Re-Sounding the xylophone collection of RMCA
ReSoXy focuses on the music practice and intangible cultural heritage of the forgotten and declining musical instrument collections of the Royal Museum for Central Africa (Africa Museum), Tervuren.
The project is studying the xylophone collection, which includes 159 instruments of different cultural origins, constructions, and musical sounds. Collected by ethnographers, colonial administrators, and expeditors, the RMCA has acquired over 9,000 musical objects and 37,000 musical recordings from Central and sub-Saharan Africa since the end of the 19th century.
Situated at the intersection of societal, cultural, and academic domains, ReSoXy investigates the intangible cultural heritage of the museum's xylophone collection—musical sound, performance practice, and technique—that may have been overlooked and misinterpreted in past scientific endeavours.
This project website serves as a platform for facilitating decentralized approaches to co-creation and participatory creative actions.
You can play the instrument via an interactive virtual keyboard and download the sound samples for your music projects.
Through this website, we aim to revive and recreate the instrument collection for everyone.
We will reflect together on the contemporary meanings and roles of the cultures and instruments that were erased and fragmented by colonization through co-creation activities, leading to the development of new ideas on the restitution and decolonization of ethnographic museum collections.
Main contributors for the virtual xylophone and sound sampling: Aiko Devriendt, Edward De Keyser, Eline Sciot, ICT-RMCA, Michiel De Malsche, Ludovic Nyamabo, Bernadette Choy Hei Man
Principal researcher: On Ying Adilia Yip
Coordinator: Rémy Jadinon
