Songs of the Baka and Other Discoveries

by Dennis James

  Mali:

  BEFORE THE STORM

  Disregarding the State Department’s Travel Advisory List (i.e., “don’t go there”), we travel to Mali, in West Africa, in February, 2012. There is some skirmishing in the north between nomadic Tuareg separatists (MNLA) seeking their own nation and the Malian army. A few foreign tourists have been taken hostage. Certain towns, including Timbuktu, are, for practical purposes, inaccessible. We did not plan to visit Timbuktu, so this is not a deterrent. Its historic cachet notwithstanding, Timbuktu is half covered with sand from the encroaching Sahara. Nor are we planning to visit the Tuareg settlements in the north, since we had already spent time with the Tuareg in southern Algeria in October, 2011.

  Instead, we focus on Central Mali, the most fertile section of the country, watered by the Niger and its tributaries. Along these rivers are the port cities of Ségou, Mopti, Djenné, and Bamako, each with a centuries-old culture. Our plan is to trek through the villages of the Dogon people who live, as they have for a thousand years, in the Bandiagara Escarpment, the nearly inaccessible cliffs that drop sharply to form the edge of the Dogon plateau. Also on our itinerary is Le Festival sur le Niger, an annual world music festival in Ségou, featuring musicians from all over Africa.

  Mali is one of the poorest countries in the world. In contrast to its neighbor, Algeria, which has an abundance of oil and natural gas, Mali has an abundance of onions and mangoes. Its officialdom is as corrupt as any on the planet. Millions of dollars in UN and NGO civil and military aid has been diverted to the coffers of ranking civilian and military leaders.

  A preview of Mali’s penurious state is its Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York City, where we must go to obtain a tourist visa. The Mission is a tiny two-room walk-down in a fashionable district in Manhattan. A waiting area with folding chairs is separated by a glass shield from the working space of the Mission’s single employee, Madame X, a robust, friendly woman and Jacqueline of all trades. There is no security guard. Jacqueline extracts the visa fee from each of us, has us fill out a short form, receives our inoculation records, and advises us that the visas will issue in one week (they do)—all within fifteen minutes. Two other applicants await her services, amiable and scruffy young American men looking forward to total immersion in the Festival on the Niger. They are also processed with dispatch. The modest facade of Mali’s Mission belies its professional and efficient operation.

  Bamako

  Arriving in Bamako late at night, we deplane onto the still-warm tarmac and lug our carry-on backpacks into a crowded, stifling terminal. Waving a sign with our names is Adama, our guide. Most Malians speak French, but Adama also speaks excellent English, as well as Bambara (the most prevalent non-European language in Mali), Dogon, and others. He is a garrulous, athletic young man in his late twenties who seems to know everyone in Bamako. He is Dogon, his kin residing in various parts of the Escarpment.

  The hotel is modern, with functioning air conditioning and a pool suitable for lap swimming—factors that take on importance in the sub-Saharan heat.

  Our pre-breakfast walk takes us along the Avenue of Ministries, a boulevard constructed by the French during colonial times. We dodge motorbikes and broken sidewalk tiles. Many uniformed personnel, most without weapons, stand around, chatting. The various Ministries of the Malian government along the Avenue are in states of neglect and disrepair.

  After breakfast, Adama drives us to a viewpoint where we can see most of Bamako. The dusty dun-colored city of one million people sprawls over the flood plain of the Niger. Colorful relief is provided by vegetable and flower gardens and mango groves in strips of green along the riverbanks. There are few buildings over three stories tall. Our viewing site, according to Adama, is the Malian Army Commando Training Center, with climbing structures and an obstacle course made of used tires and railroad ties. It looks like an elementary school playground. The Center is vacant. The treeless slopes of the hill are littered with trash. Shredded pieces of black plastic shopping bags cling to fences and low-lying bushes, like flocks of emaciated crows.

  Next, we drive to the Bamako Recycling Market, a remarkable place. Acres of sheds made of corrugated steel roof held up by old pipes and crooked sticks shelter men who are cutting and welding auto and machine parts. Disabled vehicles do not litter the landscape in Mali. They are brought here, chopped into parts, and sold. Whatever cannot be restored to its original function is worked into some handy implement—a bucket, wheelbarrow, rake, machete, scythe, scoop, or piece of furniture. Nothing is wasted. It is the ultimate recycling center.

  The sheds are hot under the metal roofs, and the men’s work is hard and dangerous. Barefoot, wearing nothing but shorts, and without goggles or masks, the men wield cutting and welding torches hooked up to battered tanks of fuel. Radios blare popular music, and laughter is heard all around.

  The finished parts and implements are stacked in a neat array for inspection and sale on the street that traverses the market. On this same street is the principal fresh food market for Bamako. It is as devoid of men as the welding sheds are of women—Malian women are in charge here.

  The women in Mali are tall, with erect postures from a lifetime of balancing impossible loads on their heads while a baby is slung on their backs. Many wear traditional dresses called boubous with matching turbans in bold patterns and bright harmonious colors, vivid against their dark skin. The women we meet are assertive but good-humored, liking nothing better than a ribald story or raucous joke. Their domestic chores are endless and tiresome but are done communally amid much gossip and teasing.

  Our lunch at a Senegalese restaurant consists of a fish stew made with the ubiquitous river fish, capitaine, which is served a dozen different ways during our trip. I never tire of it.

  We visit the National Museum and Park, a green, verdant oasis in the dry urban expanse of Bamako. The museum is empty, perhaps because there is an admission fee. Exquisite icons, masks, and statues from all over Mali are beautifully displayed, with explanations in both French and English. Outside the museum, a small World Music concert led by local musicians attracts a crowd. Malians of all ages get up and dance.

  The Grand Marche (big market) is bustling in the late afternoon. Everything is for sale, including traditional remedies for physical, mental, and spiritual maladies. Ingredients include monkey and fox skulls, skins and furs, and roots and mushrooms.

  At night, we stroll the crowded streets of Bamako without incident or fear. The next day, Barbara gets lost during an early morning walk but finds the hotel after a lot of signing and pointing by friendly locals.

  Ségou

  One hour after we begin the six-hour drive to Ségou, we have to stop. There is a problem with the Land Cruiser’s brakes. We wait in the sun for a replacement auto; no point in complaining. At last, a car arrives, and we continue to Ségou. It is Mali’s second city, with a more laid-back atmosphere than Bamako, which is already pretty relaxed. We stay in a modest two-story establishment with a pleasant courtyard dining area and café serving beer, pizza, and capitaine to Malians, ex-pats, and a few tourists.

  Ségou is the site of the annual World Music Festival on the Niger, for which we have VIP passes. It is held in an open-air arena on the waterfront, with an enormous stage, screen, and sound system, as well as ground level seating of about an acre and a grandstand at the back.

  By nightfall, the dusty street next to the hotel is packed with Malians, other West Africans, young Europeans, and a few Americans. We bring up the average age on the street by several years. Adama guides us through the throngs and into the roped-off VIP grandstand. Even these VIP seats are far from the stage, but the screen provides close-ups of the performers. The arena is filled to capacity, and people are listening in the streets and in boats on the river.

  The music has already started. It can probably be heard in neighboring Burkina Faso. There is no music program, and Adama, who has ducked out to take care of other business, is not around to transla
te the band announcements made in French and Bambara. The music is great, mostly a mix of West African traditional percussion and song, with occasional elements of blues, house, hip-hop, folk, and rock.

  An assortment of suits and embroidered boubous sit in the grandstand, chatting with one another while the bands, the soloists, and the audience go wild. We stay, enjoying the music and spectacle for about two hours, and then, still jet-lagged, retire for the day. The beats and rhythms continue to throb into the small hours of the morning.

  The performers are all Malian on our second night. Some of the lyrics are in English and overtly political. Rokia Traore sings “Africa United” like an anthem, its background rhythms bringing the young fans to their feet.

  The Bandiagara Escarpment: Home of the Dogon

  The Bandiagara Escarpment is a seven-hour drive north of Ségou. On the way, we stop at a Bou village to view their millet storage silos and cylindrical huts with pointed thatched roofs that are clustered together like a mute, miniature town. We pass calabash farms, where Fulani women carry loads of mangoes on their heads. The driver takes the Land Cruiser off road for many miles, arriving at last at a small Dogon village set in a crevice of a hill on the Dogon Plateau. It is the village of Adama’s grandfather, now deceased. One of Adama’s uncles still lives there.

  As we approach the village, walking beside onion and millet fields, Adama and the people we encounter exchange greetings in the Dogon manner. This is a ritual that takes place between all Dogon at every meeting, even between people who have seen one another earlier that same day. Adama observes this ritual scrupulously. The oldest begins the exchange with “Aga po seo?” (Hello, how are you?). Next comes “Oumana seo?” (How is the family?), “Ounou seo?” (How are the children?), and “Yahana go seo?” (How is the spouse?). The reply to each question is seo, meaning okay. The exchange is then reversed, and the younger greeter makes the inquiries as the older replies, “Seo.” The recitation is done almost simultaneously and usually takes less than a minute, but it requires the speakers to stop and acknowledge one another’s presence and worth as an individual and member of the Dogon community. The back-and-forth nature of these greetings reminds us of the call and response of African-American gospel music.

  A climb up the rocks, through narrow passageways and up ladders made of logs notched with foot holds, leads us to a tiny courtyard where Adama’s uncle and his family reside. There are very few people in the village. Most are in the fields on the Plateau, in school, or sleeping in the cool darkness of the windowless rooms carved out of the rock and lined with hardened mud. Adama’s uncle invites us into his rooms. On display are copies of Dogon totems and icons as well as contemporary animal and human figures, carved for sale to tourists in the cities. Upon inquiry he brings out some original, antique figures, which have apparently been in the community for years. We select and bargain for two, a two-foot-high bearded and seated elderly male and a small female figure. While we are aware that we have been guided to the uncle’s home in the hope of a sale, we don’t mind contributing to the community.

  Most of the structures in Dogon villages are rectangular in shape. There is a building for meetings of the elders and a town square for community meetings. An open pavilion covered by a low thatched roof is used as a venue for adversaries to present their arguments and resolve disputes in a court of elders. The low roof requires everyone involved to sit or squat, emphasizing their equality before the tribunal.

  It is the weekly market day in Niangono, and, as usual, the women are in charge. Amid the press of the crowded lanes between vendors, I make the mistake of stepping over a cookpot tended by a market matron who immediately scolds me in a loud voice about my breach of etiquette. My embarrassment entertains the surrounding sales force. I apologize profusely, to no avail.

  Street in Dogon village

  Meeting house, Dourou

  We spend the night in the city of Bandiagara near the edge of the Escarpment. The only other dinner guests in the café are a German couple who are here to help build a school in the city.

  Near the edge of the Dogon Plateau, we begin a four-kilometer trek down a fault in the Escarpment to the Dogon village of Nambori. The trail traverses the broken head and face of the cliff, follows dry streambeds, and descends into steep claustrophobic gorges, some only one-meter wide. After two hours, we emerge from the shadow of a gorge onto the Gondo Plain at the base of the cliff.

  Stretching to the southeast, the plain is classic African savannah, covered with dry, dusty grass. Baobab trees are silhouetted against serrated clouds above a distant mountain ridge, like birds on a wire. Facing the cliff, well-tended fields of rice, sorghum, millet, and onion are enclosed by bamboo poles entwined with branches of thorn trees. Rising from the plain about one quarter of the way up a five-hundred-meter cliff is Nambori. Square-peaked silos mix with adobe houses that are the same ochre shade as the cliffs, a monochrome Cubist assemblage.

  Above the Dogon buildings are abandoned dwellings dug into the cliff face, as well as square and round towers with windows, doorways, ladders, and roofs. These were the homes of the Tellem, a people who preceded the Dogon as occupants of the Escarpment seven or eight hundred years ago. Under pressure from the more numerous farming Dogon, these hunter-gatherers moved over the Escarpment onto the Plateau, where they still live in small communities. The Dogon use the former Tellem dwellings for burial sites and storage of secret society artifacts. Above the Tellem towers, about three-quarters of the way up the cliff face, is a line of tiny caves—holes in the soft rock. These caves were occupied and then abandoned by a Pygmy people who arrived before the Tellem and who long ago migrated to the forests of central Africa. We like to think that the Baka we visited in Cameroon are their descendants.

  Remains of Tellem and Pygmy villages, Escarpment

  The Tellem and Pygmy sites appear at regular intervals along the entire two-hundred-kilometer length of the Escarpment. It is like the Mesa Verde ruins in Colorado, just twenty times as long.

  We move slowly, taking in the haunting beauty of this primeval scene. The spell is broken as we approach the cultivated fields and come across two young women working the soil. Adama hails them and the seo greetings ensue. He teases and flirts for a while, making them laugh, before introducing us. He then leads us on the long climb through twisting lanes and stairways to the top tier of the Nambori village, where we are to stay the night. A meal of chicken and vegetables in onion sauce is waiting for us.

  Adama informs us that some young people of the village would like to perform a wedding dance for us, but the standard fee is equivalent to seventy-five dollars and there are no other tourists to split the costs. However, we have come all this way to see artistic and cultural expressions unique to Mali, in particular those of the Dogon, so we agree to the proposal.

  An hour after nightfall, we are led to a small square lined with benches in a corner of the village. A crowd of about seventy villagers assembles, most in their twenties and thirties, some forming a circle. Many of the women wear traditional indigo boubous. A percussion ensemble of five or six older men begins to warm up. The rhythms are hypnotic, seemingly repetitive but with small episodic changes that gradually alter the whole rhythmic pattern.

  A young man in slacks and a white shirt and a young woman in a boubou walk into the center of the space as the rhythms slow down. Barefoot, side-by-side, they shuffle slowly on the hard-packed earth, moving forward with small, hesitation steps. Suddenly, the drummers accelerate the pace and increase the volume. The dancers drop into a semicrouch, knees bent, head up, arms straight out in front, feet pounding the earth in double time—an explosion of energy for twenty seconds until the drums relent and the dancers resume the slow shuffle for several minutes. This sequence repeats four or five times until the dance is over. It is a traditional dance performed by young people who have decided to wed—their public performance together an announcement to the village of their engagement status.

  Everyone, many
long married with children, takes their turn on the floor, showing that they can still perform this demanding percussive dance. Adama, a real athlete, does back flips in his rendition. Finally, they drag us onto the floor where we perform a feeble version of the dance, evoking applause and laughter.

  Our sleeping quarters are on the roof of the chief’s house. The roof is lightly covered with clean sand, a mosquito net is strung over some rope, and floor mats and pillows are provided.

  Just before we fall asleep, a strong male voice resonates across the rooftops in the slow, distinctive tones of the Dogon language, speaking for several minutes. He is the village crier, announcing the death of an elderly man. “That is why the Chief was not at the dance,” Adama explains to us. “He had to preside over preburial rituals.”

  The call of several roosters wakes us at four a.m. We walk downhill through Nambori, greet some residents working in the fields, and continue our trek along the base of the Escarpment to Tireli, a sizeable village in the shadow of the cliffs. We have come to see a performance of the Sigi ritual.

  The Sigi fits into Dogon mythology as a rite of atonement and initiation for male youths. The Dogon have a complicated creation myth in which young men engaged in some mischief, disrupting the creation of the earth. The disruption was overcome by the deities, but gods don’t forget, so every sixty years, men wearing masks representing animals, humans, and spirits perform a dance of expiation. The sixty years coincides with the orbital cycle of Sirius, the Dog Star, the Dogon’s most revered celestial object. We will be watching an authentic presentation, but not the real event.

  On one side of a dusty ten-meter square, five men wielding small hammers beat out a rhythm on the stretched skin of log drums. Coming down a narrow lane is a contingent of masked and costumed figures, some with animal faces, some with tall headdresses rising straight up from their masks, some on stilts, and some wearing double-crossed white wooden slats on their heads. Groups of three or four wearing the same costume enter the square in single file, using little hopping steps. Each group in turn dances in unison. Those with towering headpieces whip their necks back and forth and in circles, their headgear skimming the sandy floor, raising dust clouds around their legs. The figures on stilts lurch from side to side. Some impersonate women involved in the myth, wearing coconut shell bras with sea shell–lined straps and straw skirts. Throughout, the drumming continues, seeming to echo the rhythm of my heart. I am overwhelmed by the drumbeat, the colors, the dance and the dust, and the simple fact of where I am. I don’t want it to end.