Women's Songs from West Africa

Description

African women's verbal art in context

Exploring the origins, organization, subject matter, and performance contexts of singers and singing, Women's Songs from West Africa expands our understanding of the world of women in West Africa and their complex and subtle roles as verbal artists. Covering Côte d'Ivoire, the Gambia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, and beyond, the essays attest to the importance of women's contributions to the most widespread form of verbal art in Africa.

Introduction
Women's Songs and Singing in West Africa: New Perspectives
Thomas A. Hale and Aissata G. Sidikou

1. Wolof Women Break the Taboo of Sex through Songs
Marame Gueye
2. Jola Kanyalen Songs from the Casamance, Sengeal: From 'Tradition' to Globalization Kirsten Langeveld
3. Azna Deities in the Songs of Taguimba Bouzou: A Window on the Visible and Invisible
Boubé Namaïwa
4. Initiation and Funeral Songs from the Guro of Côte d'Ivoire
Ariane Deluz
5. Praises Performances by Jalimusolu in The Gambia
Marloes Janson
6. Music about Feminine Modernity in the Sahara
Aline Tauzin
7. Songs by Wolof Women
Luciana Penna-Diaw
8. A Heroic Performance by Siramori Diabate of Mali
Brahima Camara and Jan Jansen
9. Women's Tattooing Songs from Kajoor, Senegal
George Joseph
10. Drummed Poems by Songhay-Zarma Women of Niger
Fatima Mounkaïla
11. Space, Language, and Identity in the Palm Tree
Aissata G. Sidikou
12. Bambara Women's Songs in Southern Mali
Bah Diakité
13. Patriarchy in Songs and Poetry by Zarma Women
Aissata Niandou
14. Muslim Hausa Women's Songs
Beverly B. Mack
15. Lamentation and Politics in the Sahelian Song
Thomas A. Hale
16. Transformations in Tuareg Tende Singing: Women's Voices and Local Feminisms
Susan J. Rasmussen
17. Income Strategies of a Jelimuso in Mali and France
Nienke Muurling

Index
List of Contributors

Sujets

• African Studies
• Media Studies
• MUSIC
• Multiple signal classification
• Ethnomusicology
• Anthropology

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 02 décembre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 3
• EAN13: 9780253010216
• Langue: English

Extrait

WOMEN'S SONGS from WEST AFRICA
Edited by THOMAS A. HALE AND AISSATA G. SIDIKOU
Indiana University Press
BLOOMINGTON AND INDIANAPOLIS
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© 2014 by Indiana University Press
All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
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Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Women's songs from West Africa / edited by Thomas A. Hale and Aissata G. Sidikou.
    pages cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-01017-9 (cloth : alkaline paper) — ISBN 978-0-253-01021-6 (ebook)
1. Music—Africa, West—History and criticism. 2. Women musicians—Africa, West. 3. West Africans—Music. I. Hale, Thomas A. (Thomas Albert), [date]- editor. II. Sidikou, Aissata G., editor.
ML3760.W66 2013
782.42082'0966—dc23
2013012262
1 2 3 4 5 19 18 17 16 15 14
To the African women who helped make this volume possible
Contents
Introduction: New Perspectives on Women's Songs and Singing in West Africa \ Thomas A. Hale and Aissata G. Sidikou
1 Wolof Women Break the Taboo of Sex through Songs \ Marame Gueye
2 Jola Kanyalen Songs from the Casamance, Senegal: From “Tradition” to Globalization \ Kirsten Langeveld
3 Azna Deities in the Songs of Taguimba Bouzou: A Window on the Visible and Invisible \ Boubé Namaïwa
4 Initiation and Funeral Songs from the Guro of Côte d'Ivoire \ Ariane Deluz
5 Praise Performances by Jalimusolu in the Gambia \ Marloes Janson
6 Saharan Music: About a Feminine Modernity \ Aline Tauzin
7 Songs by Wolof Women \ Luciana Penna-Diaw
8 A Heroic Performance by Siramori Diabaté in Mali \ Brahima Camara and Jan Jansen
9 Women's Tattooing Songs from Kajoor, Senegal \ George Joseph
10 Drummed Poems by Songhay-Zarma Women of Niger \ Fatima Mounkaïla
11 Space, Language, and Identity in the Palm Tree \ Aissata G. Sidikou
12 Bambara Women's Songs in Southern Mali \ Bah Diakité
13 Patriarchy in Songs and Poetry by Zarma Women \ Aissata Niandou
14 Muslim Hausa Women's Songs \ Beverly B. Mack
15 Lamentation and Politics in a Sahelian Song \ Thomas A. Hale
16 Transformations in Tuareg Tende Singing: Women's Voices and Local Feminisms \ Susan J. Rasmussen
17 Income Strategies of a Jelimuso in Mali and France \ Nienke Muurling
Index
Contributors
Introduction
NEW PERSPECTIVES ON WOMEN'S SONGS AND SINGING IN WEST AFRICA
Thomas A. Hale and Aissata G. Sidikou
The essays in this volume are the result of research presented at a conference titled “Women's Songs from West Africa” held at Princeton University. For the conference organizers, the event was the climax of a long effort to bring together researchers in a variety of disciplines who had worked for years and in some cases decades on song, a genre that reveals much about the world of women in West Africa.
To a large extent, the focus of both the conference and the project out of which it grew was the content rather than the sound or form of these songs. Although it is difficult to dissociate form from meaning, both in song and in literature, the organizers, specialists in African literature and related fields, believe that song constitutes the most widespread form of verbal art produced by women in Africa. The lyrics cannot be ignored in our efforts to understand and communicate to others the richness of African literature today.
The conference organizers embarked on this project after recording songs by women in West Africa during the 1980s and 1990s. Aissata G. Sidikou, author of Recreating Words, Reshaping Worlds: The Verbal Art of Women from Niger, Mali and Senegal (2001), collected songs in Niger and then compared them with lyrics sung by other women in Mali and Senegal that had been recorded and published by researchers as part of larger projects. Although other scholars have published works that include a focus on the songs of women in particular contexts—for example, Karin Barber's landmark study of songs by Yoruba women, I Could Speak until Tomorrow: Oriki, Women and the Past in a Yoruba Town (1991)—the study by Sidikou was the first to take a regional approach to the genre for woman singers. Thomas A. Hale, author of Griots and Griottes: Masters of Words and Music (1998), studied professional artisans of the word, both male and female, from a regional perspective in Niger, Mali, Senegal, the Gambia, and other Sahelian countries. Although he, too, recorded songs by women, and produced a short video about griottes in one country, Griottes of the Sahel: Female Keepers of the Songhay Oral Tradition in Niger , distributed by the Pennsylvania State University, his approach was focused as much on the history and social functions of the performers as on the lyrics.
In the course of presentations of the results of their work at professional meetings, both Sidikou and Hale encountered other researchers—North American, European, and African—who were also studying songs by West African women. In some cases—for example, Beverly Mack of the University of Kansas and Susan Rasmussen from the University of Houston—these colleagues had been recording songs as well as other forms since the 1970s.
The long-term efforts of these researchers yielded greater understanding of women's complex and subtle roles in diverse societies as well as a corpus of many songs. But the outcomes of these projects remained to a large extent in isolation. For Beverly Mack, whose lifetime has been spent studying the verbal art, both oral and written, of Hausa women, it would have been impossible to carry out research of equal depth among, for example, a half-dozen other peoples in the region, because she would have had to learn many more languages—and devote several more lifetimes to the task.
As significant as these ethno-specific analyses were for scholars interested in learning more about the lives of women in West Africa, there was a clear need for a complementary regional approach. In her comparisons of songs across the Sahel, Sidikou discovered differences rooted in culture as well as many similarities based on common concerns of women. In his study of griots and griottes in the same region, Hale encountered a similar phenomenon: many differences stemming from the diversity of cultures, but also similarities based on traditions that go back many centuries and span a vast area from Senegal to Lake Chad.
It is because of these emerging regional similarities that we decided to limit the focus of this project to the Sahel region. It is made up of diverse peoples who nevertheless share common climatic, historical, and cultural experiences that include cycles of drought, the rise and fall of vast empires, highly stratified social structures, historical traditions maintained by griots, male and female, and systems of belief overlaid by Islam, a religion introduced into the region a millennium ago. Given these similar cultural features across the Sahel, a series of questions emerged:
Do women have a significant public voice through the medium of song? If so, what are women saying in their song lyrics? What links between these songs appear across the Sahel, both formal and thematic? Where does the genre of song fit into African literature?
The danger in such a comparative approach, of course, was that in making comparisons across cultures, we might elide differences and specificities to such an extent as to render the project meaningless. We do not want to end up with the kinds of generalizations one finds in some collections of verbal art from Africa.
Our solution is to produce two volumes. The first is Women's Voices from West Africa: An Anthology of Songs from the Sahel (Indiana University Press, 2011). The purpose is to identify common themes across the Sahel without losing sight of the cultural differences. The sources are diverse: archives, journals, books, and collections by researchers. The lyrics enable the reader to discern the many links between the songs of women from different societies in the region. The most striking example is the theme of marriage.
The second volume, this collection of seventeen essays presented by eighteen researchers at the Princeton conference and contributed to since then, offers insights into the specifics of cultures represented by the songs in the anthology.
It is important to point out here that there is not a one-to-one link between each of these papers and a song or group of songs in the anthology. Some essays provide context for particular genres—e.g., wedding songs. In these cases there is a very direct link, and these ties are often indicated in the first volume. But others inform the larger project. They provide information about singers, the fin