Kasala for Myself

“Kasala for Myself” is a subdued poem—at least by the standard Mujila has set for linguistic turbulence in his other work—of existential affirmation. The speaker’s choice of happiness is made in a context of exilic longing, cultural in-betweenness, and postcolonial memory. Proceeding by a bricolage of lightly sketched souvenirs and oracular commentary, the poem ends with the speaker’s powerful intention to become a kind of eudaimonic bartender, serving up draughts of hope to an imperiled world.

As indicated by the title, the poem draws upon the generic resources of the kasala, a form of praise poetry practiced by the Luba people of the Democratic Republic of Congo. In Le chant kasala des Luba, Patrice Mufuta describes the kasala as “a free-verse poem made up of praise-names. It is sung or recited in an elevated tone, in public settings . . . It is intended to elicit yearning, and is sometimes performed with musical accompaniment.” Originally an oral form composed in Ciluba, the kasala was adapted for written French in the 1960s by the important Congolese poet Clémentine Faïk-Nzuji.

For Mujila, the orality of the kasala survives in the improvisatory freedom of the performer. “If I recite my poem,” he told me, “it will end up being longer because I’m going to improvise or choose variations from the main text.” This extensibility—some critics have charted instances of the kasala extending past eight hundred lines—prompts Mujila to note similarities with the blues or jazz, an artistic kinship he makes explicit in the jazz-suffused soundscape of the final stanza of “Kasala for Myself.”