Singing with the Dogon Prophet

Walter E.A. van Beek, Oumarou S. Ongoiba, Atimè D. Saye

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781978772694
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnomusicology
• Index: Social Sciences

In the Dogon funeral proceedings, a major song cycle called baja ni is performed in a session of at least seven hours. The texts of the chants are attributed to a legendary figure called Abir?, who as a blind singer in the nineteenth century roamed the heartland of the Dogon. The baja ni songs have escaped scholarly attention thus far. Singing with the Dogon Prophet by Walter E.A. van Beek, Oumarou S. Ongoiba, and Atim? D. Saye provides their first publication in English as well as an analysis of these songs. These texts deal with the relations between man and woman, man's ambivalent dependency on the otherworld, and with life and death; the whole night performance is one of the high points of the funeral. Additionally, Abir? is a prophet, and during his life has uttered a great number of prophecies on a wide range of topics, from local issues to the relation of the Dogon with the Fulbe herdsmen, and from the arrival of the colonials to ecological transformation. This book examines how these prophecies with these songs offer an inside view of the way the Dogon construct the present in a continuous dialogue with their past and their projected future.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• The research and the many contacts in Mali that have made this volume possible resulted from the project DigiDogon, a collaborative effort by the African Studies Centre Leiden and the Department of Anthropology, University College London. The project is f
• The Child of Heaven and the Child of Death
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1: Singing through the Night
• Chapter 2: A Dogon Heritage
• Chapter 3: The Blind Singer
• Chapter 4: The baja ni Texts in Dogon Culture
• Chapter 5: The Songs
• Chapter 6: Prophecies
• Appendix 1
• Appendix 2
• Appendix 3
• Bibliography
• Figure Credits
• Index
• About the Authors