A fascinating article on music in
Mali in CN Traveler.
To an out-sider, the social details appear fantastically arcane, and I tried to keep a running tally in my notes: "Blacksmiths (including ironworkers) can marry only potters, but have close relations with Fulani, who are cattle herders"; "weavers always married to dyers"; "leather makers entitled to repair calabashes"; "all Bozo are fishermen"; "griots were once hunters, though both hunters and griots now deny it." I kept this going for a week, then surrendered to befuddlement. ...Though the country is officially Muslim, there is no prohibition against following other religions or practices. I had also begun to notice a vagueness bordering on the elusive whenever I asked Malians simple biographical questions about age or birthplace or their children's names. In a people so unfailingly polite and hospitable, it was a glaring anomaly. Little by little, I began to grasp that animism is less nostalgic folklore than a fully operational belief system that ascribes supernatural meaning to every aspect of daily life. Magical stories of river gods, supernatural visitations, and miraculous medicinal cures conjure a world of benevolent spirit allies. But in the shadows, and seemingly more potent, lurks the persistent threat of misfortune in the form of curses, spells, and sorcerer's vendettas. Sharing even minor personal details can give an enemy the necessary opening to put a curse on you. ... On the way up, we'd been listening to his cassettes of Malian music, so I wanted to know how he reconciled his distaste for griots with a liking for their music. He picked out a handful of the cassettes and slammed them down on the armrest, one by one. "Pas griot!" "Pas griot!" "Pas griot!" He wasn't wrong. Not all of Mali's musicians were born to the griot caste. Both Salif Keïta and Ali Farka Touré came from higher classes and initially met with outrage when they became musicians. ... But griots are more than an alien underclass. They preside at weddings and child-naming ceremonies, have wealthy patrons whose praises they are enlisted to sing, are the keepers of cultural history, and even hold government positions. Somewhere between sorcerers and artists, liars and truth tellers, they're a social adhesive that seems designed not to stick. ...
One does not arrive in Timbuktu with great ceremony. The town's port is silted up and impassable, so we disembarked downriver and drove in on sand-strewn streets that declare the circling, encroaching presence of the Sahara. Now a World Heritage Site, modern Timbuktu is part museum, part atmospheric end-of-the-world euphoria. The restored mosques and madrassas recall Timbuktu's provenance as a sixteenth-century hub of Islamic scholarship. But Main Street hummed with glamorous young women dressed in brightly patterned boubous and Tuareg nomads swaddled in cerulean blue. And everywhere were intrepid-looking Europeans, besuited in safari jackets and explorer hats, loading up Land Rovers and SUVs with tents, mattresses, water coolers, and food supplies for the ride out to Essakane, where the Festival au Désert would shortly take place. ...
But hardship is part of the festival's legend. Now in its eighth year, it began as a cultural solution to the long-simmering feud between the Tuaregs, the Saharan nomads who have occupied the desert for two millennia, and the Malian government. A brewing civil war made the area a no-go throughout the early nineties, and despite a peace accord in 1996, travel advisories continue to discourage tourism. The festival has been vital in bringing foreigners back, with its irresistible invitation to three days of Saharan magic, world music, and cross-cultural community—the only place in the world where Robert Plant can share a bill with West African griots and Tuareg bluesmen. Last year's festival entered legend as the coronation of the Tuareg band Tinariwen, Mali's latest superstar export, whose impeccable rebel credentials start with their formation in a militia training camp in Libya. I'd seen them play in New York a few weeks earlier, and they didn't disappoint. Performing in a sepulchral half-light and dressed in Berber costume, they came across as a revolutionary combination of Ali Farka Touré and Jimi Hendrix. ...
I crawled out of my tent at dawn to behold a bizarre sight. A dozen of my campmates were up on the dunes, performing tai chi and sun salutations; the peddlers were at their side, trying to talk them into buying jeweled daggers and tribal headdresses.
