Abstract
Conference paper presented at "International Council for Traditional Music World Conference", St. John''s, Newfoundland, Canada, 13-19 July 2011.
Broadening the common notion of empire as merely a profane institution my point is to show how a religious empire, in our case the ZCC, can be created through a universalising process of appropriating the other empires'' musics. I look at several aspects of mpoho, a style performed either by specialized church groups or by the whole congregation of the Zion Christian Church.
I will argue that current version of the mpoho points to older cultural practices of Sotho groups living in today''s Limpopo Province of South Africa such as praising the ancestral spirits and rainmaking. Especially when performed by the brass band the mpoho uses similar techniques to and plays the same representative social role as ditlhaka, an old royal one-note reed pipe dance.
Mpoho refers to Africa''s pre-colonial practices of leadership represented in the institution of chieftainship and today it strongly supports the authority of Zion Christian Church bishop-chief.