Musicking Tradition in Place: Participation, Values, and Banks in Bamiléké Territory by Simon Robert Jo-Keeling A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Anthropology) in The University of Michigan 2011 Doctoral Committee: Professor Judith T. Irvine, Chair Emeritus Professor Judith O. Becker Professor Bruce Mannheim Associate Professor Kelly M. Askew © Simon Robert Jo-Keeling, 2011 acknowledgements Most of all, my thanks go to those residents of Cameroon who assisted with or parti- cipated in my research, especially Theophile Ematchoua, Theophile Issola Missé, Moise Kamndjo, Valerie Kamta, Majolie Kwamu Wandji, Josiane Mbakob, Georges Ngandjou, Antoine Ngoyou Tchouta, Francois Nkwilang, Epiphanie Nya, Basil, Brenda, Elizabeth, Julienne, Majolie, Moise, Pierre, Raisa, Rita, Tresor, Yonga, Le Comité d’Etudes et de la Production des Oeuvres Mèdûmbà and the real-life Association de Benskin and Associa- tion de Mangambeu. Most of all Cameroonians, I thank Emanuel Kamadjou, Alain Kamtchoua, Jules Tankeu and Elise, and Joseph Wansi Eyoumbi. I am grateful to the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research for fund- ing my field work. For support, guidance, inspiration, encouragement, and mentoring, I thank the mem- bers of my dissertation committee, Kelly Askew, Judith Becker, Judith Irvine, and Bruce Mannheim. The three members from the anthropology department supported me the whole way through my graduate training. I am especially grateful to my superb advisor, Judith Irvine, who worked very closely and skillfully with me, particularly during field work and writing up. Other people affiliated with the department of anthropology at the University of Michigan were especially helpful or supportive in a variety of ways. These are Christo- pher Ames, Sarah Arvey, Linda Bardeleben, Catherine Bolten, Laura Brown, Elana ii Buch, Eva-Marie Dubuisson, Paul Duffy, Darlinda Flanigan-Dascola, Henrike Florus- bosch, Tom Fricke, Emanuela Grama, Jessica Greenwald, Bridget Guarasci, Sarah Hal- lum, Britt Halvorson, Sallie Han, Randall Hicks, Erika Hoffman-Dilloway, Claire Insel, Webb Keane, the late Nicola Knight, Matthew Lavoie, Katherine Martineau, Laurie Marx, John Mitani, Erik Mueggler, Melinda Nelson, Robin Nelson, Tam Perry, Ayn Rei- neke, Xochitl Ruiz, Karen Smid, John Thiels, Cecilia Tomori, Julie Winningham, and my former students in “Language and Society” and “The Anthropology of Music.” Those not formally affiliated with the department helped and supported me in equal- ly varied and equally valiant ways. Among them, I thank James Amrine, the late Mike Andrews, Jason Antrosio, Njacko Backo, Kerry Boeye, Julie Chamberlain, Richard Cooper, Jeremy and Teresa Deck-Keeling, Samuel Epstein, Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg, Patrick Fothergill, Colette Granger, Andrew Ivaska, Cherie Jo, Mahindan Kanakaratnam, Nicholas Keeling, Rachel Keeling, Kerry Leahy, Jessie Mabry, Derek and MaraBell Mancini-Lander, Peter McCamus, Beth Pearson, Timothy Perry, Nancy Rinehart, Arthur Verhoogt, Nyah Way, and Chris Weber. Extra special thanks go to Miché Jo-Keeling and David and Julia Keeling. iii table of contents acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………………………..ii list of figures……………………………………………………………………………………………….v list of tables……………………………………………………………………………………………….vi abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………………….vii chapter one: introduction…………………………………………………………………………….1 chapter two: locating Bangangté………………………………………………………………..44 chapter three: “tradition” in musicking…..……………………………………………………85 chapter four: musical banks in members’ lives……………………………………………122 chapter five: naming, place, kinship, and song..…………………………………………165 chapter six: a coffee shop in Bangangté…………………………………………………….221 chapter seven: conclusions and discussion…………....………………………..…………246 appendix…………………………………………………………………………………………………263 works cited……………………………………………………………………………………………..264 iv list of figures figure 2.1: map of Cameroon………………………………………………………………………45 figure 3.1: myself and a mangambeu ensemble in rehearsal………………………….92 figure 3.2: myself and some consultants rehearsing ndanji…………………………...97 figure 3.3: a benskin ensemble and myself in their rehearsal space……………...101 figure 3.4: a lali ensemble in full regalia playing out…………………………………...105 v list of of tables table 5.1: example names…………………………………………………………………………165 table 5.2: some maternal ndab………………………………………………………………….167 table 5.3: some paternal ndab…………………………………………………………………..168 vi ABSTRACT Musicking Tradition in Place: Participation, Values, and Banks in Bamiléké Territory by Simon Robert Jo-Keeling Chair: Judith T. Irvine This dissertation is a linguistic and musical ethnography of Bamiléké people in Ban- gangté, a town in Cameroon where many musical groups are also rotating credit associa- tions. These “musical banks” met each week to address financial matters and rehearse their chosen genre. I argue that the musicking of musical banks is a key site for creating and reproducing solidarity and moral values about kinship, place, “tradition,” and death. I bridge a theoretical gap between poetics, performance, and ideology in linguistic anthro- pology and the participation approach in musical anthropology. My focus throughout is on the musical bankers‟ major concerns, what people do with musical banks, and how these practices address the major concerns – all with special em- phasis on music and language as forms of social action. I analyze song recorded at re- vii hearsals, and discuss public appearances at funerals. I also use metadiscursive data drawn from a wide range of informal events. “Traditional/modern” discourse shapes a lot of what musical bankers do and I dis- cuss these terms as power-laden tropes, not analytic concepts. Positioning themselves in the semiotics of these tropes required considerable uncertainty and subtlety in choosing and negotiating particular signs which may index both “tradition” and “the modern” in contradictory ways. Most of what musical banks do concerns funerals, which means that confronting the reality of death undergirds the musicking and solidarity of members. Musicking helps the bankers manage and accept the intensity of death and of their solidarity within the banks. Musical bankers‟ song relies heavily on inherited personal names, which index ma- trilines and villages. They provide a crucial resource for the formal structuring of song, and constitute a major piece of the puzzle of what makes this musicking emotionally rich. Understanding why the musical bankers felt strongly about what they did requires appre- ciating the importance of place. The positive values many musical bankers associated with “tradition” were, in fact, rooted in the power and beauty of villages. It is specifically the land which my Bamiléké consultants understood to be essential for the continuation of their moral values. viii chapter one introduction This dissertation is a linguistic and musical ethnography of musical groups in Ban- gangté, a town in the Grassfields of Cameroon. An unusual feature of life in the Grass- fields is that many musical groups are also rotating credit associations. I went there to study language and music as practiced by members of the Bamiléké ethnicity, but did not notice the connection with money until I was already several months into field work. These groups, which I call “musical banks,” met each week to address financial matters. Once this is accomplished, they would close their books and bring out musical instru- ments and rehearse. I argue that the musicking of musical banks is, for their members, a key site for creating and reproducing solidarity and moral values about kinship, place, “tradition,” and death. My focus is on some of the members‟ major concerns, what they do with mus- ical banks, and how these practices address the major concerns – all with special empha- sis on music and language as forms of social action. My principal research site was re- hearsals and I analyze song recorded at rehearsals. I also participated at public appear- ances and received musical training and language training in groups of two to five. I dis- cuss some of these events, as well. 1 In the chapters to come, it will become evident that these themes – kinship, place, “tradition,” and death – are co-constitutive, not modular elements to be dealt with in dis- crete sequence. At the root, this dissertation is about some people (musical bankers in Bangangté) participating in discourses about these themes. Discourse – defined appro- priately broadly as “processual, real-time, event-bound social action” (Silverstein 2005a:7) – includes musicking and talking.1 I will pay special attention to how feeling or emotion structures this participation and comes to be structured by discourse, understood semiotically. participation The term “participation” is fertile for uniting the concerns of musical anthropologists with those of linguistic anthropologists. This is not the place for a full-length exegesis, but briefly: students of language run the risk of under-appreciating the roles of sound and bodily movement in language, resulting in misleading characterizations of language as primarily psychological, and of psychology as independent of sound and body. Students of music run the risk of seeing language as nothing more than a semantico-referential tool, whereas language is actually part of social worlds of sound and bodily movement which constitute the domain “music,” however it may be defined by research subjects or researchers.