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The “Tamachek Vibration”: How Musicians Rework Identity Through Fluid Cultural Traditions

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The “Tamachek Vibration”: How Musicians Rework Identity Through Fluid Cultural Traditions 51 The “Tamachek Vibration”: How Musicians Rework Identity through Fluid Cultural Traditions Katherine Detamore Indiana University South Bend The Tamachek of Mali are a unique people among the larger Tuareg subgroup of Berber people who live in Northern Africa. As part of a study abroad program based in Mali’s capital city Bamako, I was able to conduct a two-month research study among a small Tamachek community located there. These connections enabled me to perform with my Tamachek informants at two concerts and learn much about their traditional, yet fluid forms of music, dance, and dress and about the social cause they support through their art. Through the transformation of these traditions, my Tamachek informants renegotiate their own social and cultural identities. Not only does this research add valuable information about Tamachek musical traditions and fluid identities to the small body of research about them, it also provides an important look at the wider issue of praise singing in Mali and calls into question its validity in connection with the support of a social cause through musical traditions. Introduction and a way of creating and maintaining social solidarity.2Not only has this been the case in the United States, but many The following paper discusses the ways in which certain forms of African music, especially Malian griot music, have members of the Tamachek1 community have used music been used for political purposes.3 Indeed, certain types in order to invoke identity, social solidarity, and support of Tuareg music were used in the recent movement for a specific social cause. At first, the continuing conflict independence from Mali and are still used to promote other between the Malian government and the Tuareg nationalist social causes.4 movement, which came to a head in the early 1990s, inspired this research project; I wanted to bring Malian culture into Though the original hope of this research was to discover the national spotlight, and gain access to the separatist’s circle a thriving and growing Tuareg nationalist movement, it in order to learn about the Tuareg nationalist movement evolved into something quite different. This is not because from the inside. Once in Bamako, I realized that this goal the nationalist movement does not exist, but because the was not possible due to the relatively menial social and group of musicians who became my chief informants have a political presence of the Tuareg who reside there. Instead, different mission. This mission is closely tied to the goal of I focused on extensive ethnographic interviews with my a non-governmental organization called Ama to which my musical instructors, used their personal social networks to primary informant belongs.5 The goal ofAma is to bring the get a larger snow-ball sample of the Tamachek community, issue of ongoing slavery among certain ethnic groups in Mali and used participant observation at my private lessons, to public attention and to fight for slavery’s eradication. The social functions, and performances to better understand the group of musicians with whom I studied receives backing role of music in the Tamachek community. Fortunately, the from this organization because they have chosen to support interviews I had planned concerning nationalism opened its humanitarian cause through their music. the doors to more compelling questions about the ways in which tradition is used and reinvented for specific purposes. Methods My choice to study music as my main topic was not random. Music has proven to be a very important means of protest As part of a semester-long study abroad program through 1 The Tamachek are a subgroup of the Berber people known in academic literature as Tuareg. Most subgroups of Tuareg refer to themselves by their dialect of the language they all share which is called Tamasheq. Some variations of these names are Kel Tamasheq, Kel Tagelmust, Tamajaq, and Tamachek. 2 Charles H. Cutter, “The Politics of Music in Mali,” African Arts 3 (1968): 39. 3 Ibid., 38. 4 Susan J. Rasmussen, Those Who Touch: Tuareg Medicine Women in Anthropological Perspective.(Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2006), 633. 5 Ama is a pseudonym given to protect the identity of my informants. 52 Antioch University in Mali, I lived with a Malian family the home of the band leader in celebration of his child’s in the capital city of Bamako for about two months. This birth. I was also present and performed with the band on family was well-to-do and lived just off of one of the major two other occasions. One of these performances was at the paved roads in an upscale part of the city. The father owned national museum of Mali and was put on for a group of a few farms as well as a taxi company. He also had two wives foreigners. The second was the final performance and visual who lived in two small houses within his courtyard. There arts show for Antioch Study Abroad which had a mixed, but were a total of twelve people living there (including myself), predominantly Malian, audience. The second two shows eight of whom were under 25 years old. All of the children were different from the first in that they were on a stage except for the oldest attended private schools and had had facing an audience and, because of this, the dance styles tutors at one time or another during their educations. The and band-audience interactions were different than those oldest child was about my age and I learned many things between friends at an informal party. from her about Malian customs and traditions. For example, at first I thought my host family was Tamachek due to the In addition to these opportunities for observation and mother’s heritage. Yet, during my first week in their house, participation, the band also connected me to members of my host sister informed me that she was not Tamachek, but two important organizations that work with the Tamachek Malinke because their descent system is patrilineal. Though community where I conducted additional interviews. The I had learned about this type of descent system before, I had first of these two more formal interviews was with about no idea how exclusive it could be. The Tamachek, much like fourteen members of a Tamachek women’s cooperative neighboring Malinke ethnic groups, still hold to a patrilineal that sells various food items and provides beauty services to descent system in which it is only required of the men (not the public in order to help support their own families and the women) to marry within their ethnic group in order to eventually open a school for adult literacy. I interviewed preserve it.6 Rasmussen’s work among the Tuareg in Niger these women for about an hour, asking them about their echoed this reality when she said that “if the father is a sultan organization’s purpose and history, why they chose to sell or or prominent marabout and the mother is an ex-slave, the make what they did, why they were living in Bamako, their child is considered noble; […] if the father is an ex-slave and lack of formal schooling and their reduced job opportunities the mother a noble, the child is considered a slave.”7 as a result. During the second formal interview I was able to speak with the president of Ama. At that interview, we While I lived with my host family I was treated as one discussed the Ama’s history and goals, the work it does of the family. I would wake up about nine in the morning, with those it calls ‘black Tamachek’ and other marginalized have breakfast that they bought for me from a street vendor, communities, the modern-day existence of slavery and the and walk about fifteen minutes to Ama where I had music Malian government’s refusal to acknowledge it, as well as lessons for about two hours a day. My two teachers, the the contribution of musicians, like those with whom I male band leader/flute player and one of his female singers/ studied, in raising awareness for this social cause. tende drummers would meet me there and often brought other band members and friends along with them. At my In addition to the informal interviews with members of lessons I learned to drum, sing, play the flute, make artisan/ the band, participant observations, and two interviews with leather goods, and dance as the Tamachek do. I also had the organizations impacting the Tamachek community, I also opportunity to do informal interviews with four of the six talked with five other Malians about how the Tamachek band members (two males, two females) on topics ranging are regarded in order to better understand how they are from traditional clothing and music to their life histories perceived by other ethnic groups. I found it hard to get a feel and personal experiences with the Tamachek nationalist for the situation because the Tamachek community seemed rebellion. After my lessons I would often walk back to small and largely ignored.8 For example, many times when my home with one or both of my teachers for lunch (they I would introduce myself by my Tamachek name I would were related to my home-stay family). In the afternoons be asked for my Malian name, given a new one, or receive and evenings I practiced whichever instrument or vocal a blank uncomprehending stare. Still, these reactions were technique I was learning at the time, interacted with my better than the anger I had anticipated I would receive family, or went on interviews or performed with the band.
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