GENERATION “FLY TO FLY”: URBAN TRANSFORMATION, NEW COSMOPOLITANISM, AND THE POLITICS OF WOMEN'S VOICING IN DAKAR, SENEGAL Ali Colleen Neff A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Communication Studies (Cultural Studies) in the College of Arts and Sciences. Chapel Hill 2013 Approved by: Christopher T. Nelson Lawrence Grossberg Louise Meintjes Renee Alexander Craft Michael Palm © 2013 Ali Colleen Neff ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Ali Colleen Neff: Generation “Fly to Fly”: Urban Transformation, New Cosmopolitanism, and the Politics of Women's Voicing in Dakar, Senegal (Under the direction of Christopher T. Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg) The research from which this dissertation is drawn was conducted in 2009-2012 with women vocalists and other cultural and religious practitioners throughout the region of Dakar, Senegal, rural sites in the Sine-Saloum Delta, and the inland Sufi pilgrimage sites of Touba and Prokhane. Using a series of ethnographic methodologies, I approach the phenomenon of Dakroise women’s sounding through the amplifier of media anthropology, in which sound, sensation, and indigenous discourses on culture and the arts illuminate contemporary Senegalese cultural practice. These contexts evidence the specific, cumulative ways in which music works for the women of Dakar. At the same time, I examine the broader current sociopolitical conjuncture at work on Senegalese culture, in which a global economic crisis, the mass migration and emigration of Senegalese young people, new movements in international Islam, and national political and legal strife shape the dimensions of women’s creativity. I argue within that women’s vocal practice in Dakar constitutes a material cultural formation that substantially helps Senegalese people to survive and thrive in an atmosphere of postcolonial struggle. Drawing from a deep well of indigenous creative practices, the women musical poets of Dakar work according to a various series of perspectives, exigencies, and skills to bring resources into their communities. Their projects overlap in a formation I call a “body in iii sound”: a space of resistance, struggle, creativity, and possibility that manifests the life force of African futurity. iv To Mama Diarra Bousso, jërejëfaté. i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and its Center for Global Initiatives for their immense support, including an Off-Campus Dissertation Research Fellowship and a Peacock REACH fellowship for research abroad. The mentorship of William Ferris, James Peacock, Christopher Nelson, Louise Meintjes, and Lawrence Grossberg were fundamental to its conception. Committee members and/or teachers Michael Palm, Renee Alexander Craft, Wahneema Lubiano, and Della Pollock helped immensely along the way. Mark Anthony Neal, Robert Cantwell, Brad Weiss, Charles Piot, Mark Katz, Jayna Brown, Marcie Ferris, Kathleen Higgins, and Arturo Escobar each lent a helpful ear and resources as I worked out the ideas within this work. Ayse Erginer and Dave Shaw helped especially to shape my chapter on transnational hip-hop. This dissertation work was funded by a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship. This study has been enriched by the generous contributions of Baye Cheikh Sylla, Serigne Abdou Aziz Mbacké, Serigne Abdou Aziz Fall, Serigne Lamp Fall Mbacké, Sokhna Arame Fall, Bamba Niass, Imame Sene, and Mame Sagar Mboup. Many of the ideas within follow my work in the seminars of Ian Baucom, Achille Mbembe, John Kasson, Patricia Sawin, and Fred Moten. Generous predecessors and peers in the field including Anthony Kwame Harrison, Joseph Schloss, David Font-Navarette, Chérie Rivers Ndaliko, Elijah Wald, and Amber Clifford. Peers including Justin Burton, Sindhu Zagoren, Ashon Crawley, Laura Wagner, Luis- Manuel Garcia, Max Katz, Ryan Smith Ananant, Jennifer Kyker Bangoura have nourished the ii ideas within its pages. Amanda Gilvin has been a special force of friendship and intellectual challenge throughout. I acknowledge the contributions of the UNC Global South Working Group, Duke African Music Working Group, UNC Paul Gilroy Working Group, SEM Seminar in Global Music, especially Eric Charry and Mark Slobin. Duke Music Dissertation writers Matt Somoroff, Karen Cook, Yana Lowry, and Kelley Tatro, Yelena were generous in their critiques. Students who have challenged me to better articulate this work, including Jessica Dilday, Pier Duncan, and the students of the Crunkology seminar. I am grateful for the friendship of Carmen DeTitta, Erin Luben, Tim Gordon, and Sarah Honer, the generosity of Jay and Pat Gordon, and the support of my father, Allen Neff. There would be no reason for the work within without my son, Serene Saliou Niass, who has spent his first year on this planet peering around the edges of my open laptop to offer smiles and pure inspiration. Most importantly, I am grateful to the women who worked with me as consultants, collaborators, and teachers, including Astou “Toussa” Gueye, Sokhna Khady Ba, Binta Sarr Diop, Soukeye Dieng, Oumou Sow, and Njaaya Gueye. For the days of ceebu jën and rounds of attaya, for the nights of swatting off mosquitoes after a long night at the disco, for the mother’s wisdom, for the sisterhood, I am so thankful. Miryam Diallo, Maman and Penda Diallo, Maman Guissé, Ami Collé and their illustrious family, Awa and the Thiams, and the Sow and Niass families of Guediawaye taught me much about Senegal and the Wolof language. This work is the product of generous funding from within and the University of North Carolina, including the DK Wilgus Fellowship in music research, the Peacock REACH Fellowship, and the UNC Off-Campus Dissertation Research Fellowship. External funding iii includes the Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship, and two FLAS Summer Language Fellowships for Wolof. Beth-Ann Kutchma, Tripp Tuttle, and Niklaus Steiner were instrumental in securing this funding and making this project possible. The UNC Center for the Study of the American South, under the care of Harry Watson and Jocelyn Neal, has been a home for this work throughout. iv PREFACE: A NOTE ON TRANSLATION AND INTERPRETATION The research for this dissertation was conducted primarily in the Wolof language, the Senegalese lingua franca, which I studied, through the generosity of the FLAS program, at the SCALI African Languages Cooperative in 2008 and through the Baobab Center in Dakar in 2010. The orthography of spoken passages and contested spellings follows the guidelines of Sokhna Arame Fall, whose work is foundational to official Wolof orthography. Because the language integrates and Wolofizes French and Arabic words as well, I follow Wolofized usages, connotations, and spellings where appropriate. Often, I quote written sources, proper names, or pervasive unofficial spellings that differ from Fall’s orthography; in these instances, I replicate native usage. Wolof verb tenses are especially difficult to translate to English, and translations are made to best fit the contextual valence and tone of the speaker’s narrative. I argue throughout this dissertation that contemporary Senegal does manifest a special national integrity due to historical, cultural, and geographic factors. At the same time, its ethnic groups (particularly the Mandé, Pulaar or Fula, Bambara, and Djola), overflow national boundaries. When discussing particular cultural phenomenon and influences, I intentionally refer to some as national, others as ethnic, and still others as regional, and Pan-African (or often in this last case, “African”). References to cultures of Africa, Africanness, and Africanity are made in reference to postcolonial theory, which acknowledges both the diversity of African experiences and its integral historical relationship to colonialism and discourses on Blackness. The term Diaspora is used, unless otherwise modified, to refer to the global African Diaspora. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: Sounding Dakar, Senegal ................................................................................1 The Senegalese Mass Sonore........................................................................................ 1 The Voice that Matters ................................................................................................11 Postcoloniality in the Phonographic Register .............................................................18 Bodies in Sound ..........................................................................................................32 Dakarois Aesthetics, musical imagination and urban transformation ........................40 Chapter 1: Sokhna Khady: Senegalese Su<i Women’s Musical Practice, Feminine Interior Worlds, and Possibilities for Ethnographic Listening ...................................52 On Ethnography and Sound........................................................................................ 59 A Space of Generation ................................................................................................68 Ethnographic Interiority .............................................................................................71 I am a Woman Who Calls Allah’s Name ....................................................................75 Voice, Amplification, and Reverberation ....................................................................79 Co-Writing Culture .....................................................................................................84