TAPS0330: Mandé Dance, Music, Culture and Social Engagement
www.yeredonmali.org
Proverb:
So don ji don yeredon de nyogon te.
While it is excellent to know how to ride a horse and wonderful to know how to swim,
nothing is better than to know oneself.
This course is mandatory S/NC.
Primary Instructor:
michelle_bach-coulibaly@brown.edu
Lyman Hall, Room 010
Office Hours: Wednesdays 12:00 – 2:00 p.m. or by appointment.
(Office) (401) 863-3285 (Cell) (401) 588-1688
Contemplative Practices Instructor:
thomas_coburn@brown.edu
Cultural Consultants:
Seydou Coulibaly – (Cell) (401) 588-2709
Moussa Traoré – moussatraore@hotmail.com (Cell) (617) 970-5587
Teaching Assistants:
samuel_yambrovich@brown.edu
raques_mcgill@brown.edu
Odera Igbokwe – oigbokwe@risd.edu
emily_goldman@brown.edu
Class Times:
Tuesdays, 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. and Thursdays, 4:00 – 6:00 p.m.
Section Times:
#1 – Tuesdays, 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. (Emily/Odera)
#2 – Thursdays, 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. (Michelle)
#3 – Fridays, 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. (Raques)
#4 – Fridays, 1:00 – 2:00 p.m. (Sam)
Course Requirements:
1. The Rhythm of Change Festival – Arts and Social Change in Africa and the
Diaspora (in cooperation with the Arts in the One World Festival)
http://rhythmofchange2012.blogspot.com
2. ATTENDANCE:
PARTICIPATION, RESPECT and COMMUNICATION are PRIMARY VALUES,
therefore no more than three unexcused absences will be allowed. After two, you WILL
AUTOMATICALLY receive a warning from your TA and be asked to make up classes by
coming to two additional sections.
Clear communication must come to the TAs via email if you are to miss class. If you do
not make up classes and fall behind, you will fail the class. These dances and concepts
are complex and demand devoted practice. You are accountable for the material given
in class for the days you missed.
If you miss a class, you must make arrangements to make up the class material on
your own time, and documentation is required for illness-based absences.
Sections are preferred. Two extra sections equal one class. 30%
3. THREE DANCE TESTS:
Each rhythm and dance is taught as a highly codified and stylized body language.
These three dances represent different casted or cultural groups with their own
movement vocabularies, musical traditions, languages, folkloric histories and embodied
dialects (Khassonke, Bambara, Woloso).
After we complete learning the basic material you will be tested on them in class time.
You will be tested on your ability to learn the order, the rhythmic complexities of
each step, accompanying songs, stylistic aspects, transitions, weight-shifts,
motif-structures, doubling and tripling the beat, the stance, listening to and
connecting with the musicians, vitality, energy, subtleties, ENDURANCE,
collaborative creative work with your families and bio-mechanical nuances.
These tests will require that you meet with your family for SACRED TIME to organize
spatial patterns for the dance. This helps you to remember the order of steps, builds
spatial awareness, including the near/ medium/far reach kinesphere, and the power of
surrendering in a movement choir. You are not in it alone. It takes a family to prepare for
the test. You are only as good as your whole group is. 30%
DATES OF THE TESTS:
a. DANSA: February 23. Khassonke Djoun-jounba and jembe ensemble celebratory
dance that exemplifies grace, agility, rhythmic complexity, and social unity.
b. WOLOSODON: March 22. Woloso means, “Born in the house of the King”, and
expresses the power and place of this historically casted group in service to the reigning
Patriarch, or jatigi patron of the artist. The dance and song, while expressing solidarity,
lampoons casted society, and utilizes pelvic virtuosity to entertain, embarrass, and
receive favors from prominent patrons. Today it one of the most popular secular dances
performed by all of the major national and private dance companies, and exists as a
satirical reminder of one’s place within the strict codifications of pre-colonial and colonial
Mande society.
c. SANDIA: April 26
The dance of the jaliya praise singing group. Originally they were sacred keepers of all
speech, genealogies, oral histories, constitutions, and powerful negotiators between
clans.
4. Social Engagement, Service Learning and Research Projects:
Each family will partner with their bantering family to engage in a service learning
project in association with either Adopt-A-Doctor (Kouyate/Sangare), Djoumanzana
Orphanage and Community Centre (Coulibaly/Sissoko), Sekou Camara Primary
Source Library (Keita/Camara), Cultural Preservation: Radio Jekafo/Troupe Fakoli
(Traore/Diarra), Jinijela Garden Project (Diabate/Soumare).
Each team is required to do research on their topic, make and sustain contact with their
project coordinators, deliberate on the assessed need and realistic perimeters for the
project, identify a method of engagement (ex. the creation of a radio play that addresses
the need, write a song about the issue, record it, assist in fundraising initiatives through
performance, contact an ambassador for diplomatic pouch assistance), and present this
research to the class, with a clear plan for how this project will utilize performative
values and creative expression. Dates TBA.
http://www.1beat.org/
5. FINAL EXAM/PERFORMANCE:
May 12th @ 3pm call. 5pm performance on Lincoln Field. The rain date is May 13th @
5pm.
Final Exam Performance:
You are required to be at all rehearsals for the final. Each dance is given 7 hours to
perfect steps, set choreography and to do all staging.
T: 5/1 @12-1pm #1
@6-8pm #2
H: 5/3 @12-1pm #2
@6-8pm #3
F: 5/4 @12-2pm #3
@2-4pm #1
S: 5/5 @9-12
#1
@12-3pm #2
Sn:5/6 @4-7pm #3
T: 5/8 @12-1 #1
@6-8pm Run all dances with Musicians
H: 5/10 @4-6pm DRESS REHEARSAL
S: 5/12 @ 3pm Call/ 5pm Performance
CELEBRATE.
Course Mission and Description
The mission of the class is to build a mindful, respectful community, inspire civic
engagement, create egalitarian exchanges between the diverse Brown population and
West African artist-activists, and to further leadership skills through collaborative
research- to- performance projects that utilize the power of performance to raise
awareness and educational practices that serve to sensitize thought into action.
Through the attainment of physical virtuosity students will learn Mande cultural concepts
of “communitas”, generosity, strength, flexibility, responsibility, civic-mindedness, and
cultural awareness.
This semester we will be working with Professor Thomas Coburn towards a
comprehensive investigation of Contemplative Inquiry and its relationship to the
principles of Mande performance.
Professor Coburn Writes:
“A serviceable generic definition of contemplation and meditation is “disciplined
interiority.” Such a definition does not deny the variety of contemplative and meditative
practices across cultures, around the globe, and throughout history, but it invites us to
think about these practices as a genus, as variations on a theme. That theme is
inwardness, the intentional focus of attention on our inward life and on the present
moment. It should therefore be understood as a counterpoint to where we usually place
our attention, that is, on the outer world, the natural and social environments in which
we live, with all their attendant stories. Contemplation and meditation draw us inward,
often in ways that turn out to be consequential for how we engage the external world.
While contemplatives often live solitary and reclusive lives, many have been engaged in
movements of social and political transformation. A great many techniques and
practices have been developed in different cultures as part of the inner discipline of
contemplation. This course will introduce you, in very preliminary fashion, to some of
them”.
As a research- to- performance course we will examine the vast contributions made by
Mande culture in West Africa and upon the contemporary art stage. With an emphasis
on embodied theory and praxis we will examine the tensions between Traditional and
Contemporary practices.
We will look at how these traditions are:
1. Manifested in contemporized expressions,
2. Mobilized across borders, and
3. Crucial to building a strong cultural aesthetic which functions to create a viable
cultural
Our work is to engage you in the rigorous and detailed physical decoding of this vibrant
tradition that emphasizes concepts of youthfulness, brightness, luminosity,
coolness, stability, flexibility, strength, balance and communal healing. These
traditions demand that we build the necessary strength, flexibility, and endurance
needed to efficiently work in the style and vitality of West African Dance, Music and
Performance.
Collaborative research, participation in the RHYTHM OF CHANGE Festival, and
collaborative research will facilitate a heightened sense of communal learning, Mande
pedagogy, and cultural meaning.
By the end of the semester you should be able to clearly identify, understand,
apply or perform:
1. Three specific Mande dance traditions with their accompanying musical and
oral performance traditions.
These dances and rhythms will be taught as highly codified languages, with specific
phrasing structures, spatial focus, qualitative affinities and alternating centers. Each
movement and rhythm can be studied in respect to its slight variations of intonation,
syncopation, and qualitative choice.
By learning selected songs, folktales and proverbs alongside Mande physical traditions,
we hope to engage each student in an “embodied” approach to history, to assist you in
understanding the high functionality of Mande Performance, and how these traditions
resonate in our own cultural expressions.
2. The relationship of Contemplative Inquiry to Mande culture aesthetics as they
apply to your overall awareness, kinesthetic intelligence, and respect for yourself,
each other and Mande pedagogy.
Notions of improvisation, spontaneity, “ephebisim”, and “getting down” will be taught in
light of their relevance to preserving and maintaining cultural values. Form, Style and
Stance are studied as symbols for social interaction and spiritual growth, as are the
conventions of call-and-response, repetition, competition, improvisation, syncopation,
multiple meter, "coolness", and balance. Dances will be studied as they correlate to
concepts such as:
1. The transmission and maintenance of sentiments and traditions,
2. Theory of dance as a social safety valve,
3. The cathartic element or dances of derision,
4. Group exaltation and search for "the sacred",
5. Cultural and moral education,
6. Agents of healing,
7. Elements of competition: theories of boundary display, negotiation,
8. Dance as ritual drama and builder of "communitas",
9. Motivator in the work place,
10. The creative "other" (transplanted idea from the West)
Concepts of movement include:
Bio- mechanical functions or bone actions: flexion, extension, rotation, circum-duction,
inversion, eversion, pronation, and supination.
Spatial equations: the planes, transverse, points in space, spatial directions, spiraling,
the dimensions (one. two. three), carving/shaping, weight shifts: under-curving/chase,
over-curving/glissade, near, medium and far reaching kinesphere.
Movement considerations: Adduction, abduction, sequential, simultaneous, swing, fall
and recovery, arched, spoke-like, peripheral, gestural, postural, gathering and
scattering, central initiation, multi-unit or single -unit torso, bi-lateral, uni-lateral,
symbolism dance, work motifs, Contemporary Dance terms.
Commonality and CORE elements of Mande Dance and Music:
West African considerations:
REBOUND, DOUBLE and TRIPLE BEATS in the body, Up-beat dancing/the lift, leaps:
preparation, thrust and recovery. The idea of heating up the step will be taught as we
go to the drum. Notions of marking the beat, maintaining one’s balance, displaying
one’s coolness: “hot on the inside and cool on the outside”, are taught as linkages to
cultural tenets. We will consider how the energetic flow, weight centers, spatial focus,
temporal considerations, and qualitative choice explore the relationship between form
and function.
a. The percussive concept of performance where tonality, chord progressions and
temporal components are played with attack, energy and precision.
b. Multi-metric playing and dancing where ¾, 4/4, and 6/8 time signatures are “played”
simultaneously. The dancer responds and “plays” the multi metric rhythm with
corresponding architectures of the body.
One model: Articulations in various centers respond to the resonation of the particular
drum sound. (example: joun- joun corresponds to the feet, being the lowest register and
therefore grounding the dancers in keeping time and into the earth. The konkonee and
bass tone of the jembe respond to the pelvis action, while the tones and accompanying
jembe keep the heart center moving, and the slap sounds from the jembe respond to
jumping and high accents in the arms, head and peripheral gestures.
c. A-part playing and dancing
d. Call and Response
e. Dances of derision.
FAMILY RESEARCH PRESENTATIONS:
These research presentations must include information from the readings or social
concerns that you might already have with Africa, such as the achievement gap,
nutrition, endemic disease, IMF, deforestation, political unrest, fight for limited
resources, FGM, AIDS, colonialism, neo-colonialism, or other issues identified by the
IRIN web news, you are to make a researched piece of educational theatre addressing
these issues. Write songs, poems, and stage newscasts, scenarios from the web,
movement, satire, masquerade or other performative traditions.
MARCH 6thth. Keita and Camara
(History as Performance)
* Niane: Sunjiata An Epic of Old Mali.
*Camara: The Epic of Sunjata: Structure, Preservation, and Transmission
*Keita: Outcast To Ambassador. Life and Times of Salif Keita.
MARCH 8th. Sissoko and Coulibaly
(Mande Music)
Charry: Mande Music. Chapter One
Conrad, David C. A State of Intrigue: The Epic of Bamana Society.
McNaughton: The Mande Blacksmiths, preface through the end of Chapter 4.
MARCH 13th. Diabate/Soumare .
(Cultural Economy/Cultural Policy)
Required Readings:
Articles on Cultural Policy Debate:
#2,3,4,5,9,12,15.
March 15th: Sangare/Kouyate
Munson, Ingrid: The African Diaspora: A Musical Perspective. Read chapter on
Oumou Sangare.
DeLuca and Kamenya: Representations of FGM in Finzan, A Dance for Heroes.
Brett-Smith, Sarah: The Making of Bamana Sculpture: Creativity and Gender.
Laye, Camara: Guardian of the Word. Trans. James Kirkup.
Duran: Birds of the Wasalu
March 20th. Diarra/Traore
(Embodied Art and Initiation)
Required Readings:
Ezra: Art of the Jo Society.
Male: The Jo and the Gwan.
Thompson: An Aesthetic of the Cool. West African Dance.
Sada Sissoko: The Koteba. Bamana ritual play, dance and theater.
McNaughton, Patrick: The Mande Blacksmiths: Knowledge, Power, and Art in West
Africa. Ch.#1
SELECTED TOPICS TO BE EXPLORED For Research: (examples)
I. The Meaning of “Mande”
a. Myth, Space, Place and Legend
b. Ethnic groupings and Regions.
While these cultural regions and groups have remained “fluid” through centuries of
empire building, wars, migratory shifts, religious movements and economic influences;
new technology and recent globalization have made an immense impact upon the
survival of traditions and cultural values.
Mali is divided into 8 major political regions as established by the French system of
governance. These groups are fluid but remain in association with certain regions to this
day.
Regions:
#1 Kaye: Khassonke, Soninke, Kagoro
#2 Koulikoro: Bambara
#3 Mopti: Dogon, Peul, Bambara, Bozo, Bobo, Marka, Songhay and Tukulor
#4 Timbuktu: Tuareg, Songhay, Maure
#5 Gao: Songhay, Tuareg, Maure, Peul
#6 Sikasso: Senufo, Bambara, Minianka, Dyula, Bobo, Wasalunke
#7 Segou: Bambara, Peul, Bobo, Bozo, Marka, Minianka, Maure
#8 City of Bamako: originally a small Bozo village, but now the most populous city with
all cultural groups.
c. Topography and environment
d. Mande Diaspora
e. Casted groups in pre and post-colonial society.
(Blacksmiths, woloso, horon, nyamkalan).
Pre-colonial Mande society organized itself into specific groups or castes. In the
established divisions the noble caste is called the horon. These sedentary
agriculturalists formed allegiances with great warriors and military strategists which
evolved into a ruling caste.
The second group, jonw, and woloso are now an obsolete slave caste, but still respond
to their pre-colonial status through the continuity and accumulation aspects of the
dance. Woloso were second generation slaves who were born in the house of the king,
and were at times in positions of great power through the jon kuru or jon futu
associations that represented the indentured servants to their masters. The third
important “casted” group we will be studying are the nyamakala group, or specialized
professionals. Blacksmiths, bards, and leather workers pass their arcane knowledge
down endogamously, from one generation to another. The bards or wordsmiths learn
their trade over years and years of mentorship and training, as well as in the occult
practices to heighten the development of their performance. Traditionally they have
been referred to as “griots’, “jesere”, or” “jeli”” jeliya”, “jeliw”. This group of hereditary
bards or wordsmiths trained in the art of negotiation, praise and flattery for their patrons,
historical and anecdotal tales, genealogies, historical documentation of great deeds and
events, as moralizers and counselors of disputes, and keepers of tradition. In precolonial times they wielded great power to sway political action, as they were the voice
of the kings and great noblemen. Their services were of primary importance in
sustaining, transforming, and spreading Mande culture throughout all of West Africa
through their power and authority of the word. Like the “jeli” our research will be
presented in a performative format similar to Mande epic tradition heightened in
energetic value. Contemporary counterparts still exemplify the basic premises
expounded in their written and performed texts. (example: The Jata Band)
f. Clans and familial bantering relationships.
Example: “Traditionally each clan has bantering relationships with different clans. These
are called ‘senekun’ or “sinankun”, and exist as social contracts between people that
allow individuals to hurl insults back and forth in benign and often public settings.
Retribution takes the form of additional insults, and it is all done with great laughter and
applause.” (Patrick McNaughton). Many of these insults refer back to ancient acts of
either heroic or cowardly nature that have been passed down from generation to
generation. Satire and the hurling of insults between clans are the glue that keeps
Malian people together. Travel on the Durnees or Soutramans (taxis-buses), affords
numerous occasions for social interaction. A form of impromptu theatre evolves
between the odd thirty or so people who are crammed inside one of these buses. The
fact that the buses have peripheral seating with everyone looking at each other creates
a circle of possibilities. At any one moment you might hear someone ask what your
family name is. Upon answering, the insults begin and laughing takes over the entire
bus as these insults gradually become more outrageous. There are many jokes about
the Coulibaly clan, as well as all clans. As a “Coulibaly” you could be told that you are
the best farmer of beans, therefore a “bean eater” who blows a lot of hot air into the
atmosphere. The “bad slave” jokes are endless and usually end in slamming one’s
father: “your father has sex with monkey faced-women”, or even more outrageous
insults. NEVER INSULT THE MOTHER. She is sacred, next to God.
II. The Nature and Relevance of Mande Oral Epic Traditions: (partial list)
a. The Sunjiata Epic: as it exists as literature, history and performance.
b. The Ghana Empire and epic of the Wagadu Kingdom.
c. Hunters epics. Samory Toure, and the Songs of Seydou Camara.
d. The Bamana Kingdom of Segou and Kharta e. Askia Mohamed (Maiga)
f. Somono Bala (Bozo, Somono)
III. Life Cycle and Life-Crisis Ceremonies of the Bamana
a. Naming Ceremonies and Baptisms
b. Circumcision
c. Fiancée and Marriages
d. Jina-don healing ceremonies
e. Funerals
f. Agrarian ceremonies
g. Secret societies and Divination
h. Power Associations
IV. Bamana Masquerade. Yaya Coulibaly and Sogoba Tradition
V. Contemporary Festivals in Mali. The Biennale Festival of Art and Culture, Festival
in the Desert, Chi Wara, The Photography Biennale, Dogon Sigui, Sanga Choreography
Competitions.
VI. Women and Children’s Rights and Health Issues.
VII. Mande Dance and Music Traditions.
VIII. Mande Film and Still Images
VIV. Contemporary Artists and the World Music and Dance Circuit.
X. NGO’s and recent Globalization Issues.
Other readings: (A more thorough bibliography will be put up on the web-page)
Bamana Folklore
Conrad, David C. A State of Intrigue: The Epic of Bamana Society.
Courlander, Harold with Sako, Ousmane. Heart of the Ngoni: Heroes of the African
Kingdom of Segu. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1982) 178 pages
Music Traditions:
Charry, Eric. Mande Music: Tradition and Modern Music of the Maninka and
Mandinka of West Africa. (Chicago:University of Chicago Press)
Novels by Mande Diaspora Authors:
Sembene, Ousmane. God’s Bits of Wood. (Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 1960)
This is a novel about the 1948 strike on the Bamako-to-Dakar rail line.
Ba, Amadou Hampate. The Fortunes of Wangrin. ( Indiana University Press). 1973.
Power Associations:
McNaughton, Patrick. The Mande Blacksmiths: Knowledge, Power, and Art in West
Africa. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 241 pages
Political:
French, Howard W. A Continent for the Taking. The Tragedy and Hope of Africa.
(New York: Vintage Books, 2005). 263 pages. Howard French is a former
correspondent for the New York Times, who witnessed firsthand some of West Africa’s
most devastating recent history. This will give you an interesting view of why Mali, like
most of West Africa, is still struggling with Neo-colonialism.
Aesthetics and Philosophy
Alphonse Tierou. African Dance is Life . A spiritual and philosophical look into the
nature of African Dance.
Thompson, Robert Farris. Flash of the Spirit. (New York, Vintage Books, 1983)
This is a great introduction to Mande aesthetics as they respond to music, textiles,
architecture, sculpture and dance.
Thompson, Robert Farris. African Art in Motion. (Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1974) 275 pages.
This is the granddaddy of West African Art books. The ideas presented, while recently
disputed, are still of immense value in how to look at African art and it’s relevance to
embodied practices.
The Sunjata Epics
These three different versions will give you an overview of this important oral history.
Laye, Camara. Guardian of the Word. Trans. James Kirkup.NadiN (New York: The
Noonday Press, 1954)
Johnson, John William. The Epic of Son-Jara: A West African Tradition.
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986)
Niane, Djibril Tamsir. Sundiata, an Epic of Old Mali. Trans. G.D. Pickett. (Essex:
Longman 1965)