Nganga

[1] These experts also exist across the African diaspora in countries where Kongo and Mbundu people were transported during the Atlantic slave trade, such as Brazil, the southern United States, Haiti and Cuba.

[2] They possessed the skill to communicate with the ancestors in the spiritual realm, or Ku Mpémba, as well as divining the cause of illness, misfortune and social stress and preparing measures to address them, often by supernatural means and sacred medicine, or minkisi.

[4] An English missionary describes how an nganga looks during his healing performance: Thick circles of white around the eyes, a patch of red across the forehead, broad stripes of yellow are drawn down the cheeks, bands of red, white, or yellow run down the arms and across the chest.... His dress consists of the softened skins of wild animals, either whole or in strips, feathers of birds, dried fibres and leaves, ornaments of leopard, crocodile or rat's teeth, small tinkling bells, rattling seedpods...[4][5]This wild appearance was intended to create a frightening effect, or kimbulua in the Kongo language.

The act of putting on the costume was itself part of the performance; all participants were marked with red and white stripes, called makila, for protection.

[6] Based on this process, Gell writes that the nkondi is a figure an index of cumulative agency, a "visible knot tying together an invisible skein of spatio-temporal relations" of which participants in the ritual are aware.

[7] In South Africa, the inyanga has a medicinal role, in contrast to the sangoma, who deals with divination and the ancestral spirits, however, the distinction has become blurred in some areas and many traditional healers tend to practice both arts.

[13] In the United States, nganga, who acted as spiritual leaders, played a key role in Hoodoo practices, which combined Kongo religion, Christianity and indigenous American herbal knowledge.

[14] Many inverted positions of capoeira, including bananeira, aú, rabo de arraia, and others, are believed to have originated from the use of handstand by nganga imitating their ancestors, who walked on their hands in the spirit world.