Thomas Baltzar

BALTZAR, THOMAS (c. ), German violinist, was born at Lubeck. He visited England in 1656 and made a great impression on Evelyn and Anthony Wood. In 1661 he was appointed leader of the king's famous band of 24 violins, but his intemperate habits cut short his career within two years. Nothing like his violin-playing had ever been heard in England before, and in all probability the instrumental music of Henry Purcell owes much to its influence.

BA-LUBA,

a Bantu negroid race of Central Africa with sev eral subdivisions. They live between Lakes Tanganyika, Mweru and Bangweulu in the east and the Kasai in the west. In the east, where there is the greatest racial purity, they founded the States of Katanga, Urua and Uguha; in the west they have intermixed to some extent with the Ba-Kete aborigines. To the western Ba Luba the name Ba-Shilange has been given. The Ba-Luba are connected with the founders of the great Lunda empire—now di vided between Belgian Congo and Angola—under a monarch en titled Muata Yanvo (Jamvo). In 187o a remarkable politico religious revolution occurred, the result of which was the estab lishment of a cult of hemp-smoking, connected with a secret society termed Bend Riamba; the members of this abandoned their old fetish worship and adopted a form of communism of which the central idea was the blood-brotherhood of all the mem bers. Towards the east hemp-smoking becomes less common.

The Ba-Luba practise circumcision and scar-tattooing is com mon; tooth-filing is very frequent in the east, but comparatively rare in the west ; the fashion of dressing the hair is very varied and often extremely fantastic. Their houses, which are built by the women, are rectangular; on the Lulua, however, pile-houses, square in shape, are found. They are an agricultural people, but work in the fields is relegated to the women and slaves ; the men are admirable craftsmen and are renowned for their wood-carving, cloth-weaving and iron-work. In the west, bows and arrows are the chief weapons, in the east spears principally are used. The old form of religion still obtains in the east, which was untouched by the communistic movement mentioned, and charms of all sorts, as well as carved anthropomorphic figures, are extremely common.

See M. W. Hilton Simpson, Land and Peoples of the Kasai (iqii).