tagged w/ dogon
-
On the Road continues in Timbuktu where Bob Holman gets more insight into the dusty off-station in the middle of nowhere. Bob goes to the Timbuktu Library, with volumes from the 16th Century when the city was the center of African learning. We ourselves learn how to ride a camel and how Timbuktu got its name before we venture into the Sahara and spend an afternoon listening to the hypnotic music of the Tuaregs, the nomadic "blue people," named because their indigo-dyed clothing rubs off on their skin.
Then we head south to visit the Dogons, renowned for the interplay of their culture of masks with daily life and rituals. Bob tries to get a mask ceremony to happen: he buys millet beer for the town, and we see how it is brewed. He then has his fortune read via iconic marks in the sand that are left overnight for the pale fox to wander through and change their meanings, one of many Dogon traditions first written about by Marcel Griaule. When the village erupts into a mask ceremony, the Dogon dancing, music and masks evoke a complete cosmology of extraordinary beauty, utterly fascinating and unique.On the Road continues in Timbuktu where Bob Holman gets more insight into the dusty... more
-
-
Sure enough, Amasaygou (Dolo, of course), is at the Castor for breakfast at 7am. We lay out the day’s plans, the week’s plans: visits with the elders, the diviners, the traditional healer, the griot, the blacksmith, and a celebration that includes masks, if all goes well. The village of Tireli, 19k’s and an hour+ away makes the best Dogon millet beer (“kunyan”) and has the best mask collection – we’ll go there and talk about throwing a party that we can film.
Maybe it’s because the diviners are such a part of life here, maybe it’s because everyone has the same last name, maybe it’s because Griaule left such a mixed heritage of scholarship and hoax (or, maybe, mistranslation). Whatever it is, the Oral Tradition is thriving in Dogon country like nowhere else I’ve seen. The tourists are here for one thing only: the Dogon way of life. Which is to say, the way spirituality is imbued in all objects. The odd jester’s hats with swinging puffballs. The landscape that makes the arcane, fantastic cosmology seem logical. And it’s not that tourists are here in such great numbers – the toilet is still a hole as often as not, and sanitary conditions are, let’s say, haphazard. Meeting Moussa in Tireli (everybody here is a Saye) is filled with these engaging contradictions – he runs the only hotel in town, which the Women’s Association started with a grant from Nobel winner Muhammad Yunus, he of the microgrant theories. Entrust Moussa to hold the money, and he’ll put together our Festival. Hmmm.
I like him, and we are encouraged that we’ll shoot here, but want to allow Sangha a chance to respond, so it’s an hour plus back to Sangha: 20 minutes on a sand piste including a 75 degree plunge into an empty river bed, 20 minutes dirt road past Amani, the sacred crocodile village, Irili, which is also a World Heritage site (truly extraordinary, Hobbit + Star Wars + Truli plus you name it – Mitterrand helicoptered here!), then a steep ascent up a rocky torture road that is intermittently paved, a road that curves alpine-like past villages, Telem caves, and wild west vistas. An NGO paved the road, but didn’t have enough money to pave it all — paved means a cement slab is sunk into the earth. So they paved the most dangerous parts, so the story goes. If that’s true I don’t know what these nondangerous, unpaved parts used to be – the 4x4 sometimes slows to a roll as pointy rocks and potholes take their toll. Avberage speed is around 3kph. Finally we clear an incline and there’s Lower Sangha spread before us – hundreds of mostly women workers with jugs or rice sheaves on their hand, slowly walking from here to there through the green rice and onion fields of Paradise. In the distance the cliffs, the reed rock escarpment, the Telem caves. An indescribable landscape.
Turns out Sekou is also the man in charge of the Sangha equivalent of the Tireli plan. He asks me, Well, did Tireli work for you? Sure did. Then why not do that? Because I wanted to get a price from the Sangha. From you.
Bob Holman is the host of a new travel series focused on endangered languages called ON THE ROAD WITH BOB HOLMAN on LINK TV. He traveled to West Africa, Middle East and Asia and these are his blog stories from his travels. More information at http://www.rattapallax.com/blog/on_the_road/Sure enough, Amasaygou (Dolo, of course), is at the Castor for breakfast at 7am. We... more
-
-
Bea and I walk into town at sunset but there is no town. She spots a pregnant baobab tree, which becomes a running joke, the first joke I’ve told that gets a laugh from the Dogons. And not just a laugh – this is a heartshaking thunder clap of a retort, as if I knew something! That’s what this guide named Amasaygou says, the first Dogon I’ve had a real conversation with. He helps us with our Dogon greetings’ riffs, we discuss the compatibility of religions, Animist, Muslim, Christian, all coexisting here. Another joke: a Muslim can have Animist beliefs, but Animists cannot be Animists and have Muslim beliefs. More laughs.
This is taking place at the Campement, built on the grounds where Marcel Griaule’s house was. Griaule had lived with, and studied, the Dogons for twelve years when the Wise Men’s Council told him it was time for him to have a chat with the blind guy, a former hunter named Ogotemmeli. The result was a book, Conversations with Ogotemmeli, that outlined the Dogon cosmology and its interaction with daily life. Incredibly rich and evocative, these stories were the basis of everything – from which side of the room you slept, what the direction the ox plowed, and how each village was laid out as twins, to a divination method where sticks, stones and sand are used to create a sore on the earth, which night animals walk across and disturb. The paw prints and disturbances are read as your future, and resulted in another book, The Pale Fox.
That night I will visit the Kirili’s friend, Sekou Amadou Dolo (everyone in a Dogon village has the same last name: in Sangha that would be Dolo). His first words are, can Animists can’t have Animist beliefs, correct? The idle chitchat I’d had with Amasaygou just an hour or so before had already become part of Sangha lore, was returning to me in another conversation. Sekou “knows” me. Not only that, but he is asking me if I think Amasaygou would make a good guide. Why not? Things make sense in a way that is clear and understandable – the medium is the message, the content is the messenger.
Bob Holman is the host of a new travel series focused on endangered languages called ON THE ROAD WITH BOB HOLMAN on LINK TV. He traveled to West Africa, Middle East and Asia and these are his blog stories from his travels. More information at http://www.rattapallax.com/blog/on_the_road/Bea and I walk into town at sunset but there is no town. She spots a pregnant baobab... more
-
-
We’re in the beginning of an Arizona/Grand Canyon Western film set, so stop after just fifteen minutes down the piste to shoot some B roll. Bea discovers the key to the room at Gourma, so Abdul returns to Douentza while we shoot, crack jokes, get burrs in our pants, are visited by wandering Peuls, and…. finally our faithful driver returns and we’re on our way. Taking it easier. And of course today happens to be Tabaski here (it’s a locally defined thing), so still no food.
And as we move into Dogon country something happens. As if the cliffs are living. The Telems were here first. In the eleventh century. You can sense their world – veldt, savannahs, jungle with lions, buffalo, elephants. The wild dangers led the Telems to live in impossible-to-reach cliff houses, like Chaco Canyon or Mesa Verde. You can see these astonishing dwellings in a documentary of a Dogon cliff funeral made by Jean Rouch Cimetieres dans La Falaise . I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THAT YOU STOP whatever you are doing and spend 18 minutes with the Dogons. It’s in Dogon and French and awesome.
Bob Holman is the host of a new travel series focused on endangered languages called ON THE ROAD WITH BOB HOLMAN on LINK TV. He traveled to West Africa, Middle East and Asia and these are his blog stories from his travels. More information at http://www.rattapallax.com/blog/on_the_road/We’re in the beginning of an Arizona/Grand Canyon Western film set, so stop... more
-
-
Timbuktu Bucks
It’s expensive here – dinner costs around $10, double the price of Dakar and Bamako. The jewelry hustlers are all over you all the time. And you understand it – a tourist arriving here is like Mali making a pact to export to Montenegro. It’s hard to get here: the pharmacist yesterday apologized for his lack of lip balm, and promised it would be on the next plane into town. Right. The only way to export your work is to get a tourist to carry it home. And the exchange rate is lower, too.
Big Day Shooting
Bea and I settle in for a Production Meeting and lay out a morning in town and afternoon with the Tuaregs. Sana introduces me to his brother, Sandi, who turns out to be his cousin, who turns out to be… etc. When Sana sees me looking at Bradt’s, he casually drops the news that it’s Sandi on a camel on the cover. Indeed.
Losing a Negotiation with the Tuaregs
No problem.
We go to the Tourist Office and shoot my passport getting the official Timbuktu stamp. Only took me thirty-five years. Shoot the outside of the 15th Century Mosque that looks as much like Arizona as Timbuktu. Have a great conversation with Sana at the sacred Tim (well) of Madame Buktu, who lived alone but her well became the way station that became the stopover that grew into today’s Timbuktu. Karamo buys a homemade, tin-can mbira, and we have an impromptu jam ‘round the well. I fall in. It’s dry.
A Kilo of Salt
Buy a kilo of salt, one chunk, dug straight from the earth, two bucks. [NB - this purchase is destined to appear on the poster for LinkTV’s broadcasting of “On the Road.”] Stage the meeting of Sana and Bob at the Hotel Bouctou, another of the seemingly infinite number of places where Ted Joans lived. The owner, another friend of Ted’s, tells us he always stayed in Room 2. But we’d already shot in front of Room 1 – Ted’s number one room, according to Sana. Lunch, like all meals in Timbuktu, takes forever unless you’ve ordered in advance. Omelet clocks in at an hour and fifteen minutes. Last night we ordered chicken. We heard a squawk about half an hour later.
In the afternoon it’s Tuareg time – I ride a camel into town, Karamo and Lamont ride into desert. Bea and I scout the village – located in the midst of scrub and sand, a particularly unhappy piece of desert. Bea immediately asks for a dune, which Sandi conjures up and which totally makes the shoot. Camels, hypnotic music, the sword dance. Karamo sits in on kora. It’s decided professor Bob should ride his camel sans handler, which turns into a rich comedy of camel stubbornness and poet exhilaexasperation. The sun slides down. The women are wearing incredibly ornate silver headresses which mingle gorgeously with their deep indigo clothing. Bea requests a woman to dance. She moves away from her drum, settles on the earth, and subtly moves her hands. Waves of sand. An hourglass without the glass.
Bob Holman is the host of a new travel series focused on endangered languages called ON THE ROAD WITH BOB HOLMAN on LINK TV. He traveled to West Africa, Middle East and Asia and these are his blog stories from his travels. More information at http://www.rattapallax.com/blog/on_the_road/Timbuktu Bucks
It’s expensive here – dinner costs around $10, double... more
-
-
It couldn’t be. But it looked like a rainstorm ahead. The river got choppy. Whitecaps appeared. The temperature dropped. The air turned to milk. I had Beatriz and Lamont start shooting and they shot for an entire tape, an hour. We were moving through memory. Inside a cloud. The trees along the river were shaking. It was the last night before Timbuktu.
The sun came down like an iron cover on a pot. Suddenly darker than dark. We huddled around the table for warmth – no food till new land. The Captain’s flashlight revealed nothing but swirling wisps of fog. The moon ghosted up, and the familiar two stars that have been her accompaniment on this trip, but otherwise the sky and river merged into a black tunnel. It was very late, we were very hungry, very cold, freezing, a few miles from the Sahara.
But the Muse calls. I turn on my headlight to jot some words. “Fermez la lumiere!” bellows the Captain. “Turn off your light! It’s dangerous!” “What’s the danger?” I reply, trying to get some perspective. Silence. Crocodiles? Hippos? Are we lost? I see a flashlight on the left shore. “A gauche!” I shout, half a joke, half hoping the Captain will heed my advice and pull us in to safe haven.
This is supposed to be the time to travel by water to Timbuktu – the river at its highest. Much of the year the trip is impossible – the Niger dries up as it bends (“le boucle,” the Buckle) south at the Sahara. Thirty years ago the Niger flowed through Timbuktu. Now it’s almost twenty kilometers away. Desertification for real.
But tonight the river’s height has changed the shoreline. The fog cloud has turned things around. The high water has caused some of the riverfront villages to be abandoned. Where can we put in for the night? Where is the shore? We cross the broad river, searching. Our jokes have subsided. For almost two hours the Captain stands at the prow, making small hand gestures to the man at the wheel. This way, that.
Suddenly we are ashore, a lonely sand spit, wind blowing mercilessly. The lone tree explodes in a cacophony of scolding and we name the place “Monkey Island.” As the crew sets up the tents, Karamo goes ashore to record the madness. It’s not monkeys but egrets, huddling themselves, reproaching us for invading their sorry dune.
We take dinner on the boat. Last night had been full of stories and imitations of each other. Tonight, our last night on the Niger, is full of tent-shaking monsters – grit teeth to stay on ground. Sand blowing everywhere, somehow getting inside the tents. Frantic dreams. By morning, my sandals, left outside, must be dug out.
We break camp. Two tents blow into the Niger and are fished out with poles. We cast off at daybreak. We’re too cold and tired to shoot.
The blankets we’d bought in Niafunke became our outerwear. All we can do is make time downstream. We are promised a Tuareg village; the one we find is deserted. Filled with loneliness. Finally, late afternoon, we enter Timbuktu like most: tired, dusty, bumping along in an open bache (small truck), wrapped in rags.
Bob Holman is the host of a new travel series focused on endangered languages called ON THE ROAD WITH BOB HOLMAN on LINK TV. He traveled to West Africa, Middle East and Asia and these are his blog stories from his travels. More information at http://www.rattapallax.com/blog/on_the_road/It couldn’t be. But it looked like a rainstorm ahead. The river got choppy.... more
-
-
On the Road continues in Timbuktu where Bob Holman gets more insight into the dusty off-station in the middle of nowhere. Bob goes to the Timbuktu Library, with volumes from the 16th Century when the city was the center of African learning. We ourselves learn how to ride a camel and how Timbuktu got its name before we venture into the Sahara and spend an afternoon listening to the hypnotic music of the Tuaregs, the nomadic "blue people," named because their indigo-dyed clothing rubs off on their skin.
Then we head south to visit the Dogons, renowned for the interplay of their culture of masks with daily life and rituals. Bob tries to get a mask ceremony to happen: he buys millet beer for the town, and we see how it is brewed. He then has his fortune read via iconic marks in the sand that are left overnight for the pale fox to wander through and change their meanings, one of many Dogon traditions first written about by Marcel Griaule. When the village erupts into a mask ceremony, the Dogon dancing, music and masks evoke a complete cosmology of extraordinary beauty, utterly fascinating and unique.On the Road continues in Timbuktu where Bob Holman gets more insight into the dusty... more
-
-
A griot (gree-oh) is the keeper of the West African oral tradition and the tribe's genealogy through poetic songs. Bob Holman is invited to Gambia by his long-time friend and teacher, Papa Susso, to learn more about this musical art and see how the kora, the 21-string harp-lute is made. Bob travels up the Niger River with Papa's son, Karamo, also a griot, in search of the spirit of the African-American Beat poet, Ted Joans, who lived a buoyant life in Timbuktu in the 70s and was Bob's mentor. Along the way, Bob discovers the roots of hip-hop, rap, the blues -- all the great American musical traditions that originated in Africa. The episode concludes with a kora-guitar jam session between Karamo and Ali Farka Toure's son, Vieux.A griot (gree-oh) is the keeper of the West African oral tradition and the... more
-
-
The Campement Hotel has air-conditioned rooms with great showers, flush toilets: it’s all too much for any of us. We’ve been sleeping five on the floor in a single room with a rock-covered hole and warm water in a bucket for over a week. Over dinner, we’re treated to two wandering griots, one playing the jangly 6-string hunters’ kora, the simbi, and the other joining him in singing and dancing a hypnotic welcome song. It’s lovely. This is when Albert the Guide shows up so he’s put to work immediately — book the hunter griots! OK, tomorrow at the market at 10am. Yes, the two hunter-farmer griots are a father and son and now they have a manager, Johnny.
The Monday Djenne Market, one of the most famous in the world, was the touchstone date for the whole 6-week shoot. Had you asked me a week ago, I’d have said, maybe we’ll make it on next Monday or the Monday after. But we have caught enough recent breaks to get back on schedule, a sense of drive and passion is with us, so we are at the market by 6am to catch sunrise and the market set-up. That’s what all the guidebooks say to do, and I’d say most of the tourists in town were up and at ‘em by seven or eight. The market itself, however, is a might slower, and still had empty stalls when we pulled out at 2 – I told Albert that he should talk with the latecomers, that the tourists were getting up early expecting them He said he would.
Bob Holman is the host of a new travel series focused on endangered languages called ON THE ROAD WITH BOB HOLMAN on LINK TV. He traveled to West Africa, Middle East and Asia and these are his blog stories from his travels. More information at http://www.rattapallax.com/blog/on_the_road/The Campement Hotel has air-conditioned rooms with great showers, flush toilets:... more
-
-
Love that Bea. She also came up with a third movie this morning. OK, retracing memory as usual: we’re making a movie, “On the Griot Trail,” about Papa Susso and I searching for the essence of the oral tradition, the living meaning of the oral historians/musicians we call griots, as part of a larger project I’m working on to bring to light, via poetry, the plight of the world’s endangered languages. But deaths in the family and a broken camera have changed our modus operandi: Papa has returned to Banjul to spend time with family and celebrate Tabaschi (L’Aïd el-Kebir), leaving his son, the marvelous griot and sound tech, Karamo Susso, to carry the torch. And because the price of DHL-ing another camera costs as the same as flying here, the wild and wonderful Philadelphia poet/photographer Lamont Steptoe has joined us with two cameras, as second camera/still photographer/jolt of energy.
The second film is a short, stand-alone we’re going to shoot in Timbuktu. A “Heart of Darkness” where Kurtz is a poet. In fact, he’s the Beat poet Ted Joans, who divided his time in the 60s-80s between US-Paris-Timbuktu. The Niger becomes a river of time – I’m traveling back to see Ted like I tried to do in 1975 while working on a play, “Bicentennial Suicide,” in the middle of the Sahra. I came down from Morocco through Algeria and made it into Mali at the desert outpost Tessalit where I spent the night in jail for having no visa, and then was shipped off for Tamanrasset, Algeria. But that’s another story.
This short “film within a film,” will be based on Ted’s poem, “Timbuktu Tit Tat Toe,” about the gentrification of the town (circa 1968!)*. Ted’s widow (he died in 2003), Lenora Castiglia, sent us an incredible poem epistle detailing her trip with Ted back to Timbuktu around 1986. We’ll also be using a piece I’ve written, “Once Upon a Place,” a bit of Georges Simenon’s “Tropic Moon” about Gabon in 1933. And I’m sure some of Lamont’s work will get in there too – he’s Ted, morphing from Karamo (who morphed from Papa!) (Got it?). I love films!
Bea’s new film idea (hereby copyrighted, as are the poems above) is “3 Ghosts” – all subjective POV and “signs” of the speakers – footprints or cushions puffing back up as they stand up, etc. Finally the three come together in the desert, approach a mirror, Finis. Throughout the film, everybody uses “We” as in “We’re hungry” and “Where are we going?” even though there are no Others. We learn that the word “I” has been lost from the language.
It’s been so hot the last couple days that we even used the AC for the last hour to Mopti – Karamo has been battling sinusitis. He started antibiotics yesterday and seems better today. I have no idea how the heat is affecting us, except to say, like all of Africa, it is. No one knows what day it is. As Janis Joplin said, July 4, 1970, Calgary, the day she kissed me (again, that’s another story), “It’s all one day, man.”
(* You can find this poem in Ted’s last published work, Teducation, published by Coffee House Press – shout out to founder Allan Kornblum.)
Bob Holman is the host of a new travel series focused on endangered languages called ON THE ROAD WITH BOB HOLMAN on LINK TV. He traveled to West Africa, Middle East and Asia and these are his blog stories from his travels. More information at http://www.rattapallax.com/blog/on_the_road/Love that Bea. She also came up with a third movie this morning. OK, retracing memory... more
-
-
My first day in Mali not in jail. The in-jail story, suffice it to say, was some twenty years ago and is for later. Right now, just being here in Bamako, seat of high culture of the griot tradition, is dreamscape extraordinaire totale, bursting with life and heat. One of the big neighborhoods is Lafiabugu, or Rest, Please District.
And of course living at Ballike Sissoko’s house is also sleeping the life. Toumani Diabate lives next door. Yesterday Ballike tried out a new kora in the afternoon (he liked it): last night we visited Toumani’s music compound, and he played “Badjouru” with a wonderful jelimussow. Not since I sat on Lonnie Mack’s front porch…
First, go to market.
Go to calabash store, buy calabash (this giant dried gourd, cut in half, is primarily used as a kitchen bowl) (floating in a big bowl of water, it is used as a drum) (whole (small) calabash covered with beaded string you’ve got your shakeree).
Go to hardware/shoe store. Buy a roll of thin polyester fishing line, a medium size skein of medium size line, and a nice-sized line of the thickest. That’s just for the bass string. Buy a big nail that you’ll need to hammer into the ring you attach the strings to, below the bridge.
Go to the rosewood market, just outside of the general market. This wood is usually going for firewood. But you can pick out three nice sticks for the handles and cross piece, and then a big one for the neck. You’ll need some thin strips for the bridge, too.
It’s quite a walk to the cowhide makers’. And quite a smell once you get there. Lots of cowhides stretched in this pole barn, finished ones are strewn about on the dusty grass in front. To the left, fresh skins are scraped (all meat goes straight to the barbecuers next door), salted, rinsed and piled to drain. Lashed into vertical drying rack. When dried, stacked. Eventually exported all overt the world. Except for the occasional kora.
As for the carpet tacks, well, the best thing is to have Papa Susso bring them with him from the United States and present them in wonderful Presentation of the Carpet Tacks Ceremony.
Go home to compound. Trim and cut cowhide into two or three kora-sized pieces. Sketch circles with knife – use stone jutting up in courtyard to sharpen knife – cut circular kora skin, reserving leftovers for braiding dried skin and using as tuning rings, each with a string attached. Dunk and leave sit in lime water for two days. During this time you can make the handles and cross piece – use an adze to find them inside the rosewood. Use the same rosewood tree joint which has been handed down from your father as a brace to shape and carve. Use a file and sandpaper to get some aesthetics going. You can file down the kora so the rim is flat. You can notch the bridge – eleven notches on right, ten on left, the kora has 21 strings in a pentatonic scale (some use 25). A cross between a harp and a lute. Played with thumb and forefinger of both hands – three back fingers curl around and hold the handle.
Ain’t no books to teach you how to. Find a kora and you’ll find a teacher.
Remove skin from lime and stretch on board leaning against tree. Scrape hair from hide with the same (sharp) knife. Bury skin flat in ground for several days. Uncover. Skin now stretchable. Poke holes and thread a rope through. Center calabash on skin. Pull up ropes (some use a white powder here, a kind of glue, others don’t). And use foot to hold rope down. Pull tight, using a rope tightener (wood rod). Lots of crisscrossing here, lots of oomph in the tightening.
OK.
Cut holes in skin at top and bottom, having decided which is top and bottom. “Screw” handles in; crosswise for crosspiece. Let sit in sun Braid cowhide strips. Cut hole for neck insertion. Insert neck (tuning rings are all in place, check). Thumbtack design – make it real, pretty, bold, hard. Cut resonator hold. More thumbtacks. String, tune, play. Don’t tell anyone. Play for everyone.
Beatriz Seigner
Or, Beatriz Seigner-Martin Leite. A genius goddess with a camera. Seeing her whirl in the midst of yesterday’s wedding, all the bridesmaids in brilliant orange, the camera hoisted above to catch the whirl…
Three Shoots One Day
The wedding, the School of Fine Arts (Jelimady Sissoko, from the compound, is a great kora teacher), and Jelimady again later playing with his band at the amazingly upscale Hotel Libya L’Amitie…
Sad, On Schedule
Starting to get sad around Papa. I miss him already. Ram calls – he’s putting Lamont on the plane. Our tour connection Dagui of Tellem Travel knows how to get a 30-day visa extension at the airport. Which means that Sunday we’re back on schedule – off to Djenne for the renowned Monday Market.
A Bamako Thanksgiving
My daughter calls and reminds me, (thank you Daisy!). I call up Spencer, who I met through the blog, to invite him to meet us a Djelimady’s concert. “Bob!” He says, “I heard about the concert, it’s supposed to be great. But I’m at the Ambassador’s having an American Thanksgiving!” That’s the story here, On the Griot Trail.
Bob Holman is the host of a new travel series focused on endangered languages called ON THE ROAD WITH BOB HOLMAN on LINK TV. He traveled to West Africa, Middle East and Asia and these are his blog stories from his travels. More information at http://www.rattapallax.com/blog/on_the_road/My first day in Mali not in jail. The in-jail story, suffice it to say, was some... more
-
