks to an article written by Italian writer Frederico Philos. This piece was first published in Italy in 1934, and then in the Jamaica Times in 1935.
According to Philos, the “Nya-Binghi” was a secret club that conveyed the message “Death to all White Farmers” throughout South Africa.
He further stated that Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie was appointed as the leader of this order in 1930 at a secret meeting in Moscow, the Soviet Union’s capital.
Philos’ paper used as propaganda for European colonial efforts on the African continent to quell anti-colonial resistance.
The essay impacted the early practitioners of Rastafari, a Haile Selassie-inspired religion that emerged in Jamaica in the 1930s. On the island, the term “Nyabinghi” was coined to describe a Rastafarian gathering.
By the 1950s, Jamaican Rasta drummers had developed a form of ritual music known as “Nyabinghi drumming.” It was influenced by a number of ancient Afro-Jamaican musical genres, including Burru drumming and ritual drumming styles found in faiths like as Kumina and Revival Zion.
The title “Nyabinghi” was also applied to one of Rastafari’s oldest branches, the House of Nyabinghi.
Queen Nyabinghi is adored by Rasta women as a symbol of women’s empowerment in the face of persecution, similar to Empress Menen Asfaw.
