In the traditions of the Songye people from the Congo River basin, and the Bakongo, after whom the region is named, the world was seen as a perpetual battlefield between good and evil spirits. These spirits came in two forms: the first were benevolent ancestors, who remained protective of their former villages, and the second were bakisi, emissaries from the land of the dead. Bakisi appeared only when the ancestors were displeased, bringing misfortune that the living had to face. To communicate with these spirits, both the Songye and Bakongo depended on a spiritual intermediary known as the nganga (plural banganga). These individuals, favoured by the ancestors, had the ability to connect with the spirit world. Banganga channelled the power of the dead by creating and maintaining minkisi (singular nkisi), which were containers—like ceramic vessels, gourds, horns, shells, or bundles—filled with magical substances such as grave dirt or sacrificial blood. This magical substance, called bilongo, was essential for contacting the dead and infused the minkisi with spiritual power. The stronger the ancestor associated with the bilongo, the more powerful the minkisi became. Over time, minkisi often took on figural forms representing the ancestors themselves, becoming key figures in the community whose advice, protection, and magic were mediated by the nganga.

Figural minkisi from the Songye people usually follow a consistent design. They are almost always male, though there are rare female examples, and depict a strong figure with slightly bent knees, a distended abdomen held in the hands, and a tall, square-jawed face, often topped with a horn or crest. The distended abdomen served as a sacred container for the bilongo, acting as a reliquary for an ancestor. The belly button was often extended, and usually took the form of a mirror or other reflective material, in order to symbolise the transitional nature between the worlds of the living and dead. The extended navel was taken to represent the umbilical nature of the relationship between the ancestors and their living descendants. This evocative Songye nkisi bears all of these traditional hallmarks. The head, in a squared-off shape consistent with other Songye nkisi, is decorated with brass studs and plate brass, now discoloured through oxidation, which would have originally acted as a further reflective interface between the living and the dead. Whereas nkisi often bear so-called ‘coffee-bean’ eyes, which in their half-closed state assimilated the figure with the recently deceased, this figure has bright bulging eyes with pupils of brass, which seem to sparkle with life. Around the arms, which are bent with the hands on the belly. Are additional decorations – a brass bangle, which, given its size, was clearly produced for an actual human and was probably placed on this figure to associate it with a specific ancestor, and the shell of a snail, probably a large air-breathing freshwater snail of the family Biomphalaria spp., of which numerous subspecies are known in the Congo region, which were eaten as food by numerous Congolese peoples. The navel, where the bilongo is hidden, is capped with a large brass stud, surrounded by smaller studs. The piece rests on large flat feet atop a base.

The head of the figure is covered with upright brass nails which mimic the feathered headdress of the chief. By making this figure appear equivalent to a chief, it is imbued with a kind of extra power, and perhaps this gives us a hint as to the identity of the deceased to whom the bilongo encased in the reliquary cavity of the stomach relates. The related Kongo people had a famous category of minkisi, the nkisi mangaaka, nearly life-sized minkisi which bore the accoutrements of a chief. These figures were believed to be the most potent, and while many minkisi were created at the behest of individuals within the village to help with their own relatively petty problems, the nkisi mangaaka was only commissioned by the tribal chief, and was employed in finding solutions at a societal level. It is possible that this Songye nkisi, also attired like a chief, may have been used in a similar way, as a pillar around which the community could revolve rather than being used in a private manner. The care with which this nkisi was made reflects both the stratified nature of Songye society as a whole – the entire region was governed by a Paramount Chief, known as a yakitenge, who was advised by a council of village chiefs and elders, who disseminated his rulings to the people – as well as the relatively egalitarian ethos of the individual village, where chiefs to a greater or lesser extent delegated power to the ancestors through the use of minkisi.