tribal people françois boulanger people françois boulanger chronicle of a sanza collector by...

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FIG. 3 (left): Liddedbowl.Rotse, South Africa. Early to mid

20th century. Wood. H: 24 cm.

Provenance: purchased by the

collectorom South African artist, Irma

Horstmann collection, Switzerland,

1992. Courtesy of Museum Africa,

Johannesburg. Johannesburg Art

Gallery acc. no. 1992.11.18.

Photo by Russell Scott

TRIBAL people

François BoulangerChronicle of a Sanza Collector

By Françoise Barrier

There is a barely audible instrument that one playsin Africa, for oneself in the hut or outside without dis-turbing anyone or attracting attention. It is thesanza, the thumb piano—rudimentary, archaic, andapparently made by the village blacksmith freely andwithout any rules. No two sanzas are identical. Theinstrument is intended for no particular melody andhas no fixed scale. It is anarchistic and makes musicof murmurs, the opposite of competitive or composedmusic. It is the instrument for dreamily soothing one-self and escaping from the noise of the world, an in-strument for personal listening. That is what wouldhave suited me.

Henri Michaux, Face à ce qui se dérobe, 1975, p. 92.

For François Boulanger, whosegood-natured silhouette is well known to every Belgiantribal art dealer, “collectors do not readily appreciate thetrue value of small ethnographic pieces.” That is howhumbly he qualifies the works in his collection, which isas atypical as it is exceptional.

In the course of the last twenty-five years, François,with the unwavering support of his wife Françoise (manycollectors would envy him for her limitless de-votion to the cause of the collection), hasamassed no fewer than 900 African works. “Butthese are only small objects,” he says, a bit de-fensively, “musical instruments, 500 sanzas—at one time, I had nearly as many as Tervuren.And there are also the drums and whistles.”

François decided to devote what has now be-come a quarter of a century to the study ofAfrican lamellophones (as sanzas are technicallyknown) rather abruptly. He began by bringingobjects, mostly powder containers, back from hisfive-year military service stay in Zaire. “The vil-lagers themselves came to sell them to us. Eventhough I had not yet developed an interest inAfrican art, I preferred these things to sculptures

FIG. 1 (upper left): A wallof sanzas in theBoulanger apartment.Photo: François Boulanger.

FIG. 2 (left): Musicianplaying the sanza.Charles Hénault Archives.

FIG. 3 (below): Postcard,Kuba? F. Boulanger Collection.

FIG. 4 (below): Postcard,Mission de Kangu: un jeunemusicien Kongo.Éditions Nels pour les missions des

Pères de Scheut, before 1920.

F. Boulanger Collection.

120-123BoulangerE+F_120-123BoulangerE+F 18/05/11 09:10 Pagina 120

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FIG. 5 (left): Musicianswith sanzas of thetype known aslikembe. DR Congo.Charles Hénault Archives.

FIG. 6 (right):Lamellophone,kangobio or kalimba.Lozi, Zambia.H: 11 cm.


Photo © Y. Van Ruysevelt.

FIG. 7 (right):Lamellophone,magbomboyo,bandakwi, or marombe.Budu?, DR Congo.H: 51 cm.



FIG. 8 (below): Sanzamade from a cocoapod. Budu, DR Congo.H: 29 cm.



made for tourists.” He regrets not having gone more indepth at the time and having missed some importantpieces. It wasn’t until he was in the Sablon neighborhoodin Brussels in 1974 that he really discovered African art.In young Pierre Loos’ small street-level gallery on rue desMinimes, he became enamored of a metal Teke necklace,which he acquired immediately. For him and his wife,this was the beginning of an adventure in the discoveryof African art that they embarked upon passionately andsystematically. They did not miss an auction sale in Bel-gium or France, they visited the Sablon galleries severaltimes a week, and they began to comb the local antiqueshops and flea markets thoroughly. A few years later,François recognized that his collection was too eclecticand decided to concentrate on a single category of worksthat was affordable for budget reasons and physicallysmall for space reasons. “I loved weaponry. I’ve alwaysdreamed of owning a Kota throwing knife, but shieldstook up too much space in our apartment and we had todivest ourselves of them,” François explained.

As he was particularly sensitive to the discrete charmof African musical instruments, François directed his at-tention to African sanzas and strove to put together asexhaustive and encyclopedic a collection as possible. Fullyaware that little information was available on the sub-ject, particularly from dealers, he immersed himself inreading ethnomusicologists’ works that dealt with hisarea of interest. Prominent among these publicationswere the work of J. S. Laurenty, who in 1962 publishedthe first detailed classification of the sanza at the MuséeRoyal de l’Afrique Centrale at Tervuren; of FrançoisBorel; of the Musée d’Ethnographie de Neuchâtel; and ofGerhard Kubik of the University of Vienna. Through his

FIG. 9 (left):Lamellophone, mbira,made from a metal can.Masarwa, Botswana.H: 21 cm.




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CLOCKWISE FROM FARLEFTFIG. 10: Lungandu.Tshokwe, DR Congo.H: 20 cm.Ex. Alexis van Opstal Collection.

FIG. 11: Likembe. Pende, DR Congo.H: 18 cm.

FIG. 12: Kadimba/kizanzi.Luba, DR Congo.H: 35 cm.

FIG. 13: Mbira. Ndebele/Xhosa, Zimbabwe.H: 19 cm.

FIG. 14: Kankobele.Tabwa, DR Congo.H: 23 cm.

FIG. 15: Muyemba.Tshokwe, DR Congo.H: 35 cm.

F. Boulanger Collection.Photos © Y. van Ruysevelt.

reading, these authors became his mentors, and he madea patient and thorough study of all the various types ofsanza known from West and Southern Africa. “There arethose with plant-material keys and those with metal keys.Their forms and sizes are infinitely variable. Some mayhave a resonator made from a hollow gourd, while oth-ers rely on a wooden resonator.” François likes to notethat, while small lamellophones are endemic to WestAfrica, the two original production areas were Cameroonfor ones with palm or bamboo keys and Zimbabwe forthose with metal keys, but globalization and the inter-planetary success of “world music” have skyrocketed thesanza’s success, causing it to be adopted by many con-temporary peoples, including some as far away as Thai-land. It has become a mainstay of international popularculture. “But this infatuation is a recent phenomenon,”François notes, given that art collectors and field collec-tors alike have paid but little attention to these instru-ments in the past. “When I began to take an interest inthem, dealers didn’t take these objects seriously. Theycouldn’t have cared less about them.”

Interest in smaller pieces such as heddle pulleys andcombs no doubt contributed to the recognition of sanzaas art works, but it also led to the first attempts to fakethem. François freely admits to having acquired severalexamples with one or more heads carved on them,guided by pure enthusiasm for the discovery of a rarity.However, upon closer scrutiny, he realized that while thesound box, the sanza’s “soul,” was perfectly authentic,the figural embellishments had been added later to makethe object more appealing. “When I started collecting, Icould buy a beautiful little Tshokwe sanza with a nicepatina for eight or nine thousand Belgian francs (about250 euros). Nowadays, those same pieces might fetch2,000 to 2,500 euros.”

While François’ collection encompasses the entireAfrican continent, he recognizes that examples from theDemocratic Republic of Congo and Angola produced bytheTshokwe, Luba, and Tabwa are undoubtedly the mostartistically refined and display the highest levels of detailand decorative refinement. It is rare for a sanza to reachthe bright lights of a museum display case. The most re-cent example to achieve distinction, selling as it did for1,445,599 euros at the June 13, 2010, Pierre Bergé salein Paris, in fact was not a sanza per se but a representa-tion of the mythological founding hero depicted playingthe sanza. Nevertheless, the result is convincing evidencethat the sanza—the companion of many hours lost inreverie and an instrument that accompanies man at alltimes of life, bringing him courage and support in diffi-

TRIBAL people


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François Boulanger

FIG. 16 (top):Lamellophone, maduku.Zande, DR Congo.This example is particularly rare. Two

other examples, held by the MRAC

in Tervuren and the American

Museum of Natural History, were

collected in 1912 and 1915,

respectively.

H: 25 cm.

FIG. 17 (middle):Lamellophone, pokido/djigbwangi. Lokele/Ngombe, DR Congo.H: 17 cm.

FIG. 18 (left):Lamellophone, belap/lupiekup. Bamum,Cameroon.H: 38 cm.

F. Boulanger Collection.Photos © Y. van Ruysevelt.

cult moments—holds a legitimateplace in the cultural patrimony.

François’ passion also led him toundertake an in-depth study (whichhe does not wish to call academic) ofthe works in his collection in relationto those in museums and other insti-tutions. He has put together an ex-ceptional corpus of documentation,including old photographs illustrat-ing the sanza in use, postcards, andimages (sometimes taken clandes-tinely) of examples in exhibitions. In2007, he decided to make all of thisinformation more public and createdtwo blog sites: http://africamusica.skynetblogs.be, a site devoted to thetraditional music of Africa, andhttp://sanza.skynetblogs.be, dedi-cated to tribal art in general and featuring reviews of ex-hibitions. The sites have become among the most visitedin the tribal art field. The Internet audience rightfully ap-preciates the great wealth of information that the sitesprovide, and exhibition archives on them date as far backas the early 1990s.

It was with some reticence and apprehension thatFrançois accepted the invitation of Pierre Loos, now thepresident of the Brussels Non-European Art Fair(BRUNEAF), to show a selection of works from his col-lection at the organization’s main event in June. “Whocould it interest? These are anecdotal objects, almostwithout history.” But curiosity and the desire to share hisknowledge and passion trumped his fear of criticism. Al-most 300 sanzas have been pulled off the walls of theBoulangers’ apartment and are headed for the Sablon.And that is fitting, for it was on the same cobblestonestreets years ago that he discovered these objects. As Loosobserved, “Exhibiting François Boulanger’s collectionwas an obvious choice.” And, indeed, it is a proper hom-age to a man who has tirelessly searched the streets ofthe Sablon and Saint Germain des Prés, an enthusiasticvisitor to BRUNEAF, a patient and impassioned afi-cionado who has taken the time to study and to hone hiseye, and who knows that he will never finish learning.

SANZA. Exposition des Lamellophones de la Collection F. & F. BoulangerJune 8–12, 20118a, rue Bodenbroek, 1000 Brussels, BelgiumA catalog accompanies the exhibition


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