Funerary Comedies in Contemporary Kinshasa Social Difference, Urban Communities and the Emergence of a Cultural Form

The article situates the genre of stand-up comedy, increasingly performed in Kinshasa’s mourning spaces (matanga), within Kinshasa’s social universe. This funerary joking, performed by comedians unrelated to the bereaved, signifies a strong departure from the customary funerary humor in which accepted jokers occupy particular social positions towards the deceased. Following recent changes in the organization of the mourning rituals within the circles of Kinshasa’s wealthy and the rich, these rather intimate events are ever more open to ‘strangers’, who anticipate the spending capacities of the gathered crowd. Comedians constitute one among a wide range of outsiders, who approach the bereaved community as a space of opportunities. It is argued that this new cultural genre is utterly urban, and could only emerge within urban lifeworlds, where conviviality with others, and in particular an understanding of people’s necessity of making a living in precarious circumstances, push the mourning community to transform into an audience paying for a cultural performance. Humor is not only derived from a symbolic difference between the poor and the rich, but also by the performance of exaggerated flattery producing the illusion of patronage and situating the comedian for the duration of the performance within a feigned patron-client relationship.status: publishe