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Tradition and Identity in Burkina Faso

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Tradition and Identity in Burkina Faso Wesleyan University THE SAMBLA XYLOPHONE: TRADITION AND IDENTITY IN BURKINA FASO By Julie Lynn Strand Faculty Advisor: Eric Charry A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of Wesleyan University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Middletown, Connecticut May 2009 ABSTRACT The Sambla are a small ethnic group nestled in a hilly region of western Burkina Faso, West Africa, who play a xylophone called the baan. Played by three musicians simultaneously on a single instrument, the baan accompanies all ritual, work, and recreational activities that require music in Sambla life, and it can be considered the principal Sambla musical instrument. They acquired the instrument from the Tusia, a neighboring ethnic group with whom they have long shared friendly relations as well as kinship and military alliances. In the late 19th century, two Tusia musicians migrated into Sambla country with their xylophone, after which the Sambla adapted the instrument and music to suit their needs and transformed it into a unique tradition. The Sambla’s acceptance and adaptation of the xylophone can be viewed as the latest step in the formation of their ethnic identity. The Sambla as an ethnic group were formed by a series of processes that began when they separated from another ethnic group, became geographically isolated, and began to absorb various foreign people, practices, and belief systems into their community, unifying themselves by their link to the land under a sacred earth chief. The creation of the baan tradition was another step in their process of identity creation, as it became an essential element to all ritual and social events and the center of Sambla musical life. Music of the baan is complex and multifaceted, and it employs a speech surrogate system that is capable of extemporaneous speech both within the performance of a song and during interludes between songs in which a spectator ii engages in conversation with the soloist, who responds with musical speech on the baan. The speech surrogate mimics the tonal and rhythmic contour of spoken Sambla, and it must also fit within the melodic and modal context of the particular song in which the speech is played. The tonal, modal, and multi-dimensional rhythmic and metric facets of the music are explored in the musical analysis. iii © Copyright, by Julie Lynn Strand, 2009 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Program, administered through the United States Department of Education, for funding my field research in Burkina Faso for this project. I am also grateful for the use of the research facilities while in Burkina Faso at the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique et Technique (C.N.R.S.T.) in Ouagadougou, the resources at the Ouagadougou chapter of the Société International de Linguistique (SIL), and the enormously helpful assistance of Paré Dieudonné, André Prost and the rest of the staff at the bibliothèque in the Centre d’Etudes Economiques et Sociales de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (CESAO) in Bobo-Dioulasso. During the period of my language study in preparation for my departure for Burkina Faso, I received two summers of financial support from the Title VI Foreign Language Area Studies fellowship (FLAS), also administered by the United States Department of Education, to study Bamana in the Summer Cooperative African Language Institute (SCALI) at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 2001 and Michigan State University in 2002. This language instruction was invaluable preparation for my field research, and my first Bamana instructor, Karim Traore, eventually became one of my dissertation committee members and most valued mentors throughout my research and writing process. Thanking every person in Burkina Faso who assisted in some way with this study would be an impossible task. Among the Sambla alone, I can only name a handful of the individuals who I saw on a regular basis. As one can imagine, in a v small community of fourteen villages, everyone knew about the white American woman who came for a year and a half to learn the xylophone, while my ability to remember all of their names and faces is spotty at best. First and foremost I must thank all of the members of the Diabate family, immediate and extended: my teacher Sadama, his brother Mamdou in Vienna who facilitated the relationship in the first place, and his younger brother Seydou, who assisted in my lessons by filling in the third part, gave me lessons on the Jula balañ, and showed me how a young, intensely talented musician with no formal education is able to find his way in life in urban Africa. All of the musicians in the village also contributed to my education, through both direct conversation and observation of their playing: Sifogobo, Sabwë, and Cemogo Diabate, and all of the wives and children living in baanbërënjira, the home base of the Diabate xylophone clan in Torønso. My fondest memories of Burkina Faso are from the times I spent with them in the village. As for the other Sambla, Samadou Coulibaly, an uncle to the Diabate xylophonists who is not a musician and is admittedly ignorant of the type of musical knowledge I sought, was an indispensable research assistant, interpreter, language instructor, and friend. All of the ka kan clan of Traores contributed greatly to my understanding of Sambla music, especially the late, great Tene. Of course the other great clan of Sambla xylophonists, the Konates of Konkolikan, were my research counterpart to the Diabates. I thank everyone who played in the fêtes I attended and took the time to speak with me, especially the elder musicians Sa-Kønø and Fie-Siõi. vi Special thanks must go to the village chiefs who took the time to speak with me and answer my questions: Alexis Traore, chief of Karankaso, the administrative center of Sambla country, and the village chief of Bwënde, Sa-Ndoga Traore and his brother Martin. Every individual who took the time to sit and speak with me, showed patience as I struggled to navigate interviews in fragments of Sambla, Jula, and French with Samadou’s aid as interpreter, and most importantly for opening up to me and sharing information about themselves and their families: Fie-Siõi Konate, Sa- Kønøn Konate, Si Traore, and Tene Traore (rest in peace, ala ka hinë taabaa la). There are so many other Sambla who contributed to my research and stay in Burkina, who hosted me, fed me, and made me feel welcome. I am truly indebted to all of them for creating the experiences I had there. I owe an eternal debt of gratitude Andreas Szabo, who initially helped orchestrate my connection with the Sambla in general and the Diabates in particular. He also greatly assisted me as cultural arbiter and sounding board for all of the frustrations I experienced during my stay in Burkina. My advisor at Welseyan, Eric Charry, has given me unrelenting support and encouragement, helped broaden my perspectives, and as the constructive skeptic, made me work for every last conclusion I made in this process. Mark Slobin, another committee member and valued professor, known for his laconic style and nonchalant insights that somehow end up turning everything I thought I knew upside down. I thank the rest of my professors at Wesleyan and elsewhere who have helped me through this long, involved process. I would like to mention Karim Traore here vii again, my first Bamana instructor, who has offered an invaluable perspective as a scholar whose specialty is not music, a Burkinabe who has lived most of his life in the Western academy, and a great friend with whom I have spent many hours talking over drinks, fleshing out my ideas, and working through my experiences in Africa into something concrete and relevant to the rest of my life. The support of my family must also be mentioned, who may not necessarily understand the demands and time that is required to take on and complete a project such as this, but who have patiently supported me in more ways that I could count. Thanks also to all of my friends at Wesleyan, especially those who participated in regular dissertation-writing meetings, gave me helpful feedback to my work, and saved my sanity on many occasions with much-needed distractions and opportunities to let off steam. Special thanks to the entire staff at Eli Cannon’s. I would also like to acknowledge the support of my colleagues, especially those who have been there in the latter stages of my writing. Thanks especially to David Locke at Tufts for his feedback, support, and kind encouragement, and Michael Veal at Yale, for his friendship, patience, and invaluable advice, without which I may not have actually finished any of this. Thanks also to all of others who have helped me throughout this process in one way or another: the Inter-Library Loan staff at the Wesleyan library, Alec McLane and everyone at Scores and Recordings and the World Music archives, and all of my colleagues from the Spring 2007 voyage of Semester at Sea. It’s an experience none of us will forget, and the travels, hardships, joys, and constant new discoveries from that short but life-changing viii journey will continue to affect the way I approach my work, teaching, research, and relationships for the rest of my life. I also my gratefully acknowledge everyone with whom I have played music throughout my gradutate studies: Anthony Braxton, Abraham Adzenyah, Paks Sumarsam and Harjito, Charlie Looker and Lavender, WeSteel and Pandemonium, David Locke, Evan Ziporyn and Gamelan Galak Tika, and the Boston Village Gamelan.
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