Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T22:06:14.578Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Songs from the Hunters’ Qur’an: Dozo Music, Textuality, and Islam in Northwestern Côte d’Ivoire, from the Repertoire of Dramane Coulibaly

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 March 2019

Joseph Hellweg
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

The hunting songs of the majority-Muslim, Odienné region of Northwestern Côte d’Ivoire accomplish more than meets the ear. They conjoin and distinguish Muslim goals and ostensibly non-Muslim hunting practices. The musical repertoire of my host, Dramane Coulibaly, is illustrative. This study examines the role that Dramane’s songs played in motivating initiated dozo hunters to kill game during dozo funerals, a primary concern for dozos at these events. Next, it analyzes the structure and content of Dramane’s songs in relation to the embodied, emplaced, and material dimensions of dozo funerals, where Dramane’s performances served to calm the spirits of the dead so that they would leave the living in peace. Finally, it examines the musical aspects of Dramane’s songs in relation to Islam, with the aim of broadening the study of Islam in West Africa and beyond to encompass the texts and performance practices of dozo funerals.

Résumé :

les chants de chasse de la région à majorité musulmane d’Odienné, au nord-ouest de la Côte d’Ivoire, accomplissent plus qu’il n’y parait. Ils joignent et distinguent les objectifs musulmans et les pratiques de chasse apparemment non-musulmanes. Les chansons de mon hôte, Dramane Coulibaly, sont représentatives. Cette étude examine tout d’abord la relation substantielle que les textes de chansons de Dramane établissent entre ses performances et la chasse, une préoccupation centrale des dozos. Ensuite, il analyse la structure et le contenu des chansons de Dramane en relation avec les dimensions symboliques réalisées de mises en scène des funérailles dozo, où ses performances ont servi à calmer les esprits des morts afin qu’ils puissent laisser en paix les vivants. Enfin, il examine les aspects musicaux des chansons de Dramane en relation avec l’islam, dans le but d’élargir l’étude de l’islam en Afrique de l’Ouest et de l’islam en général, pour y inclure l’esthétique sonique et cinétique des performances dozo.

Resumo:

As canções de caça típicas de Odienné, uma região no noroeste da Costa do Marfim de maioria muçulmana, cumprem mais funções do que o ouvido alcança. Elas articulam e distinguem os objetivos muçulmanos e as práticas de caça aparentemente não muçulmanas. As canções de Dramane Coulibaly, o meu anfitrião, são disso exemplificativas. O presente artigo analisa a relação de causa e efeito que as letras das canções de Dramane estabelecem entre as suas performances e a caça, uma preocupação central para os dozos. Em seguida, analisa-se a estrutura e o conteúdo das canções de Dramane e a sua relação com as dimensões materiais e de concretização dos funerais dozo, onde as suas performances serviam para acalmar os espíritos dos mortos, de modo que estes deixassem os vivos em paz. Por fim, o artigo debruça-se sobre os aspetos musicais que, nas canções de Dramane, se relacionam com o Islão, tendo como objetivo um aprofundamento do estudo do Islão na África ocidental – e do Islão em geral – que inclua a estética sonora e cinética das performances dozo.

Keywords

Côte d’Ivoiredozo huntersdozoshuntersIslamJulaMalinkeMandeorality and literacyWest Africa
Type
FORUM: The Power of Performance—the Performance of Power
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 62 , Issue 1 , March 2019 , pp. 120 - 147
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agawu, Kofi. 2003. Representing African Music: Postcolonial Notes, Queries, Positions. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ahmed, Shahab. 2015. What Is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bauman, Richard, and Briggs, Charles. 1990. “Poetics and Performance as Critical Perspectives on Language and Social Life.” Annual Review of Anthropology 19: 59–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Briggs, Charles, and Bauman, Richard. 1992. “Genre, Intertextuality, and Social Power.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 2 (2): 131–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Charry, Eric. 2000. Mande Music: Traditional and Modern Music of the Maninka and Mandinka of Western Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Connerton, Paul. 1989. How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. 1974. Of Grammatology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Derive, Marie-José. 1983. Etude comparée des parlers manding ivoiriens. Abidjan: Agence de Coopération Culturelle et Technique/Institut de Linguistique Appliquée.Google Scholar
Durán, Lucy. 1995. “Birds of Wasulu: Freedom of Expression and Expressions of Freedom in the Popular Music of Southern Mali.” British Journal of Ethnomusicology 4: 101–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Durán, Lucy. 2003. “Women, Music, and the ‘Mystique’ of Hunters in Mali.” In The African Diaspora: A Musical Perspective, edited by Ingrid, Monson, 136–86. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Dutton, Yasin. 2012. “Orality, Literacy and the ‘Seven Ahruf’ Hadith.’” Journal of Islamic Studies 23 (1): 1–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feld, Steven. 1984. “Sound Structure as Social Structure.” Ethnomusicology 28 (3): 383–409.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferrarini, Lorenzo. 2014. “Ways of Knowing Donsoya: Environment, Embodiment and Perception among Hunters of Burkina Faso.” Ph.D. diss., University of Manchester.Google Scholar
Finnegan, Ruth. 2007. The Oral and Beyond: Doing Things with Words in Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Friedson, Steven M. 1996. Dancing Prophets: Musical Experience in Tumbuka Healing. Chicago.: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Goody, Jack. 1977. The Domestication of the Savage Mind. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hanson, John H. “Islam and African Societies.” In Africa, Third Edition, edited by Martin, Phyllis M. and O’Meara, Patrick, 97–114. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Hellweg, Joseph. 2006. “Manimory and the Aesthetics of Mimesis: Forest, Islam, and State in Ivoirian Dozoya.” Africa 76 (4): 461–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hellweg, Joseph. 2011. Hunting the Ethical State: The Benkadi Movement of Côte d’Ivoire. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hellweg, Joseph, Palus, Nancy, and Koné, Drissa. 2015. “‘Questa non è una milizia’: i Dozo, la guerra e lo Stato in Costa d’Avorio (1993–2014)” (“‘This Is Not a Militia’: Dozos, War, and the State in Côte d’Ivoire”). Antropologia 2 (1): 85–111.Google Scholar
Hertz, Robert. 1960. “A Contribution to the Study of the Collective Representation of Death.” In Death and the Right Hand, 27–86. Translated by Rodney and Claudia Needham. Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press.Google Scholar
Horton, Robin. 1975. “On the Rationality of Conversion,” Part Two. Africa 45 (4): 373–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hurston, Zora Neale. 1998 [1981]. The Sanctified Church. New York: Marlowe.Google Scholar
Hymes, Dell. 1981. “In Vain I Tried to Tell”: Essays in Native American Ethnopoetics. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hymes, Dell. 2003. Now I Only Know So Far: Essays in Ethnopoetics. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Johnson, John William, and Sisòkò, Fa-Digi. 1992. The Epic of Son-Jara: A West African Tradition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Kafumbe, Damascus. 2018. Tuning the Kingdom: Kawuugulu Musical Performance, Politics, and Storytelling in Buganda. Rochester: University of Rochester Press.Google Scholar
Keita, Cherif. 1996. “A Praise Song for the Father: Family Identity in Salif Keita’s Music.” In The Younger Brother in Mande Kinship and Politics in West Africa, edited by Jansen, Jan and Zobel, Clemens, 241–43. Leiden: Center for Non-Western Studies.Google Scholar
Keita, Cherif. 2011. From Outcast to Ambassador: The Musical Odyssey of Salif Keita. St. Paul, Minnesota: Mogoya Books.Google Scholar
Konkouris, Theodore L. 2013. “Heroes, Gunpowder, Cassettes & Tape Recorders: Production, Distribution & Transmission of Hunters’ Musical Tradition in Mali, West Africa.” Ph.D. diss., Queen’s University of Belfast.Google Scholar
Madore, Frédérick. 2016. “The New Vitality of Salafism in Côte d’Ivoire: Toward a Radicalization of Ivoirian Islam?” Journal of Religion in Africa 46 (4): 417–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Masuzawa, Tomoko. 2005. The Invention of World Religions, or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maxwell, Heather. 2008. “Of Youth-Harps and Songbirds: The Sweet Music of Wasulu.” African Music 8 (2): 26–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGovern, Mike. 2011. Making War in Côte d’Ivoire. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McNaughton, Patrick. 1988. The Mande Blacksmiths: Knowledge, Power, and Art in West Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Mommersteeg, Geert. 2010. In the City of the Marabouts: Islamic Culture in West Africa. Translated by Webb, Dianne. Long Grove, Illinois: Waveland Press.Google Scholar
Morgan, David, ed. 2010. Religion and Material Culture: The Matter of Belief. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Niane, Djibril Tamsir. 2006 [1965]. Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali. Translated by G. D. Pickett. London: Longman.Ong, Walter. 2013 [1982]. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
O’Sullivan, John Michael. 1976. “Developments in the Social Stratification of Northwest Ivory Coast during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: From a Malinke Frontier Society to the Liberation of Slaves by the French, 1907.” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Oyler, Dianne White. 2005. The History of the N’ko Alphabet and Its Role in Mande Transnational Identity: Words as Weapons. Cherry Hill, New Jersey: Africana Homestead Legacy Press.Google Scholar
Sanneh, Lamin. 1979. The Jakhanke: The History of an Islamic Clerical People of the Senegambia. London: International African Institute.Google Scholar
Schoeler, Gregor. 2009. The Genesis of Literature in Islam: From the Aural to the Read. Translated by Shawkat M. Toorawa. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Skinner, Ryan. 2015a. “An Afropolitan Muse.” Research in African Literatures 46 (2): 15-31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skinner, Ryan. 2015b. Bamako Sounds: The Afropolitan Ethics of Malian Music. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strawn, Cullen Buckminster. 2011. “Kunfɛ Ko: Experiencing Uncertainty in Malian Wasulu Hunters’ Music.” Ph.D. diss., Indiana University.Google Scholar
Vajda, Georges. 2012. “The Oral Transmission of Knowledge in Traditional Islam.” In Education and Learning in the Early Islamic World, edited by Gilliot, Claude, 163–72. Farnham, U.K.: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Vásquez, Manuel. 2011. More Than Belief: A Materialist Theory of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wahhab, Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al. 1992. Kitab al Tawhid. Riyadh: International Islamic Publishing House.Google Scholar
Ware, Rudolph T. III. 2014. The Walking Qur’an: Islamic Education, Embodied Knowledge, and History in West Africa. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Warnier, Jean-Pierre. 2007. The Pot-King: The Body and Technologies of Power. Leiden: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Hellweg supplementary material

Hellweg supplementary material 1

Download Hellweg supplementary material(File)
File 5.5 MB