The traditional musical cultures of Central Africa show a strong dynamism in their practices. They continually adapt their repertoires with contemporary creations or telescope their practices in new places of performance, relocating culture in this way. The tradition and all its components are projected in a new format where the music plays a role of affirmation of identity at the local level but also global by giving a visibility to the contemporary practices of the tradition through the technologies of communication.

Today musical traditions coexist, in their ritual forms, with versions of pop music type marketed or staged during public events. This is the case of the music festival, a format for the exhibition and consumption of cultural practices, which reflects societal changes and the standardization of musical practices engendered by globalization. It is an (inter) national showcase of local heritage that combines the individual and collective arts but especially tradition and modernity.

The Gungu National Festival gives the opportunity to focus on the collective representations of tradition, heritage and its cultural manifestations, that is to say, to look at the processes of creation and affirmation of identities Community, through the prism of tradition, but also and especially on the changes of polarity observable between the city and the villages. Today, the synergy is no longer exclusively centrifugal, the rural environment has become a platform for dissemination of musical practices. These practices offer new perspectives for the study of musical traditions which must take into account the technological explosion and globalization.

Video of the National Festival of Gungu 2015

Vidéo of the Bobongo - National Festival of Gungu 2016

Nyege Nyege Festival 2019

Projet de Réseau international des Instruments de Musique africaine (PRIMA)