RES Monographs on Anthropology and Aesthetics

Series Editor:

Francesco Pellizzi

Associate Editor:
Joseph Rykwert, University of Pennsylvania

Other books in the series:

The Anatomy of Architecture: Ontology and Metaphor in Batammaliba Architectural Expression,
by Suzanne Preston Blier

Winner of the Arnold Rubin Outstanding Publication Award

“The Four Elements of Architecture” and Other Writings,
by Gottfried Semper, edited by Harry Francis Mallgrave

The Wild Bull in the Sacred Forest: Form, Meaning, and Change in Senegambian Initiation Masks,
by Peter Mark

Learning from Mount Hua: A Chinese Physician's Illustrated Travel Record and Painting Theory,
by Kathlyn Maurean Liscomb

Dance as Text: Ideologies of the Baroque Body,
by Mark Franko

The Roots of Architectural Invention: Site, Enclosure, and Materials,
by David Leatherbarrow

This series provides a point of encounter for contributions from diverse sources to the study of what is often described as “material culture.” Many disciplines have studied different aspects of utilitarian, decorative, and cult objects, from classical to modern times, in Western and other literate cultures. The series, with its breadth of scope and eclecticism, addresses this rich diversity. Like the journal from which it takes its name, it provides a forum for authors from many disciplines, including anthropology, art history, music, dance, and architectural studies.

Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge
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40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA
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© Cambridge University Press 1994

First published 1994

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Brett-Smith, Sarah C.

The making of Bamana sculpture: creativity and gender / Sarah C. Brett-Smith.

p. cm.—(RES monographs in anthropology and aesthetics)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-521-44484-5

1. Sculptors – Mali – Biography – History and criticism. 2. Sculpture, Bambara. 3. Sculpture, Primitive – Mali. 4. Sculpture – Mali. 5. Wood-carving, Primitive – Mali. 6. Wood-carving – Mali. 7. Bambara (African people) – Religion. 8. Bambara (African people) – Social life and customs. I. Title. II. Series.

NB 1255.M42B74    199493-42765

730'.089'9634 – dc20CIP

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN      0-512-44484-5 Hardback

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© Sarah Brett-Smith
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KOJUGU: I ye ntura saraka bò jina, ye, ou i ye mògò k'a sara ye, n'i ko min, a b'o de kè digagoya. Diyagoya!

KOJUGU: If you give a bull as an offering to a djinn or you give her a person as an offering, the thing that you ask for, it is that thing that she will do for you, out of necessity. Out of necessity!

Contents

List of Illustrations

Preface and Acknowledgments

Linguistic Note

Series Editor's Preface

Introduction

Methodology: Description of Fieldwork

Methodology: The Main Sources

Methodology: The Choice of Informants, the Limits and Value of the Data

Methodology: The Presentation of the Data

Methodology: The Cultural Context and Its Impact on the Interviews

The Geographic and Historical Time Frame

The Data and Islam

The Plan of the Book

1        The Bamana Universe

2        The Sculptor Speaks with Spirits: The Other World

3        The Human World

Criteria

Negotiations

Pitfalls in the Commission Process

The Economics of the Commission

4        Trees and Tools

Trees

Cutting the Tree

Tools

5        Carving and Aesthetics

The Enterprise

The Place of Carving

The Timing and Pacing of the Carving

The Artist's Motivation

Aesthetic Objectives

The Process of Carving

6        Sacred Secrets

7        “The Foundation of the World Is with Women”

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

Illustrations

1. Boli or portable altar probably used by the Komo association.

2. Mask worn by the Komo suruku or medium of the Komo association

3. Human figure (yirimògòni). This may be either a twin figure or, more likely, a commemorative piece of the kind described by Kojugu Cissoko.

4. The Dabà mask.

5. The savanna environment near a small Beledugu town.

6. Map showing rainfall in West Africa.

7. Map showing ethnic-group distribution.

8. Segu-style Tyi Warra headdress.

9. Beledugu-style Tyi Warra headdress.

10. Kita-style Tyi Warra carved for the author by Basi Fane.

11. Iron staff in the shape of a woman (guari nègè), believed to be the catalyst in smelting.

12. Basiae mud cloth (bògòlanfini) worn by young Bamana women after excision and childbirth.

13. A typical nonritual object, a stool (donkan kurun) made for the author by Basi Fane.

14. A Beledugu diviner and healer assessing the meaning of a handful of cowries that he has just thrown.

15. Tracings left in the sand by an expert sand diviner or tinyedala.

16. A temporary forge established by an itinerant blacksmith, in an outlying compound in a small Beledugu town.

17. White sheep (saga jigi) offered together with ten white kola nuts in the Mansa su saraka, to determine whether any harm would come to the author, her associate, or Basi Fane if he executed the author's commission.

18. The cekalen or portion of the vertebral column destined to be consumed by the patron (in this case the author and her associate) who is commissioning the sculpture.

19. Red and white kola nuts, dègè flour, and water in a calabash. These items were part of the Ba biyen, or Ba mansa biyen sacrifice made by Basi Fane the day before beginning to carve for the author.

20. Dègè balls offered by women as sacrifices.

21. Basi Fane searching for the dyafereke out of which he would carve the author's commission.

22. Basi's apprentice, Kege Danyogo, felling the dyafereke selected for the author's sculpture, partly because it grew directly out of a red termite mound.

23. Drawing showing the imaginary underground stream connecting the tree growing out of a termite mound with the Niger river.

24. Nègè kolo, or traditionally produced raw iron (smelted around 1930), conserved as a “sacrifice” by Salimata Kone.

25. Sonbè, or large adze, used by Basi Fane to carve the author's Tyi Warra (Fig. 10).

26. Sèmè, or adze. Most carvers own at least two or three differently sized sèmèw.

27. Sònimba, sòninan, or sòninfara. A curved chisel used to delimit the final lines of the forms throughout the carving process.

28. Jè ku (or jagi). A chisel with a curved blade like a sickle, used to carve out the interior of mortars.

29. Muru. A knife used to execute the final details of a sculpture and to burn designs into the finished object.

30. Kulan, or anvil, being used to forge a metal spatula used for painting mud cloth.

31. The bellows, fandaga, fangolow, or fanwolow, and the clay barrier that covers the pipes from the bellows, the tondo or fankun. The tondo also includes a basin that contains the charcoal fire.

32. Tieli ju mud-cloth pattern being painted by Salimata Kone.

33. Yiri kulukutuma, the “nude,” “naked,” or “round” rough wood that is the sculptor's raw material. Basi Fane's apprentice is finishing the task of stripping the bark away from the block of wood; he holds his axe in his right hand, because the Tyi Warra will not be used ritually.

34. Basi Fane measuring the length of yiri kulukutuma necessary for the Tyi Warra mask he is about to carve for the author.

35. Basi's apprentice, Kege Danyogo, cuts the shortened block of raw wood in half so as to expose the termite damage (Fig. 36), which will be removed before Basi begins to carve the mask.

36. The block of raw dyafereke wood cut in half to display the full extent of the termite damage.

37. Basi's apprentice, Kege Danyogo, removing the termite-damaged section from the block of dyafereke wood used to make the author's Tyi Warra.

38. Basi Fane begins to work on the “raw” wood. The artist sits flat on the ground, his legs spread apart, with the block of dyafereke wood between them.

39. Basi Fane uses a knife to mark lines delimiting different areas of the Tyi Warra mask on the “raw” block of dyafereke wood.

40. The lines cut into the block of dyafereke wood mark the upper end of the eye sockets, the upper edge of the brow, and the height of the wooden stumps, which will support antelope horns when the Tyi Warra mask is decorated.

41. The Tyi Warra mask as Basi Fane strips away the external layer of wood in order to “uncover” (ka yiri walaki) the rough outlines of the mask.

42. Basi Fane strips away wood from the uppermost section of the Tyi Warra mask to create the three protruding pegs used to support the decorative antelope horns.

43. Basi Fane uses the jagi to scrape out the interior (ka suruku) of the Tyi Warra mask, continuing the process of “uncovering” the rough shape of the object.

44. Basi Fane begins to strip away layer after layer (ka lèsè) of wood in order to reveal the Tyi Warra mask's final form.

45. Basi Fane uses his adze to continue stripping away surplus wood.

46. Basi Fane holds a block of wood at arm's length while he pauses and reflects (ka makaran) on the next step in the carving.

47. Basi Fane executes the final details (nyèmènèw) of the carving; these require careful work with a knife or adze.

48. Basi Fane carves the Tyi Warra mask's “ears,” one of the details that emerges during the last stages of carving.

49. The newly forged blade of a miniature sonbè created by one of Basi's sons at his request. In the past, such tiny instruments were used to carve the final details of ritual objects.

50. Basi Fane using the miniature sonbè blade to burn the surface of the finished Tyi Warra black.

51. Basi Fane using the red-hot blade of a knife to engrave decorative details on the donkan stool (Fig. 13) made for the author.

52. Kege Danyogo, Basi's apprentice, pouring water in which a piece of paper bearing divination signs (Fig. 53) has been dipped, over the Tyi Warra mask to consecrate it.

53. Paper bearing the divination signs used in the consecration of the Tyi Warra mask.

54. Basi Fane using the wet divination paper like a sponge, to rub water and karite nut oil (si tulu) over the surface of the Tyi Warra mask.

55. Western-made mirrors and glue used in the decoration of the finished Tyi Warra mask. Such “ornaments” (manyòkòlònw) are applied at the discretion of the artist.

56. Basi Fane and his son, Seri, gluing one of the Tyi Warra mask's mirrors in place.

57. Pair of Komo association ‘flutes,’ the Komo saman. According to Kojugu, the left-hand flute with the twisted and interlocked ‘horns’ is female, whereas the right-hand flute is male.

58. Fugan feere mud cloth painted by Salimata Kone on a cloth commissioned by the author.

59. Banankoro bolon mud cloth painted by Oumou Coulibaly in a small Beledugu village.

60. Two faraw, or batons, used for beating tot as it is cooking. The topmost one has been used; the lower one was carved for the author.

Preface and Acknowledgments

This book tries to explore the artistic process as it is understood by Bamana sculptors. Among the Bamana, the sculptural process raises a number of complex problems related to gender; it is hoped that this book's focus on this issue as a key to understanding the creative process will prove useful to those working in other areas of art history and anthropology.

This examination of sculptural creativity opens a window that not only looks out over the parched savanna landscape of Bamana society, but also sheds light on the personal odysseys of the men and women who choose to follow the solitary road to artistic success. The story told here is sad; likewise the creation of this book has been demanding and painful from start to finish. It could not have been accomplished without the intellect and personality of Mr. Adama Mara, and it changed his life as much as it shaped mine. In this process, we faced challenges that neither of us could overcome. We also encountered a level of tragedy that neither of us would have chosen had we understood the requirements of this project at its beginning. I hope that my writing is able to translate Mr. Mara's insight and brilliance, and that the finished book is something of a recompense for both of us.

This is not a book I would have chosen to write, nor a project I would have selected; it is something that placed itself in front of me and demanded to be done. Similarly, many of my informants came to me for their own reasons and with their own agendas. The information presented here was not so much sought out as simply received from those, like Kojugu, who wished to speak. Whether by luck or destiny, much of this book arrived on my doorstep of its own accord.

My most important guides on this voyage into the domain of the Bamana sculptor are described at length in the Introduction, but I would like to take a moment to express my gratitude to those elders who provided the largest portion of the raw material for this book: Kojugu Cissoko, Nyamaton Diarra, Basi Fane, and Salimata Kone. Without them, there would be no book, and it is my hope that their descendants will be able to use this story to understand the past. In addition to these guides, numerous other Bamana and Malinke assisted in this endeavor. Although this list is too long to include here, I would like to briefly thank Kege Danyogo and M'Fa Sory Traore for their special contributions.

I wish to thank the Malian government for granting me permission to carry out this research, and for facilitating it in every possible way. Perhaps my greatest debt is owed to Mali's current president, Alpha Oumar Konare, who in 1976 first set me on the path to the Beledugu. His advice and direction have proved invaluable. Second, I would like to thank all the government officials who helped me in my research, especially Seku Ba Camara, whose transcriptions made this book possible, Yaya Coulibaly, who assisted with my research on sculptor's tools, Dr. N'Golo Diarra, whose identifications of plants have proved vital, Dogodiougou Dolo and Professor Issa Koné, whose zoological and entomological identifications have helped immeasurably, Klena Sanogo, Abdoulaye Sylla, and Mohammed Talli Toure. I would also like to thank Kassim Koné, Adama Timbo, Moussa Ly, and the various Malian professors who taught me to speak Bamana.

I am grateful to the many colleagues who encouraged me to work on this book at various times and in various places, and who then encouraged me when the endeavor was underway: Suzanne Blier, Rene Bravmann, Bernard de Grunne, Janet Hoskins, James Marrow, David Robinson, Kenneth Silver, and Jan Vansina. Three scholars in particular, David DeVorkin, Barbara Obrist, and Richard Rathbone, read large sections of the manuscript and provided detailed annotations that challenged me and deepened my understanding of the material discussed in this book. I am also deeply grateful to Jan Vansina for his perceptive suggestions concerning the revision of the manuscripts; his insights helped reshape the original text and bring it to its final form. For additional insightful comments on the manuscript I am indebted to Robert Baum, Monica Green, Richard Paley, William Tronzo, and Lauren Weingarten. I would also like to thank the following scholars for their help in working out the many obscure identifications that appear in the following pages: Mary Jo Arnoldi, Charles Bird, Barbara Cashion, Jerry Cashion, Julie Constable, Kate Ezra, Barbara Frank, David Gamble, William H. Gotwald, Eugenia Herbert, Rachel Hoffman, Patrick McNaughton, Craig Packer, Labelle Prussin, Donald Stratton, Peter Weil, and E. O. Wilson. I am especially grateful to David Conrad for sharing his insights into the Bamana world with me, and for his patient help with a large number of the most difficult identifications. I have profited from illuminating conversations with Rowland Abiodun, Jean-Loup Amselle, Renée Baigell, David Conrad, Gillian Gillison, Pascal James Imperato, Frederick Lamp, Marilyn Lavin, Gulru Necipoglu-Kafadar, Richard Rathbone, Dr. Richard Simmons, and James Smalls. In addition, Abeer Awdul assisted in translating Arabic terms, Noel Swerdlow provided important astronomical information, and Valerio Valeri helped me to understand some previously unintelligible field data. I am also indebted to Gérard Dumestre for providing me with an invaluable copy of his Dictionnaire Bambara Français.

At Rutgers, I would like to thank the many colleagues who have provided that rare commodity, a fruitful work environment, during the past five years. Without their support this book would not exist. I especially thank Matthew Baigell, Rona Goffen, and Sarah McHam for their unstinting support, encouragement, and advice.

The research and writing of this book were supported by a number of grants and fellowships. Before acknowledging these, I would like to thank the many colleagues who wrote the innumerable, time-consuming recommendations that enabled me to receive this support. I would like to thank the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the Fulbright – Hays program for funding field research in 1984–5 and 1984 respectively. Without this support, I would never have obtained the data presented in this book.

When I returned to the United States, I embarked on the translation and cross-referencing of the interviews presented here. Both my translations and the organization of my field data owe an enormous debt to a series of grants from Rutgers University: in 1988–9 and in 1989–90, two Rutgers University Research Council Fellowships; in 1989–90, the Henry Rutgers Research Fellowship; and in 1989–90, a Rutgers Council on International Programs Fellowship.

I would also like to express my gratitude to David Robinson, who negotiated my award of an NEH grant for the translation, “Bamana Origins and the History of the Komo Society,” through the “Translations of African Historical Sources” project administered via Michigan State University. This funding was instrumental in allowing me to translate the interviews with Nyamaton Diarra that make a critical contribution to The Making of Bamana Sculpture.

In 1990–1, the writing of this book was made possible by the award of a Fellowship for University Teachers from the National Endowment for the Humanities. I remain very grateful for this generous support.

I would also like to thank the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., for its award of a Herodotus Fellowship in 1990–1. At the Institute, I wish to thank Professor Gilen Bowersock for his creative insight concerning trees and their spirits, Professor Giles Constable for his advice about the structure of The Making of Bamana Sculpture, Professor John Elliot for his confidence in my research, Professor Oleg Grabar for his consistent support of and interest in my work, and Professors Clifford Geertz and Joan Scott for the opportunity to participate in seminars in the School of Social Science. Finally, I would like to express my deep gratitude to Professor Irving Lavin for his imaginative understanding and appreciation of my work.

I also wish to acknowledge my debt to the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, for the award of an Ailsa Mellon Bruce Senior Fellowship in 1990–1. Although I eventually declined this fellowship, the award and the research contacts that came out of it have been important for this book.

The Making of Bamana Sculpture has greatly benefited from the editorship of Francesco Pellizzi. Without his encouragement and insight I might well have abandoned the project before it was halfway begun, and I am grateful for his patience, his belief in my work, and his important intellectual contributions.

In the final stages of writing, Elizabeth Mooney was of great practical help, and I would also like to thank Alexandra Brodsky, Douglas Chew, Diane Cook, Len Jenshel, and Wojtek Naczas for their contributions to the photographs. Without Alexandra's extended and patient efforts, I would not have retrieved most of the images printed here. I would like to acknowledge Claudine Vansina's drawing and her maps, which add an important dimension to the illustrations. I also wish to thank Ned Lucks and Kate Russell for their patient assistance with proofreading. Lastly, Beatrice Rehl's patience and interest have helped to bring this work to its conclusion.

Finally, I must thank those who often provided support, understanding, and encouragement at strange times and places. I am grateful to my parents, John and Catharine, for their belief in high intellectual standards and for their unstinting help in realizing this project. I remain indebted to them, to Mounio, and to Matthew and Renée Baigell, for their hospitality and their warm reception of Mr. Adama Mara when he came to work with me in the United States. I would also like to thank my sister, Helena, and my brother, John, for their belief in me. At the beginning of the project, I was encouraged by Dr. Guillermo Alfaro and Nina Kayem. While in Mali, I received warm support from Ben and Beth Hoskins, Roger and Emmy Simmons, and medical help from Leila Toko. I am grateful for the other friends whose presence and encouragement sustained me during the assimilation and preparation of the data presented here: Wade Matthews, Mary Sue Henifen, Jerome Harris, Vivien Hoexter, Jan Lacki, and Oswaldo Rodruigez. I also owe much to Dr. Stanley Bone's tough and analytic mind.

At Yale, I wish to thank my dissertation adviser, Professor Robert Farris Thompson, whose brilliant mind and searching explorations of African art continue to provide a model of intellectual achievement.

I would like to express my indebtedness to Mr. Adama Mara. This book would not have come into being without him, and I do not possess the words to express how much our long-term collaboration has meant to me. I also wish to thank Adama's wife, Hawa Mara, for her tolerance and understanding of my personality while she lived; I hope that this book memorializes her sacrifices, and that it gives pleasure to their daughter, Tatou.

In the recent past, Stephen Adler has pushed me, despite myself, to write better and to think harder than I believed I could. I am especially grateful for his editing, his daily help, and his affectionate collaboration. With him, as, in a different context, with Mr. Mara, I have formed a working partnership, a pleasure that is rarely experienced once, let alone twice in a single lifetime.

Finally, and despite its exigencies, I am grateful that I was given the opportunity to carry out this research and to write this book.

Linguistic Note

Unfortunately, there is no single standard written form for Bamana and Malinke. In transcribing the interviews presented here, M. Seku Ba Camara tried to use the orthography preferred by the DNAFLA, Mali. However, M. Camara's transcriptions are also marked by his linguistic training with Professor Charles Bird of Indiana University, and there may be times when the Bamana or Malinke text presented here differs from what might be an official DNAFLA transcription. I have judged it wiser to publish M. Camara's transcriptions word for word, since the spoken Malinke or Bamana of many interviews departs considerably from urban Bamana speech. It is hoped that the meticulous transcription of the oral text will give the Bamana- or Malinke-speaking reader the flavor of the original interview. It might also be useful to add a short explanation of the italicization used in the Bamana and Malinke transcriptions. Words borrowed directly from French are italicized wherever they appear in the Bamana text; the more confusing of these borrowings are explained as they occur. Some French words have actually been ‘Bamana-ized’ and have entered Bamana and Malinke in almost unrecognizable form (an example is the verb “to calculate,” ka kalikili kè, which derives from the French calculer). Where such terms are so altered as to be unrecognizable as French, they are treated as true Bamana words, and are not italicized. Finally, the plural form of nouns is indicated by adding a w to the end of the word.

The reader should also be aware that Bamana texts published in Mali do not use either capital letters or punctuation. I have inserted both in order to make the Bamana transcriptions and their translations more accessible.

The reader should note that when translating and interpreting Bamana or Malinke terms, I have used double quotation marks (”) to indicate when I am employing a word that is a direct translation of the original Malinke or Bamana, and single quotation marks (’) to denote a word that forms part of my own interpretation.

My use of single quotation marks is also designed to highlight terms that have been subject to question and controversy, such as ‘caste,’ and terms that are derived from Western art history and whose use may be somewhat inappropriate in the Bamana context, such as ‘realistic.’ In these cases the quotation marks should alert the reader to the fact that I am somewhat skeptical of the term used, but that it seemed the best choice from among a group of unsatisfactory alternatives.

Finally, I have consistently used the term “sex” to translate almost all references to either the male or female sex, and have not been specific as to the particular physical feature involved, for example, vagina, uterus, and so forth. This usage is intended to translate as accurately as possible the flavor of the original Bamana or Malinke, which generally employs a pronoun (“it”), a general term (ju) that includes a number of different anatomical features, or a circumlocution such as “a naked woman” to refer to either the male or female sex. It is striking that, even when pushed, an experienced midwife like Salimata uses specific terms sparingly and with great hesitation. Informants who use precise language when discussing sexual issues are the exception, not the rule, and where this occurs (as with Nyamaton's use of wulu or “dog” for “penis”) I have indicated this both in the English text and in the notes. The interviews with Salimata also suggest that certain organs, such as the uterus, may be unknown even to an experienced midwife, and I chose not to use such terms unless the text made the extent of the informant's knowledge absolutely clear.

Series Editor's Preface

The Making of Bamana Sculpture, which is the first full account of Sarah Brett-Smith's research in West Africa, after years of wise and probing hesitation, squarely confronts the problem of defining the creative process itself in Bamana and Malinke culture. Its central aim is to describe the long, tortuous, even tragic road a blacksmith must travel to eventually become an accomplished and acclaimed maker of ritual objects. Its emphasis – uncommonly, again, for art-historical studies of “tribal’ art – is on what gives the artist the ability, in the double sense of skill and entitlement, to produce objects that his community will find not only acceptable, but powerfully distinct, and – once he has become able to express his gifts with masterly self-assurance – to maintain these gifts in the face of envious competition. Brett-Smith finally shows how the growth of the young craftsman into a master blacksmith and sculptor, and the supernatural alliances necessary to shoulder his calling and ‘career,” also imply intrinsically his identification with ‘female’ generative powers and a partial relinquishing of his virility. As a corollary of this transformation, the acquisition of his ambiguous faculties also shields the blacksmith himself – and through him, the whole society – from the destructive potential of those very forces that constitute the model and spring of his, and all, creative action.

Much of the knowledge that the author has been able to gather is traditionally restricted to initiates and supposedly forbidden to women. It is astounding that as a foreigner, a noninitiate, and a woman she has been able to achieve so much. This is partly due, of course, to the changes that have occurred in Bamana and Malinke society over the past forty years; but it is evident that the concepts, feelings, and interdictions linked directly or indirectly to the making of religious images still have a powerful hold on the collective imagination of the culture. Even when they are not fully practiced anymore, they are, indeed, remembered. And when people move from ‘traditional’ villages into ‘modern’ urban settings, as one of the author's principal informants did, the sense of awe remains vis-à-vis the mystical power that had regulated life at the edge of the brousse. The memory is still strong, as is the fear (the tapu, as they used to say in the Pacific), and it will last well into the time (now imminent) when the old and complex sets of practices and beliefs will have completely broken down into scattered bits of ‘superstition.’

It is significant that many of the essential revelations were provided in the urban setting of Bamako by a great blacksmith-carver in the process of transforming himself into a ‘modern’ urban dweller, that is, into a member of a large commercial community. As in the famous case of the great Dogon hunter – metaphysician Ogotemmêli, it is the collapse of the traditional world that spurs those who are in the process of ‘abandoning’ it to preserve it.

Through the sophistication of the collaborative method adopted – with a mixture of choice, chance, and good fortune – this book breaks new ground in the insights it provides into the complex dynamics of ‘artistic’ and ritual action, in conjunction with what one might call epistemology and hermeneutics. Studies of one generation ago – in particular those of the Griaule–Dieterlen school – dealt with the description of West African systems of thought, cosmologies, or symbolic structures – at times with extraordinary results, as in the unique and controversial Dieu d'eau (later integrated by the remarkably rich Renard pâle). Despite these precedents, what is truly new in the material presented here – especially in relation to the making of ritual objects – is Dr. Brett-Smith's ability to obtain primary information of a largely secret nature, in a critically sophisticated hermeneutic context, that is, one in which the nature of the language employed by the source can be seen in terms of the specific relation to the interviewer through the discerning filter of an interpreter and associate of extraordinary intelligence, talent, and tact.

This circumstance, which became an essential element of the method by which the research was carried out and the book composed, is much more than a well-exploited information-gathering opportunity. It has become the instrument for confronting two simultaneous perspectives on the Bamana and Malinke secret world of cult objects: that of the outside cultural historian and that of the participant observer who is aware of every nuance, every subtle connotation of the language through which the information is transmitted and circulated. There is a particular resonance – a ‘noise’– between what is secret (what cannot be said) and what is routinely talked about and lived around the secret (the epistemological setting of the secret as part of the total body of experience that constitutes the culture), that touches on the ‘unspeakable.’ It is also revealing of something eminently specific to the identity of the culture, as covertly determined by its metaphysical undercurrents, its secret core, and its relation with the invisible to the larger reality within which it is immersed.

The ethnographer, in this case a woman and a stranger, elicited not just secrets of traditional symbolism, but the secret – the very principle of transformative action – that turns a male individual into an ambiguous ‘engendering’ being, into a man-woman who takes and gives life, into the lifelong companion and slave of forces that lie outside of the regimented spaces of the social environment – the powers of wilderness. She had already gained a long experience of research on the symbolism and practices of female ritual action (also in the aesthetic realm) – as those associated with menstrual cloths, for instance – and was able in this case to present herself, doggedly, as the radical other, the strong spirit from another brousse (the distant brousse of urban America) determined to learn the price and the way for dealing with the forces and spirits, of the Malian wilderness. Her ‘sacrifice,’ like that of René Griaule long ago, became, after years of perseverance, the price of revelations that had been kept from all outsiders and noninitiates.

It was to further the cross-fertilization of art history and anthropology that RES (the journal) and the RES Monographs in Anthropology and Aesthetics were created. Dr. Brett-Smith has been almost from the outset an active participant in these endeavors, combining as she does a strong art-historical training with a great flair for fieldwork – a rare mixture of tenacity and depth of theoretical concerns that would do honor to any anthropologist. It is the originality of her approach that has enabled her to make such a remarkable contribution to Africanist art-historical studies – one, in fact, whose importance goes well beyond regional (or even continental) boundaries, as she courageously confronts the problem of defining what makes it possible, in a traditional culture, for anything to be created ex nihilo. This question remains largely untackled by anthropology as well as art history, but is central, of course, to the concerns of this book series. To have a study that proceeds so far, and so brilliantly, in the daunting task of facing it, is most gratifying.

FRANCESCO PELLIZZI

_________________________

I wish to thank G. Alhadeff for a helpful reading of this preface.

Introduction

The Making of Bamana Sculpture is a book whose theoretical conclusions grow directly out of the lived experience of Mande societies. It aims to describe the inner mental world that molds the perceptions and behavior of the Bamana or Malinke sculptor. It does not attempt a formal analysis of either society's sculpture or delineate the historical development of the Bamana style; nor is it an exercise in connoisseurship.[1] Likewise, this book does not provide a semiotic analysis of Bamana art, or attempt to explore the spread of art styles along eighteenth- or nineteenth-century trade routes, and it provides only a tangential discussion of the economics of traditional art production. Furthermore, The Making of Bamana Sculpture deliberately avoids the investigation of the use or function of finished art objects, since a number of important scholars have already explored this subject in exhaustive detail.[2] Rather, the book focuses on the making of ritual objects; it attempts to place the process of carving sculpture and its motivations, principles, and rules within the cultural matrix of the traditional Bamana world.

Methodology: Description of Fieldwork

This book is the product of five years spent in Mali working primarily with the Bamana, but also with the Malinke, Bobo, Senufo, Minianka, and Dogon peoples. Between 1976 and 1979 I carried out my first fieldwork in central Mali. This research focused on the symbolism of the geometric patterns painted with mud dye onto cream-colored cotton cloth (bògòlanfini) by Bamana women (Brett-Smith 1982a,b, 1984) (Fig. 12). It suggested that the ritual or “red” mud cloths worn by Bamana girls after clitoridectomy (excision) and first intercourse become material analogues for a young woman's first child. The equivalence established between the blood-soaked ritual cloth and a newborn infant suggested the possibility that men, too, might construct material objects equivalent to children, and that all sacred objects, not just cloth, might be viewed as offspring. In 1983, I returned to Mali to explore this hypothesis, studying the production of ritual sculpture by male blacksmith–sculptors. Although this research focused largely on elderly men, it was informed by my previous work with women dyers, and many of the questions posed and answered could not have been generated without my experience of and access to the subtle, and frequently inaccessible, world of Bamana women.

If the questions asked and answered in this volume owe an incalculable debt to my early experience with Bamana women, I am no less indebted to Adama Mara, the colleague and research associate whose intelligence, intuition, and brilliance made my 1983-8 work possible. The Making of Bamana Sculpture is really the result of two minds working together, not one, and it was for him as much as for me that sculptors like Kojugu (a pseudonym) spoke their minds. In fact, the interviews cited throughout this book resulted from a team approach to the problems of recording male informants who were almost always unwilling to speak directly of “secret” male matters before a female foreigner of childbearing age. Armed with the experience of my previous work and faced with the apprehensions and fears of elderly ritual experts, I made a decision to entrust the asking of my problematic questions and the recording of the ensuing interviews to Mr. Mara. Thus, while my associate and I revised my questions together and negotiated with our informants as a team, I was absent from most of the extended interviews with Kojugu Cissoko and Nyamaton Diarra. This approach created a situation in which Mr. Mara and the ritual experts in question could speak as relative equals, without the profound psychological disturbance and distortions inevitably introduced by the presence of a stranger. However, the taping of these dialogues allowed me to listen to the conversations, to cross-question my colleague about the precise meaning of Kojugu's or Nyamaton's words or tone of voice, and to pose further questions in the light of the information provided by each interview.

In a very real way, Mr. Mara was able to re-create the interaction between master and student, or sculptor and apprentice, in his dialogues with Kojugu and Nyamaton. He presented himself to both elders as a young man in search of instruction, convincing them that the tape recordings were really an aside in his own search for ritual knowledge. He spent hours talking with and observing both men without interviewing them directly, and it was only after they had gained complete confidence in Mr. Mara's intelligence, human understanding, and knowledge of ritual practice that he began to record formal interviews. Furthermore, my associate avoided interviewing in public and indeed followed traditional practice in avoiding any serious conversations by day, waiting silently throughout the long, hot hours while Kojugu divined for his many clients or Nyamaton drank with his friends. Then, when night had fallen and the last client had finally departed, Mr. Mara would sit up talking intimately with Kojugu until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, when he would finally retrieve my questionnaires and the tape recorder. Because of Mr. Mara's discretion and his sophisticated interviewing technique, the resulting conversations have the flavor of a high-level tutorial. In fact, both Kojugu and Nyamaton appear to have taken the position of a traditional expert who instructs his favored student secretly by night, when all the other apprentices are sound asleep.

Thus, these interviews have the flavor of revealed truth, the truth that Sudanic elders reserve for their gifted inheritors, in Griaule's terms, “pure speech” or la parole claire (Griaule 1952, 29). This is especially evident in Kojugu's willingness to speak of events like his mother's and grandmother's carving of ritual objects, events that he would certainly have denied in the presence of a third party or if questioned at noon rather than at 2:00 A.M. Yet, however much my associate may have focused on his personal quest for knowledge, neither he nor I ever concealed the fact that I would eventually listen to these tapes and ultimately produce a book based on them. Our informants were fully aware that I planned to write a book stemming from our joint work, and all but one were comfortable with our assurances that they would be cited only under the cover of a fictive name (all the names in The Making of Bamana Sculpture are pseudonyms and bear no relation whatsoever to the real names of either the villages or individuals cited).

However, Basi, one of the four major sources for The Making of Bamana Sculpture, consistently refused to be recorded. In his case, the data presented in the book is derived from my own observations of Basi's behavior, remarks he made during the five-week period during which Mr. Mara and I inhabited his compound, and from written notes taken at that time. At no time did either I or my associate pressure an elder to disgorge information that he was uncomfortable revealing. In fact, both Nyamaton and Kojugu were interviewed because they approached us and requested that we record what they knew.

Methodology: The Main Sources

Nyamaton's request was motivated by the desire to uphold the reputation of his Beledugu hometown as a seat of traditional learning, and to confirm its position as the point of origin for the Bamana system of divination.[3] He happened to be visiting the town where I had worked consistently since 1976 and accompanied M'Fa Sory Traore, a much less knowledgeable elder, to greet us. While engaging in the requisite half hour of ritual salutations and small talk, Nyamaton observed us negotiating with yet a third elder for what turned out to be a short and relatively unimportant interview. After returning to his host's compound, Nyamaton cross-questioned his friend concerning our work, and, determined that we should not be left to take the elders of Kurusa as the sole purveyors of traditional knowledge, he summoned Mr. Mara and proposed to record a series of interviews. In some doubt as to their usefulness, my associate began the recordings. Although Nyamaton tended to interrupt his concrete descriptions of ritual practices with involved stories exaggerating his own ritual and magical powers, he also provided critically important data that was to serve as a preparation for our more comprehensive interviews with Kojugu. For when Nyamaton ceased to extol his own expertise, he could and did speak of highly sacred matters (such as the forging of the flutes for the Komo association) at a profound level. Unfortunately, his taste for self-glorification, his determination to monopolize our interest, and his amorality (he spoke with pride of having killed a village notable in order to become head of his local Komo association), made him a somewhat unreliable and dispiriting – not to say a terribly exhausting – personality. Furthermore, his lack of teeth, his pronounced stutter, and his fondness for obscure ritual terminology, complex linguistic constructions, and gnomic statements, posed serious problems for the transcription and the eventual translation of his interviews. Thus, after recording five crucial tapes, we politely thanked Nyamaton and left town so as to avoid his attempts to monopolize us, and so that we could maintain our other contacts in Kurusa intact.

Several months after returning to Bamako from this trip, Kojugu approached us. A Malinke sculptor from the Kita region, Kojugu had come to Bamako to open shop as a diviner, hoping to earn enough money to buy the grain that might keep his extended family alive throughout the spring, summer, and fall of 1984. By the end of 1983 Kojugu was already well aware that the negligible harvest guaranteed starvation for him and his dependents, were he not to leave home and seek his fortune elsewhere. By chance, Kojugu obtained a tiny room just inside the compound in which Mr. Mara and I also rented rooms. For months he carefully watched us unobserved as we rebuilt the crumbling mud brick walls of our rooms, paid for the lackluster protection of tin roofs, and reconstructed the outhouse. As Kojugu exchanged the normal, superficial greetings with my colleague, he noted Mr. Mara's respect for the clients who sat waiting for the sculptor to divine. He tried to find out why Mr. Mara engaged in lengthy conversations with odd people, like the blacksmith who arrived to clear out the disused well; he attempted to overhear the tapes to which my colleague and I sat glued (and which we turned off whenever he came near the door), and he drew his own conclusions. In late May, when Kojugu realized that the situation in his family had become impossible, he came to the door of Mr. Mara's room and said, “I know what you are looking for, and I can tell you what you want to know.” At first my associate reacted with skepticism, attributing Kojugu's overture to the desperate situation of his family. However, he decided to investigate whether Kojugu indeed knew “what we wanted to know,” by spending time observing the blacksmith as he divined for his clients and by cross-questioning him on ritual matters late at night. After about ten days of intensive contact, Mr. Mara decided that Kojugu not only knew a great deal about the rituals involved in making sacred sculpture, but that he had a gift for explaining his knowledge verbally. Mr. Mara then approached me, suggesting that we offer Kojugu grain to feed his family in exchange for information. Kojugu would have preferred a large cash sum, but after extended negotiations lasting several days, we finally agreed that Mr. Mara would purchase three months’ supply of rice and accompany both Kojugu and the rice to his village. This arrangement assured that the blacksmith's extended family would be fed, that his most pressing worry would be removed immediately, and that my associate would have the opportunity to observe Kojugu's family and assess the blacksmith's position within his own, very traditional community.

Kojugu kept his word and recorded twelve cassettes that describe the rituals involved in making sculpture in great detail. Our work with the sculptor broke off in early August of 1984, when he began to demand large sums of money for recording additional cassettes. By this time, both Mr. Mara and I felt that we had covered most of the issues critical to the writing of this book, and that we had been able to garner the bulk of Kojugu's knowledge. It had also become clear that the longer the blacksmith remained in Bamako, the less interested he became in traditional knowledge. In retrospect, I feel that we caught Kojugu at a critical point of acculturation; we encountered him just at the moment when the pressure of the famine had forced him into the city. At the time when he recorded our tapes, Kojugu's viewpoint had already been altered by several months of residence in Bamako; his exposure to the ‘modern’ African world of the Malian capital had driven a wedge into his vision of the world, enabling him to distance himself somewhat from the conceptual system in which he had been raised and to discuss it as an intellectual construct. One might almost say that Kojugu talked because he needed to expound his understanding of ritual practice in order to begin to adapt it to the changed environment in which he now found himself. By the end of our recording sessions, Kojugu was no longer the pristine specialist we had encountered in late May. He had learned to charge high prices for his divinations, he knew most of the quarter's bars, and he had acquired several girlfriends. Furthermore, he seemed either unable or unwilling to recall the details of ritual practices he had once expounded with such startling clarity, suggesting that his adaptation to the city environment had required the ‘forgetting’ of basic ritual rules (for instance, the one forbidding intercourse on nights devoted to one's “spirit”) and the development of a selective memory. Whether he wished or not, the famine had in some sense ‘modernized’ him.

Although the interviews with Nyamaton and Kojugu constitute the greater part of the data presented here, this book owes a similar if somewhat less obvious debt to Basi Fane and Salimata Kone. In January and February of 1984 Mr. Mara and I spent five long weeks living in Basi's compound in a small village near Kita. We selected Basi as our first source because of his fame as a sculptor and the fact that my associate had a close friendship with the old man's son. Basi turned out to be the greatest living ritual specialist in the entire Birgo (a traditional region that includes the Kita area) and a great dermatologist. In fact his fame as a skin specialist had brought him clients from as far away as Dakar and far surpassed his renown as a sculptor. Unfortunately, it was only after our arrival in his compound that we learned that Basi had ceased thirty years earlier to carve ritual sculpture on a regular basis. At the time of our visit Basi was approximately eighty years old (although he looked sixty), and was still enjoying sex with his fourth wife. His imposing figure corresponded to his categorical personality; at our arrival he told us in no uncertain terms that he had watched the French arrive in the Kita area and that he had no time for white people. He threatened to request that we leave his compound and told me directly that the only use he had for the Western world was instant coffee, which he considered a miracle. He demanded that I get up at 6:00 every morning and prepare a thick mixture of powdered milk, instant Nescafe and vast quantities of sugar, in order that he might start the day suitably armed. Basi adamantly refused ever to be taped, and he spent four and a half weeks holding us in suspense while he decided whether or not to carve our commission, a Tyi Warra mask of the Kita type. After numerous divinations and sacrifices he finally carved the mask in public, allowing me to photograph each step of the procedure. However, when he began to carve, it became clear that Basi had lost his ‘hand’ over time, and neither he nor I nor my associate were aesthetically satisfied with the result of his efforts. Nevertheless, my sojourn in his compound (which I was not allowed to leave even to walk through the village) gave me the opportunity to observe the most traditionally run family I ever saw in Mali. Basi and his family taught me an enormous amount about the absolute power of the traditional paterfamilias, the inevitable tensions generated by polygamy, and the secret vendettas that continue unabated beneath the superficially calm and united front of the extended family. I left his compound feeling that I had been given the rare opportunity to see something of what family life must have been like before colonization, and understanding why Basi's reputation as an elder who still lived his life according to precolonial rules had spread far and wide throughout Mali.

In subsequent years Basi's fervent opposition to my presence and my work diminished, for he continued to pay me a formal visit every time he came to Bamako, and he seemed delighted when I presented him with gifts, such as an army kit bag, each time I returned to Mali from my trips to America. Basi still has not allowed me to record him, but he apparently took great pleasure in impressing other ritual specialists who visited him in Bamako with vivid descriptions of my personality and behavior. During one of these visits, my associate heard him describe me with the proverb, “Just because a ram follows the path with his head down, it doesn't mean that he doesn't know where he is going.” Apparently, Basi knew perfectly well that I had been angry at his refusal to record any interviews, and that I had concealed this emotion only with great difficulty during my stay with him. He was also aware that I often correctly assessed family situations that I pretended not to perceive, and that I, like the Malinke with whom I was working, could conceal my true feelings when necessary. Basi's use of this proverb was in fact a compliment, for it conveyed not only a recognition of my receptivity to traditional culture, but also an evaluation of my personality as being ‘male’ rather than ‘female.’ For Basi, like many other informants, viewed my lack of children, my lack of a husband, and my capacity for learning Bamana as evidence that I was a ngana muso or “a woman who is a ngana.” In traditional Malinke society, a ngana muso is a woman whose sterility, force of character, and ability to master the normally male preserves of ritual knowledge and sorcery endow her with a masculine identity, and it was as a ngana muso that I was known to almost all my informants. Perhaps it was this characterization, which read salient features of my personality as conforming to a well-known Mande type, that allowed intensely secretive experts like Nyamaton, Kojugu, and Basi to contemplate a collaboration with me, even if at times indirectly, on subjects that are normally the preserve of men.

While the sojourn with Basi permanently altered my perspective on the nature of Mande family life and society, work with Salimata Kone in the spring of 1984 shifted the focus of the research from men to women and provided much of the data on childbirth presented in this book. My male informants could provide information about the creation of ritual sculpture, but they could not describe the procedures surrounding pregnancy and childbirth, an area of expertise that is perhaps even more closed to men than information concerning sacred sculpture is to women. Two factors were critical to obtaining the interviews on childbearing: my long association with Salimata Kone, and my physical presence during the interview sessions.

When I had first arrived in Bamako in 1976, Dr. Alpha Oumar Konare, now the President of the Republic of Mali, was the director of the Historical and Ethnographic Division Concerned with Mali's Cultural Heritage (chef de la Division historique et ethnographique du patrimoine culturel) and was supervising foreign researchers. He suggested that I work with Salimata in Kurusa. This recommendation was providential. Not only had Salimata won a competition for traditional mud-cloth design in Bamako; but she also turned out to be a highly intelligent elder who still conserved a vast reservoir of ritual and historical knowledge (she was approximately sixty-seven in 1978, having been born around 1911). As I worked in Kurusa, I began to focus more and more on Salimata. I photographed her as she wore pants and “spectacles” made from circles of a dried gourd while dancing her extraordinary mime of a Western doctor in the women's naloma (an association of elderly women who perform dances and mimes that satirize men's behavior); I kept her company as she painstakingly painted mud cloth after mud cloth; I ate with her; I accompanied her into the bush to search for the plants used to make bògòlanfini; and I watched her act as a traditional pediatrician. Over the next three years Salimata more or less adopted me as her ‘daughter,’ teaching me how to paint mud cloth, a skill that none of her own daughters had learned, and progressively instructing me in proper Bamana behavior. In 1978 I began my work with Mr. Mara by an extended visit with Salimata. Fortunately, Salimata took an immediate liking to Mr. Mara, treating him as though he were a grandchild, and finding, to her great relief, that Mr. Mara's skills as a translator enabled her to explain the complex symbolism of traditional mud-cloth patterns in comprehensive detail. Similarly, my colleague developed a great respect and affection for Salimata, recognizing in this tough but open-minded female elder a personality with a breadth of vision capable of transcending the limits of the society in which she was brought up and continues to live.

As our work progressed, Salimata revealed numerous additional areas of expertise. It emerged that she had been the first child of a father who had had no sons, and that both her father and grandfather had entrusted the bulk of their traditional wisdom and knowledge to her, seeing in this determined and highly intelligent young woman a future leader on whom they could depend. When the commandant de Cercle requested his taxes, it was Salimata who was sent to negotiate with him. When the commandant forbade the performance of the young women's jango celebration, it was Salimata who at sixteen became the representative who dared to cross the doorway of the Cercle and request permission to perform the dance.[4] Now, in her old age, it is Salimata who is the most respected traditional midwife in town; it is she who lays out bodies for burial and who is called to start the songs that accompany the first pounding of shea nuts. When the children of her neighborhood are fractious and difficult, it is Salimata who prescribes the best remedies, and it is she who keeps everyone awake late at night around the embers of the fire while she recounts stories of her childhood or tales of animals that speak and quarrel like human beings. And it is Salimata who intimidates the middle-aged client consulting her for help with his wife's sterility; this visitor happens to be watching as Salimata exchanges superficially cordial greetings with a dreaded male healer, and he finds her self-confidence and lack of fear in the face of this expert's enmity terrifying. For, even in the Bamana world, it is not every woman who can declare, “I may have a vagina between my thighs, but that does not prevent me from mastering the things that men are accustomed to do” (Brett-Smith 1987, 5).

Her visitors know that Salimata's deep generosity is tempered by an acute practicality, an acknowledgment that one can fight fire only with fire – and poison with antipoison, and an ability to make difficult decisions that are both the cause and result of real power. Salimata knows how to heal, but when pressed to the extreme she can exercise formidable powers. When her position is threatened she is fully capable of ruthlessness, and her humane tolerance for the fourteen-year-old girl who crept into her room to steal our powdered milk during the famine is balanced by the observation that “some children would not have done that.” This condemnation may seem mild, but that child will never again benefit from Salimata's medical skills or ritual assistance. For, with Salimata, as with any renowned expert, one crosses certain boundaries at one's own risk, and once taken, her decisions to reject a mud-cloth commission, to abet a woman in leaving her drunken and abusive husband, or to abandon the struggle with the other world for the life of a severely deformed infant, are fixed and immovable. In the constant battle for survival that haunts the Bamana world, Salimata knows both the extent and the limits of her powers; her toughness, like her broad vision and her tolerance for those with more limited perspectives, is the result of her intelligence, her daily experience of life and death, and a self-mastery that has been gained at hard cost in a ruthless and unforgiving environment.

Due to our three years of work between 1976 and 1979, Salimata may have had confidence in me, but it was the 1984 famine that cemented our rapport. When my associate and I arrived in Kurusa in the spring of 1984 we found everyone starving. M'Fa Sory Traore reported that his family was subsisting on one unripe mango split between two people once a day. At night Salimata's neighbor's children cried from hunger, and Salimata's own family was frequently hungry. As Salimata's guests, my associate and I bought enough rice to get her family through the summer and into the fall of 1984, we paid M'Fa Sory Traore generously for several minor interviews, and we attempted to persuade Salimata's neighbor to accept food for her children, even if her dignity prevented her from taking money from us directly. Unfortunately, even the most generous grants do not make any provision for the cost of feeding so many mouths on the edge of starvation, and our efforts were limited by the funding available to my research. Nevertheless, Mr. Mara and I were able to assist these three families, and, in Salimata's case, our support was rewarded by a new level of trust. Salimata knew our method of interviewing from the past, but her willingness to talk openly to my male colleague about clitoridectomy (excision), sex, pregnancy, abortion, and childbirth was a measure of her belief in our sincerity. However, there were moments when Mr. Mara, who was himself accustomed to acquiring traditional medical lore from elderly female healers, felt that my questions concerning abortion or sex were inappropriate. Although he would have avoided exploring these difficult issues if left alone with Salimata, my physical presence, my interruptions, and my attempts to ask the most shocking questions in my own mangled Bamana, enabled both my colleague and Salimata to discuss these topics, and to attribute the responsibility for the ensuing conversation to this well-intentioned but uninformed foreigner. After all, and despite my knowledge of the language, I was still a “stranger” and could be permitted to ask questions unthinkable for an African. So my associate translated, and Salimata talked. The resulting interviews are an extraordinary archive of traditional gynecological and medical information.[5]

Methodology: The Choice of Informants, The Limits and Value of the Data

Nyamaton Diarra, Kojugu Cissoko, Basi Fane, and Salimata Kone: these four elders are the foundation on which this book has been written. However, the data presented in this book is only the tip of the iceberg, since my interpretation and evaluation of this material has been informed by all the other interviews with elders of various Bamana and Malinke communities conducted over my five years of fieldwork. These elders are too numerous to mention here, but they are cited in the text when appropriate. Thus, the book's perspective and conclusions result from the totality of my fieldwork, not merely from the four principal sources. The statistically minded reader may object that one cannot interpret a culture or its art on the basis of such a small sample of informants. Why did I not interview the average ‘man in the street,’ the young, or the untutored? Such a critique would be valid if one's goal were to portray an average perspective on art or ritual. However, the intellectual system presented here is the prerogative of a highly trained elite, whether male or female. Furthermore, when conceiving of this project, my associate and I decided that we were temperamentally unsuited to a statistical inquiry or to extensive work with great numbers of average informants (even if one could satisfactorily decide what ‘average’ meant). We agreed to leave such a task to others who can carry it out more effectively, and to focus on the system of thought still preserved in the minds and memories of a small number of highly trained elders.

Moreover, even in our own tradition, if we wish to examine Renaissance painting, for instance, we first read Vasari, not documents left by the man in the street. As with high art in Western culture, in Malinke culture, important ritual art and its interpretation is not the province of the average individual. Like us, the Bamana and the Malinke have their own elite of artists and connoisseurs, and, unlike the marionettes so well described by Arnoldi (1977, 1983, 1994), ritual sculpture was and is a relatively inaccessible art form. In most cases it is made and cared for by a select few; indeed, it is often kept carefully hidden from the ‘normal’ viewer for the greater part of its life.[6]

It is also important to remember that Sudanic cultures structure traditional knowledge in a hierarchy of layers.[7] Among the Bamana, Malinke, and Dogon these layers proceed from that available to the smallest child to the arcane cosmologies that are mastered only by the most knowledgeable and intelligent of the old. In the Dogon case, both Griaule and Dieterlen obtained most of their data from those extraordinary elders whom the Bamana call the “owners of knowledge,” and Dieterlen makes this explicit in her description of the Dogon decision to allow Ogotemmêli to reveal ‘deep knowledge’ to Marcel Griaule.

The Dogon took their own decision, of which we learned only later when they told us themselves. The elders of the lineages of the double village of Ogol and the most important totemic priests of the region of Sanga met together and decided that the more esoteric aspects of their religion should be fully revealed to Professor Griaule. To begin this they chose one of their own best informed members, Ogotemmêli who, as will be seen in the introduction, arranged the first interview. (Griaule 1975, xvi).

Recently, James Clifford has reexamined the value of Griaule and Dieterlen's work, acknowledging its importance and describing Griaule's concept of the fieldworker's progressive enlightenment as an initiatory process similar to that undergone by the Dogon themselves (Clifford 1988, 57–60, 80–7). Clifford accepts the Griaule school's profound conviction that indigenous knowledge is revealed in layers; he cites Griaule's statement that only 5–6 percent of the Dogon are “completely instructed,” whereas not more than about 10–15 percent of the adult male population possesses a reasonable amount of secret knowledge (Clifford 1988, 85; Griaule 1952, 32–4).

Among the Bamana, Dieterlen (1951, xvii–xviii), McNaughton (1988, xvi, 12–13, 46–50, 150), and Zahan (1960b, 30–2) have all noted that ritual knowledge is reserved to an elderly elite. Furthermore, McNaughton tells us that blacksmith–sculptors are among the masters of the highest levels of esoteric knowledge among the Bamana (1988, 41, 50), and the creation of the ritual objects used by men is one of the least public forms of secret knowledge. In choosing to focus on the process of artistic creation, then, I selected a subject that, by definition, is necessarily hidden and secret. No blacksmith expert would willingly entrust his knowledge to anyone he considered unworthy to receive it, and no ordinary Bamana or Malinke would expect to gain access to the complex beliefs and rituals that surround the making of ritual objects without an extraordinary effort. Indeed common Bamana men and women are the first to say that the production of sculpture is not their province, to refuse to trespass on the territory reserved for blacksmith–sculptors and ritual experts by speaking of these matters, and to advise one that it would be better to address oneself directly to the experts concerned. Thus, the decision to focus on the data provided by a few knowledgeable traditional experts rather than on the bits and pieces of information possessed by less-tutored men and women, follows the Bamana model of knowledge. In approaching Nyamaton, Kojugu, Basi, and Salimata as though we were advanced students seeking instruction from great masters of traditional wisdom, both my colleague and I presented our need for information in a form that was familiar and understandable to our informants.

Methodology: The Presentation of the Data

One critical problem with the information collected by Griaule and Dieterlen is its presentation; neither author provides a guide to the context in which their data was collected, and even Griaule's descriptions of Ogotemmêli are more literary than informative. In her basic work on the Bamana, the invaluable Essai sur la religion Bambara, Dieterlen fails to document which bits of information came from which informant, making it a nightmare for the specialist who wishes to learn who said what, and when. It is hoped that the short descriptions of Nyamaton's, Kojugu's, Basi's, and Salimata's characters presented here and in some of the notes, and the information concerning the context in which they were interviewed, will provide a frame in which the reader can place the data presented here. Furthermore, the verbatim Bamana or Malinke text of each passage cited is provided in notes, allowing Bamana speakers to evaluate the accuracy of the translations. I have also chosen to provide longer, rather than shorter, citations of many passages, and to include the verbatim text of the questions posed by my colleague, so that the reader obtains a clear sense of the ebb and flow of these conversations and can place particular phrases or statements in context. However, the reader should be aware that the interpretation of these interviews also depends on my awareness of my associate's technique of interviewing, and on certain conventions of Bamana conversation.

Methodology: The Cultural Context and Its Impact on the Interviews

What are these conventions and how do they affect the substance of the interviews? To begin with, we need to understand the way in which the Bamana and Malinke regard speech. For my informants, speech is not an ephemeral event devoid of substance that can be denied or contradicted at any moment, but rather a concrete object created and put out into the world by the speaker. Traditional Bamana, who lack access to either Arabic or Western writing, assume that their speech will be indelibly recorded in the memories of their listeners, whether they utter an age-old proverb in a low voice or they loudly castigate an erring son or daughter. Any individual, whether male or female, who wishes to master a body of traditional knowledge must learn to memorize innumerable incantations word for word. In some cases, the apprentice midwife, diviner, or sculptor is required to retain the klissi (incantation) the first time it is uttered. Because of the memory training prevalent in this traditional society, surrounding listeners can recall exactly what this woman said to her husband during their first quarrel, the phrases with which that diviner shrouded the news that a woman's first son would not live to adulthood, and the exact terms of a marriage payment made twenty years earlier. In the frequent absence of writing, the Bamana treat such memories as we handle documents, and all too frequently a rash statement is recalled with unerring accuracy and used to prove a point or discredit a claim.

If speech is a concrete object that enters the minds of listeners and reposes there untouched, then speaking becomes a potentially aggressive act, and an assertion of power (Brett-Smith 1984, 135). The speaker, whoever he or she may be, invariably releases an energy that is best contained in silence, a nyama or potential power to act in the world that is inherently dangerous.[8] It is no accident that the Bamana regard the mouth as a contaminated and invariably contaminating body part (Brett-Smith 1984, 137), or that the masters of the mouth, the casted blacksmith–sculptors, the griots or oral historians, and the leather workers, are regarded as both essential and highly dangerous.[9] In fact, the freemen, or as the Bamana term them, “nobles” (horonw), who once formed the political elite, were traditionally trained never to speak at all if possible. In the past every noble possessed his griot who spoke for him in public, retranslating his simple words uttered almost in a whisper into the ornate, rolling phrases and flamboyant language that distinguish these masters of discourse. Endowed by birth with sufficient nyama that they can take on the burden of speaking, griots can use their verbal skills to touch the most difficult issues with impunity. When they broach a discussion of a land dispute, a possible marriage, or a quarrel between two brothers, their honeyed words release the nyama inherent in these inflammatory issues with no harmful effects. In return for this service, the masters of the word receive generous gifts of cash, clothing, and gold, as they once received a lifetime of support from their “noble” patrons.

If speech is contaminating, then silence is like an unbroken vessel, a precious and fragile object to be conserved at all costs. Both the Bamana and Malinke react as though the speaker had broken something perfect by putting thoughts into words, and words are perceived as concrete entities that can act on their own once uttered. In speaking, one not only unleashes words that may set loose unforeseen forces with incalculable consequences, but one also empties one's belly, one strips oneself naked, becoming vulnerable and open to attack (Brett-Smith 1984, 136). Thus, silence is a preferred and indeed a noble alternative to speech in most situations, and Zahan's declaration, “For the Bamana, the true language, the speech worthy of veneration, is silence,” states a profound truth about Mande cultures (Zahan 1960a, 492). Thus, one finds that the most powerful elders almost never speak in village council meetings, but leave the burden and the nyama of the verbal discussion to their juniors. All the while these apparently quiescent old men listen intently, evaluate the progress of the argument, and finally cast their deciding votes without making a single sound: they simply turn the front flap of their bamada (a traditional white cotton cap worn by many elders) down in assent or up in disagreement, and leave the meeting quietly with their pristine silence intact. In a very real way, the person who speaks or who opens up a new subject by putting it into words loses a portion of his or her bodily integrity and personal power. It is commonly believed that the most powerful ritual experts neither speak, nor eat, nor defecate, for any of these activities is viewed as a loss, an irreparable breach in an ideal state of self-sufficiency. We shall see later how sculptor and client engage in a subtle battle to see who will bring up the subject of payment; both protagonists seek to avoid breaking the silence that surrounds the issue, for the person who breaks the silence takes the burden of the nyama inherent in such a discussion on himself. If the sculptor leaves the initiative to his client, he succeeds in transferring the nyama involved in the entire undertaking to the other party. He may lose out materially, but his family will not suffer the disastrous effects of the nyama released by broaching the subject.[10] Here, as in so many other cases, silence is more powerful than speech.

Despite the preference for silence, there are certain situations in which men and women are forced to break the stillness and put their thoughts into words. In these unfortunate cases, one can yet retain some control by avoiding direct statements and retreating into paradox and metaphor. In the Bamana world, it is the mark of a well-educated person to speak in proverbs and metaphors, and to avoid direct questions and forthright declarations such as those that made so many of my informants cringe with horror. A blunt tongue evokes a recoil and an almost physical abhorrence that is often hard for a Westerner to understand. In Zahan's words:

When someone does not withhold speech; when he does not – which is rare among the Bamana themselves – use metaphor and allegory to express himself; when he expresses his thoughts in a fashion that is too direct, it is a sign of a lack of mastery over himself and such a person is not given consideration, even if he is very learned (Zahan 1960a, 491).

Thus, the elderly lady who wishes to resolve a dispute as to whether her family should continue to feed a hungry child from a neighboring family will never tackle the problem directly. Rather, she will stand in the middle of the courtyard, within earshot of everyone but addressing no one, and utter a proverb that recommends generosity, as if she were talking to herself. Nevertheless, this elder makes sure that her voice is loud enough that all present hear the familiar words and register the import of her statement. If taxed with the controversy, the old lady may very well reply that she does not know what the young people are talking about, but in fact her opinion has been publicly broadcast and the entire quarter is well aware of it. Similarly, a young man whose prized camera has mysteriously disappeared may simply tell his companions, ko kurunni or “crooked back.” The listeners who are all familiar with the proverb that states, “Four thousand trees, and four hundred trees, and four trees, and one small tree with a humped back, most natives cannot identify that crooked one, let alone a stranger,” know that the words refer to the impossibility of detecting “the humped-back tree” amid the multitude of balanzanw that cover the territory around Segu.[11] Just as the kings of Segu could never predict who would betray them, so it is impossible to identify the person who has made off with the camera.

This preference for expressing themselves in proverbs and paradoxical statements that simultaneously reveal and conceal the speaker's real opinions has important consequences for the data presented here. In many cases, Nyamaton and Kojugu begin their explanations of particularly difficult subjects with proverbs or seemingly innocuous statements, whose full and disquieting import can be registered only by someone deeply familiar with this characteristic mode of speech. When Kojugu says that the head of the Komo society who commissions a mask carved from the wood of the lenke[12] “will not end well,”[13] he really means that this dignitary will end his life in a terrible way. An interviewer unfamiliar with Malinke speech might easily dismiss such a statement, but Mr. Mara recognized the red flag that such seemingly innocent declarations wave for the knowledgeable listener, and insisted on further clarification. The discussion that followed revealed that the hapless Komo leader would end his days with his terrifying authority totally eroded. He would be condemned to losing his mind and talking nonsense or breaking his oath of office by lying, and would die despised and rejected by all his former followers. For those in the know, Bamana speech is full of such red flags camouflaged under the innocuous guise of statements like “He is clear, indeed” (“A jelen don, de!,” i.e., “He is anything but clear, he is a treacherous person”); “We will do it tomorrow” (“An b'a kè sinin,” i.e., “We don't wish to do that”); or “That isn't easy” (“A ma nogo,” i.e., “That is very difficult or even life threatening”).[14] The listener or translator must therefore be alert to the meanings implied by such innocuous phrases; the data presented here owes an incalculable debt to my colleague's extraordinary sensitivity to language, which enabled him to identify such nuances of speech and to pursue lines of questioning that clarified the real meaning of my informants’ original words.

In fact, Kojugu himself confirmed the existence of a hidden language, a mode of speaking in which metaphors and codes are used to communicate secrets between ritual experts in public.[15] When asked about the existence of secret speech referring to ritual matters (such as the appearance of a particular mask), Kojugu responded as follows:

KOJUGU: This speech exists.

INTERVIEWER: What kind of speech is that?

KOJUGU: With us, if such a time arrives for such secret matters [to be discussed], we will say, “So and so, the day that I am about to indicate to you, watch out for yourself on that day.” The meaning of “watch out for yourself,” is a good one. If you tell someone, “Don't watch out for yourself,” there is a [hidden] reason for that. If you tell someone, “The sky is cloudy,” all intelligent people know that there are no trees at the summit of a mountain. The reason for saying that is so that you know where we are going. Among us black people, there are many ways of uttering secret speech. Me – I can come to see someone and I can tell him, “This thing is like this, its feet are short,” and that means that the event is not far away. The event is not far away. Thus, nothing will surprise you [because you have already been warned by interpreting this secret speech]. Or I wanted to do something, I wanted to do it like this, but the affair has become very hot, it has become very difficult. This is to say that the affair has become difficult. There are many ways of speaking. There are more than a thousand ways of speaking. There are many ways of speaking.[16]

In many cases, metaphors of distance are used to indicate time. Kojugu gives the following example, stating, “This isn't a far away place” to indicate that a particular event, such as a circumcision or excision ritual, will occur in the near future.[17] Once one understands the conventions of such ‘codes,’ it becomes relatively easy to discern when ritual experts are communicating among themselves, and when an informant is trying to signal the importance of a particular issue without stating it directly. In fact, one might say that the more innocuous or nonsensical an informant's statement appears, the more seriously one should take it as an indicator of some hidden meaning that the person does not wish to reveal in direct speech.

Another problem with Bamana speech that affects the understanding of the data presented here is that “in passages of dialogue … the pronoun reference becomes difficult to follow because once [the narration has] begun, the speakers’ names are not repeated” (Conrad 1990, 33). Conrad explains that the preference for using pronouns rather than proper names, simply assuming that the listeners will understand to whom the speaker is referring, is due to the belief that if evil or mischievous spirits hear a person's given name, they will be able to call the person by name, and he or she will fall helplessly into their power. Conrad (1990, 33) cites the Bamana proverb “Mògòw tògòw fò manyi,” that is, “Saying peoples’ names is bad,” and comments that many speakers do everything in their power to avoid using someone's given name. Women are frequently referred to as “the mother of so-and-so,” whereas men may be indicated by the phrase, “the person who did such and such.” In my texts, this preference for pronouns over proper names makes many passages extremely confusing, and I have often replaced the pronouns he or she in the original text with glosses such as “the artist” or “the midwife” in order to clarify the speaker's meaning.

If silence is the highest form of speech and correct utterances are sparing, evasive, and metaphorical, it should come as no surprise that this reluctance to speak affects the Bamana and Malinke definition of knowledge, or, as they would say, secrets (gundòw). In fact, these groups espouse a theory of knowledge directly opposite to our own. In the postindustrial West, knowledge becomes important and profitable insofar as it is made public and available to all; a discovery is not recognized and accepted as a discovery until it is published. In the Bamana world, knowledge is believed to be significant insofar as it can be kept secret; the recipes or incantations available to all are without value. Because information is considered important only to the extent that it is hidden, it tends to remain the prized possession of one person, or at least, as few as possible individuals. These “owners of secrets” (gundòw tigiw) regard the knowledge they manipulate as pieces of personal property. In many cases they have purchased specific information from other experts, exchanging millet, livestock, or hard cash for the knowledge in question. Given their enormous financial investment in such secrets, it is understandable that ritual experts refuse to divulge this knowledge except in exchange for a similar recompense.

The belief that knowledge must be secret to be valuable certainly affected my informants’ perspective on the process of tape-recording interviews. It goes far toward explaining Basi's adamant refusal to register his voice on tape, and it motivates Kojugu's continual insistence on secrecy as a condition for the transmission of ritual knowledge. Kojugu tells us that the sculptor can share his medicines with his wife only if he has tested her and found that she never discusses the information he entrusts to her with anyone else,[18] that the blacksmith-sculptor must never explain his “contract” (sarati) with his spirit (djinn) to his family or friends,[19] and that the sculptor must also conceal that he has been moved to carve a particular object by receiving a message from his spirit in a dream.[20] In fact, Kojugu summarizes the Malinke and Bamana perspective on speech, knowledge, and access to the world of the spirits when he says, “And you who are cursed, you have seen it [the vision of a mask] in a dream, but you talk about it to everyone, you will never communicate with a spirit.”[21] The person who talks inadvisedly is not only cut off from communication with the other world, but is “cursed” and rejected by both men and spirits.

All these inhibitions on speaking create an atmosphere in which the individual must refrain from voicing his most profound fears and concerns except to a very few, trusted confidants. Furthermore, the awareness that one's listeners will seize on the slightest and least revelatory of statements, recasting one's words in their own minds until they feel that they have gained access to one's true meaning, creates a permanent state of paranoia that appears over and over again throughout the interviews presented here. Perhaps this is most clearly apparent in the custom that forbids a pregnant woman to say, “I am pregnant,” even though her swelling belly makes her condition evident to everyone. According to Salimata, such a statement, which we would take simply as a declaration of fact, will inevitably be interpreted as a boast. In fact, listeners will transform such a statement in their own minds, assuming that the speaker is saying something to the effect of, “Look at me, I am pregnant, and so many others are not.” In the minds of listeners accustomed to overinterpretation, a declaration of fact transforms itself into a grievous insult directed at specific people. Enraged by such a statement, the listener may very well decide to undertake ritual work that will cause the speaker to abort. If this should happen, the woman's husband will inevitably inquire why his wife has aborted, and when relatives and friends inform him that she boasted by declaring that she was pregnant, he will blame her for the loss of his child.[22] Given this pattern of thought, it is not surprising that the Bamana interpret the simple statement, “I am pregnant,” as an aggressive act performed by the woman against her husband's property (his child). Nor should it surprise us that pregnant women refuse to acknowledge their condition, reiterating, “I am not pregnant,” until the day that they deliver, or that in the Bamana world generally, direct questions elicit a negative response or no response at all.

It is possible, but not easy, to combat this attitude, and one needs to be a highly skilled interviewer to forestall an informant's anxieties and persuade him or her to talk freely. Indeed, even my colleague failed to reassure informants like Kojugu at certain times, as the following dialogue reveals:

KOJUGU: [these are the first words recorded of the interview]: Yes. We are going to talk a great deal today, but I am very afraid.

INTERVIEWER: You are afraid. What will happen to you? What could happen to you?

KOJUGU: I am afraid. I am not afraid for myself [i.e., for my own life]; I am afraid for my children. “It is your father who revealed this secret, it is your father who divulged that secret.” [Kojugu imagines the commentary of those who might discover that he had talked freely and wish to punish him for his arrogance by killing his children.] It's of this that I am afraid.[23]

In this interview, perhaps by expressing his fear of reprisals against his children, Kojugu was able to go on to talk about the details of spirit contracts, but other terrors are not so easily overcome. Inevitably, the request that the informant break the traditional rules of secrecy by openly discussing his dealings with the spirit world, or by providing recipes for particular “medicines,” opens a Pandora's box of fantasies. Topics that we would consider of no possible consequence raised enormous problems for many of my respondents. For instance, a simple question as to which trees can be used to make a Komo mask elicited the statement, “You mustn't explain that to anyone,” from Kojugu.[24] When my colleague responded by exclaiming, “Eee! An, an,” indicating that he would not broadcast this revelation to other Malinke, we obtained the following response:

KOJUGU: People name a certain tree that they call sensa. Its name is silensa.[25] If you take a piece of this [Here he means a piece of the bark. The bark is placed in water and the Komo mask is soaked in this bath.] from the eastern side and another piece from the western side [of the tree], that [the bath in the solution made from these pieces of bark] will endow the Komo mask with great power. There is another that they call nyamacenin.[26] A piece from the eastern side and a piece from the western side; it is this that gives great power to a Komo mask.[27]

Here, my associate's insistence succeeded in persuading Kojugu to cooperate by providing the names of two trees that are used in the making of a powerful Komo mask. However, Kojugu clearly felt uneasy at divulging such specific details to nonblacksmith outsiders, and his constant fears of the vaguely but ominously stated punishments that would be visited on his children because he had talked with us may have prevented him from giving us a complete list of trees. Thus, the reader should be aware that the information presented in this book must be viewed as far from comprehensive and as possibly constituting, at least in part, the less sensitive portion of the knowledge owned and used by my expert informants. As the two examples just given demonstrate, it was possible to persuade informants to talk, but only up to a certain point.

In addition to their fear that other ritual specialists would regard the revelation of details, such as the types of trees used to make Komo masks, as “treachery” (janfa) and exact a terrible price for my informants’ audacity in speaking, both Salimata and Kojugu avoided certain key topics out of apprehension about possible administrative sanctions. Traditional experts are well aware that practices such as slavery, human sacrifice, or abortion are now illegal, and they often limited their discussions of them out of a very practical awareness that talking about these issues might elicit an inquiry by officials of the modern government. For instance, Kojugu described the payment traditionally given a blacksmith for manufacturing slave shackles as follows:

KOJUGU: One made this [the shackles] and one connected them together. One made them in exchange for a payment of a female slave who carried her child on her back. A male slave and a female slave or a young slave girl. One made all of these things for that [payment]. We are no longer in the epoch of slaves. Therefore, we cannot speak about the problem of slaves.

INTERVIEWER: You can talk about it because it is something that is in the past. If you don't speak about it to us, how will we know about it? Won't it be lost?

KOJUGU: It will be lost, it will be lost.[28]

Although Kojugu admitted the rationale for discussing slavery, he was unwilling to do more than add a few words explaining why it was necessary to pay for the shackles in slaves (apparently, blacksmiths believed that the irons would not work unless they were paid for in human lives), and my colleague took care to shift the discussion to another issue so that the sculptor could relax. Similarly, Salimata became almost totally silent when asked, “Can a pregnant woman eat a lot of dori powder?”[29] At first, she merely responded, “Ah!” then, “N, n,” and finally, “No.” These responses revealed that she did not wish to let us know that she was well aware that women eat this powder in order to abort. In Salimata's mind, admitting to knowledge about the use of the dori powder might lead the way to an accusation that she had given it to specific women in order to produce abortions. The level of her fear reveals two important things: the extent to which fears of administrative reprisals interfere with informants’ discussions, and the possibility that Salimata had actually used this powder to cause abortions in certain, exceptional cases. Thus, Salimata's later statement that her mandate as a midwife was to preserve life must be interpreted in the light of her extreme fear regarding any discussion of the abortion-producing dori powder. As Salimata's example illustrates, it is important to keep the informant's fears in mind when interpreting the data, and the verbal denial of controversial facts can sometimes be equivalent to an admission of their disquieting reality.

The paranoia that envelopes the Bamana often precludes direct speech; it is far more common for Kojugu, Nyamaton, or Salimata to evade responding at all than to express their fears of speaking. In the following dialogue, Kojugu's reluctance to discuss the belief that ritual experts can use menstrual blood in the fabrication of certain extremely powerful objects forced my colleague to ask a very specific question based on his own knowledge of this ritual practice.

INTERVIEWER: Well, with you, the way in which it comes out [menstrual blood], what does that show?

KOJUGU: An, an [denial], the way in which that comes out from women [i.e., I am not going to talk about the way in which menstrual blood comes out from women and what can be done with it].

INTERVIEWER: Hun?

KOJUGU: The way in which it comes out from women.

INTERVIEWER: Is the meaning of all this that the first woman, that her menstrual blood, that it was transformed into a boli [a ritual object]? In the conversations of your old men [i.e., ritual experts], is that it?

KOJUGU: Nhun.

INTERVIEWER: That's it?

KOJUGU: Nhun.

INTERVIEWER: What, “Nhun?”

KOJUGU: I say that this occurred.

INTERVIEWER [in a questioning tone]: Nhun?

KOJUGU: Nhun.[30]

It is easy to see that when my associate finally asked him point-blank, Kojugu acknowledged that men do use menstrual blood in this way; but that it was impossible to persuade the blacksmith to speak spontaneously about the matter. It may be objected that my colleague's phraseology actually suggested Kojugu's answer to him, but the reality is that no ritual expert would ever speak voluntarily of such a matter, unless he were convinced that his interlocutor knew the truth already. In Bamana terms, my colleague's revelation of his own knowledge concerning the uses of menstrual blood does not suggest an answer to Kojugu, for the sculptor had no trouble telling my associate that he did not know what he was talking about when his questions missed the mark. Rather, Mr. Mara's anticipation of the question's answer provides the necessary guarantee of safety by indicating that the questioner is already included in the select circle of those experts who know about these things, thus enabling Kojugu to produce either a grudging assent or a firm denial. Our informants’ desire to avoid certain difficult or highly secret issues and their polite but vague verbal evasions sometimes made it impossible to obtain information; the technique of getting an informant to talk by revealing what one knows oneself does not always work. For instance, when asked, “I said, When you wish to begin a sculpture, will your djinn come to you in a dream and show you in what way you should fell the tree; or perhaps, does she come and speak next to you, as we are speaking now; or perhaps you perceive her in another fashion?” Kojugu replied only, “People possess different [kinds of] djinns. You already asked me that, didn't you? For me, aaa …”[31] and it proved impossible to obtain any concrete description of his spirit's appearance. When wielded by elderly Bamana or Malinke, polite verbal formulas and evasive responses can easily prevent one from ever obtaining the information one seeks.

Although it is sometimes possible to break through an evasive response by pursuing an issue and suggesting provocative alternatives to an informant, it is almost always useless to press an elder when he or she takes refuge in outright denial. A case in point occurred when we asked Kojugu why sculptors carve more female than male figures. After a short discussion,[32] Kojugu decided that the preference for carving female figures was too profound a topic for a man of his age, and that he would be going beyond every limit of appropriate speech if he explained this issue to us in any depth. Thus, he came right out and ended his brief discussion with the statement, “As to me, my discourse is not focused on that [i.e., I am not prepared to discuss that].”[33] When my colleague pursued the topic, Kojugu again refused to speak, saying, “I tell you, my discourse is not in this domain,”[34] and finally, after my associate asked the question for the third time, he put an end to any possibility of discussion by saying, “We are children, we can't discuss this.”[35] Such a categorical refusal to speak is usually occasioned by the depth and secrecy of the subject touched upon rather than by any inner confusion, for most informants did not hesitate to state their ignorance openly and declare, “I am not Allah that I should know this,” when faced with a philosophical question that they felt to be beyond human comprehension.[36]

When outright denial occurs in regard to less profound issues, it can also reflect an informant's desire to avoid possible problems with friends, neighbors, and clients. The following dialogue demonstrates why an informant may refuse to speak, even on what we would consider relatively unimportant subjects, if he suspects that the discussion might implicate him in serious interpersonal problems.

INTERVIEWER: Good, now, previously, how many personages in wood did you make and who did you make them for?

KOJUGU: The number of personages in wood that I made was more than nine. If I wish to cite all the names of those who commissioned these figures, I cannot, since I can't remember all of them. Well, if there is a stranger who comes to me and he persists, saying to me, “Kojugu, I have heard that you are a certain way, that you can make this; I have heard people speak about your fame, I have need of such and such a figure,” I will not ask you where you come from, or your family name or even your first name. Even if you are really a thing of the bush [i.e., a spirit in disguise], I am not Allah that I will know it. Even if you are a thing of the bush, I am not Allah that I will know it. But, I will say to you that you will pay the following sum. I have made many things like that – up until nine [figures]. Nhun, oo, the person who commissions one of these with me, he commissions it without my knowing whether he will use it as a basi [traditional ritual object] or whether he will use it in another way. I am not Allah that I will know that.[37]

In this case, Kojugu's continued insistence on the fact that he is “not Allah that [he] should know” the details demanded by my colleague suggests that the sculptor does indeed remember who commissioned what, and when.[38] However, Kojugu denied that he had any precise memory of these commissions, both to avoid any responsibility for possible negative uses of the objects, and to forestall the possibility that we might track down his clients and stir up trouble by asking them for further information concerning their commissions. Clearly, Kojugu did not wish to receive a series of visits from angry clients, who would have felt that he had betrayed their trust by telling an outsider the details of the objects they had ordered. In this case the sculptor's denial that he knows anything at all is a straightforward issue of professional confidentiality.

Thus, as with verbal evasions, denials of knowledge must be evaluated in terms of their context. The informant who simply doesn't know something will usually respond with either, “I don't know that,” “My elders did not tell me that,” or “If I were to tell you that I know that, I would tell a lie. Telling lies is not good.” The use of other formulas will often mean that the informant is well versed in the subject but is simply unwilling to discuss it. In all these cases of denial, it is up to the researcher to put the declaration that the informant doesn't know something in context, and to decide on the most likely interpretation of his or her words. Thus, given comparative data from other oral sources, together with a knowledge of the context in which a particular informant is speaking, I will occasionally interpret certain negative statements as evidence for the opposite of what they appear to deny. For instance, research on textile production and use during 1979 revealed that most Bamana and Malinke had absorbed the belief that to be or to work naked was “uncivilized,” barbarous, and undesirable. Informants would simply lie about the date at which certain progressively more modest forms of dress were adopted in order to appear Western and “civilized.” Given this background, and the fact that other ritual experts and sculptors had informed me and my colleague that sculptors typically carve and forge sacred objects in the nude,[39] I made a choice not to believe Kojugu's statement, “No, we aren't naked,” when asked whether blacksmiths took off their clothes to carve or to smelt.[40] The bulk of the evidence indicates that sculptors do indeed work in the nude when carving ritual objects, and Kojugu's statement should be interpreted as a face-saving gesture, not as a realistic description.

Given the Bamana view of speech as an intrinsically dangerous activity, it is hardly surprising that my informants clung tenaciously to a multitude of stratagems for avoiding direct discourse. It is no easy task to interview a Bamana or Malinke elder successfully, and this book owes an incalculable debt to Mr. Mara's sophisticated interviewing techniques. In addition to the approaches already discussed, my colleague used several other methods to elicit commentaries from our informants. He knew how to pace an interview, when to abandon a profound issue and shift the discussion to minor concerns, like how to temper the blade of an adze, that aroused little anxiety. Then, later in the same or another interview, Mr. Mara would return to question our informant concerning the original topic. Thus, each interview (and indeed the whole archive of interviews) became a patchwork in which important information alternates with practical discussions that frequently seem to have little relevance to the stated purpose of the conversation. Although Mr. Mara's system of interspersing key questions with inquiries of lesser consequence made retrieval of the information presented here extremely difficult (and necessitated the use of a software program with a textbase), it did provide enough breathing space so that informants felt able to continue to speak, despite their anxieties.

Finally, Mr. Mara also knew when to present himself as confused and even stupid, despite all his knowledge, in an effort to provoke our informants into speaking frankly. For instance, the following question is completely nonsensical, because the Komo suruku under discussion is either a metal flute or the Komo mask, while the Komo jenfa is an association official.

INTERVIEWER: What did they [expert blacksmith–sculptors] make? A small Komo suruku [flute or mask], or a Komo jenfa [official of the Komo association]?[41]

Clearly, it is impossible to make an official of the Komo in the same sense that it is possible to make either a flute or a mask. The purpose of the question was not to make sense, but to irritate Kojugu just enough that he would produce an accurate definition of both the Komo suruku and the Komo jenfa, in an attempt to set straight this ridiculous young man who thinks he knows so much.

At this point the reader may be wondering whether Mr. Mara's depth of knowledge and sophisticated interviewing technique resulted in biased interviews, and whether my colleague did not lead me by the nose into interpreting the data according to his own convictions. These are important issues and deserve clarification. First of all, the hypothesis I set out to test at the end of 1983 – that male sculptors would be found to structure the process of carving ritual objects on the basis of the rituals and beliefs surrounding the processes of pregnancy and childbirth – emerged only in the fall of 1981 during the writing of the last chapter of my dissertation, “Iron Skin: The Symbolism of Bamana Mud Cloth.” My data suggested that Bamana women elders cross the gender boundary and take on male roles as they manipulate the reproductive powers of childbearing women through ritual work performed with cloths that have absorbed the highly charged blood of excision and childbirth. My analysis of ritual cloths revealed that the Bamana exteriorize and project young women's childbearing ability onto material objects – the “red” or ritual cloths in question – that can then be controlled and manipulated by postmenopausal women. Thus, in Bamana terms, the real reproductive decision makers are not women of childbearing age, but the female elders who guard the ritual cloths that absorb and contain the childbearing potential of their juniors.

Having arrived at this analysis, it occurred to me that if elderly women acquire a destructive ‘male’ identity when they manipulate ritual cloths to eradicate the life-giving potential of young women, then, in a parallel process, male sculptors might be assuming a ‘female’ identity through the creation of the male-owned sculptures that are believed to assure human fertility. If this were indeed the case, then the entire process of carving sculpture might well be modeled on the biological processes of pregnancy and childbirth. The positive reproductive powers of young women might be externalized and projected onto the ritual objects carved by men, in much the same way that their reproductive failures are assumed to result from tampering with the cloths that have absorbed their blood.

This thesis appeāred to warrant investigation, for it seemed to permit a totally new interpretation of the processes of creation in Bamana society; and in 1983, I returned to the field to examine it by interviewing Bamana and Malinke sculptors. However, when I first explained this highly intellectual, Western hypothesis to Mr. Mara, he responded with extreme skepticism. My colleague admitted that the work we had done in 1978–9 on mud-cloth production and its history was important, but he commented that it was also practical; we had investigated technique, patterns of cloth distribution, and the ritual uses of specific cloths. This new scheme for research was extremely dubious in his eyes, for it concerned the conceptual underpinnings of sculpture, a field in which it was hard to obtain even technological information. Mr. Mara warned me that we would probably obtain no data at all, or, if we did manage to get blacksmith-artists to speak, their observations would not support my hypothesis or even be related to it. Far from providing me with a pet hypothesis, my colleague informed me that I had become far too Western and intellectual to carry out successful fieldwork.

After a month of discussion, I managed to persuade my associate to work on the proposed project, but I myself feared that his analysis might well be correct, and I prepared the first lists of questions with a sinking heart. Our preliminary work with Basi, and his refusal to record a single interview or even discuss the making of sculpture, enhanced my colleague's skepticism, and made me begin to doubt my own analysis of the textile data. However, our work abruptly shifted course when we encountered Nyamaton in the month of April. At last we had found a ritual expert willing to talk, but my associate was still convinced that whatever Nyamaton said, it would certainly not support my hypothesis, and he carried off the tape recorder with stern injunctions not to expect a miracle. Several hours later he returned with his face transformed and said, “I don't know how you knew this about our society, but your ideas are right. The old man spontaneously said what you have been telling me.”

When I listened to the tape, it became clear that my colleague had needed only to ask a few simple questions unrelated to sculpture to get Nyamaton off and running. After requesting his name and age, my associate had begun the interview by asking if ritual objects had once worn clothing, and, if so, of what kind.[42] He then asked what the names of these garments were,[43] which acted as a catalyst for a lengthy, spontaneous explanation of the entire Komo society, its rituals, and its ability to kill those who contravene its rules.[44] This led directly into Nyamaton explaining how he came to be the head of his local Komo society,[45] how he had killed an important local dignitary to acquire his position,[46] and how his ritual powers had killed his two wives and caused the members of his association to turn against him, so that he was forced to take refuge in Kurusa.[47] At this point my associate simply said, “That is true,”[48] a comment that again set Nyamaton off into a detailed explanation of how the ritual flutes for the Komo society are actually made.[49] This explanation states clearly that the blacksmith's wife must be present in the nude for these objects to be forged correctly. The interview continues in this way with my colleague simply muttering, “It is true,” or “Yes,” or “Nn, nn” at intervals, until the end of the first side. At the beginning of side two, Mr. Mara then returns to the question of the ritual garments worn by sculptures, but again, Nyamaton runs away with the interview, changing course to a discussion of specific ritual objects, and leaving my associate little space for intervention. Mr. Mara did manage to ask Nyamaton to clarify his statements concerning the making of the Komo flutes, but other pieces of critical data, such as the stigmatization of the left hand as the “woman's hand” and the assertion that menstrual blood is both the greatest poison and the greatest antidote for poison, emerged spontaneously.

On a cursory reading, such bits and pieces of data seem insignificant, but one must remember that, of all our informants, Nyamaton carried to the most extreme point the use of speech as an enigmatic code for expressing deeper and unspeakable truths. When he states that a blacksmith cannot manufacture Komo flutes without the presence of his naked wife, that menstrual blood is the universal antidote, that “the world is a secret,” and that “the first secret is sexual intercourse,” Nyamaton is really saying that women provide the underlying base for all of men's activities, and that even the Komo itself depends on the physical presence of a woman and her reproductive parts for the successful manufacture of its sacred objects. Nyamaton is declaring that men cannot maintain their most exclusively masculine rituals without recourse to women, and he is suggesting that sexual intercourse, the irresistible sexuality of women, and their reproductive capacity, provide the primordial models for all the subsequent “secrets” of men. Nyamaton's conscious revelation that the most secret affairs of men require the cooperation and presence of women, that men borrow the incalculable power emanating from the female reproductive organs and their excretions to create their magical flutes, to poison, and to heal, and his complete conviction that the entire world rests on women, convinced my associate of my hypothesis.

At this point, the research problem shifted. It was no longer necessary to persuade Mr. Mara to find appropriate informants and carry out interviews. Rather, it became essential to explain to him that he should give experts like Kojugu the room to disprove my thesis, that he should do everything in his power not to bias the answers to my questions, and that he should attempt to translate my queries into Bamana with the greatest possible exactitude. I now found myself in the position of skeptic, restraining my associate's enthusiasm for this new perception of his own society, directing his questions toward a more objective stance, and cross-questioning him as to the spontaneity of Kojugu's declarations. Despite extensive efforts to cross-check Nyamaton's interpretations against those of Kojugu, to pose each question in as objective a manner as possible, and to reexamine each scrap of data for possible bias, I still, like any field researcher, have doubts as to the universality of some of Kojugu's statements. While I am convinced that the broad overview of the art-making process presented in this book is essentially valid, and that other researchers who manage to interview ritual experts alone and in depth will find similar data, I would have preferred to cross-check more of the data with other elders before I left Mali in 1988. Unfortunately, the short- and long-term social dislocation and sheer human misery resulting from the famine years (1983–6) and the highly sensitive nature of my inquiries prevented more extensive research. However, where I feel that an informant's statements might not be entirely accurate (as in Kojugu's discussion of the gender assigned to specific carving tools, Chapter 4) or that the data is accurate but preliminary (as in the discussion of the payment system formerly used for ritual sculpture, Chapter 3) and that it is important that other researchers pursue these topics, I have stated this in the text or footnotes.

It is a truism that in anthropology, as in any area of science, the investigator's interests and level of knowledge inevitably affect both the questions asked and the answers obtained. This book's focus on gender as a key issue for an analysis of the art-making process clearly derives from my own interests and my own perception that this is a critically important issue in any culture; another researcher with other interests might well have directed interviews in a different direction. Furthermore, Mr. Mara's own interests in, and advanced knowledge of, traditional belief and ritual clearly affected the level at which my informants responded. A colleague less deeply versed in traditional practice would have elicited less searching commentaries. However, given these limits, both Mr. Mara and I did our best to attain ‘objectivity’; our goal was to open up a given subject – the relation of gender to the making of ritual sculpture – and to give our informants the freedom and safety to speak their minds, to tell us what they thought about the creative process. In many cases, we quickly discovered that our preconceptions were wrong, and none of our key informants hesitated to tell us how thickheaded we were when we proposed a ridiculous theory. That Nyamaton, Basi, Kojugu, and Salimata felt free to criticize our dubious hypotheses, and frequently did so, suggests that when they did make positive statements there is a very good chance that these do express traditional beliefs and are not a reflection of our own wishes. Both Mr. Mara and I sought to guard against our own preconceptions and biases, and it is hoped that the synthesis presented in this book, although inevitably imperfect and falling short of total ‘objectivity,’ will inspire further research and will provide a new angle of vision from which to look at the process of art-making in non-Western cultures.

The problem of the investigator's objectivity or bias inevitably brings up the extent to which the fieldworker has applied overt or covert pressure on his or her sources in order to obtain results. Clearly, this problem is exacerbated by the value the Mande world places on silence and secrecy, and Marcel Griaule, one of the earliest fieldworkers in Mali, has often been accused of having exerted unnecessary pressure on his informants. It is worth discussing this issue, as critiques of Griaule are often extended to more recent researchers. James Clifford has observed that Griaule often spoke of the fieldworker as necessarily possessing an active, aggressive posture, and that he compared field work to detective work in a legal case: “The role of the person sniffing out social facts is often comparable to that of a detective or examining magistrate. The fact is the crime, the interlocutor the guilty party; all the society's members are accomplices.”[50] From the beginning of our work together, Mr. Mara and I always refused to adopt the extreme stance of Griaule, since we felt that it was intrinsically unfair both to ourselves and to our informants. However, we did attempt to seize those moments when elders wished or volunteered to talk, to place our interlocutors at ease, to forestall some of their attempts at evasion, and to banish enough of their fears that the possibility of speaking could open up in front of them as a positive alternative to silence. Nevertheless, whenever informants were deeply upset with our questions and clearly wished to remain silent (as, for instance, when Salimata refused to acknowledge that midwives could or would ever arrange the death of an extraordinarily deformed child), we abandoned the disturbing topic and moved on to other issues. While this method probably cost us considerable amounts of data, it preserved amicable relations with all of our informants and left the door open for future work when the elder in question might feel ready to discuss such difficult issues voluntarily. Neither I nor my colleague ever felt comfortable forcing data out of an informant; we left the final decisions as to how much to say in the hands of those we interviewed.

Inevitably, no ethnographic record is ever either completely authoritative or objective, and our archive of taped interviews and the data selected for presentation here are no exception. However, I would hope that in providing a detailed description of the circumstances in which key informants were interviewed, their skills, their areas of knowledge, and above all an account of the problems encountered in interviewing and the methods used to overcome them, I have provided the reader with some tools with which to evaluate the interview passages cited in this book and my interpretation of them. The reader should also note that it is I, not my colleague or informants, who is responsible for the intellectual analysis presented in this book. It is possible to disagree with some of the ideas presented here, but I would hope that the reader would recognize, in the lengthy transcriptions from my tapes, the authentic voice of several Malinke and Bamana elders in written form. If this work manages to preserve something of these voices and to translate the ideas they express with reasonable accuracy, then it has not failed. It has been a privilege to be the recipient of my informants’ and my associate's synthesis of Mande tradition, and it is my hope that this book translates this joint work and intellectual exchange into a living portrait of Bamana art making.

The Geographic and Historical Time Frame

It is probable that some of the fundamental findings presented here (for instance, those concerning the establishment of a permanent bond between an apprentice artist and his spirit familiar) are shared by many West African societies; when mentioned in presentations, my discussion of the data has evoked remarks pointing to similar phenomena in other African cultures.[51] However, I prefer to leave the assessment of the extent to which my conclusions can be generalized to other scholars, and to state simply that I believe the data and ideas presented here to be characteristic of the Bamana and Malinke.

Furthermore, the reader should be aware that although field work among neighboring ethnic groups (the Minianka near Koutiala, the Senufo near Sikasso, and the Bobo near San) provided corroborative data not always cited here, this book is based primarily on informants from the southwestern and northwestern Bamana regions and the Kita area (Fig. 7).[52] Whereas Nyamaton and Salimata are both Bamana from the Beledugu, Basi is a true Malinke from the Birgo. Kojugu is an interesting case in that he speaks a version of Malinke that is very close to Bamana, and his home village lies in the area traditionally called the Kakolo after an ethnic group of that name.[53] The Kakolo-speaking people inhabit a territory midway between the Bamana of the Beledugu and the Malinke of the Kita area, and scholars are still confused as to the origins of their ethnic identity and language. It is possible that Kakolo speech may have resulted from a mixture of either Soninke or Fulani with both Bamana and Malinke.[54] Kojugu himself is Malinke, but his village has undergone strong Kakolo and Bamana influence.[55] Thus, his descriptions of ritual practices and beliefs may be taken as representative of both western Bamana and northern Malinke practice.

It is very possible that specific sacrifices, ritual practices, and the payments for commissions may vary within both the Bamana and the Malinke regions, but correspondences between both Nyamaton's and Kojugu's information and the data presented by Dieterlen in Essai sur la religion Bambara (1951) (drawn from informants in the Segu area) and Dieterlen and Cissé in Les fondements de la société du Komo (1972) (drawn from Malinke and Bamana informants in the Kangaba and Segu areas), strongly support the validity of the central ideas presented here for the Bamana–Malinke region as a whole. It is on the basis of this corroborative evidence and the matching data presented by three male informants from different areas (Nyamaton, Basi, and Kojugu did not know each other), that I gained the confidence to generalize from the specific data recorded in our interviews to the Bamana and Malinke as a whole. However, whenever information applies only to a specific geographic region, and when differences occur between the Bamana and Malinke perceptions of a concept, I note this.

Although The Making of Bamana Sculpture is a work of art history, the reader will find that the first two chapters of the book are somewhat vague in defining the time period in which the practices and ideas described in them apply. This ambiguity is partly due to the nature of the enterprise; it is difficult to situate a particular method of thinking and acting within precise chronological boundaries in a fastchanging world, and this study is first and foremost the description of an inner world. A conservative estimate would be that the conceptual system described here was still fully in place as of 1880 or 1890. The specialist reader deeply familiar with Sudanic cultures may well suspect that the beliefs described here go back several hundred years earlier; scholarly responses following the presentation of this data in seminars and lectures suggest that many experts would support such an assertion. Furthermore, it would be difficult to sustain the belief that the complex system of ritual practice and thought described in this book did not take several hundred years to develop, or that a newly invented conceptual system could have systematically infiltrated both Dieterlen and Cissé's data and the information provided by my own informants. Both the coherence of the mental system presented in what follows, and the similarities in the data collected by separate researchers from different informants at distinct dates (and, with the exception of Nyamaton and Salimata, living in different places), suggest that we are dealing with a single conceptual structure whose skeleton probably dates back at least several hundred years.[56]

However, Kojugu describes the process of making sculpture as an ongoing enterprise, and we may wonder whether one can assume that ritual practice has remained stable from the 1880s to 1984. In an absolute sense the answer must clearly be no; minor changes in procedure are inevitable; memory, even the highly trained memory developed in oral cultures, is always fallible; and the Mali of 1984 was not that of 1890.

Nevertheless, one must remember that not everyone in the outlying regions of modern Mali has actually experienced contemporary Malian culture as lived in the capital city. As a general rule, the farther out from an urban center one travels, the farther back in time one moves, and some villages hidden in the hills near Bamako have even made a conscious choice to ‘stop time’ and conduct their affairs as though the French had never arrived in Mali. Both villages and individuals experience modernization at different rates; all my key informants preferred to conduct their day-to-day business as traditionally as possible, and all were able to distinguish what was traditional and customary in the past from present-day practice. In fact, both Kojugu and Salimata note specific phases of historical change in regard to both ritual practice and sexual mores.

What comes through clearly in the voices of all my informants is a fundamental level of agreement concerning the basic conceptual structure that orders their mental universe, and with it the process of creating ritual objects. Salimata and Kojugu are both agreed that one cannot obtain success in one area without paying for it in another. Basi is well aware that his deaf, dumb, and mad nephew is the payment for his own fame and his family's spirit. Nyamaton and Kojugu both agree that sexuality and childbirth are basic metaphors that order the production and use of ritual objects, and all my informants agree that women are the foundation on which Bamana society is built. Irrespective of their individual ways of adapting to the pressures of modern life – Basi still tries to run his compound with the ruthless autocracy of the nineteenth-century cekun or “important man,” whereas Salimata has chosen to forge a working compromise with the new world of foreign medical expertise and sexual freedom – all my informants continue to preserve and use certain traditional principles of thought, and it is the elucidation of these principles, what one might call the bare chassis of traditional thinking, that is the subject of this book.

In describing this chassis of logical ideas I have chosen to use the present tense. This ‘timeless’ anthropological present is of course an artificial construct, but it is clear that the perfectly balanced and elegant thought structure I shall attempt to describe once existed as a whole, a complete way of thinking about the human and artistic universe. It may well be that the detailing and a few expendable parts have dropped away from what was once a well-sprung intellectual Cadillac, but my informants still lead their lives and create their ritual objects in consonance with the structure underneath the upholstery. It seems to me that one would do the elegance and complexity of Bamana thought a great injustice in presenting the mental system on which art making is still based as anything less than a compelling totality, and it is in the hope that the reader will gain a sense of the comprehensiveness and logic of the principles that underlie artistic creation that I have chosen to use the present tense throughout this book. When and where my data clearly reflects historical change (for instance in the section of Chapter 4 on the gender of tools), I have noted the approximate dates to which my information applies.

The Data and Islam

A further problem that must be addressed in conjunction with the historical frame for the material presented here is that of Islamization.[57] The reader familiar with the Muslim world will recognize that many of the ritual restrictions on the sculptor described in Chapters 2 through 6 are suspiciously close to a number of Muslim rules, particularly those forbidding sexual intercourse at significant times. Islam arrived in Mali at an extremely early date, and there has been much discussion as to what ethnic groups were Islamized when.[58] Most scholars seem to agree that Soninke traders and merchants (Levtzion 1979, 209) together with selected members of Malinke ruling families (Levtzion 1979, 210–14) were the first to adopt Islam wholeheartedly, and that generalized conversion among the Bamana (and indeed many Malinke) only followed the imposition of colonial rule.[59] Today, many Bamana and Malinke see Islam as providing the only legitimate and morally upright alternative to what seems to be a headlong rush into the dubious benefits of ‘freedom,’ ‘liberty,’ and ‘progress,’ and conversions to more and more fundamentalist forms of Islam are widespread throughout Mali. Among my informants only Basi resolutely maintained a total adherence to an ‘animist’ identity, publicly stating, “After I die, then they can begin to pray in my compound, but not before.” Kojugu never prayed and clearly advocated both the production and use of traditional ritual objects, although he was not as vocally or as adamantly opposed to Islam as Basi. Salimata and Nyamaton were nominal Muslims, and Salimata's religious devotion actually increased during the time we worked with her, since she began to pray the requisite five times a day and to visit the mosque on Fridays. Like Kojugu, Nyamaton still maintained boundless faith in the efficacity of traditional religious objects and practices, but he was not averse to bringing Allah, Mohammed, and Satan into line with his own belief system. Nyamaton's interviews are dotted with numerous references to Satan, Mohammed, and Mohammed's semimythical successors, references that would certainly evoke skeptical amusement from an Arab Muslim. These citations often seem to lie more in the realm of folklore than of monotheistic religion.

Thus, my chief informants covered a wide spectrum of responses to Islam, ranging from complete rejection to some degree of actual adherence. Given the diversity of my informants’ viewpoints, and their understanding that we wished them to describe the traditional view of art making as they had learned it and continued to experience it, it is probably impossible to separate what aspect of the data is Islamic (or strongly influenced by Islam), from what is ‘pure.’ In fact, some Africanists literate in Arabic who have worked extensively with Islam and Islamic topics regard such an endeavor as pointless. Many scholars have noted that African Islam is a creation unto itself, both infiltrated by and infiltrating traditional or ‘animist’ systems of thought and perception. The data presented here is no exception; what is certain is that all my informants, whether consciously or not, were familiar with the general tenets of Malian Islamic belief, and that general Islamic practices (such as prohibitions against sex at certain times) have long been a part of both Bamana and Malinke culture. Whether such practices were once self-generated and traditional, or whether they were introduced into the Mande world hundreds of years ago by Islam, cannot be determined. Kojugu accurately describes this fusion of Islamic and traditional belief structures when he declares:

We cite the owners of the Koran [i.e., Muslims] and the owners of the Koran cite us. All these things are mixed up together [i.e., all the beliefs current in the Mande world, both Islamic and traditional are interdependent].[60]

Given statements like this, all that can be done is to warn the reader that many of the prohibitions and rituals described by Kojugu, Nyamaton, Salimata, and Basi may well reflect some Islamic influence. What this consists of and how one might identify it precisely must be left for others to investigate. Instead of pursuing the chimera of influences, I have attempted to portray the intellectual framework for creativity as a totality, a living and coherent system sufficient unto itself. This choice is meant neither to deny the important impact of Islam on Mande culture nor to exaggerate it.

The Plan of the Book

Unlike many works of art history, this one does not separate the history of the artist from a technical and interpretative description of art making, for in the Bamana world the two are inextricably intertwined. To portray the inner conceptual universe that propels men like Kojugu and structures the procedures that sculptors follow during the execution of a commission, I have chosen to interweave the story of the artist with the story of the object. This choice has been made deliberately in order to convey the Bamana perception of creative activity to the reader, for the Mande do not separate this process (as we tend to) into artistic biography and connoisseurship. The making of each object is also a stage in the transformation and ‘making’ of its sculptor, and the progressive transformation of the sculptor is necessary for obtaining the next commission and creating the next object. As we shall see, the Bamana examine the sculptor's personal life and identity when they choose an artist, and moral uprightness is as important a criterion as aesthetic skill. The Bamana believe that the execution of an important ritual object effects permanent and often disastrous changes in the sculptor's personality, sexuality, family life, and even longevity. In a never-ending cycle, the successful completion of important commissions depends on the artist's moral and ritual character, and this character is permanently altered by each new commission.

Given the interdependence of artist and object, I have chosen to begin this study, not with the making of the object, but with the formation of the sculptor who makes the object. How does someone become a great artist in the Bamana world? How are important sculptors selected, and how do they select themselves? What physical, mental, and spiritual capacities must they have to give life to inanimate wood? In this exploration of the artist's formation, several prominent themes emerge that will recur throughout the book. These are the ideas that the creation of important ritual objects requires a heavy psychological and physical ‘payment’ by the artist; the reality that this payment often involves implicit or explicit violence; the fact that creation is perceived as a gendered process that is ‘female’ in nature; and finally the male perception that women are frighteningly powerful and destructive creatures whose biological abilities act as a catalyst for men who create and use ritual objects as a reaction and response.

As these themes suggest, I have chosen to use the idea that cultures may associate a gender with specific activities as an intellectual tool with which to analyze the artistic process. This is not the only way in which one can examine the making of art but, given the nature of the data, it appears the most useful and produces the most interesting results. Second, I have attempted to analyze artistic production in terms of Bamana explanations rather than Western assumptions. This effort gives rise to numerous digressions that may at first seem irrelevant, but that the reader will later find to be of crucial importance to a clear understanding of the data and its interpretation.

The method of attack just described is complex, and it may be helpful to provide a shorthand guide to the contents of each chapter before entering the Bamana universe. Chapter 1 explores the nature of the problem facing the scholar who confronts Bamana perceptions of what is involved in making art. It discusses the Mande understanding of what an art object is, it defines who the art makers are, and it describes where they stand in relation to the rest of the human world. Chapter 2 explains the selection process through which great artists are chosen and choose themselves. It provides a brief discussion of the important sculptor's technical apprenticeship, and then moves into a lengthy portrayal of the ritual obstacles that confront an aspiring artist and the price he must pay for greatness.

Chapter 3 discusses the social and economic contracts that structure the commission process. It highlights the way in which ‘economic’ exchanges reflect both the artist's relationship with the human and with the spirit world. Chapter 4 describes the first stages in making a sculpture. It discusses the criteria for selecting the tree to be cut down and carved, and the rituals that surround the process of felling the tree. It then moves into an examination of the nature and gender of the tools used for creating ritual objects as opposed to those employed to fabricate secular utensils. Chapter 5 continues to explore the process of carving; it describes the interdictions that the artist must observe when working on a ritual object, and it analyzes the aesthetic principles that guide the sculptor.

Chapter 6 shifts the emphasis from the presentation of data to an interpretive analysis of the creative process, suggesting that the rituals that structure the carving of important Bamana sculpture derive their substance from two basic paradigms, that of sexual intercourse and that of childbirth. Chapter 7 investigates a significant corollary of the analysis presented in Chapter 6; the fact that under certain circumstances uncircumcised boys, as well as adult women, may carve important ritual sculpture. The book then concludes with a discussion of the nature of creativity in Bamana and Malinke society.

Finally, the notes contain both bibliographic references and substantive information that will aid the reader in navigating the tricky waters of the Mande world.

CHAPTER 1

The Bamana Universe

Nyama, Nyama, Nyama; Nyama tè se ka ban

from “Sundiata,” sung by Salif Keita

Nyama, Nyama, Nyama; One can never finish Nyama

NYAMATON: When the owner has finished making “the boli who speaks,” and when night has fallen, he will greet it as follows: “Good evening!” If it is a girl, she will reply, “Nse! Master, good evening to you also.” Truly! Well, the owner will perform work over it and then put it into its sack. If the sack is suspended at its owner's side, and if he goes to greet people, it will say [here Nyamaton imitates the falsetto voice of the boli], “AA! Good Morning! Good Morning! Good morning to you elders! Did you sleep well? May Allah protect us from disaster!” It is inside the sack, but it talks. And if a person comes over to greet it, just as though he were greeting us, as we are sitting here now, and he says, “Good morning,” it will reply, “Nse! Good morning to you. Did you sleep well? May Allah grant us a peaceful day! Why have you come to see me?” The way in which a child with a sweet voice talks, it talks in that way… . This is the boli that speaks. Its secret is difficult. All things contain a secret.[1]

When faced with objects like “the boli who speaks,” scholars have frequently resorted to what might be called a dictionary approach to African art, first listing the name of the sculpture, then describing its form, and finally attempting to define its use and function. This well-established method has enabled us to document the use of most Bamana and Malinke objects, including the boli or portable altar (Fig. 1) that speaks so vividly to Nyamaton. Germaine Dieterlen tells us that boliw are used by high-ranking male members of the feared Komo association to focus power from the spirit world. In precolonial times these assemblages of wood, bark, stones, metal, tree roots, white cotton, animal hair and claws, and various excretions including blood, excrement, and human placentas, acted as a community's judges.[2] They heard cases, they identified the guilty, and they were even said to pass sentence. As Nyamaton tells us, they “talk.”

What are we to make of this ‘conversation’ between the artist and proprietor of the boli and the object itself? How can an artist hold a conversation with his own creation? Can such an object be considered art as we in the West understand it? Picasso's much-contested ‘discovery’ of African art in 1907 and readymades such as Duchamp's Bicycle Wheel of 1913 (Rubin 1968, 197) placed our familiar categories of painting, sculpture, and decorative arts in disarray and doubt.[3] Nevertheless, we continue to react with skepticism to any account of the relationship between artist and art object like Nyamaton's. Must we still, like many colonial authors, place such talking objects within an irrational and illogical world of superstition, or can we perhaps find our way through the maze of the Bamana world to a more profound understanding of Nyamaton's description?

This book attempts to provide a guide through the labyrinth of Bamana belief, and to illuminate the intellectual system that lurks beneath Nyamaton's apparently naive account of the rapport between artist and object, to see if the creation, use, and meaning of objects like Nyamaton's boli is not, in fact, exactingly logical, and if, once we understand the basic concepts that underlie artistic creativity among the Bamana, both Nyamaton's conversation and the boli‘s use do not become straightforward and even simple.

Figure 1. Boli or portable altar probably used by the Komo association. © 1988 Sotheby's, Inc.

If a boli can converse with and judge humans, what is it? For, even by Duchamp's definitions, it does not seem to function as an art object, although it is clearly a human artifact and acknowledged as such. Moreover, if we take all those other artifacts that we have grouped loosely together under the heading of ‘Bamana sculpture,’ how do we explain their existence and functions? Do the Bamana have any conception of art, and, if so, what is it? Why and how are artifacts such as Nyamaton's boli or a guandusu made? What happens to the people who are selected to create such objects and why?

In an attempt to answer these questions we will examine the group of ritual objects produced by Bamana and Malinke sculptors or yiri baarakèbagaw (literally “workers in wood”) that today we call sculpture. However, in contrast to previous scholarship, we will focus on these artifacts before, not after, their completion, neglecting the finished products of Bamana artistry in order to investigate the creative process that brings them into existence.

As Nyamaton's description makes clear, Bamana and Western ideas of what sculpted objects are and what they do are startlingly different. The primary purpose of Bamana ritual objects is almost never aesthetic pleasure.[4] Ritual objects are commissioned and created to achieve a practical goal in a world full of disease, death, disaster, and sterility. Unless a ritual object can solve a human problem, it is useless and therefore valueless. In fact, sculpture as such does not exist as a term. Rather, ritual experts and carvers talk about mako dlan yiriw, “wood carvings that fix needs,” mako nya yiriw, “trees/carvings that remedy needs” (yiri means tree, wood, or when used to refer to sculpture, a carved piece of wood), and mako nyelanw or “things that arrange needs.”[5] In 1906 Monsignor Hippolyte Bazin defined mako as “besoin, nécessité, manque,” as in “j'ai besoin d'une couverture” (Bazin 1906, 379), and the word conveys a sense of fundamental urgency, the conviction that one cannot do without something. By using the word mako in their names for ritual sculpture, the Bamana and Malinke reveal that they view carved objects primarily as solutions for urgent and inescapable needs.

Figure 2. Mask worn by the Komo suruku or medium of the Komo association. © 1988 Sotheby's, Inc.

Defining a “need” will lead us into the broad hinterland of Bamana and Malinke life, but first let us note that these ‘sculptures,’ the “things that remedy needs,” are only one subcategory of possible solutions: “medicines” or basiw. The term basi or “medicine” refers to any substance or object that is instrumental in fulfilling a mako or “need.” The category of basi can include such various items as textiles, traditional drugs, revered Islamic texts covered with dried sacrificial blood, leather bags, and natural objects, such as twisted tree roots. Although basiw frequently begin their existence as natural phenomena, they are always rearranged by the human hand, becoming invested with an added and non-natural power. Such rearrangements vary from simply allowing sacrificial blood to drip over a leather bag, to carving the ominous headdresses that require all of a blacksmith-sculptor's natural and supernatural powers (Fig. 2). For the Bamana and Malinke these ‘rearrangements,’ the familiar N'tomo, Tyi Warra, Komo, Nama, Konon, and Kore masks that scholars such as McNaughton (1979b, 1988), Dieterlen (1951, 1972), and Zahan (1960b, 1963, 1980) have described so well, are simply a very particular and high intensity subcategory of basiw, or “medicines.”

Creating a basi, or “working” on a natural substance to endow it with power, requires that the ritual specialist or sculptor undertake physical procedures that rearrange the forces believed to be continually at work in the world of the dead and of spirits. Whether they consist of powdered leaves or imposing sculptures, basiw are actually vehicles, material objects that condense and channel the otherworldly powers that fulfill human needs. In fact, the “working” that results in a basi can take many forms, including pounding leaves or bark, wrapping white cloth around two sticks and an assortment of traditional medicinal powders and binding the whole with white thread before encasing it in a leather covering, creating a leather covering for a Koran and anointing it with blood sacrifices, dyeing a ritual cloth, and last but not least, carving an altogether new mako nyèlan, “thing that remedies needs.”

Although sculptures are placed in the general category of “medicines,” ethnographic descriptions of sculpted objects and statements like Nyamaton's implicitly suggest that the “working” involved in making sculpture involves a different and higher valence of power, and produces more dangerous products than that which creates other types of basiw. Our present knowledge of Bamana and Malinke art confirms that the “things that remedy needs” possess exceptional powers, for the most important sculptural “medicines,” such as the masks made for the Komo association (Fig. 2), boliw (Fig. 1) (Brett-Smith 1983, 48), and human figures (yirimògòniw) (Fig. 3) seem to have a life of their own. In the past, a Komo boli frequently decided legal cases where guilt was punishable by execution, and, as Nyamaton tells us, a boli can still speak.[6] It would appear that all carved basiw are thought to possess uncanny powers far beyond those of a pounded leaf “medicine,” and some, such as the Dabà, are even believed to be capable of killing the unwary spectator (Fig. 4).[7] It was and is these superhuman, but still humanlike, powers that make carved basiw so essential to the running of the secret male associations that traditionally controlled Bamana and Malinke village life, for these “medicines” provide a reference point, a summa of authoritative judgment, that lies beyond the vagaries of merely human desire and knowledge.[8]

If carved and constructed “medicines” are so much more powerful than pounded leaves or twisted roots, perhaps this has something to do with the way in which they are rearranged or “worked” – in Western terms, with the process of creation itself. Here, the term basi suggests a direction for investigation, for, in a literal sense, the word means “blood.”[9] However, it can be used to refer to any ritual object that has either received blood sacrifice or that has imbibed repetitive human speech (usually klissiw or “incantations,” but sometimes just companionable talk), thus becoming an effective tool for fulfilling a “need” and changing something in the familiar order of the known world – in Bamana terms, a “medicine.” Not all sculpted basiw receive the visible coating of dried blood that immediately identifies a powerful ritual object, but, as we shall see, no carved “medicine” is ever produced without sacrifice, whether publicly made and ostentatiously carried out, or privately arranged and concealed from one's neighbors and family. Sacrifice – the giving of life, and particularly of human life – is essential to the production of carved basiw or sculptures. In the Bamana world, satisfying “needs” through the manufacture of “medicines” requires prior payment; there is no escape. What these payments are, who makes them, and how the power gained from these ‘sacrifices’ is channeled and infused into finished sculptures, lifting them above the normal run of basiw, is the subject of our study.

Figure 3. Human figure (yirimògòni). This may be a twin figure (filani yiri) or, more likely, a commemorative piece of the kind described by Kojugu Cissoko. © 1985 Sotheby's, Inc.

The Bamana and Malinke are compelled to create important ritual sculpture or “medicines” in order to satisfy makow or “needs;” but what are these needs that are so important and overwhelming that they demand the terrifying ‘sacrifices’ we will discuss in Chapter 2? To understand the nature of a mako within the Bamana world, we must explore the environment in which the Bamana and Malinke struggle to survive. Since the mid-sixteenth century most Bamana have lived in the dry, undulating savanna of the Middle Niger (Fig. 5), in conditions of scarcity and harshness, whether environmentally or humanly imposed. Migration and slave routes also brought large numbers of them northwest into the Beledugu hinterland throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries (Brett-Smith 1982a, chapter 4; Robert 1987, 1–134). Although the southern and southeastern fringes of the Bamana heartland around Buguni enjoy a relatively heavy rainfall, the northern areas have always been subject to periodic droughts and famine. Rains normally come between early June and late October, and the annual rainfall ranges between twenty and ninety inches (500 and 1,000 mm.) (Roberts 1987, 5) (Fig. 6). The Niger river, the source of agricultural wealth and, as we shall see, the repository for the mythical prototypes of all sculpture, flows through the center of the Bamana heartland from southwest to northeast. To the south of the river, around Segu and in the Jitumu and Ganadugu (Fig. 7), farmers can reasonably expect dependable harvests of sanyo (Pennisetum pycnostachyum), keninge (Sorghum guineense Stapf.) and, in recent times, maize. However, farmers in northern areas on the left bank of the river often struggle with eroded ferruginous soils, and famines are cyclical and expected events.[10]

In addition to famine, the Bamana and Northern Malinke live with a variety of incapacitating diseases whose grip was much harsher in the past. Polio, tuberculosis, and leprosy are still common. Beledugu informants reported that guinea worm was formerly so prevalent during the rainy season that one could walk from house to house and find many adult men sitting at home unable to go out or farm because of the sores the worm brings. Families starved because guinea worm prevented them from farming. Life expectancy is still short, approximately 45 years for men and 47 for women in 1987 (Kurian 1992, 1242); several relatively young informants died during the course of my research.[11] Infant mortality is extremely high: 169 per 1000 for children between birth and one year of age (United Nations Department of International Economic and Social Affairs 1991, 216), and pregnancy is a high-risk condition.[12] A woman of thirty may have borne six children and is already considered old.[13] In most cases there is still little access to modern medicine, and people often die suddenly of unknown causes.

If the natural world is and was predictably tough, so it is in the human. The Bamana traditionally live in extended families controlled by the eldest living male, with the chain of command passing to younger brothers in order of birth. During the past thirty years widespread Islamization and contact with urban lifestyles have shifted inheritance patterns in the direction of a Western model, but the patriarchal paradigm of family life remains virtually untouched. Women are married out of their compound or village by their fathers, uncles, great uncles, or grandfathers, and it is still almost impossible for them to refuse such arrangements outright. A patriarch's control of his sons, nephews, and grandsons was and sometimes is no less arbitrary: in 1984 we witnessed Basi, an eighty-year-old blacksmith-sculptor, brandish a burning six-foot log and attack his thirty-year-old son for what we would consider a minor disobedience.[14] Traditionally, every form of rebellion, no matter how minor, is read as a subversion of accepted power relations within the family, and is tantamount to open and therefore violent treason. Basi had the prerogative to kill his son and would, indeed, have been considered legally justified in doing so in the precolonial system of justice.[15]

The authoritarian nature of the traditional Bamana lineage is made slightly more flexible by the warmly affectionate relationships between full siblings, some older and younger women, and friends of the same sex and age. The Bamana refer to a variety of non-competitive, affectionate relationships (for instance that between grandmother and grandson) by the term badenya or “mother-childness” (Johnson 1986, 9). As the term itself suggests, the concept of badenya stems from the unbreakable allegiances forged between children of the same mother in a polygamous family, while its opposite, fadenya (“father-childness”), denotes both the ineradicable rivalry between half siblings and the father-son harshness evident in Basi's response to his son.[16] Many scholars describe the Bamana perception of the individual, and indeed the family itself, as caught in the middle of a continual tug-of-war between the supportive cooperation of badenya and the competitive struggles of fadenya.[17] From this standpoint, village and family life provides a safe haven of cooperation, whereas internecine struggles are projected outward onto the vast expanses of the savanna bush.

Badenya is a powerful force, particularly between mothers and children, but the Bamana see it as fighting a perpetually defensive war against fadenya. For anger, competitive rivalry, and treachery (janfa) do not exist on the same level as cooperative help. In most cases badenya lies on the surface; fadenya lurks below. The authoritarian structure of Bamana society places a great burden on its members: that of denial. The woman who is married to a man she detests must preserve the appearance of badenya; she must rejoice at her lack of power. The host who receives a stranger must (and there is no escape) be hospitable. This example is worth examination since it has often been cited as evidence of Bamana virtues and generosity. The situation is actually more complicated than that. If a stranger arrives in a compound and greets his host properly, the latter must follow a rigid etiquette. First, he assigns one of his wives to care for the guest. This woman sets out water and invites the guest to wash. Once the visitor has disappeared, she takes the grain doled out by her husband and begins to prepare a meal. The host then awaits the return of the visitor, meanwhile calculating which chicken (or, in the case of a really prestigious visitor) which goat must be offered him. On the guest's reappearance, the host summons a child to capture the animal, which is then formally presented to the visitor. The guest must respond with ritual thanks and agree to the animal's slaughter. The host then kills the animal, which he hands over to the younger men who will gut it or remove the feathers. They will then transfer it to the woman who prepares it. Meanwhile, the host is engaged in a series of ritualized conversational gambits that explore the reason for the stranger's visit. Finally, the meal is ready, and both host and guest wash their hands and eat together. Superficially, this encounter is a model of badenya or mutual support and friendship. In fact, however, such visits are often dreaded and frequently turn out to be veiled outbreaks of fadenya. Why, and how?

First of all, the obligation to honor a guest by providing him with a substantial meal is heavy. In most Bamana and Malinke areas the diet is at least 90 percent carbohydrate. Animals are killed only on special occasions. The average farmer does not have many chickens or goats to spare, and their loss is painful, especially if the visitor is not already a close friend. Second, the family itself may not have enough to eat, but tradition prescribes that, failing extra grain, the head of the family command his wives to take his children's food away from them or to give up his own meal to the guest. Nothing less is required, and both men's and women's reputations as exemplary exponents of mògòya or “personhood” depend on their willingness to build a reputation by such gestures. Third, visitors may as easily bring bad as good news. In the nineteenth century, visitors were frequently the emissaries or spies of slave traders, and an unexplained visit was often followed by a raid (sò boli) for the purpose of capturing slaves, an intrusion that in modern times has been taken over by the local tax collector. Furthermore, even known visitors frequently cloak their real purpose under a superficial veil of friendliness. The ritual expert who stops in one's compound to wish one well may actually be recalling an unpaid fee for an expensive medicine, or suggesting that the recipient of his visit do as he says, or else.[18]

Finally, even positive visits can have a negative impact. In 1987 we heard about a visit that had been made to a family with whom we had been acquainted for many years. The visit's purpose was to request the hand of the younger brother's oldest daughter in marriage. The girl, who was about thirteen at the time, was a great source of practical and emotional support to her grandmother, who wished to arrange the marriage herself. However, Bamana custom prescribes that the older brother arrange the marriages of the younger brother's children and vice versa. In this case, the older brother had arranged his niece's marriage (which could not be rejected by the grandmother and younger brother) to an unknown, poor family in a distant village. It seemed that the principal reason for this arrangement was to spite the younger brother, who was wealthier and more successful, by burying his child in an obscure and unfamiliar situation. What one would have thought was an occasion for joy turned out to be something else indeed.

Figure 4. The Dabà mask. 6/78.

Figure 5. The savanna environment near a small Beledugu town. 12/17/83.

Given the enormous discrepancy between the rules of ostensible badenya and the fadenya lying beneath the surface, it should be no surprise to find that the rules of hospitality are sometimes bent. The ‘generous’ host may be ‘absent’ or a stand-in; in 1979 we were told that the traditional head (dugutigi) of a Senufo village was “away in another village,” and we had to make do with his younger brother as host. The brother did not have the authority to invite us into the family compound, so we sat waiting under a dilapidated shelter that did little to protect us from the burning sun until, several hours later, the missing village head suddenly emerged from a neighboring alley. The dugutigi's sudden appearance revealed that he had simply been hiding (and consulting his spirits) until his younger brother discovered whether we had come to collect taxes or not. Although this example occurred in Senufo territory, it is by no means uncommon among the Bamana, where the real head of the family often observes the visitor from a concealed position as he or she converses with the stand-in host. When the real authority is satisfied that the visitor bodes no ill he ventures to emerge. Finally, one should add that the requirement of eating with the visitor is dangerous for both guest and host. The communal meal, which has often been interpreted as an exemplary instance of badenya, is feared not only because there is no escape from it, but also because neither party is sure whether the other has not surreptitiously placed a death-bringing poison in the food. Poisoning has traditionally been a favorite method for eliminating one's enemies, and there is no better occasion to carry it out than a meal among ‘friends’(Brett-Smith 1983, 47–8). Thus, under the apparently simple rituals of hospitality that seem so warm and generous, there is a subtext of labyrinthian complexity whose surface badenya conceals a wealth of potential destruction and paranoia.

Figure 6. Map showing rainfall in West Africa.

Figure 7. Map showing ethnic-group distribution.

It is certainly true that the Bamana world could not exist without the warm links of badenya, but the socially imposed requirement that the individual conceal his or her true opinions and needs in favor of the strict rules laid down by tradition, rules designed for the good of the group rather than the individual, places a tremendous strain on human relations. It is as if the rules themselves, like the rituals of hospitality, were the thinly cooled crust of a recently active volcano, while the suppressed emotions below burble away like lava, ever seeking a path of escape. In fact, knowledgeable Bamana quote the saying, “The real obscurity is the sun at high noon,” to express the paradoxical fact that many human interactions that seem straightforward are, in reality, full of complex, hidden agendas.[19] Under careful scrutiny, badenya reveals a depth and obscurity that has been frequently ignored in studies of Bamana society.

One would be mistaken to think that the Bamana ignore or underestimate the power of human warmth, friendship, and affection. However, experience has taught them always to assume the possibility of jealousy and competitive rivalry. No family head of any intelligence wishes to neglect his responsibilities to the people within his care. An elder who does not assume that a foreign visitor may be a tax collector, and does not take evasive action, leaves the way open for immediate and punitive exactions of grain and/or cash which may leave the household without food in the coming months. The longer the tax collector can be put off, the more grain will have been consumed by the family, and even the severest official cannot tax an empty granary. The wise elder manipulates both the rules of badenya and the reality of power relations, so that he is ‘absent’ until he feels certain that he will not jeopardize his own and his family's security.[20]

The authoritarian structure of the Bamana lineage, where power is concentrated in the hands of the oldest living male (with some consultative power lying in the hands of slightly younger brothers and sons), and the stringent social rules imposed on all lineage members, implies that both men and women must assume that some fadenya lies hidden beneath the façade of affection. Such assumptions may be unwarranted, but no sensible person is willing to take a chance of assuming benevolent treatment at the hands of another. Badenya is the stated, socially approved ideal of human intercourse, but intelligent people usually operate on the basis of possible and even probable fadenya.

The human frame of life is difficult from the start, for the growing child must confront the realities of fadenya at every step of the way.[21] Indeed, it is unlikely that even a much-loved child in a nuclear family will succeed in every dimension, for it is almost inevitable that at least one relative within the distant extended family will nurse a grudge against the parents. Salimata Kone provided an instructive example of this when, in 1984, she told us that a distant uncle had single-handedly countermanded her immediate relatives’ decision to marry her to a rich Fulani. The uncle maliciously insisted that she could not marry a non-Bamana, and she was betrothed to her eventual husband instead.[22]

Given such constraints, the individual cannot reasonably expect to survive intact physically, emotionally, and intellectually. Success is an almost impossible goal. Rather, one hopes to survive long enough to beget many children, for perhaps some of them will achieve the goals that one has been denied through fadenya. Children not only assure the continuation of the family in an environment in which early death is still common, but they are also viewed as extensions of their parents, entities who will perhaps evade the limits fadenya has imposed on their father, mother, and grandparents. To survive emotionally, and to cope with the narrow possibilities offered by the patrilineal and authoritarian family structure, one must have children. It is not just physical survival that is at stake when a woman is infertile, but psychological survival as well. Superficial needs are manifold in the Bamana world, especially after contact with the West, but real needs are few: children and the food to feed them.

If the Bamana terms for sculpture, mako dlan yiriw, “wood/carvings that fix needs”; mako nya yiriw, “trees/carvings that remedy needs”; and mako nyèlanw or “things that arrange needs” make any sense, then they do so in terms of these two necessities, food and children. Of these two, children are by far the more important, for as long as there are able-bodied human beings to farm the land, one has done much of what one can to guarantee survival.[23] It should then come as no surprise that almost every standard type of Bamana sculpture whose meaning we have begun to understand can and does function as a control mechanism or “medicine” for human fertility. When reduced to their one common denominator, these “things that arrange needs” can be thought of as the gynecologist's prescriptions of the Bamana world.[24]

In the Bamana mind, human existence and survival depend on two distinct categories of people within society: women and blacksmith-sculptors or numuw. The importance of women is clear; they are the containers that create new life, for children come out of women. In Bamana society it is this intrinsic ability which bestows critical importance and power on women. Furthermore, as we shall see, the power to create new human beings is the ultimate in human power. Men can kill, but they cannot make children. They can guarantee extinction, but they cannot assure survival. In a world where so many natural forces make death a familiar presence, men's capacity for destruction is unremarkable; it is the ability to create that seems extraordinary. Over and over again informants remarked to me that women were the strongest sex, because “a woman can be dying but she will become pregnant and carry her child to term, despite her illness.” The Bamana view this ability to look death in the face and vanquish it through the creation of another life, as nothing short of miraculous.

In an environment in which survival is tenuous, the importance (and therefore the power) of women seems almost self-evident. But what about the second group mentioned, the blacksmith-sculptors? What have blacksmiths got to do with farming or human reproduction? Why are numuw essential instruments in the struggle to satisfy the basic needs of the Bamana world – food and children? Let us examine the battle to produce food first. Farming is not an easy task.[25] Just before the beginning of the rainy season, in late May or early June, the Bamana farmer takes his hoe or daba and begins to break up the dry ground, which after the seven-month dry season and temperatures regularly above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, resembles cement more than earth.[26] This backbreaking task is so difficult that the intrepid farmer is called tyi warra or “wild beast.” Warra is a term used to denote any wild animal with claws that can scratch and wound. Thus an anteater is a warra, a pangolin is a warra, some antelopes (for instance the dage) are warra, and the quintessential warra is, of course, the lion.[27] The farmer, scratching away at the cementlike soil, is thus compared to the wild beast that claws its prey. The famous Bamana antelope headdresses, which almost always combine antelope, lion, pangolin, and anteater features, depending on their region of origin, emerge to celebrate and encourage Bamana men when they begin to break up the soil (Figs. 8, 9, 10). The iconography of the headdress implies that the successful farmer will demonstrate the same aggressive qualities as the animals incorporated into it.[28] Farmers, however, unlike women, are dependent on outside technical expertise for their production. They cannot farm without a wide variety of iron hoes, each designed for a precise soil type and specific rainfall, and even today, they still cannot obtain these tools without recourse to the blacksmith-sculptor. For, in the traditional world, it is the blacksmith and the blacksmith alone who works iron into hoes.

The Bamana organize the human world by placing each child into an inherited social category, in their terms a siya or “race.” Before colonization one could be born a slave (jòn), a “noble” or farmer (hòròn), or, like the blacksmith-sculptors, a member of a cluster of endogamous artisan groups referred to by many authors as ‘castes.’[29] The Bamana use the term nyamakala or literally “handles of nyama” (kala means “handle” as in “hoe handle”) to refer to the general category of ‘casted’ groups, which includes blacksmith-sculptors (numuw),[30] praise singers and oral historians (jeliw), leather workers (garankew), and mimes (funèw). Each group is endogamous, although all nyamakalaw recognize a common separateness from both nobles and ‘slaves.’ It is the numuw or blacksmith-sculptors who are the technologists, the sculptors, and the great artists of Bamana and Malinke society, for traditionally no one else was permitted to work iron or carve wood.

McNaughton doubts the accuracy of the caste label (1988, 156–61), yet he confirms that fears of contamination underlie the separation between the specialized artisan groups and other members of Bamana society.[31] Today it is difficult to realize how rigidly separated caste status kept people, since the dual pressures of Westernization and Islamization are pushing people toward a homogenized society, in which one's inherited “race” is less constricting than in the past. However, several informants, both blacksmith and noble, made it clear that a noble would never eat out of the same dish as a casted person. Noble women told me that when praised by a griotte (a female member of the bardic ‘caste’), they would automatically give the gown they were wearing (dloki ba) to the singer; once the cloth had touched the griotte's skin they would never wish to put it on again. Some noble families apparently kept separate stools that were offered to nyamakala visitors; once a casted person had sat on the stool a noble would never use it. My informant stated that the intention was to avoid secondary contact with the imprint of a ‘casted’ person's sex. Such avoidance strongly suggests that some contaminating power adheres to nyamakalaw. In fact, a blacksmith named Kanfoliba Fane suggested this directly when he explained why the wrappers and trousers worn by blacksmith women and men were plunged into a dye bath of fermented mud, which turned them completely black. He said:

Certain people [blacksmiths] dipped all their garments entirely in mud. The wrappers were for the blacksmith women, and the trousers were for the blacksmith men. Why was this? Because dirt was upon them, they were blacksmiths’ cloths, they were not clean. It was a time when knowledge of cloth was practiced. That was between them and other people. Effectively, their work, the work that I have just been explaining to you, is not the same as the work of other people.[32]

Fears of contamination by nyamakalaw are particularly strong in relation to sexual behavior; at least one noble informant told me that a horon who had sexual intercourse with a griot or jeli was forbidden ever to eat in his village again, and thereby ostracized. This interdiction works in both directions; all my blacksmith informants maintained that it was unthinkable to marry or have sexual contact with a nonblacksmith, asserting that they would inevitably lose their ritual and technical expertise through the contaminating exchange of bodily fluids. Blacksmiths are proud of their heritage; in 1979 Kanfoliba Fane told me, “Ne si ka di ne ye ka tèmèn fènw bèe kan,” or “My ancestry is sweeter to me than anything else,” to explain why he would never marry a nonblacksmith.[33] Indeed, one could well argue that blacksmiths are even more elitist than nobles, considering their own siya or “race” as far more crucial to the survival of the community than any other.

Figure 8. Segu-style Tyi Warra headdress. © 1989 Sotheby's, Inc.

Figure 9. Beledugu-style Tyi Warra headdress. © 1990 Sotheby's, Inc.

These mutual fears of contamination were and are given physical shape in the location of the compounds belonging to numuw.[34] Blacksmith families generally lived in separate hamlets or in concessions placed at the very edge of villages, where their noble patrons came to consult them on important matters, such as a ritual object's failure to work, or the negotiation of a treaty with a neighboring community. Each blacksmith family was usually linked to a “host” or jatigi family through a symbiotic relationship, which might extend many generations into the past. The noble hosts provided millet for the blacksmiths’ granaries, and in exchange the numuw provided the hoes and other iron tools essential for agriculture. Such relationships did not prevent blacksmiths from working for other patrons, but it was considered correct for the blacksmiths’ first loyalty to be given to their host.

The physical separation of the blacksmith compound or hamlet from the larger farming community testifies to the profound ambivalence that surrounds these technological and ritual experts. Nobles certainly respect blacksmiths, but they also fear them, and the numuw themselves are aware of this fear. In fact, they often act deliberately so as to encourage the attitude of awe with which they are regarded, self-consciously creating and manipulating a social persona for their own obscure purposes (McNaughton 1988, 7–10). The noble's ambivalence toward his blacksmith ‘guests’ becomes more comprehensible when one realizes that nobles were and are profoundly dependent on their ostensible inferiors. Blacksmiths not only provide critical farming equipment and weapons, but they are also a source of political advice, psychological counseling, medical services, and, above all, what we would call ritual armoring.[35] The provision of weapons or medical services may seem primary, but it is the blacksmith's mastery of uncanny ritual powers, powers that enable him to protect his hosts and clients, and create the “things that remedy needs,” that make him both so centrally important and so terrifying to his community.

Figure 10. Kita-style Tyi Warra carved for the author by Basi Fane. Basi also referred to this mask as a Nama kun, although objects of this type were used by the young mens’ ton to celebrate farming, not by the Nama association. Photographed in Basi Fane's compound, 2/22/84.

The expert blacksmith-sculptor is the supreme master of the invisible but ever-present power the Bamana call nyama. Many scholars have tried to define nyama at length, and the best current summary is McNaughton's (1988, 15–16), although the most succinct and evocative description remains Bird's “energy of action,” the energy released by any act, whether positive or negative (1974, vii–ix; Bird & Kendall 1980, 16–17, notes 4–6). In fact, this mysterious energy, which flows through both animate and inanimate things, has more negative than positive consequences. One does not speak of suddenly acquiring the money to buy a new car as the result of nyama, but unleashed nyama is undoubtedly responsible for a terrible accident with multiple deaths. Perhaps the driver had let loose nyama by having sex with his wife while she was menstruating; perhaps a passenger had failed to sacrifice the expensive ram that would have removed the nyama attaching to him from the success of a business venture; or perhaps the inherent excess energy, the nyama, of the newly bought, pristine vehicle had not been removed by a minor scrape on the paint.

Nyama, like the economic exchange system on which the Bamana economy was formerly based, operates on principles of limited energy. Nyama cannot be created; one is born into a world filled with an enormous but still finite supply. However, it can be stockpiled. While most ordinary people usually want to “let loose the nyama” (ka nyama bò), to unleash its destructive power in a relatively safe fashion through prophylactic sacrifices, ritual specialists make a career of amassing unknowable quantities of this spiritual and physical energy. The aged sculptor, who may be referred to as a nyama mògò or “nyama person,” has acted as a human lightning rod, attracting and condensing free-floating nyama into his own person over so many years that now, in his old age, merely touching him contaminates the supplicant. The blood of sacrifice, which normally serves to dissipate the nyama attached to an individual through the breaking of a ritual rule, can also serve to condense and stabilize nyama into a ritual object or person.

In the Bamana world, all nyamakalaw or ‘casted’ people are literally “handles of nyama,” human instruments for contacting and mastering this unpredictable energy, whose untrammeled course so often leads to disaster. With his inborn charge of nyama, a blacksmith or griot can act as an intermediary, contacting the spirit world with impunity and changing the balance of forces within it. Whether arranging a marriage or fabricating a Komo mask, a griot or a blacksmith becomes a “handle” or tool, a human channel for the transmission of nyama to those less equipped to bear its weight (Cashion 1982, 177).[36] Like their massive hammers, the blacksmith–sculptors are the supreme instruments for controlling nyama; many farmers seem to regard them as necessary but dangerous societal equipment, half human and half object in nature. The Bamana, Malinke, and Minianka believe that one can identify a blacksmith at a single glance by the shiny blackness of his or her skin. It is as if this shining, metallic brilliance of the skin were the visual correlate of the numu‘s innate ability to master the nyama of working wood and iron, and their “shine” or “glow” were an e**manation from the iron they work.[37] When we turn to myth we find that the accounts of blacksmith origins suggest an identification between the smith and iron. Kanfoliba Fane began his account of blacksmith origins by stating that the numu “is the first child of the world”[38] (“dinyè denfòlò ye numu ye”) and followed this by describing how the first blacksmith fell to earth from the heavens like a bolt of lightning or Milton's Satan. In this mythic history, the original blacksmith has clearly been equated with the first anvil, said to be a flaming stone that fell from the sky to land in the middle of the bush (Jonckers 1979, 113). Neolithic stone axes discovered on newly cleared land are adapted for use as ritual anvils, and the mythical account likens the blacksmith himself to a flaming meteorite.

The mythic connection between the flaming anvil or blacksmith falling from the heavens, the iron ore dug from the earth, and the human being who smelts it, is made concrete by the ritual of washing at birth. Among the Bamana the blacksmith's identity, his inheritance of intrinsic nyama, and his lifelong technical and spiritual connection to artistic activity, is established when the newborn numu is ritually washed with the water used to cool iron in the forge. The Bamana believe that a child's first bath controls his or her destiny throughout life; a person with an ineradicable body odor is said to have been badly washed at birth, and therefore saddled with an unappealing presence for the rest of his life. Thus, the ritual washing in water from the gorodaga, the vessel used to cool iron in the forge, reinforces and stabilizes the numu‘s ‘caste’ inheritance. The fact that the newly born numu is washed in the same water used to cool iron suggests the Bamana consider the infant, emerging amid blood and heat from his mother's womb, to be “the same as” the heated iron, and that they compare the trauma of birth to the strokes of the hammer on the hot metal. The washing process cools and stabilizes both the infant and the hot iron, enabling them to be used by society at large.

The fusion of the blacksmith with the iron he works, the sense that they are “the same,” is expressed through other ritual gestures. A blacksmith cannot be born without the head of the extended family announcing the birth to the anvil (kulan) by speaking to it and sacrificing a kola nut (Fig. 30).[39] In making this gesture the blacksmith elder treats the anvil as though it were a person senior to him in age and experience. Effectively, the anvil becomes the family head, to whom all events must be reported, even by the oldest living male. The anvil, itself a sacred object charged with nyama, is no longer an object, but a nonhuman person who supervises the affairs of the family. This living tool possesses a vindictive and domineering personality, responding immediately and harshly to any infringement of its interdictions and demanding frequent sacrifices. It should not surprise us therefore to find that blacksmiths fear the anvil more than anything else. In the words of Kojugu Cissoko:

KOJUGU: The thing that we really, really fear is the problem of the anvil. We have real fear of the problem of the anvil.

INTERVIEWER: Because it is of iron?

KOJUGU: Because it is of iron.[40]

This fear of and identification with the anvil and its iron becomes more understandable when we learn that anvils could be made only from guan nègè kolo, iron smelted by the blacksmiths themselves in traditional furnaces.[41] In the past, blacksmith families with the right to smelt were required to sacrifice a redheaded infant (gonbilen or kunbilen) from their own family every sixty or seventy years, to preserve this economic and spiritual prerogative. The child was offered to the ritual iron staff or guan nègè, which acted as the physical and spiritual catalyst for the smelting process (Brett-Smith 1987, 7–8) (Fig. 11).[42] This rule reveals the complete identification of the blacksmith with the iron he smelts, for the red blood of a child whose hair glows like copper is offered to obtain the pure red iron used to create the anvil, on which the instruments that bring life to the soil and to human beings are forged. The anvil, that lump of raw iron taken directly from the smelting furnace, is said to judge between life and death:

KOJUGU: When you are seated at the anvil, if your hammer's handle breaks and it flies out to hit you on the head, heaven and earth [i.e., the anvil] will make the judgment [as to whether you die or not].[43]

The anvil cannot be created without human sacrifice and so, once smelted, it incorporates the vitality or nyama of the blacksmith himself, becoming a nonhuman being, able to judge the living and the dead, and to intervene in the daily business of life.

It should not surprise us, then, to find that a new anvil was a costly item, traditionally purchased with two slaves or two bulls.[44] Apparently, an object that had to be made from smelted iron, iron that periodically demanded a human life, could be acquired only by payment in human kind – slaves, or their equivalent, bulls. The buyer consecrated his purchase at the approach of the rainy season through the sacrifice of kola nuts, sacred water, and a cock, or even, if the blacksmith family was wealthy, a goat.[45] The anvil continues to be a costly investment, for blacksmiths commonly attribute disasters in the forge to a drop in the frequency of the offerings made to the kulan. In Kojugu's words:

KOJUGU: If I am in my village I will not sow millet [at the beginning of the rainy season] so long as I haven't made the sacrifices to the anvil – an aged cock and two red kola nuts. If you sow without making these offerings, then if you have a disaster in the forge, it is you yourself who have provoked it.[46]

We need to remember that, just as with the washing in the water from the gorodaga, there was once no choice about whether a blacksmith learned to use the anvil, for apprenticeship traditionally began around the age of six or seven. Every blacksmith learned to work iron and, in so doing, came in intimate daily contact with the anvil's power and unpredictable personality. Whether or not a particular blacksmith ever mastered enough ritual expertise to become the guardian of his family's ritual anvil, he certainly imbibed some of the nyama associated with the working kulan.[47]

One tana or ritual rule associated with the forge, and by extension the anvil itself, reveals the extent to which ironworking is thought to focus that special valence of nyama that only blacksmiths can master. It is forbidden for any nonblacksmith, male or female, to step over the active work area of the forge (fandugu); that is the charcoal, the glowing fire, and the tondo (another name for the fankun, the clay barrier that covers the pipes leading from the bellows) (Figs. 16, 30, 31). Any nonblacksmith who steps across this area (which usually includes the smith's anvil), bringing his or her genital area directly above the space demarcated for forging, must pay a fine of kola nuts to the owner of the forge. These kolas are, presumably, offered to the anvil itself in apology for the contaminating effect of contact with a nonblacksmith body.[48]

The umbilical cord that links the blacksmith directly into the world's vast resource of nyama is partly related to what we would call technical skill. Iron smelting, the supreme test of numuya or “blacksmithness,” demands an extraordinarily precise technical control of temperature and chemical transformations (McNaughton 1988, 16, 31–2). The possibilities for destruction inherent in the volatile process are so high that the transformation of raw ore into iron inevitably carries an almost intolerable charge of nyama. The Bamana believe that smiths are genetically endowed with the capacity for tapping nyama through smelting without being harmed by it, since smiths are by definition born with higher inherent nyama than nobles or slaves.

The idea of an inherited capacity for mastering nyama is difficult for us to swallow. However, the numuw themselves have no such problem, and even make a series of fine distinctions among families of blacksmiths. For instance, blacksmith-sculptors make a primary distinction between what they call bula and non-bula numuw. The bula are often considered to be the original descendants of Fakoli, the blacksmith hero who aided the famous thirteenth-century king of Mali, Sunjata. Bulaw are said to be endowed with a greater innate mastery of carving, smithing, and nyama than non-bulaw, and to make contact with spirits more easily than other blacksmiths. Needless to say, blacksmiths differ widely on who can be considered bula. For instance, Kojugu considered the Cissoko, the Dumbiya, and the Kuruma clans to be true bulaw, while he categorized other famous blacksmith families such as the Sinayogo, Bagayogo, Danyogo, Kante, and Fane as non-bula.[49] However most Mande bards or griots would probably place all these families in the category of bulaw. Despite disagreements as to who can be counted among the bulaw, and indeed whether bulaw are inevitably of blacksmith status, all my sources agreed that some branches of every blacksmith family owe their caste status to the assimilation of captives or to inmarriage. For example, Kojugu also explained both the perennial disagreements about membership in the bula category, and an embarrassingly conspicuous lack of artistic skill in some family members, as the long-term result of a non-bula man marrying into the Danyo family.

KOJUGU: People say that the Danyo are bula, because if you marry a woman from such a concession, in that same concession, if there is a head of the family in that concession and you marry one of his daughters and you come to live in the concession and if, may God protect us from such an eventuality, if you should die, then your children and especially your children who have just begun to walk will grow up with the children of the family. They will never know another father, they will never know anything else, and if the head of the family tells them, “This is your family name,” then in explaining his work to his own children, he will also explain it to all the children. So a child will do that work perhaps, but that task does not really belong to his own race. This is why there are many so-called bulaw when, in fact, not all of them are bula. If things are hot, indeed very hot, one can't even find two families descended from Fakoli, only one, but when things are sweet there are many families who descend from Fakoli.[50]

Figure 11. Iron staff in the shape of a woman (guan nègè) believed to be the catalyst in smelting. Photo P.-A. Ferrazzini, Musée Barbier-Mueller, Genève.

Kojugu enlarged on this explanation by describing his frustration with a son who was totally devoid of visual awareness or manual skill, and could barely make hoe handles. The boy had been beaten repeatedly to force him to master basic carving skills, but to no avail. Finally, Kojugu had concluded that his son's lack of ability must be due to an unknown ancestor who had taken a slave to wife, thus bringing a different inheritance into his family. He stated in tones of disgust that the boy was fit only for farming, and that he had therefore allowed him to abandon any pretense of carving or smithing.

Lack of skill can always be explained by a misalliance at some distant point in the past, but blacksmiths are also aware that both chance and economic factors may determine a particular person's area of expertise and mastery of its nyama. Certainly all blacksmiths possess a superior quantity of nyama as their birthright, but distinctions among manipulators of nyama often relate to concrete economic and personal factors. Traditionally, only a few blacksmith families owned the legal right and possessed the expertise to smelt iron, which gave these “major lineages” or numu bon da a tremendous economic edge, since raw iron was always at a premium in precolonial times. Smelting rights could be bought by one family from another, and elderly knowledgeable blacksmiths still keep meticulous account of which numu families possess this right and who bought it from whom, since ownership of such rights still confers enormous prestige among other blacksmiths.[51]

In addition to remembering which families are bula and which possess the right to smelt, blacksmiths also categorize numu families according to their expertise in smithing. Some families specialized only in ironworking (the primary source of power for all blacksmiths), but could not smelt; others possessed the right to smelt as well as to forge iron, and some worked gold and silver exclusively (the Khamissoko, for example). Although metalworking skills were precisely assigned to specific blacksmith families, all numuw were born with both the legal right and the innate valence of nyama that enabled them to carve, scarify, circumcise, excise, and perform other surgery. Informants indicated that circumcision and excision were skills common to every blacksmith lineage, even those known to be descended from former blacksmith captives.[52] Most blacksmiths usually acquired some skills in at least one specialty; and gifted individuals studied one or two areas of expertise in depth (for example, Basi was both a famous carver and an extraordinarily successful dermatologist). Normally, experts in scarification also circumcised and excised, and might very well be reputed surgeons.[53]

What was uncommon, however, was to combine three or more of the above skills with a high degree of expertise. As Kojugu stated:

KOJUGU: In some places it depends on what you have learned; if you have learned to circumcise you will do that; if you have learned to carve [sculpture] you will do that; and if you have learned to trace scars, you will do that. Those who can perform all these tasks are not numerous; circumcise, carve sculptures, the other tasks of blacksmiths, make the mask for the Komo society – you can visit three villages and even up to four or five, and you can count all the blacksmiths who are there, and you will not find one such person, really.[54]

Among specializations, carving important ritual sculpture ranked next to smelting in order of importance, and those numuw who mastered both the ritual and visual expertise necessary for controlling the nyama inherent in different woods and creating important works of art, were few and far between. Kojugu stated, “If you are a sculptor, it's not an open, everyday affair, it is a hidden thing.”[55]

The masters of nyama have complex personalities; their work ranges from the banal manufacture of simple hoes to the most complicated surgery and carving. Their speech travels from the boisterously obscene to the elegantly elliptical. Their intelligence, visual skill, and hardheaded capacity for decision making can be frightening. Yet, they are so important that they are categorized as “the first children of the world.” Every Bamana farmer is dependent on the blacksmith's technical skill for his essential tools. Kojugu makes this explicit when he discusses the appropriate price for a hoe:

KOJUGU: After that, all the remainder of the blacksmith's tools, if someone orders you to make them and pay for them, you can never agree with anyone on their price because the first [tool] is the hoe for farming. The owners of the Koran have spoken at length on this problem. They have said that you must pay two village leaders in order to buy a single hoe, but the blacksmith who demands too much [for his hoes] will agree with no one. You should work and take the price of your sweat. The rest of your payment, if you are not a man who is spoiled, the rest of your payment will present itself to you in the other world.[56]

Kojugu cites the owners of the Koran, but the idea that a hoe is worth two living village leaders is Bamana. No payment, even the impossible one of two living elders, is valuable enough to recompense the blacksmith for the gift of agricultural productivity.[57]

Smiths are essential for agriculture because their tools enable farmers to cut the soil, releasing its nyama in growing plants. However, at a deeper level of analysis, we find that the numu‘s ability to cut is also essential to human reproduction. For the Bamana and Malinke cutting the soil and cutting an unformed, nyama-filled human being by circumcision and excision, are not so different. In the Bamana world, children, who come into the world from the realm of the ancestors, are sexually untouched vessels charged with unknown powers. They possess inordinate amounts of nyama and may even be sorcerers, breaking the most severe rules with apparent impunity. When the greatest healers, hunters, ritual experts, and carvers sit down to eat from the same bowl, into which each master has cast his own poison, each fighting for the glory of killing his neighbor and for his own survival, it is the small boy who walks calmly into their midst and eats and drinks unscathed, while the doyen of the group mysteriously dies. Children are known for being able to eat anything and everything, even moldy food, for their uncurbed tongues, and for their delight in dirt. Whether sleeping, sitting, or playing, there is no part of a child's body that is not in intimate contact with the earth, one of the most powerful entities known to the Bamana.[58] The child's unfettered power, so terrifyingly strong because it is manipulated without awareness, presents a grave threat to society.

For as long as children are indeed unconscious, the Bamana can sustain their unchanneled display of nyama, but puberty signals the need for control. Untrammeled sexual play will wreak havoc with the complex marriage alliances arranged by the eldest living male within the extended family. In fact, since Malian independence in 1960, such experimentation has actually undermined the power structure of the family and village. Traditional sexual rules appear to have been extraordinarily rigid. A girl was required to be a virgin at her marriage; the white cloth that absorbed the blood from first sexual intercourse was guarded throughout her life as the source of fertility; and, according to at least one informant, a child born to an unexcised girl or an uncircumcised boy was exposed to die in the bush.[59] Both male and female honor were involved in keeping teenage friendships nonsexual, and in assuring that the girl went to her fiance untouched.

The ability to marry off one's grandchildren, to manipulate the sexual lives of another generation, was an important testimony to the political power of the old men who traditionally ran the Bamana village. Acceptance of the power structure, and the marriage alliances by which it was reinforced, was inculcated through the ordeals of circumcision and excision which were the prerequisite to marriage and sexual life.[60] Salimata Kone reported that if a young girl should prove recalcitrant, those in charge of the excision would call several strong young men to help them:

SALIMATA: If they couldn't hold her, they would report this to the young men who would take hold of her [the young woman to be excised]. When these men took hold of her, even if they had to go among the women right into the place where the excision was taking place, they would sit down [while holding the girl] and turn their backs [on the assembled group of women] and turn their eyes toward the bush. The women would do the work [of excision] until it was finished. When they had finished they would say [to the young men], “Get up, but don't look behind you, look in front,” and they would leave in this manner …[61]

As this passage indicates, excision was imposed by force when and if it was resisted.

All my female informants from traditional areas reported that excision “releases the nyama” (ka nyama bò) of childhood, purifying the young woman and guaranteeing her obedience to traditional rules of respect (bonya).[62] In the words of Sokona Danba, a blacksmith woman from Shuala, north of Segu, “A bè nyama bò, bolokèli ka nyi, a ka nyi muso ma kojugu,” or “Excision releases the nyama, it is good, it is very good for a woman.”[63] In another passage Sokona continued, “The reason for excision is cleanliness; don't they say that this is dirty? It is because of dirt; if you get rid of the dirt, the woman is completely clean.”[64] This desire to expunge the nyama of childhood was so strong that a girl who did become pregnant before the operation took place was immediately excised within twenty-four hours of giving birth.[65] The child, however, was never considered legitimate, and, were it allowed to live, was called a nyamògòden or nyamaden. Since mògò means “person” and den “child,” both words can be translated as, “child of a nyama-filled person.” Such a nyama-filled mother was, in Bamana terms, nonadult and unsocialized. The abandonment of nyamògò denw under a clump of kunjè bushes suggests that the Bamana considered them to be uncivilized things of the bush, not potential human beings.

The preceding data suggests that Bamana excision is intimately related to socialization, the control of nyama, and the successful production of acceptable children, but not necessarily to an explicit control of female sexuality. If we look at the terms used for excision we find corroboration of this interpretation. The Bamana refer to both excision and circumcision with the terms ka boloko (literally, “to wash the hand”) and a bè sigi nègè kòrò (literally, “he/she is seated under the iron”).[66] The first term probably denotes the necessity for the blacksmith who circumcises or excises to wash his or her hands to remove the blood from the operation, while the second reflects the practice of seating the patient on a low stool, holding their arms behind them, and separating their legs in order to perform the operation. One additional term used only for women, fura ci, is much more suggestive. In the Beledugu the term fura ci denoted the entire ensemble of excision preparations, the clitoridectomy itself, the retreat period of at least four weeks that followed the operation, and then, at the beginning of the rainy season following the girl's excision, a communal feast that heralded the departure of all the girls excised at the same time for their husbands’ homes. In this region there was no formal marriage ceremony, only the fura ci. In fact, the girl's loss of virginity on her arrival at her husband's home was like an afterthought, the real focus being placed on the group survival of the excision ordeal, and the formal and legal transfer of the girl by her own family to her husband's family. If we analyze the term fura ci we find that fura means “leaf” and ci means “break” (in the sense of breaking a pot). The group excision and the pronouncement of the marriage contracts was (and still is) referred to as the “breaking of the leaf.” Clearly, the use of the term “leaf” reflects a visual image of the genital area, which is broken by excision of the clitoris much as the stem of a leaf is broken when it is removed from its branch.[67]

What is significant for our analysis of the blacksmith's role is that the term fura ci refers to excision, and not simply or even primarily to the loss of virginity. One can say that a girl has passed through the fura ci when she has been excised, although she may not yet have been married. It would seem, then, that the blacksmith woman who excises actually “breaks the leaf” by removing the clitoris. The Beledugu terminology suggests that clitoridectomy is, on some half-conscious level, both a deflowering and even an impregnation, for the Basiae and N'Gale cloths worn to absorb the blood of the excision surgery are treated as though they were the young woman's first child.[68] As both the practice of child exposure and the fura ci ceremony demonstrate, it is clitoridectomy, above all, that enables the woman to have sex and produce acceptable children.

If we think about female anatomy and the blacksmith's task, we realize that the blacksmith surgeon is actually carving the human body. What is essential in excision is the removal of an extrusive part; the surgeon must guarantee that the clitoris disappears, that the leaf is smooth, that the gash which produces children is indeed a gash.[69] This task can be viewed as similar to that of the carver who polishes a finished object, removing all the stubborn knots in the wood; and, indeed, Kojugu reported that his grandfather, who had been an expert sculptor, also excised young women.[70] The stress on excision, on the smoothing of the female body, suggests that the Bamana perception of the female body as concave dominates their attempt to master the problem of reproductive failure. Without the blacksmith's reworking of the female body, the removal of the extrusive nyama materialized in the clitoris, even a healthy child is not acceptable. A child is not really a child unless it has come from a gash that is total; ambiguity cannot be tolerated.

So, in the Bamana world the recarving of the body in order to produce truly authentic “human” children is the task of blacksmiths. Just as the farmer cannot use the available soil without tools, so society cannot use its reproductive potential without the restructuring power of the iron knife. One can bear a child without being excised, but it is the blacksmith's surgery performed on the mother that renders the child usable. For both essential needs, the production of food and the production of usable children, the numu is essential. At the base level of production, the blacksmith produces hoes for farming, and he or she performs the universal genital surgery that is the gateway to sexual experience and childbearing.

In both cases, the blacksmith is providing the means to “break” or “cut.” It is no accident that the verb for backbreaking labor in the fields is ka ci kè, literally, “to make cutting.” Likewise, the woman's leaf is “broken,” and scarifications that are normally cut after excision or circumcision are ciw or “cuts.” Cutting in any shape or form is the blacksmith's job, but cutting is also designing and ordering, for when a Bamana woman designs a complex geometric pattern across a mud cloth she says, “N ye fini ci,” or “I have cut the cloth.” Synonymous with “N ye fini ci” is the expression, “N ye fini nyègèn,” “I have drawn the cloth” (Fig. 32). Blacksmiths also use the term ka nyègèn to refer to a multitude of activities that we would call drawing; the verb is a basic all-purpose term in carving as well as in the composition of cloth patterns. Although the expressions using ci certainly have a more aggressive tone, the fact that both male and female Bamana artists often use the terms ka ci and ka nyègèn interchangeably gives us some insight into the resonances of “cutting” for the Bamana.

In the undifferentiated world of natural creation, a creation filled with unlocalized, unknowable, and uncontrollable nyama, cutting or designing is the first civilizing act. The blacksmith is truly the “first child of the world,” for he separates, he draws, he makes things clear, unambiguous, and simple. In the Bamana world the problem is not that things are separate; it is that the world presents itself as a mysterious and power-filled unity. Bamana men and women obey a multitude of ritual interdictions because these rules separate; they keep things apart and draw boundaries in a world where boundaries seem painfully weak. A farmer walking to work expects to see an unfamiliar spirit intruding into his everyday space. A pregnant woman who lies down to sleep expects to be visited by her grandmother in a dream. The hunter who kills a pregnant porcupine can expect the animal's mate to lecture him and impose a death penalty on his unborn son. The unseen world of spirits, ancestors, and unborn children lies perilously close. The material world is only a manifestation, an extrusion, like the woman's clitoris, of the immaterial but physically real force of powers beyond one's control, and the nyama generated by these powers is invasive, pervasive, and terrifyingly destructive.

The balance of power in the Bamana mind is always in favor of the unseen world, welling up from the universe of the dead and the nonhuman. We have seen that there are two groups of people who deal directly with the problem of obtaining human needs from the forces of the other world: women and blacksmith-carvers. Women deal with the undifferentiated, raw universe seething with nonmaterial forces, by going into it to capture nyama and create children. Numuw go into the other world to capture nyama, to control it, localize it, and channel it through “cutting” and the creation of ritual objects. Women are endowed with biological access to the other world, blacksmith-sculptors inherit the potential to control nyama through the mastery of technical and ritual skill.

Before examining how a blacksmith child acquires this mastery, let us address a problem implicit in understanding the Bamana worldview. It is tempting to suggest that this universe teeming with force is merely a symbolic construct, or that the genital surgery of excision only ‘symbolizes’ the acquisition of reproductive capacity. I believe that such paradigms are modern Western, not Bamana or Malinke, constructions. The Bamana universe operates in a breathtakingly literal, not an exclusively symbolic, fashion. The practical approach, so characteristic of all the informants consulted, makes clear that the surgery of excision does not symbolize a woman's reproductive capacity in an abstract way; in their view it makes it possible. The surgery does not constitute a sign that then represents a distant referent such as childbirth; its meaning consists of the fact that it radically and physically alters the structure of the woman's body, enabling her to give birth to children who are not tainted with unmanageable quantities of nyama. We in the West may discuss the ‘symbolic ramifications’ of excision, but its usefulness to the Bamana is physical, not symbolic. The surgery is the physical, not the symbolic, gateway to sex and pregnancy.

Figure 12. Basiae mud cloth (bògòlanfini) worn by young Bamana women after excision and childbirth. It may also be worn by postmenopausal women, who were traditionally buried in it. The Basiae is always considered to be a “red” or ritual cloth. This cloth is in the author's collection. Photographed by Wojtek Naczas, 1993.

The Western concept of a symbol does not work in the Bamana world because the sign and its referent are still viewed as being the same. To manipulate and harm a cloth that has received the blood from the surgery of excision is “the same” as damaging a woman's child (Fig. 12). Cloth and child, although apparently different in their material manifestations, are only so to those outside the Bamana belief system. The excision Basiae carries the same valence of nyama as a child: therefore, the cloth does not represent or ‘stand for’ the child; it is simply, and literally, another category of child. This literal unity of sign and referent explains cases such as that of the elderly woman who confessed that she had stolen her co-wife's deflowering cloth to render her sterile. There was no doubt in the mind of the blacksmith specialist she consulted that her action had succeeded.

Our traditional conception of non-Western symbols often assumes that they echo in an implicitly false way the reality they ‘symbolize.’ We tend to assume that a society in which someone can bring a traditional court case against an elderly woman for stealing her co-wife's deflowering cloth, and make the charge stick not as theft but as attempted murder, is unrealistic and, as frequently noted in the colonial literature, ‘childish.’ But if our Western theory of symbols is misapplied, and the deflowering cloth does not ‘symbolize’ fertility but constitutes, in itself, a woman's fertility and her future children, then it is the Western observer who misconstrues the situation.71

If the ‘symbol’ is one and the same with the referent, we can understand the blacksmith-sculptor's position somewhat better. The sculptor exists in a field of forces, a vast territory of unsubdued nyama, whose focal points are the ritual objects, or, in our terms, the sculptures, already in existence. In this universe of force fields the nyama of each ritual object exerts a set of physical effects: some cause children to be conceived and born, others cause children to die, rain to come, rain not to come, some men to find wives, others not to, and so forth. The sculptor who creates an object is interjecting an untried force, a new valence of nyama, into the existing field, disrupting it and bringing about a new balance of forces. The object the blacksmith creates will have a material effect on his environment precisely because he is not creating a symbol in our sense of the term, but rather a new entity with its own inherent power. To create such an object, he does not attempt to transmute a distant referent into a representational sign; but through a set of physical actions repeated over time he changes the force fields of nyama flowing through the world he inhabits. Like a classical physicist, he undertakes physical operations with physical consequences. In this ability to change the real, material world through the rearranging of nyama, he finds himself in a position parallel to that of the pregnant woman who alters the physical constitution of the social group when she gives birth to a new human being. What is important to the Bamana about the sculptor's creations is that they are not symbols; they alter the world materially, not intellectually. The resulting objects are the condensations of a multitude of specialized and highly ritualized actions repeated over time, actions that change the nature of the force field in which the sculptor and all others act.

CHAPTER 2

The Sculptor Speaks with Spirits: The Other World

How is a great sculptor trained, and how does he acquire the art of controlling nyama? What is the path taken to the other world, a path that ultimately leads the sculptor to speak regularly with spirits, to encounter them in the bush, and to receive, both waking and sleeping, extraordinary visions of the objects he is destined to create? Sculptors are born with a caste status that endows them with a certain valence of nyama, but birth does not necessarily assure success in mastering nyama, dealing with the spirit world, or making superlative medicines or ritual objects. For numuw as well as for others, failure is more common than success when attempting to achieve renown in dealings with the spirit world.[1] Many are born numuw, many carve hoe handles, some sculpt minor ritual objects, but only a very few can even attempt to create a mask like the Dabà (Fig. 4).

Famous sculptors are difficult individuals. They are cantankerous at best, forthright to the point of rudeness, and their generally exceptional intelligence is often directed with venomous intent. They may, in the full flow of speech, stop abruptly, stare off into space, and simply walk away if their spirit calls. They can and do delay the delivery of sculpture for many months and years, refusing to carve while seducing one with skillful promises of “soon, soon …” They are often erratic, disappearing into the bush to wander for months at a time, they are impatient with fools, and they like to drink. Yet, they possess and self-consciously manipulate an enormous reservoir of intelligence, psychological acuity, and visual skill. There is nothing more interesting than hearing a Bamana sculptor analyze a badly made mask, or summarize the flaws in his brother's character. A famous sculptor can not only recognize the visual defects in his own work, but can also act with great courage and a balanced vision in the midst of turmoil. A man who confronts spirits daily has little difficulty in analyzing and portioning out justice in the human world. When focused on this world, the great artist often has extraordinary patience with clients who present him with apparently negligible problems, and yet he loses his temper in an instant with those who lightly disregard traditional rules. He can be deeply compassionate and yet, at the same time, remain rigidly fixed on a terrifying course of action. A nyama mògò or “nyama-filled person,” he remains unsurprised and unshaken by the passions of those around him. His direct contact with familiar spirits endows him with the capacity to hear the troubles and confessions of the entire community, and then to leave them behind as he moves into the bush, the forge, and the shadows of the spirit world.

Some artists are born with certain signs that signal an unusual capacity to create. All Bamana, both noble and nyamakalaw, examine their children at birth for features such as birthmarks, a glowing, coppery skin color, or emergence from the mother still enclosed within the amniotic sac.[2] Men are generally the experts in the divinations that precede and follow birth, although some midwives may become skilled at diagnosing the abilities of an infant marked by an unusual physical feature.[3] Men not only examine the child physically, but they also note the timing of the birth; a child born during the Komo association celebrations at the beginning or end of the rainy season is automatically dedicated or “given” to the society, and is expected to possess extraordinary powers.[4] Such powers may include the capacity to predict the future, a phenomenal memory, the ability to fascinate others and to work out financial deals, and artistic gifts. Salimata Kone attributed her multifarious medical, historical, and artistic gifts to Allah, but she also told us that she had emerged from her mother wrapped in the amniotic sac. This anomaly was the material sign of the powerful personality she would become, a personality that she, herself acknowledged:

SALIMATA: This [such gifts] comes from the place where Allah has taken the mud to make you. Now, my father never had any sons, but, I, I arrived as one of his children and now, anything that happens, people give me the responsibility to take care of it. Myself, I never sought a medicine for this [this ability], I never went to consult a thrower of cowrie shells, I consulted no one. However, no matter what thing I undertake, thanks to the power of Allah, that thing is accomplished. That power comes from Allah. Whether that power finds itself in my head, whether that power finds itself in any other part of my body – I don't know.[5]

Among blacksmith families physical abnormalities are frequently interpreted as signals of artistic capacity. A child born with a birthmark similar to that of a grandfather who was a famous sculptor will be named for this grandparent, and it will be assumed that he possesses a similar artistic potential. As in Salimata's case, the interpretation of material signs surrounding the birth will be conflated with a very practical evaluation of the child's personality and gifts.

The information received through divination and the physical accidents of birth is continually reevaluated as the infant grows and develops. Bamana elders of both sexes spend an enormous amount of time watching and caring for their grandchildren, and when the children are only two or three, will distinguish people of consequence from those without a future. In 1984 Salimata remarked of another grandchild who was only one and a half or two years old, “Ne ma da la, n'a ma kè mogo ye, inafò Bakary ye,” or “I doubt whether he will become a person like Bakary” (her most gifted grandchild). Moreover, Bamana elders do not permit their own affection for a particular grandchild to influence their stark and unbending sense of that child's possibilities and inherent limitations. In a world of short lives and limited resources, it is senseless to spend valuable hours teaching an unintelligent child the lengthy history of the extended family. A master sculptor is not going to waste his time preparing special medicines to increase the intelligence of a grandson whom he has already evaluated as being without artistic potential. Rather, he will concentrate his energy on another child whose personality, behavior, and physical characteristics already promise a capacity for visual thinking. Such children may not necessarily be those the grandparent loves best, for, in the case of sculptors, the master carver frequently fears that his son or nephew may surpass him. These anxieties often create a vacuum around the master artist, for few sons are willing to awake their father's ire by challenging him artistically. In fact, it is far more common for a great artist to select a distant relative, a stranger blacksmith, or a sister's son as his artistic heir, for these apprentices do not present such an immediate threat to the master numu‘s power and social standing.[6] Furthermore, artistic gifts are not necessarily inherited directly, and a great artist may well need to consider a much larger pool of apprentices than those within his own lineage if he is to find a truly worthy successor.

A stranger does not present himself to a master carver like Basi without prior training. Aspiring artists may distance themselves from their immediate family when in their teens, but they usually receive their early training from their fathers, uncles, or grandfathers. A potential sculptor may be distinguished by his grandfather's birthmark, he may have been named for his grandparent, and he may show clear signs of visual skill at an early age, but, ostensibly at least, he is treated no differently than any other apprentice.[7] All numuw begin to learn both ironworking and wood carving at about the ages of six or seven.[8] The length of apprenticeship depends both on the pupil's innate ability and on his level of ambition.

KOJUGU: At six years or seven years you begin [to learn]. You begin little by little.

INTERVIEWER: Until approximately what age? If you begin at six or seven, you continue until you are how old?

KOJUGU: If you are intelligent, when you are ten years old you are already well set on the way of the work, but if you are not intelligent you can work continuously, but you will make nothing that is good. If you are intelligent and if you begin very early, before becoming mature [physically] and even before you are fifteen years old, you will be well on the way. Before you are twenty years old, you will have mastered all aspects of the work.[9]

In a similar passage Kojugu uses the word nyèlakeku when he says, “If you are a very intelligent person… .”[10] Nyè is the normal Bamana term for “eye,” whereas keku means “cunning” or “skilled” (Bazin 1906, 280). Thus, Kojugu is not simply stating that the apprentice should be intelligent, but that he must possess an “intelligence of the eye,” or the ability to learn mechanical and sculptural skills from watching, without any verbal instruction from his master.[11]

When still a child, the apprentice applies his visual intelligence to both ironworking and wood carving simultaneously.[12] The student alternates between the two crafts, first mastering a task of wood carving and then one of ironworking. Before a boy is old enough to manipulate the sònbè (a large, curved axe used to take the bark off chunks of wood) he may be given tools designed for children[13] and asked to carve small spatulas (faraniw) as a preliminary exercise;[14] he is also asked to come and work the bellows in the forge.[15]

KOJUGU: The work of blacksmiths – if you begin it when you are still a child, you first work wood. You will make large spatulas [sonkalanninw],[16] and after that, you will begin to do both together [woodworking and ironworking], since if you have carved spatulas, then you will carve large spatulas, and, yes, if an adult goes into the forge he will say to you, “Come and work the bellows for me.” And if you stay on the bellows, they will tell you, “Come and make a hairpin.” You will learn everything, you will learn everything together.[17]

Kojugu regarded both carving spatulas and mastering the bellows as preliminary training, and was firm in stating that the first real achievement of his apprenticeship was the production of a bandigini, a small hairpin used by women to unravel their braids, comb their hair, and divide it into tufts for rebraiding.[18] After forging a tiny hairpin, Kojugu then made a large hairpin (bandigi) and an awl with a wooden handle (filen kala bandigi), used for piercing holes in broken calabashes in order to stitch them together.[19] He then returned to wood carving, fashioning tiny stools for children to sit on, before learning how to forge a knife.[20] Kojugu noted that a gifted apprentice should be able to produce a knife before he is eight years old.[21] Next Kojugu carved tiny adzes for children to play with, and then he returned to the forge to fashion the women's knives (nyugutigèlan) used to cut the vegetables for the sauce that accompanies the daily dish of millet (tot). After mastering the production of knives, Kojugu then went back to carving, making the four-legged stools on which women sit (Fig. 13).[22] He made locks, first for the doors of granaries and then for house doors, before learning how to forge hoes for farming (dabaw) and axes (jelew).[23] Finally, he mastered the carving of mortars for pounding millet and other grains (kolonw).[24]

At this stage, the pupil who has only mediocre gifts and little ambition halts his formal apprenticeship. Many numuw never forge anything beyond hoes, knives, and adzes, or carve an object more complicated than a mortar or granary lock. They may continue to work next to a master artist for years without necessarily reaching an advanced level of expertise, or they may strike out on their own as producers of hoes and mortars. In either case, they acquire their own tools. Normally, making one's own tools is a part of apprenticeship, and the pupil forms his own instruments in the forge, although the master blacksmith may alter the final shapes slightly, and polish and sharpen the iron blades.[25] The first tool to be made by the apprentice is the dèsèlan or sèmè (an adze that can serve as an axe, a saw, a chisel, or a plane; McNaughton 1988, 26):

KOJUGU: Because it is a small thing he can make it quickly. If he is gifted for that [the work in the forge], he will also make a large axe [jele]. When he knows how to make that [the axe] very well, now, any piece of work that comes into his head, if it is a job that blacksmiths do, whether one shows him how to do it or one doesn't show him, he will be able to do it.[26]

Tools for making everyday objects such as mortars or knives are personal property, but they are often left in the forge at night and other blacksmiths do not hesitate to use them. Tools and their symbolism are discussed in Chapter 4, but it is important to note that master sculptors have two sets of tools, one set for everyday objects, and one set for carving ritually important objects. The second set must never be touched by anyone other than its owner, is subject to rigorous interdictions, and in the past included tiny instruments similar to dentists’ picks or engraving equipment for incising details such as scarification patterns onto sculptures. Today the average apprentice may never set eyes on a set of ritual tools, much less use them.

After obtaining his tools and finishing what one might call a technological apprenticeship, a gifted student will then seek the ritual training necessary to make sacred objects. Kojugu describes how the sequence of ‘secular’ objects gives way to ‘sacred’ ones:

KOJUGU: If you want to learn the work of blacksmiths and sculpture in particular, you will begin with a woman's hairpin. When you have made that, then you will make large spatulas [sonkalaw]. When you have made large spatulas, then you will make stools. When you have made stools, then you will make knives, then hoes, and then axes. When you have finished all these, then you will make doors, and then mortars. After all these, the things that you like to make, if your spirit is good [if you arc intelligent], you carve them. And when you sleep, if any kind of work [i.e., carving] appears to you during your sleep, you will make it. Like the creation of the Komo [mask], with the Warra [unidentified], the Gongoniw masks [another name for Tyi Warra masks], and the little old Nama masks, you can carve all of these.[27]

Kojugu himself carved the first of his seven Komo masks at the age of eighteen, and it is reasonable to assume that most artists do not begin to create ritual objects before about twenty years of age.[28] However, in exceptional instances blacksmith elders may decide to entrust the carving of an important ritual object to a very gifted but uncircumcised boy of about eight or ten, without telling him its meaning. Such objects are thought to possess exceptional nyama, both because the child does not understand what he is making and because he has no sexual experience. This situation will be discussed later, but it is important to note that these objects carry an extremely high negative valence and are usually created in order to harm or kill specific enemies. However, important objects carved by children are the exception, not the rule. This is due both to the restrictions that normally govern the creation of ritual objects, and to the rarity of child prodigies capable of carving masks. More often, even the most gifted carvers never carve any ritual object before they are circumcised.

Figure 13. A typical nonritual object, a stool (donkan kurun) made for the author by Basi Fane. According to Basi, this type of stool is called donkan because the shape of the support resembles the form of a pressure drum or donkan. The decorative pattern has been burned into the wood with a knife and a chisel heated in the forge. Photographed just outside Basi Fane's compound, 1/25/84.

Once an apprentice is skilled enough to attempt ritual objects, he usually begins with masks rather than human figures, although the same artists eventually carve both. Since many human figures are carved to represent a dead relative, creating them involves issues of likeness and resemblance that are less critical to the carving of masks. Furthermore, the levels of nyama involved in the creation of “people in wood” (yirimògòniw) are extremely high, and such a project is fraught with dangers for both the sculptor and his family. Later we will explore the Bamana conception of likeness and the problems posed by the nyama attached to the carving of yirimògòniw. Whether or not the gifted student progresses from masks to figures, his apprenticeship has only just begun when he achieves the technical skill required to carve the human form, for in the Bamana mind, dexterity is the least of it. Apprenticeship involves much more than technical mastery, and manual skill is merely the tip of an iceberg, largely composed of a life rigorously disciplined by ritual requirements and increasing spiritual expertise. The ambitious student may be able to carve a Komo mask, but with the exception of the rare instances mentioned above, he never ventures to do so until his ritual apprenticeship is well underway.

The gifted apprentice does not outdistance the mediocre student so easily, for even child prodigies must run the gauntlet of a detailed and tough selection process. Master sculptors may wait a very long time before beginning the ritual training of even a superlatively gifted apprentice. The master studies the student, and the important artist deliberately and consciously tests all his apprentices to make sure that he has an accurate sense of both their visual and psychological abilities. He tries to find out whether his pupils possess visual imagination and creative power as well as the self-confidence to work independently. The following passages suggest that perceptual intelligence and psychological maturity open doors to an advanced level of artistic training and the ritual apprenticeship that accompanies it. Let us look first at the visual tests that permit a master sculptor to bestow his trust on a gifted follower:

INTERVIEWER: Good, now, supposing that you have apprentices, how do you know that one is more intelligent than the other, how can you know that?

KOJUGU: The manner in which I know that – supposing I go out to go somewhere, I will say to one and to another, “Make all your most concentrated efforts and do this job here.” Then, I sit down with them and I make a drawing in the sand and I explain the task to them, “You must make it like this.” Indeed, the old one which was here [i.e., the old mask] is broken. I turn my back and go off. When I come back, if they have been working and they come and show me the results, saying, “Here is the thing that you told us to make, here it is,” if I take it and I examine it, the one who can understand things fast, I will find that this one has followed the road that I indicated to him. But if you take the old example and if you show it to them directly, then if they make it, you will not be able to tell who is the most intelligent. You take the design into your head and you place it in your thoughts and you show it to them like that. Then, the one who carves as you have described, even if the result is not exactly as you described, but he has followed your instructions, this one can really carve. You can teach this one. You will quickly obtain an important reputation by teaching him.[29]

This passage suggests that Bamana artists regard skill, especially skill in copying a model, as something that can be learned. They also recognize that the ability to conceptualize an object in the imagination and then realize the idea in wood is innate, and they consider this imaginative capacity the supreme test of an apprentice's ability. In fact, Kojugu explained his own progress beyond the stage of carving mortars in terms of a capacity to imagine objects visually:

KOJUGU: I stayed with that [the ordinary items of apprenticeship] and everything that people brought to me as work, even when I was resting, the work that came to me as well as the work that other people [sculptors] did that was discussed in front of me, even if I couldn't see these things with my own eyes, at night when my eyes were closed, I envisioned the work in my imagination and I calculated it, and, as soon as dawn arrived, I set myself to it. If I spent two or three days like this, I could understand the work. And even, even if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, if you told me that this work was this thing here, it was like this, like this, like this, and like that, if you described it in that way, I could calculate it in my imagination. I would spend three days thinking about it like this, and then I would make it. In my case, I learned the work of blacksmiths like this. But, the person who taught me was Kali Cissoko.[30]

Kojugu declares that he set himself the task of imagining objects he was unable to view, in order to develop the ability to carve them. Thus, he reinforced his inborn ability by nurturing the capacity both to memorize forms and to imagine them. Kojugu consciously trained himself so that he became prime material for an apprenticeship with a master sculptor. Thus, the master carver's decision to begin the ritual training of a gifted apprentice is conditioned, not just by the pupil's imaginative ability, but also by the student's psychological maturity, his interest, his powers of disciplined concentration, and his deliberate quest for a master teacher.

Let us examine Kojugu's case in more detail. Despite the emphasis on his own self-generated training program, Kojugu felt it important to add, “The person who taught me was Kali Cissoko.” In another interview Kojugu stated that Kali Cissoko was his father, and that his primary apprenticeship occurred in his natal village.[31] Although aware that his own interest and motivation had opened the doors to carving ritual objects and had enabled him to surpass his father, Kojugu followed traditional rules of respect in attributing his expertise to his parent's teaching. However, he was not unaware of the limitations on what he could learn at home. As with many gifted artists, Kojugu quickly surpassed the level of teaching available to him from his father, or even his other relatives. He told us:

KOJUGU: My fathers [the older men of his extended family], it was not with them [that he could learn to make masks such as the Komo). Their road in life was not with the old traditions of the Bamana. I saw it [a Komo mask], indeed, with someone, I saw it with an old blacksmith who was called Bourama.

INTERVIEWER: Bourama?

KOJUGU: Nhun. A native of Mansadugu.[32]

As we shall see, Kojugu's relationship to his true artistic master was predicated on his prior achievement of a high level of technical skill. Bourama was willing to accept Kojugu into a visual and ritual apprenticeship at an advanced level because the young man had already proved himself, because their manner of thinking about artistic problems was similar, and because Kojugu was absolutely determined to become a famous sculptor and had sought him out.[33] In Kojugu's case his interest led him to travel in order to view famous ritual objects:

KOJUGU: I have the habit of going on such trips [to view ritual objects]. I have the habit of voyaging to the east of our hamlet. Myself, I went on trips in that direction. I heard the news concerning a certain Komo mask, and I went to look at it during the night of the manifestation [of the Komo association], and after the night of the manifestation, I returned to our village and I worked [he means that he set himself to sculpt a similar mask]. I sculpted it and I sold it to some people. They used it as a mask for their Komo association. I made another similar one, both once and twice.[34]

Almost every artist of note has spent months traveling long distances to see certain objects or to watch another famous carver work. Such voyages demand a high degree of artistic confidence and self-reliance. An apprentice who doubts himself will never present himself to a master such as Bourama. One might think that master artists would be deluged with eager apprentices, but this is rarely the case, for many students of considerable ability prefer to stay at home and make hoes.

Why should an apprentice gifted with an excellent visual memory and a capacity for invention prefer to carve hoes for an entire lifetime? The answer lies in Bamana and Malinke beliefs about advanced apprenticeship. For the Bamana, becoming a master artist is a dangerous enterprise that demands a far higher level of commitment than is required for routine carving. To master the nyama inherent in the creation of ritual objects, the aspiring apprentice must enter into a relationship with at least one, if not several, personal spirits or djinns,[35] This enterprise is risky at best, and may very well be life-threatening, for spirits do not pardon a change of heart, exacting an instantaneous death for their betrayal. By the age of fourteen or fifteen, every apprentice is well aware that the master carver of his village owes his powers to a spirit familiar, and he also knows that in aspiring to such heights he will inevitably pay an enormous price.

Spirits are vengeful, unpredictable, and absolute in their requirements. The djinns are also seductive and can extend an inexhaustible supply of artistic ideas and ritual power to their “owners.” In addition to sculptors, other men and women can establish a rapport with a personal djinn, and different types of spirits respond to different individuals. One elderly woman may hear her djinn’s voice as clearly as though it were spoken aloud, a hunter may see strange lights in the bush and suddenly know where an animal is lurking, and a sculptor may receive regular visits from his djinn while dreaming. All my informants were unanimous in insisting on the real and very physical existence of their familiar spirits, but only a few characterized them in exclusively visual terms. As Kojugu said, “People possess different kinds of spirits,” when he wished to evade a precise description of how djinns look.[36] Like humans, djinns live in families, and their world, which is contiguous with our own, but invisible, is much like that of the Bamana. The Bamana believe that djinns live in villages and undertake daily activities. In fact, Kojugu implied that spirits have a regular schedule:

KOJUGU: Because if you get up very early in the morning, you will find that one of them [the djinns] is in the middle of leaving for the place where he will pass the rest of the day. If they haven't reached the place where they will pass the day, and if you encounter them on the road when they are in a hurry, they will create a quarrel with you even though you haven't sought it out.[37]

Much of the apprentice's training when he acquires a djinn consists of learning where and when to approach these volatile entities. As we shall see, djinns are more accessible at some places and at some times of day and night than at others; dusk, dawn, midday, and midnight are risky times to accost them, since they are reputed to turn on petitioners at these moments.[38] Particular djinns have distinct personalities and specific areas of expertise. A blacksmith who is both a famed healer and renowned sculptor may consult one djinn in regard to obtaining medicinal plants, and another for help in visualizing a mask. Despite these ‘human’ preferences and failings, djinns are never regarded as people; their powers are too great and their manifestations as shining lights, disembodied voices, or figures who appear to the “owner” and then vanish when another person appears, are too extraordinary. Djinns come from the other world, and they make sure that their “owners” know it.

All my informants were agreed that personal spirits (as opposed to those owned by communities, which are called foroba djinnew) are both male and female, and that it is most common for a male djinn to respond to a female “owner,” and a female djinn to a male “owner.” In the course of five years of fieldwork I encountered only one man whose familiar spirit was not female. In this case the spirit took the form of a bent old man with a white beard, who appeared to his owner in dreams that predicted the future, and the rapport could be viewed as a father – son relationship. Kojugu implied a great deal, both about the sexuality of the men who carve and about the source of their superior access to intuitive knowledge and visual skill, when he described the difference between male and female spirits:

KOJUGU: There are some [spirits] that are male and there are some that are female. There are male spirits and there are female ones. In my own case, it is a female. If you visit my village again, Dusu [Kojugu's wife] will not tell you, but the people who will tell you [about Kojugu's spirit] are the strangers who live in the village.

INTERVIEWER: But, why can't you tell me yourself? It's not such a grave matter. Which one of the two bestows power quickly? The female spirits or the male ones?

KOJUGU: The female spirits. If you understand each other, they can give you power very quickly. Two old men – you can pass a long time together, you can like each other, you can help each other, but the woman whom you like and who likes you, the secret that she possesses, she will tell it to you and you will tell her yours.[39]

Kojugu tells us that the majority of sculptors possess female spirits both because the feminine djinns prefer to bestow their favors on male “owners,” and because artists find a rapport with a female spirit more rewarding than that with a male familiar. He also intimates that the master sculptor's relationship with his female djinn has a sexual dimension, a facet of the artist-spirit relationship to which we shall return.

In addition to possessing unique personalities and distinct gender, spirits are associated with particular locales. The traditional term for spirit, kungo fèn, “thing of the bush,” makes their connection with the unending savanna explicit. Whatever their personality, and they may very well assume an urbane façade, spirits are more accessible to the aspiring sculptor in the loneliness of the savanna scrub, on a mountaintop, near a pool of water, or in isolated pockets of tropical forest. Sculptors may acquire spirits simply by coming upon an isolated and unexpected feature of the landscape, such as a hidden pond, and by experiencing the djinn‘s presence there. As Kojugu stated:

KOJUGU: Certain ones [sculptors], in order to execute their work [commissions] work with the djinns of the mountains. Others, their work is with the djinns who are in the water. And some others have their powers from the djinns of the earth. This is the case that we call dankunròdjinna, the djinns of the crossroads.[40]

When a spirit does not appear spontaneously, the gifted apprentice must actively seek her out. It is true that most gifted students will naturally possess the finely tuned intuition that predisposes them to hear voices and see visions from the other world, but intelligent and practical people without such perceptual skills will also seek spirits for pedestrian reasons. In response to being asked why people seek spirits, Kojugu replied:

KOJUGU: There isn't one single reason. Some people seek them in order to obtain money, a great deal of money; some people seek them to obtain secrets, the secrets of black people, and to be a cèkun [a powerful and famous leader]. So, they will search for them. Even if you want to seek one in order to have children, many children, you will seek one. Even if you seek one in order to have grazing animals, you can seek one. Each person has his own method of obtaining a djinn.[41]

If we return to the apprentice sculptor, we may find that he has wandered extensively through the bush without encountering a djinn. Like Kojugu, he has surpassed his close relatives in ability and has been forced to travel in search of a teacher. When a young sculptor presents himself to a potential tutor, he is frequently looking for more than ritual and artistic instruction; often he requests the gift of a personal spirit. For, all my informants were unanimous in stating that no one, not even the most gifted sculptor, could get far without a familiar djinn.

INTERVIEWER: Well, are there some blacksmiths who have had a great reputation, but who haven't possessed djinns? Or, are there some who seek a djinn in order to have a great reputation? Does this exist?

KOJUGU: These people exist. Some people seek them in order to possess a great reputation, but they don't have djinns. They offer sacrifices, they offer things until they wear themselves out.[42]

Kojugu added that a carver without a spirit can only create empty and “useless” objects; objects that may be visually correct, but that have no power to act in the world.

INTERVIEWER: Good, are there certain ones [sculptors] who don't possess spirits?

KOJUGU: There are certain ones who don't have spirits. They can carve wood ten times [he probably means carve the same sculpture over and over again], but it will never be of any use.[43]

Indeed, a sculptor risks death if he attempts to create important objects without the protection of a djinn, for spirits are jealous of their powers and will kill the ambitious carver who is not protected by one of their own kind.[44] Needless to say, few attempt the project.

Given the volatility of the djinn-sculptor relationship, master carvers are understandably reluctant to take on an apprentice and steer him through the dangerous waters of the spirit world. An apprentice must be absolutely sure of his talent, he must be fully adult in personality, and he must have made a conscious decision to take on the burden of a spirit familiar, no matter what the cost. The following passage suggests that a master carver accepts an advanced apprentice, only if he can demonstrate the persistence, quality of perception, and creative ability that will enable him to handle a long-term relationship with a personal djinn:

KOJUGU: The one [apprentice] who possesses a spirit, if you say to such a one, “I myself wanted to carve a certain thing, but I have forgotten the way in which one makes it, but the beginning is like this or like that, the middle is like this, and the end is like this. I have forgotten the middle.” He [the apprentice] will carve it, he will carve all the parts while you go away and leave him alone. When you come back and you find that he has produced the object in just the manner you described, the manner you described – he has reached all the limits of that; however long it takes this one, he will unite himself with spirits. The fact that djinns come out for you, all this depends on your teacher. If he is clear [honest] with you, he can put you in contact with djinns, but if he has decided to do ill, you can pass your whole life in studying and you will understand nothing.[45]

Kojugu appears to contradict himself; he first states that any apprentice who attains a certain level of artistic ability will inevitably come into contact with a spirit, and then he adds that access to a spirit depends exclusively on one's teacher's benevolence. Sculptors agree that an inborn visual gift is a necessary prerequisite for obtaining a spirit. They also recognize that some students are so extraordinarily gifted that such powers can come only from the other world; the child arrives in this world endowed with natural access to a spirit familiar. However, such a birthright is dangerous, for without appropriate tutoring, without learning the social skills and the rituals to appease older sculptors and their djinns, the apprentice of genius will inevitably die young or burn out. Gifts are inborn, but the opportunity to use them fully is socially and ritually prescribed. One needs both the protection of a benevolent teacher and of a spirit familiar to realize one's potential.

When the startlingly able apprentice finds a master carver and convinces the expert artist to teach him, an artistic dialogue can emerge between the two sculptors. Kojugu described his relationship to his teacher, Bourama, as follows:

INTERVIEWER: Bourama?

KOJUGU: Nhun. A native of Mansadugu. He, too, he was a person who possessed djinns. If he laid down at night, the work that he saw [in his sleep], when the dawn came, he executed it. Like me, also, he was like that. The day that I encountered him, I, too, I calculated it inside myself and I went to cut down a tree, I carved it and I finished it [the sculpture], and I came and showed it to him. I said, “The thing that you carved, I have carved another similar one.” He said, “Who showed you that?” I replied, “No, nobody showed me [how to do that].” Since that occurred, it was this [event] that brought us together. If he went to execute a work, we did it together. If he was about to lose himself somewhere [in the carving], I would say to him, “Teacher, in my opinion, I would say that … here, and here, and here, this should, this should be over here.” He would stop and say, “Aaa, that's true.” We showed each other our ideas, one to the other.[46]

Such a relationship is obviously built on trust and a meshing of artistic visions. The master sculptor always runs the risk that his apprentice may surpass him, and he relies on the sense of obligation and the respect owed to him by his student for protection of his public persona. As in Kojugu's case, the student may actually execute much of the carving attributed to the master sculptor, or he may provide invaluable feedback at key moments in the carving process. An intelligent apprentice, like Kojugu, evades the dangerous waters of fadenya, or overt rivalry, by choosing a teacher outside his immediate family and by adopting an explicitly deferential attitude toward his “master.” Only a foolish student will advertise his gifts so indiscreetly that his teacher and the teacher's spirits turn on him.

In some cases the apprentice may begin his career with many advantages, but his failure to find an appropriate teacher who can negotiate for him with the spirit world puts an abrupt end to his ascent. Kojugu explained the case of a sculptor, whom we would term a child prodigy, in these terms:

KOJUGU: An uncircumcised boy – there was one of my own aunt's sons who was called KoMakan, KoMakan Fane – when he saw anything at all with his eyes, if it was a product created by blacksmiths, he could make it. This occurred when he was not yet eight years old, but formerly one's parents hid such an ability. They would give you something to make, and you would make it, but they wouldn't tell you how it was used. They would reveal the use when you were circumcised. When you were circumcised you would have access to the secret of the thing [the use of the object]. But, without that [explanation] you would never know the reason [for which one carved the object]. You could carve a thing that would work harm, and you could carve a thing that would work good; I just told you, they wouldn't explain this to you until you were circumcised.[47]

According to Kojugu, this sculptor is still alive, but he has been unable to create important ritual objects, and he has never acquired a “name.”

INTERVIEWER: Does he have great renown now? Has he acquired much wealth in making sculpture?

KOJUGU: He doesn't have a great name. He knows how to do his work because he can see things very well and he can carve, but the door through which one must exit during the night, he doesn't see that door. He doesn't see that in the traditions of being a blacksmith, but he can execute his work.

INTERVIEWER: Now, since you have stated, if someone doesn't see, that is to say, “that he can't go out during the night,” I myself I don't understand this, but the manner in which you have described this, I gather that you can't really make sculpture, isn't this so?

KOJUGU: If you know things you can make it [sculpture]. If you do so, if someone ties you up through treason in the rear [if someone plots against you], then you will not be able to escape. You will stay in it [you will die]. It is for this reason that in the families of bula,[48] if you are executing a work, if you see the work during a dream, you wait one month or two, and then, in the third, you execute the work. The doors through which you will be able to exit, if you do these things, you will escape unharmed. If you do these things, nothing will happen to you among us, the black people. If you know these things, then, at that time, you can execute your work and nothing can conquer you.[49]

To clarify this passage one needs to understand that the “doors of the night” are the antipoisons and ritual practices that will enable the gifted apprentice to escape the snares set for him by rival carvers and their djinns. A young man like KoMakan, who does not acquire a “master” willing to teach him the skills to negotiate the rivalries of this world and offer him a spirit to protect him in the other, will quickly fall victim to either humans or spirits. In another discussion Kojugu explicitly emphasizes a teacher's importance in rescuing his apprentice from attacks by both competitors and djinns:

KOJUGU: If you are a worker [i.e., a carver] and you have learned the work in your head according to a certain manner, or you have encountered the “things of the bush,” if there isn't someone very important behind you [a master teacher], if you don't have a good support and protection in an important person, if you hazard yourself by making extraordinary objects, in the world of black people they will poison you to kill you.[50]

Every apprentice is well aware that he runs the risk of losing his life if he approaches spirits or carves important objects without the guidance of a master. It is almost immaterial whether the apprentice selects a teacher from his “fathers” (older men of the same extended family), from his maternal uncles,[51] or from among complete strangers; but it is essential that the master possess both the ritual and pharmacological power to protect his student. Kojugu tells us that ambitious apprentices bent on obtaining fame are driven to find a teacher by fear of death. Like KoMakan, the gifted student who fails to establish such a rapport can evade disaster only by putting his ambition aside, by refusing to use his natural gifts, by turning down the commissions that would refine his innate visual intelligence, and amounting, in the end, to nothing but a fabricator of hoes.

The Bamana and Malinke acknowledge that although one can seek the gift of a djinn from a master, inherited talent, personal zeal, friendships with other ritual experts, and the likes and dislikes of the spirit herself also affect the ease with which one obtains a familiar. Earlier in this chapter, Kojugu attributed a sculptor's ability to foresee the consequences of accepting a commission to consultations with a spirit familiar, adding that such powers are available to bula sculptors. In making this statement, he appears to imply that membership in a particular subcategory – or in Bamana terms, a “race” of blacksmiths, the bula[52] – determines both access to djinns and the nature of their gifts. Sculptors like Kojugu are ambiguous regarding the role of inheritance in obtaining spirit familiars. On the one hand they recognize that unusual genius may crop up unexpectedly in the midst of a family conspicuous for its lack of talent, but they attempt to explain the random quality of these mysterious occurrences by assuming or inventing a forgotten but illustrious ancestor for the young man or woman in question. No one, even a blacksmith, is willing to say that someone cannot possess a spirit because of his birth (they might be proven wrong); but in practice spirit “owners” seem to come from families with several generations of expertise in dealing with the other world. Although Kojugu emphasizes the importance of inheritance in obtaining spirits, he simultaneously notes the possibility of acquiring a spirit through sheer force of personality:

KOJUGU: They [here he refers to the social category of sculptor-blacksmiths] don't all have djinns. They don't all have djinns. To be an “owner” of djinns is a problem of ancestry and one's roots [in the sense of genealogical inheritance], or even, if a man is a great personality and his dream is hard [he obtains information about the future in his dreams] and what he has been told, there, where he lies down to sleep, he has verified, he has verified it, he has verified it, and he hasn't revealed what he has been told to anyone, and the instructions that were given to him, he has executed them; thus he can become the “owner” of a djinn.[53]

Despite this acknowledgement of the importance of single-minded determination and individual personality in obtaining a djinn, it is rare to find a specific case in which a blacksmith's ancestry is not invoked to explain the current manifestation of a spirit familiar. In another passage, Kojugu links djinn ownership to membership in particular blacksmith families, each of which has its own reputation for spirit ownership and sculptural achievement:

KOJUGU: If there are many people in my family, I, I am bula, I myself am bula, my father is bula, my mother is bula, and these [the bulaw] have their djinns apart. There are certain who are Sinayogo, some also are Bagayogo, another has a bula father but his mother is Bagayogo or the mother is Fane, or the mother is Kante, but the father is bula; each one has the djinns belonging to his lineage. But if one talks about the djinn who has appeared in its true form, the person whose father is bula and whose mother is bula, it is for this person that the apparition is swift [the djinn appears in its normal or most typical form, i.e., as a white-haired old man without going through many strange transformations, and is seen by the sculptor early on in life]. The person whose father is Kante and whose mother is Kante, they, too, they have their djinns apart. The person whose father is Fane and whose mother is Fane, all of these have their djinns of the lineage. But just as there are some who go beyond everyone else in their knowledge, so the djinns too outdo each other, and men also outdo each other like that [presumably because they own powerful djinns]. No one [either an individual or a family] will tell his secret to another. We, the Sinayogo, Bagayogo, Kante, Fane, Danyogo, each one has his djinn of the lineage, but no one will tell anything to another.[54]

The contradictions in Kojugu's discussions of access to djinns suggest that the Bamana need to soften the spirit of competitive individualism that infuses the quest for a djinn, with explanations and family references that situate the outstanding artist within a social frame, and attribute extraordinary abilities to particular ancestors and to membership in specific lineages.

The Bamana reconcile inheritance of a spirit with the master's ‘gift’ of a djinn to his apprentice in the following way. Sculptors have primary access to spirits through either personality, inheritance, or a combination of the two, but a master artist may sometimes bestow access to his familiar spirit on a close friend or a worthy pupil:

KOJUGU: To be the possessor of a djinn is a problem of one's lineage and of friendship. If you are friends with someone, if you care for each other, you will say, “So and so, at this point you are familiar with the whole affair,” and you will continue, “I want to place you in correspondence with a djinn.” If the man is courageous, you will do it. This man [the one who has received the djinn] can show it [the spirit] to his son, and it can become their recourse and hope. When the father dies the son will perform the work [of caring for the djinn]. If the child gets along with the djinn, they [the son and the djinn] will execute the work together.[55]

Thus, a djinn, originally obtained through a gift, may ultimately be transferred from father to son, entering the familial network of spirit inheritance. Such exchanges are not limited exclusively to personal friendships or the bonds between student and “master”; experts who maintain more distant, and one might almost say ‘official’ friendships, may exchange djinns so that each artist emerges from the pact with not one, but two or three spirits.

KOJUGU: A certain person can be together with a djinn, but he is not together with the birisi [a “race” or variety of djinn], and he is also not together with the gòtè [magically endowed dwarfs who constitute another “race” of djinns]. All the types of djinns have their categories among themselves, but those who are the truly, truly important men – if you have heard that we say the “leader of black people,” then we are referring to three people who complement each other [in ritual knowledge and skill], because the djinns belonging to each person's lineage are not the same, and if you don't wish to do harm, each to the other, you will come and give yours [your djinn] to me. I, too, I am together with certain djinns, and I will give mine to you. And another person will come and give his [djinns] to me. We will exchange them together like that. All of this then becomes the source of your power to command [he refers back to his definition of a “leader of black people”]. But if you don't live in the same country, you don't do this. You and the person who comes from the same region, you do this with him.[56]

Since the powers bestowed by djinns often have explicitly political overtones (for instance, the ability to foretell the future is often used to predict success or failure in battle),[57] djinn exchange is one way of cementing alliances between village groupings (kafow) and ensuring that the region's most prominent ritual specialists cooperate, rather than indulge in the internecine competition to which their individualistic natures often lead them. Such an exchange also provides each party to the agreement with a veritable arsenal of spirits, each of whom bestows its own particular skills on the artists in question, enabling them to expand the range of objects they carve.

Despite the possibility of acquiring djinns through inheritance, personal friendship, or semiofficial alliances, some numu families never seem to obtain tutelary spirits. According to Kojugu, the absence of startling talent and an accompanying spirit does not mean that such families are not numuw; rather, this void may occur because the family in question has intentionally killed their djinn.

INTERVIEWER: But are there certain men, certain blacksmiths or certain lineages, who, right up to their death, will never obtain a djinn? They cannot keep a djinn in this world?

KOJUGU: That occurs. You will find that this lineage of numuw has killed their djinn. Among the black people, there is a basi [a ritual object] that is called Soro. If you own this, if you cross the path of a djinn with the Soro, the djinn dies, but if the djinn crosses your path, the djinn dies too. If you are on the mountain, then the djinns will leave you alone [i.e., the Soro is used to protect oneself when wandering in mountainous areas]. If you own the Soro, up until seven generations have gone by, it is extremely difficult that you possess a djinn or that the djinns come out for someone of your lineage. That can happen [that a family can consistently lack a djinn].[58]

Of course, if unexpected talent suddenly crops up in such a family, the Bamana comment that the seven generations covered by the Soro have elapsed, leaving the blacksmith family open to spirit communication; or they say that the young sculptor in question has suddenly retrieved his family's lost djinn through ritual work. Thus, ownership of objects like the Soro places long-term, but not necessarily permanent, obstacles to blacksmith-spirit relations, and rare cases of isolated genius can always be justified by the same rules that are used to explain a general lack of talent.

Djinns are the sine qua non of the sculptor's world, but how does one establish regular contact with them? The gifted apprentice who has stumbled on a djinn near a deep pond hidden in the bush needs more than one encounter; he requires a daily relationship on which he can depend for support and advice. Learning to divine affords a point of entry into the other world.[59] Thus, in the Bamana world the master sculptor is, by definition, a master diviner, for an inability to predict the future will leave the carver an easy target for his rivals and their djinns.

INTERVIEWER: But, can a blacksmith become a great sculptor with a great reputation among other blacksmiths or bula if he doesn't know how to divine? Is this possible?

KOJUGU: That is difficult – to become a renowned blacksmith without being able to divine and without being together with a djinn.

INTERVIEWER: Nhun.

KOJUGU: No, you won't hear of that.[60]

Kojugu tells us that both divinatory skill and a tutelary spirit are necessary to evade the dangers of ambition.

At first glance, divination may seem a skill far removed from carving. Nevertheless, not only does divining reveal which commissions to accept or refuse; it is also visual training. The Bamana and Malinke use many divination techniques, including throwing cowrie shells (Fig. 14) and interpreting the patterns into which they fall; interpreting the flight of birds and the appearance and movement of certain animals; the duga, two flat planes of bamboo sticks attached to a spine whose winglike movements to and fro are interpreted in terms of a yes/no response to questions; and above all, tinye da, or sand divining (Fig. 15).[61]

In sand divining the ritual expert (who may or may not be a numu; all great sculptors are expert diviners, but not all good diviners are numuw) first smooths the very fine sand lying in a demarcated ritual space about two feet across.[62] He then mutters an incantation (klissi), presumably imploring the aid of his spirits, spits into the sand, and begins to sketch a set of jagged marks in a semicircle around the edge of the divining area. In sketching these marks he is inspired by forces beyond his control, which take possession of his right hand. When he has finished a single semicircle, he counts the number of ‘points’ or marks and, depending on whether the final number is odd or even, places a single or double mark to the right-hand side of the divining area. He then repeats the performance seven times, giving him eight marks to his right. Each of the eight slots to the right of the diviner is called a “house” (so), and each house refers to a particular set of issues such as money, sex, political power, co-wife relationships, etc. The diviner's skill lies in the extent to which his hand can translate messages from the other world, in his interpretations of the particular combination of “houses” thrown up by the sand, and in his ability to prescribe the correct sacrifices that will rearrange the forces controlling the client's life into a more propitious pattern.

When observing different diviners handle the sand, it is clear that successful practitioners are able to release and yet control their right hand so that the linear marks flow out of their fingers with seeming ease. They relax the muscles in the hand so that one actually seems to perceive a nonhuman force flowing through them. This fusion of control and total relaxation lies very close to the complete concentration and manual fluidity for which master sculptors aim when carving. Furthermore, the interpretation of the often-illegible lines demands the mastery of what we would call drawing, a mastery comparable to that of the sculptor who can see the finished objects as he blocks out the rough outlines of a mask or figure. In mastering sand divination, an apprentice sculptor is therefore developing a relaxed control of his hand and the powers of visualization necessary to carve important sculpture.

Figure 14. A Beledugu diviner and healer (age 71 in 1984) wearing a mud-cloth shirt, an embroidered diviner's hat, and Islamic prayer beads. He is assessing the meaning of a handful of cowries that he has just thrown. Photographed in Salimata's compound in a small Beledugu town, 4/15/84.

It is also worth noting that the ‘signs’ created in the sand (Fig. 15) are viewed as emblems of movement and change in the world of spirits. Just as a bird's flight can signal the conjunction of otherworldly powers that results in a stranger's arrival in the viewer's compound, so too, the marks in the sand reflect the particular conjunction of invisible forces that determine the client's situation at the moment of consultation. The sand is like a mirror in which one sees shadows of the forces that inhabit the other world. It is a tabula rasa that functions as a door to the world of the spirits, a physical point of contact with the unseen that surrounds one.

The sculptor who learns to divine as part of his apprenticeship is learning to interpret visual phenomena – the marks in the sand, the flight of birds, the appearance of a monkey – as emblems of powerful forces outside this world. As he enters more deeply into divination and carving, he will progressively experience the physical world in terms of the invisible universe surrounding him. In so doing, visual experiences – the shape of a bird's wing, the movement of a snake, the curve of an antelope's horn – will become fused with the rearrangements of nonhuman power they have come to signal. Thus, in learning to divine, the apprentice sculptor is also learning the visual code of the spirits. As he advances, he will gradually come to transfer automatically between the voices he hears, the visions he sees, and certain visual phenomena in this world. Then, when his personal spirit emerges from an isolated tree in the bush, whispering advice and a description of the mask he must carve, the sculptor can clothe these instructions in the visual vocabulary he has slowly absorbed over years of divination: an antelope's horns, a bird's wings, or the pattern on the back of a snake. Eventually, the bird's wing becomes “the same as” the fearlessness characteristic of this particular bird, and the acute angle of this particular horn is “the same as” the swift movement of this tiny but rapid antelope.

To understand the visual importance of learning to divine, it is also important to realize that the stringent ritual requirements for carving important sculpture preclude much trial work; the sculptor frequently cannot draw or even carve a preliminary ‘sketch’ of the object, but must create an object of great visual power at the first attempt. In some sense, then, the visual thinking required for able divination offers the apprentice sculptor the opportunity to practice the conceptualization of visual ideas, to transfer easily among the geometric form, the abstract idea it encodes, and the visual image to which it corresponds.

In the following passage Kojugu describes the way in which a mastery of divination enables the sculptor to locate himself in the unseen world, protecting him from possible attack. Kojugu's words also suggest that mastering the signs of divination grounds the artist visually within a world filled with conflicting images:

INTERVIEWER: Does each blacksmith – if you have to make sculpture is it obligatory to divine, for you, yourself, to divine?

KOJUGU: If you must make sculpture and you have mastered that, it is necessary that you, yourself, know how to divine. If not, one day you will meet someone who doesn't like you [a veiled way of saying someone who detests you], and he will tell you something in a hidden way and leave you with that. At another moment he will do something to destroy you, and your fame will be lost. But if you yourself know [how to divine], you know the sand [divination in the sand], you know the place where you are sitting, you know the place where you lie down to sleep, or again, you know the sand [by citing the “place where you are sitting” and “the place where you lie down to sleep” he means that you have to know how to divine in any place and under any circumstances], it is this which is good. But if you can't do it under all these circumstances, you will float [literally, float as in the water] in making sculpture.[63]

The blacksmith who “floats” is certainly at the mercy of the powerful winds generated by other sculptors’ envy, but he is also adrift in a world of unexplained visual phenomena – birds’ flight, the shape of a particular tree, and the marks of divination. It is precisely because these visual events are the carriers of information about the other world that he cannot find his way out of traps set for him by other sculptors any more than he can interpret a djinn‘s messages concerning the forms of the mask he is enjoined to carve. A sculptor who cannot divine is rudderless in a confusing world of competing images and explanations.

Training in divination enables the apprentice to code and interpret messages from the spirit world, but how does one expand one's senses to receive these messages? We have already noted that ritual objects are a special class of “medicines,” or basiw. Both this categorization and statements by nobles and blacksmiths, suggest that by the time a sculptor creates a carved “medicine” or ritual object, he, himself, is literally soaked in basiw or traditional drugs. In describing famous ritual experts, French-speaking, educated Bamana often say, “Il est pourri de medicaments,” or “He is rotten with drugs,” to express their feeling that any great savant has soaked his body in basiw in order to preserve himself, just as we may keep an interesting specimen in formaldehyde. We have mentioned earlier that the newborn numu receives his first bath in water taken from the family's gorodaga, the jar containing the water that cools red-hot iron in the forge. This bath establishes the social identity of every numu child, but special children – those born with the amniotic sac still wrapped around them, those with particular birthmarks, or those for whom the divinatory signs signal an extraordinary future – receive additional baths from birth onward. The water for these baths is always provided by the child's father, who, as a ritual expert, knows how to prepare the bathwater. Some plants must be pounded cold and then placed in the bathwater, while others must be boiled first, with the cooled water used to bathe the child. Continuous bathing in medicinal solutions begins immediately after birth and continues throughout a ritual expert's lifetime. These baths are considered so critical to the child's future that the right to wash a special child is taken away from the child's mother and the task is given over to the father's mother or sister, or even to the mother's co-wife. The natural mother is eliminated partly because she is not old enough to have mastered the many incantations or klissiw that must be muttered over the baby as it is bathed, but also because a knowledgeable father always suspects that his wife may wish to preserve her son from a future fraught with difficulties. The signs of specialness are difficult to hide, and an intelligent mother will know fairly soon after birth whether her child is marked out as a future sculptor of ritual objects. As we shall see, this path entails many personal sacrifices and, in some senses, a distorted life. A loving mother may very well wish her child to have an ordinary future, or she may simply wish to express an underlying animosity toward her husband by thwarting his plans for the infant. In any case, the father takes no chances and, with the exception of breast feeding, the baby is often taken over by an elderly woman the father trusts.

Figure 15. Tracings left in the sand by an expert sand diviner or tinyedala. Photographed in the consulting chamber of a famous diviner living in a Jitumu hamlet, 12/1/84.

Many of the pounded leaves, branches, and roots (all the medicines concocted from these substances are known by the general term, furaw, literally, “leaves”) used by the Bamana have definite and strong physiological effects; the infant is usually given some of the “medicine” to drink as well as being washed in it. Such baths are usually given daily (in some cases two or three times a day), a regimen that may very well build up a particular response or particular susceptibilities in a small child, or even an adult. As the child grows, the father and grandfather monitor the effect of their “medicines,” perhaps adding some to increase memory, others to augment intelligence, and still others to accentuate a nascent divinatory ability. By the age of six or seven, the young numu will have been bathed innumerable times in powerful drugs, and, depending on the child's psychological maturity, he may have already received explanations of the baths he must take. A seven-year-old may very well understand that the mixture he drinks and then bathes in each morning is a lakari or antidote against possible poisoning by another sculptor who rivals his father.[64] Daily washing in and consumption of antipoisons intensifies as the apprentice grows in skill and ambition. Thus, the Bamana are not wrong when they refer to an eighty-year-old sculptor as “soaked” in drugs, since every artist of any note has been consuming and absorbing various pharmacological preparations since the day of his birth.

This lifelong treatment has two primary purposes. The first, as already mentioned, is to protect the able child, apprentice, or master artist against poisoning by rivals. Whether or not death by poison is as frequent as the Bamana believe, the fear of falling victim to a competitor's armory of poisons determines much of the sculptor's behavior. It is commonly thought that one achieves artistic or ritual supremacy only by killing those already in power; Nyamaton openly stated that he had killed an important village notable through poisoning and that this had been necessary in order to obtain his position and renown.[65] Famous sculptors, like Basi, are continually on the watch for the poisons that they believe may be introduced into their food, and always carry special supplies of various antidotes so that they may consume additional doses if necessary. Gatherings of ritual experts (these are often funerals, although they may simply be meetings called by the head ritual expert of a particular geographic region) are well known, not just because they are occasions for the intellectual discussion of traditional knowledge, but also because they afford opportunities to poison one's rivals. An apprentice who walks in on a group of seven or eight dignitaries from outlying regions gathered together in a makeshift, tin-roofed, Bamako room will never willingly share their meal, although it may be offered him many times over. He well knows that the seemingly convivial assembly often hides bitter emnities and many years of pharmacological warfare. In one case we were told of a supreme expert whose thin visage and body seemed to bear burn marks down half of his face and his right side. This soma, or expert in traditional drugs, had so dosed himself in antidotes that his skin itself had very literally “burned.”[66] The apprentice who dares to share a bowl of food with such a man is, in Bamana terms, making an open declaration of his equality with the expert. Such a gesture will be interpreted as a challenge to the meticulously ranked power structure of experts, who test the aspirant by “throwing”[67] their own poisons at him, and the sculptor who survives acquires a particular rank, depending on the virulence of the poisons he is thought to have consumed and resisted. At a certain point, the ambitious apprentice has no choice; if he wishes to acquire a “name,” he must take his life in his hands and throw himself into the fray, stepping forward to eat out of the same dish as his superiors and challenging their powers. In fact, the aspirant must not only survive this ordeal, but he must use his own developing arsenal of drugs in the hope that a famous expert will die shortly after the group meal. Such a death will be immediately attributed to the brash newcomer, who thereby acquires a reputation. No wonder that a careful father feeds antidotes to his seven-year-old son, or asks his own mother to wash the newborn child with special medicines.

Bamana sculptors and ritual experts will almost never divulge the recipes for either their poisons or the antidotes they consume so avidly.[68] However, the following description of the effects produced by the sculptor's traditional “medicines” suggests that exposure to these products may induce hallucinations. If so, the Bamana would not be the first people to locate and consume mind-altering drugs in a search for spiritual knowledge and power.

INTERVIEWER: All right, but does a blacksmith-sculptor who washes himself with such leaves [usually a boiled concoction made with particular leaves] – is it the trees [the medicine] that transform him, or is it the djinns, for instance, in the case where a sculptor has a great reputation?

KOJUGU: The tree with which you wash yourself can transform you [b'i yèlèma]; the tree is used to wash with. The tree that you must really use for yourself, to wash yourself with – if you wash yourself with all these trees you will change [i b'i yèlèma]. It is for this reason that up until your death you [the sculptor] will never have the courage to wash yourself with all these trees.

INTERVIEWER: Nhun.

KOJUGU: Nhun. Aaa! Ba! Ba! Ba! Ba! [An exclamation that emphasizes the force of the leaves he has been discussing.][69]

The critical term in Kojugu's response is the expression i b'i yèlèma, which Bazin translates as (1) “to change, to transfuse,” (2) “to reform, to convert,” (3) “to turn, to return, to change position,” (4) “to translate, to distort, to metamorphosize,” and (5) “to pass by” (Bazin 1906, 680–1). The expression can be used to convey either spatial transition, as in the example, “We passed by on the other side of the river”; a physical transition, as in the meanings “to distort, to metamorphosize, to transfuse”; or a psychological transition, as in the total change of personality indicated by “to reform, to convert.” Kojugu declares that traditional drugs produce the “changing” of the sculptor, a “changing” which alters an ordinary person into one that sees and communicates with spirits. The “changing” that produces visions and enables the gifted apprentice to “see” and “hear” his spirit familiar is probably achieved through the consumption of drugs that we would label hallucinogenic. It is clear from talking with many different informants that the consumption of such traditional “trees” or drugs is absolutely essential to a sculptor's formation. The gifted apprentice will simply not progress beyond a certain limit without a constant diet of various prophylactic and vision-giving “medicines.” Therefore, he does not seek a teacher merely on the basis of the master sculptor's artistic gifts, but he also evaluates the pharmacological knowledge of his tutor. A generous teacher will not only advise his apprentice on daily dosages of the “medicines” appropriate for him, but he will also monitor their effects and gradually introduce his apprentice to new and more potent furaw that will enable him to contact his spirit. An apprentice sculptor may travel from master to master in search of ever more powerful poisons, antidotes, and spirit-producing drugs, becoming a repository of pharmacological knowledge and literally soaking himself in medicines.

In some sense, the master sculptor who has soaked himself in a lifetime of medicinal washings and drug consumption becomes a living “medicine” or basi. Many Bamana believe that such individuals are so filled with powerful “medicines” that it is extremely dangerous to go near them, much less to touch them. Some famous experts cannot be touched even by members of their own families; they receive their food privately in a bowl carefully set in front of them, and eat alone. The Bamana perceive clear physical changes in the ritual experts who place themselves on a lifetime regimen of drug use, changes that alter the sculptor's gender identity, sexuality, and his ability to engender children. Although we will discuss these issues farther on, here, I would like only to suggest that as the “medicine”-soaked sculptor has become a “medicine” or basi in his own right, so, in some sense, carver and object are “the same,” for it may be just as dangerous to touch the sculptor as to brush against the object he has carved. By soaking himself in “leaves,” the sculptor transforms his very flesh into an analogue for the wood he carves. In a very physical and real way, the numu, washed in water from the forge at birth and steeped in a lifetime of traditional chemicals, becomes both the iron that he forges and the wood that he carves.

Both divination and plant-derived “medicines” are pathways in and out of the spirit world, but there is a third avenue. Some sculptors communicate regularly with their djinns in dreams, and may even discover that they possess a familiar spirit while dreaming. Spirit dreams are referred to as sugow ka farin, or “dreams that are hard, dreams that have power,”[70] a characterization which translates the fact that the dreamer receives “hard” information about the future from his djinn. The same phrase also designates predictive dreams that lack a spirit encounter. The Bamana do not leave dreaming to chance, however, hoping that a spirit will choose to visit them at night; like the apprenticeship in divination and the carefully portioned doses of traditional drugs, dreams too are rationed. From childhood on, every apprentice is well aware that the great artists, diviners, and healers of his community devote three nights a week to their djinn. Men who wish to master traditional knowledge of any kind are instructed to give up sleeping with their wives on Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday nights.[71] Each ritual practitioner has special preparations that he devises, or that his master gives him, to prepare him for a night of visions. In one Islamized informant's case, these preparations consisted of washing extremely carefully, praying to Allah, and then lying down to dream. He reported that he might continue this procedure for several Thursday nights before seeing his spirit, who talked to him in a straightforward, conversational style as if he had been awake. Less Islamized dreamers probably wash themselves with particular leaves prior to sleeping, but both fervently traditional and Islamized men take care not to come into polluting contact with their wives or any other sexually active woman.

This strict interdiction on contact with women reflects not only the conviction that sexual thoughts or activity will interfere with spirit communication, but also a deep belief that, like men's real wives, djinns are personally and often violently jealous.[72] Kojugu told me that he had tried to sleep with his girlfriend on a night that should have been devoted to his djinn. The spirit (a female) possessed him while asleep, causing him to thrash about in bed and to kick his girlfriend so hard that she was forced to get dressed and leave him alone with his djinn.[73] Given spirits’ jealous nature, it is important that a sculptor's wives accept his commitment to his familiar spirit. When negotiating and finalizing marriage arrangements, it is common practice for sculptors’ families to select a woman from a djinn-possessing family. Such a girl will not only be familiar with the etiquette of dreaming, but she will have been trained to accept an irregular sexual life that includes long periods of abstinence. Likewise, the woman's family will not match a young girl lacking in maturity, character, or self-control with a potential sculptor of ritual objects, for they are well aware of the demands imposed by such a partnership.

Djinns are jealous and difficult, but they also woo the sculptor with information and artistic vision. Kojugu described the process of dreaming as follows:

KOJUGU: … If you dream of something and that occurs, if you dream that tomorrow a certain thing will happen, if that occurs once, twice, three times, and even four times you keep this in your memory, and no matter what work you are about to do, that which you do, that will realize itself correctly.[74]

The information received from one's spirit in dreams may include predictions of commissions to be received; instructions to search for a particular tree in a precise location; incantations to be uttered when cutting the tree; or information as to the size of a mask, the length of its horns, and a precise picture of its appearance. The successful sculptor will also be informed about the birth of specially gifted children within the village, the existence of sorcery in and outside his family, marriages that should or should not be contracted on behalf of his sons, visitations by strangers, his rivals’ movements, their possible attempts to poison him, and sculptures that are being carved by other experts. In fact, the sculptor expects to receive prior warning of all events of any importance by talking with his spirit in dreams. However, the sculptor must pledge his silence in return for privileged access to information. In Kojugu's words:

KOJUGU: And you who are cursed, you have seen that thing in your dream, but you tell it to everyone, you will not communicate with a djinn.[75]

Thus, a numu may refuse a seemingly advantageous marriage for his brother's son without giving any reason; his spirit has advised against it, but he cannot reveal this. A sculptor may refuse to carve a particular mask, no matter how many cows the village commissioning the object is prepared to give him, or he may warn a certain family that they must make a major sacrifice (a sheep or a bull) without giving them any reason. In a traditional village, such pronouncements are heeded, for an elderly noble will know without being told that the sculptor who prescribes a heavy sacrifice is merely relaying the information gathered from his djinn. Likewise, the family head who fails to heed a famous sculptor's advice knows that he is actually disregarding a communication from a spirit, and this knowledge will eat away at him until he has made the requisite sacrifice. No one, especially in public, will discuss the source of these instructions, but everyone is aware of their real origin. Indeed, although djinns are important to sculptor-blacksmiths as a source of ideas and visual images, it is their general information-giving function that matters to the community as a whole. The famous sculptor may be more renowned for his ability to predict the future and prescribe sacrifices than for his artistic achievements, which are sometimes recognized by only a select few.

Divination, “leaves” or “medicines,” and dreaming are all methods for communicating with one's djinn. They all demand a disciplined way of life and a mastery of a certain body of knowledge. For the Bamana, it goes without saying that the aspiring sculptor will order his life and acquire an intellectual focus. However, sculptors do not believe that this rigorous self-formation fully accounts for djinn ownership. A djinn may open communication with many sculptors, but she stays only with a sculptor who can give her something of real value. A sculptor must pay for his relationship and, as with “needs,” or makow, there are only a few payments of any worth. A young carver of promise confronts the most powerful barrier to success when, at the beginning of the relationship, the djinn asks him whether he is prepared to sacrifice other human beings, his own sexuality, or his life span to artistic achievement. Let us begin with the most frequently requested payments, human beings.

It is often unclear whether spirits request a human life directly, or whether they communicate their wishes via the apprentice's master. Kojugu describes a generic encounter with a spirit as follows:

KOJUGU: If you are beginning to sculpt [ritual objects] and if you have studied without success, if you encounter the things of the bush [spirits] who want to come out for you, if the thing of the bush says, “My price is a person for you to become a blacksmith-sculptor whose name will be repeated by everyone,” then, if you accept you will ask, “You are referring to what kind of person?” If she [the spirit] says that it is your first wife, if you accept, you give your wife to her. If she says that it is your first child, if you accept, you give the child to her. Nhun. In all the country of Fuladugu there is nobody ahead of me in working iron. That [agreement] took place in far off years.

INTERVIEWER: At that time you gave how many children?

KOJUGU: I gave my first son.

INTERVIEWER: To do what? Why did you give him?

KOJUGU: For the work of blacksmiths and sorcery.[76]

This account describes a one-on-one conversation between sculptor and spirit, but another interview suggests that spirit propositions are usually mediated by the master carver. At an appropriate moment in a young artist's career, his teacher will detect the spirit's proposition through divination and will then explain the djinn’s wishes to the apprentice. One suspects that the tutor may use the spirit's demands as a test of his student's commitment, and that the master artist may time his presentation so as to reinforce the apprentice's bond to him. The following passage suggests that teacher and student are linked forever by the secret agreement to “take” human life, an agreement to which “Allah himself” stands as witness:

KOJUGU: A long time ago my master, Bourama, told me this: “My student, I see very clearly, I see that you are destined to have many children. To have many children, and gain great fame as a sculptor, and be popular in general; what do you think about this?” He went on to say, “You will have seven boys in succession, and they will all be born in good physical condition.” I replied, “I don't really want a wife and even less so children.” I told him that. He tried to do something [a ritual procedure], for indeed, he said that it isn't good [not to have any children]. To have no children, either boys or girls, from the time of your birth through your old age and until your death is not good. And, indeed, if you agree to this, at your death your fame will perish. That is bad. In my own case the sarati [contract] that was established between us for my own children is in force up to this day. Now he [Bourama] is dead, but Allah himself is aware of it [the contract]. And when the account is full, it will end there.[77]

A short time later in the same interview Kojugu continues:

KOJUGU: When he [Bourama] told me about the problem of the children, I told him that I didn't want them. He [Bourama] said, “Your reputation will begin to grow before you are forty years old.” He said, “When you are more than forty with your white hair, you won't even have time to go to the bathroom due to the [number of] consultations and the flow of people [to see you].” He said, “You must be patient like the earth.” All the statements that he made have been realized one by one up to now, here, where I am sitting now. Even the fact that I am working with you now, he told me about all this, but I myself thought that it was really the djinns and that we should work together [i.e., that the djinns gave Kojugu the counsel to work with us]. But now, the work that I am doing [with you], I think that he told me about it. All his pronouncements are realizing themselves one by one. And regarding children, with all that you do in your life, what he told me about the problem of children, that I wouldn't have more than three sons is true. One has already died. One is living, and there remains one to come. He told me all these things. I told him that I accept [the contract]. He said the following: “In regard to the seven children that you are destined to have, they will all die with the exception of three sons.” He explained to me how this was arranged, and he executed it [the contract]. I too explained it to my wife, and I carried out the actions that my master told me to do.[78]

Kojugu's statement, “I carried out the actions that my master told me to do,” probably means that he performed the ritual acts that would guarantee his success and fame, but that would also cause him to lose four of his seven potential sons to the spirit world. Taking these actions is important because the apprentice's oral acceptance of the agreement with his spirit binds him to fulfill his part of the Faustian bargain. Whether one-on-one or mediated through the apprentice's tutor, the conversation with the spirit assumes the character of a legally binding contract or sarati.[79] In 1906 Bazin defined the word sarati as “agreement, make an agreement, impose conditions,” and in particular as “agree on a term of payment.” Today, Westernized Bamana living in Bamako use the word to refer to mortgage payments, and villagers employ it to refer to the stage-by-stage fulfillment of any long-term debt. Kojugu uses the term to mean “contract,” and he emphasizes the binding nature of the verbal spirit agreements, comparing them to a Western legal contract:

KOJUGU: That is the reason for which one offers the sheep [to one's djinn]. One gives a white bull as an offering. That is such a one … that which you, the white people, call sarati. If two people take the sarati, that if one will do this, then I will do that; if that person does this and you, you refuse to do that, will you go to judgment or will you not go to judgment [in a court of law]?

INTERVIEWER: You will go to judgment.

KOJUGU: If you give a bull as an offering to a djinn or you give her a person as an offering, the thing that you ask for, it is that thing that she will do for you, out of necessity. Out of necessity! It is like this – making the contract. One cuts the tree [for a sculpture], and one offers a sheep; but in my case, it wasn't like that, because for me, she didn't tell me to do that. It is she who gives me my personal name, it is she who gives me my family name [i.e., fame].[80]

According to Kojugu, both spirit and sculptor are bound in perpetuity by the sarati, or contract. Once the artist has made the agreed-upon offering, his djinn has no choice but to fulfill her side of the bargain “out of necessity!” Both sculptor and spirit are caught and held by the equivalent of a legally witnessed Western contract. Kojugu's explanation of the economic sacrifices (a sheep, a bull) made by the sculptor, Bazin's 1906 definitions of sarati, and contemporary Bamana idiom, suggest that the Bamana conceptualize spirit contracts as barter agreements. In a carefully calibrated economic equation, success in blacksmithing, sorcery, and sculpture is meted out by the spirit familiar in return for payments usually made in human life.

In keeping with the overt decision-making structure of the Bamana family, the aspiring sculptor always offers a dependent over whom he has legal disposition: his mother, first wife, or child.[81] A sculptor does not and cannot offer another adult man. In theory such contracts are always secret, but members of the extended family surrounding a great blacksmith will note the rapid deaths of his wives and children, and draw their own conclusions without uttering a word. Indeed, a sculptor who has achieved great fame often finds it difficult to acquire additional wives, for few families wish to place one of their young women in a position where she is an inevitable pawn in her husband's dealings with the spirit world.[82]

Although all my informants universally agreed that fame of any kind had to be bought with the gift of life to a spirit familiar, no one was willing to assert that a particular sculptor had actually killed a member of his own family. Kojugu came the closest to such a statement in the following interview:

INTERVIEWER: During your whole life have you ever heard that a blacksmith existed somewhere; everything made by him was disliked, everything was ugly, no one bought anything? Good. Now, he gave his son in a sacred pact with the djinns, or even, he gave certain of his children as offerings, and after that he became able to carve extraordinary things, and he was able to make many, many things. He gained renown and many clients.

KOJUGU: I have seen someone like that. The person I have observed who worked like that, his works [sculptures] were not liked by people. People considered his works ugly. He lives next to us in a hamlet.

INTERVIEWER: What is his name?

KOJUGU: His name is Numufiyn.

INTERVIEWER: What is the name of the hamlet he comes from?

KOJUGU: He comes from Sakoro. He is called Numufiyn Danyogo. The village where he was born is a village of the Komo. This village is called Gabakoro. This blacksmith-sculptor lives next to our village. He executed this work [the ritual work of carrying out the pact], and then all his works [sculptures] were appreciated. Indeed, it's his daughter that I took in marriage for my son.

INTERVIEWER: But did he have the habit of giving one of his children as an offering so that his works might be appreciated? Does that happen?

KOJUGU: [with great hesitation and uncertainty] N, n. He cannot.[83]

When listening to Kojugu on the tape one has the impression that he wants to respond in the affirmative, declaring that Numufiyn Danyogo did indeed “offer” a child to his djinn, but that he is well aware that this statement might implicate him and Numufiyn in an administrative inquiry. Thus, Kojugu states that Numufiyn “executed this work, and then all his works [sculptures] were appreciated,” but he is not willing to specify what executing the work means in concrete terms.

Furthermore, we should remember that the Bamana and Malinke concept of offering or sacrificing may not correspond to ours; a great expert who performs rituals designed to cause the death of one of his children believes that he has “killed” that child. To Kojugu, it is immaterial whether Numufiyn has actually poisoned his child or simply concluded a ritual agreement with his spirit; the results are the same, for Numufiyn's child will surely die, “taken” by the spirit familiar. In the Bamana world, it is the intention to offer one's child that is the key element in the spirit contract; it matters little whether the sculptor intervenes physically in order to shorten his child's life, or whether he simply performs certain ritual actions that will, in and of themselves, accomplish the same purpose.

In fact, my informants placed much greater stress on the efficacy of the sculptor's “works” or ritual actions than on more material methods such as poisoning. The general belief seemed to be that physical interventions were unnecessary, for the person offered to a djinn would inevitably and mysteriously die once the artist had concluded the contract. This interpretation is borne out by Kojugu's description of his own sarati expressed in the phrase, “I carried out the actions my master told me to do.” Kojugu's statement implies that the ritual operations carried out at the time of his sarati assured the deaths of certain of his future children, although they had not yet been born. I was unable to judge how often poison is employed to hasten the process begun by ritual work, although it is clear that young children often suffer because the husband has informed the wife that a particular child “belongs to” his familiar spirit. In view of the extraordinarily high child mortality rate, a mother's belief that her child will inevitably die, and her ensuing despair and passivity, may well be enough to bring about death. As the following passage suggests, the sculptor's wife usually becomes an active participant in his contract:

KOJUGU: You [the sculptor and the spirit] will agree on a pact. In my case, as you see like this, I gave my first child [almost certainly a boy]. He was born, and the day he was born, before he was born, I said to his mother, Dusu, and to her alone, “This child here, I have made of him my mako [need, problem, affair, solution to a problem].” She replied that she didn't know anything about it [i.e., that this decision was not her responsibility], and I gave him [to the spirit world]. Then we had our second child. When she gave birth to this one we named it Kumba [a girl who is still living and is married]. I said to Dusu, “This child here, you can make use of it yourself to resolve your problem [i.e., to acquire ritual knowledge for yourself].” But I said that as far as I was concerned, I had fulfilled my agreement. I did this for my descendants, but I didn't do it for her [his wife]. Whoever is descended from me, whoever is descended from me, all the knowledge of blacksmiths, whether it be sorcery or not, they will be able to do it. I said [to his wife], “It is for this reason that I have done this.” Thus, if you wish to become a true sculptor of wood, and you wish to use these carvings that you make as ritual carvings, nothing will succeed unless you give your child or your first wife or your mother.[84]

The ideal blacksmith woman does not protest; she accepts her husband's unilateral decision even though it will deprive her of her firstborn son. A woman like Dusu has been educated in the knowledge that she will be expected to accept the loss of one or more children to the spirit world. On leaving her natal village for her husband's home, she has received strict instructions not to oppose her husband when he informs her of a child's future death, and she is well aware that none of her children are her property, but belong to her spouse.[85] A sculptor's wife, like the artist himself and, indeed, the entire community, does not believe that there is a choice. As we shall see, fulfillment of a spirit's demands is mandatory; there is no way out.

However the person offered to the djinn dies, the sculptor takes full responsibility for the decision to “take” a life. It was impossible to judge whether or not Kojugu had neglected his children, as many Western artists of great fame have been known to do. However, it was clear that Kojugu sincerely believed that his decision to seek artistic renown was directly responsible for the deaths, either before or after birth, of his offspring. In his own terms, he had “taken” human life in order to acquire a “name.” In Kojugu's mind, there was no doubt that he had killed his own children.

What compels a thoughtful and intelligent man like Kojugu to take this tragic step? It is clear that sculptors live with continuing grief and remorse over the children that they have ‘killed,’ and that these emotions manifest themselves in the violent temper, erratic responses, and semipermanent conversations with spirits that both terrify and impress the artist's clients. Kojugu gives us one clue when he uses the same word, mako, to refer to the child who enables him to attain fame, as he had previously employed to describe what we would call sculptures. We have already seen that the Bamana have no single word to denote ‘a sculpture.’ Rather they use the phrases makow dlan yiriw, “wood/carvings that fix needs”; makow nya yiriw, “trees/carvings that remedy needs”; and makow nyelanw, “things that arrange needs,” to describe carved ritual objects. Later, we found that these “needs” are twofold: children and food. In the passage cited here, Kojugu describes his child as a “need,” whose dedication to a spirit familiar and subsequent death is the gift required to obtain the power to create the “wood carvings that remedy needs.” In a cycle of exchange, Kojugu offers a “need,” a living child, to the spirit world, in order to obtain the knowledge that will enable him to carve the ritual objects that will operate to fulfill the community's requirements for food and children. As we shall see, the sculptor is enjoined to work for the communal good. Thus, it is better that two or three of the sculptor's children should perish than that the village should lack a protective ritual object that will fulfill its needs. Sculptors, by virtue of both ambition and birth, are simply those selected to negotiate with the spirit world on behalf of the group. From the Bamana perspective, it would be individualistic and unproductive for the numuw to put their satisfaction in their own family ahead of their djinn‘s requests or their community's requirements.

Sculptors like Kojugu live within a mental frame in which it is unthinkable to contravene the demands of the community by refusing to offer one's child to a spirit. However, spirit agreements also express a carver's personal and highly individualistic need for artistic recognition, and his simultaneous fear that such recognition will place him in opposition to his family and village. In the Bamana world, no individual can achieve fame without paying a price. The community needs sculptors, but numuw still win their renown on an installment system in which only continual payments can guarantee protection from the group's ire. In a system of limited resources where one individual's success necessitates another's failure, one cannot stand above the crowd without paying a terrible price. In Kojugu's words:

KOJUGU: … To be someone of a great reputation for such sculptures [ritual sculptures] and to have children and to have the reputation of having many children, all that cannot occur [at once]. You will take one of the two reputations, you will take one and you will lose the other. “May my reputation stay with me even though only a single child stays with me, may I stay with only a single child but keep my reputation [for sculpture].” Thus, you will continue with your work, you will keep your renown, but it is this single child who will be your heir, as you have seen for me. Haven't you seen my children?

INTERVIEWER: Nhun.

KOJUGU: A daughter and a son. That doesn't mean that I won't have any more children. The oath that I have sworn – I can't go beyond that, nhun, but no one must know about it.[86]

Although it proved impossible to do more than scan the families of important sculptors, healers, hunters, and ritual specialists, it is common for many supremely successful men and women either to be childless or to have at most one or two children. When asked, Kojugu immediately cited three great blacksmiths who had never had any children: Tieba Traore, his “master” Bourama Fane, and Nunfayiri Danyogo. He also told us about two other powerful leaders of men, or cèkunw, one of whom was his wife's uncle, who had never had more than one child. Finally, Kojugu mentioned his grandfather, also Kojugu Cissoko, who had had only three children, but possessed a supreme mastery of ritual knowledge.[87] In evaluating Kojugu's statements one needs to remember that although three children seems a great many to us, in a culture where wealthy men frequently had at least six wives and a woman has commonly carried six children by the time she is thirty, three is a rather limited number of descendants. The Bamana attribute their ritual experts’ lack of progeny directly to the saratiw or contracts concluded between these specialists and their djinns. In the Bamana mind, there is no question but that saratiw cause the sculptor to remain without descendants. It is interesting to note that in addition to sculptors, the Bamana women who achieve renown as mud-cloth painters are often barren, although it is unclear whether their lack of children enabled them to concentrate on painting mud cloth, thereby acquiring greater artistic proficiency, or whether, as the Bamana would say, they exchanged their possible children for other powers.[88] In some cases it is evident that certain men have exchanged their ability to engender children for access to nonhuman power; they display a physical transformation or feminization that is discussed later on, but that may well result from the use of specific drugs. Whatever the cause, my informants were universally agreed that success in any traditional speciality, especially sculpture, precluded the enjoyment of many children.

Children are a prime target of spirits, for the ‘weight’ of a human being counterbalances the enormous quantities of nyama with which the djinn endows the sculptor and the objects he carves. One child is ‘heavy’ enough to generate the nyama to fill many objects. But spirits often make other, apparently less stringent demands on the ambitious artist. Many contracts impose afflictions that transform healthy individuals into people whom one might call the living dead. Madness, physical disabilities, and loss of sexual potency are favorite exchange counters. The great carver may agree that his personal djinn “take” one of his dependents by rendering the person insane. For instance, in Basi's family it was believed that the famous sculptor had “given” his nephew to the family spirit. Bala had been born a deaf-mute, but he had once been the most productive young man in Basi's extended family, spending long hours at the forge, sculpting, and farming. Although he was Basi's younger brother's son, he was deeply loved by his uncle, and took the older brother's part in the perpetual conflict between the two great men of knowledge. In 1983 Bala suddenly went mad. The family lost his economic contribution, and Basi lost his most beloved apprentice. Every day the uncle prepared special medicines to cure his nephew, but to no avail; Bala remained in another world, sitting alone in the compound and from time to time uttering strange, garbled noises. He could not understand the gestures of those around him, and he could not work. Members of Basi's family and neighbors whispered that the old man had “given” his nephew to the family spirit, and Basi himself interpreted this visitation as the required payment for his own ever-expanding knowledge and reputation. The fact that Basi loved this nephew more than his own sons merely confirmed the sculptor's belief that the spirits had extracted their payment.

Basi did not hide his living-but-dead nephew from the nonblacksmith visitors who came to consult him at every hour of the day and night. This ruined shell of a person was kept in the courtyard on full view for all to see, a kind of diploma and testimony to the greatness of the Fane family and its current incarnation, Basi. No visitor, silently observing Bala's inchoate cries and movements, could doubt that he was being tortured by spirits, or that these same spirits had endowed his uncle with superhuman powers. In fact, Bala's illness could be read as a guarantee of Basi's abilities, reassuring the skeptical client that she was consulting a truly great skin specialist. Basi's own attitude toward his nephew confirmed an outsider's interpretation of Bala's madness as a spirit payment. When questioned, Basi said, with both sadness and resignation, that he knew he could not cure Bala, but that, as a healer, he continued to prescribe the medicines that Bala drank and in which he was washed every day. Basi's resignation to losing the nephew he loved so much implied that something beyond a purely physiological derangement was at stake. An intelligent visitor would immediately conclude that Basi simply knew more than anyone else, and that Bala's illness was the result of a spirit contract to which the old man had given tacit if not active consent. Basi's expertise required payment, and Bala's madness fulfilled the old man's side of the bargain, whether or not he had overtly offered his beloved nephew to the family's spirits.[89] No wonder that Basi is prone to sudden fits of rage, no wonder that when his consultations are over he so often sits alone under his favorite mango tree, and no wonder that he attracts clients from as far away as Dakar and Abidjan.

Madness may be a bargaining counter favored by spirits, but other illnesses also serve the same purpose. In a rather obscure passage, Kojugu attributes his success in forging iron to the polio-induced paralysis of “the person whom I gave for this work”:

KOJUGU: I did it for the work of blacksmiths. At this time I already had the Komo [this probably means that he was already the head of his local Komo society]. No matter what work I sat down to do, even if I couldn't finish it in one or two days, on the third day I finished it. People thought that I made the thing ahead of time, when, in fact, I had simply studied it. The person that I gave [it is unclear to whom Kojugu is referring] for this work, the one I gave, is a person whose feet and legs are spoiled [i.e., paralyzed]. At some moments he can come and visit me, and at other times he cannot come and visit me [Kojugu seems to be referring to the irregularity of the paralyzed person's visits]. On the day when he doesn't visit me I don't enter the forge. People come to give me orders for this or that. I tell them that, “I feel sick today. I am not going into the forge today,” although in fact nothing is wrong with me. But, the day that he comes to visit me, even though I have no desire to go into the forge, I go into the forge. I execute my commissions. Nhun.[90]

Among both the Bamana and Malinke, deformities of any kind – blindness, deafness, leprosy, lameness, harelips, mental retardation, or neurological problems – are regarded as evidence of an exchange with the other world. In Bamako, people frequently repeated versions of a tale explaining a certain trader's wealth. The story, which was standard, went as follows: a trader had made a bargain with his personal spirit, offering it a child in return for wealth. When the man had a daughter, she was found to be a half-wit. Far from being upset or neglecting his child, the trader hired several caretakers to guard his daughter day and night, because the girl often escaped, running toward the Niger river and trying to jump in. The caretakers were instructed to guard her from drowning at all costs, for the trader's wealth would vanish on the day his daughter died. Although this story has the air of a fairy tale, it was widely recounted and was accepted without question as being perfectly within the bounds of possibility.

The tale of the half-wit girl and the example of Bala's madness both suggest that visible afflictions play a crucial role in the Bamana understanding of the spirit contract. It would seem as if the mysterious deaths of children, wives, or mothers were not enough to reassure the holders of spirit contracts. Deaths are certainly payments, but those who die disappear; they are no longer around to be pointed at as visible testimony to a sarati. Thus, in addition to death, the Bamana appear to need living testimony to their contracts. The constant presence of a half-wit child or a person “whose feet and legs are spoiled” seems to function as a living reminder of the price paid to the spirit world. The damaged relative's continued existence testifies to the fact that the spirit contract is still in force; every day the price is being paid, and every day the artist or the rich man reaps his rewards. In fact, the story of the half-wit girl states that her death will actually end the contract, liberating her, her father, and the djinn from the terms of the sarati, and putting an end to the spirit's gifts.

The same need to view the evidence of the spirit contract over and over again may also explain Kojugu's insistence on the multiple deaths required by djinns. A single death is not enough; repeated deaths are required in order to guarantee the contract's ongoing validity. This need to explain the benefits of a spirit contract with several deaths suggests that, in Bamana society, exceptional men and women feel intense pressure to justify their unusual gifts. In a culture where the statement “I am pregnant” is regarded as a boast that opens the speaker to deadly attack, it is no exaggeration to say that any man or woman with exceptional talent lives in permanent fear of his or her life. In this labyrinth of hidden envy, the constant, living presence of a damaged relative acts to reassure both those with gifts and those without, that ability carries an inevitable cost. Bala's madness is Basi's defense; for, if the old man is already paying the price, why attack him further? As Basi well knows, the day that his nephew dies will be the day that the famous sculptor's enemies and spirits will begin to inflict further hardships on him. In the Bamana world, payment is not enough; the person of ability must make repeated payments if he wishes to keep on using his talents.[91]

The popularity of explanations and stories like that of the half-wit girl suggests that Bala's madness, or Kojugu's ‘gift’ of a paralyzed person to his spirit, are not isolated cases. Indeed, when Kojugu was asked if he knew of other blacksmiths whose children had also been afflicted with illness or deformity, he replied:

KOJUGU: I can remember one.

INTERVIEWER: Where is he?

KOJUGU: He is at Kobala. He is my friend.

INTERVIEWER: And his name?

KOJUGU: Fadama.

INTERVIEWER: And his family name?

KOJUGU: Soumaoro.

INTERVIEWER: I am speaking about his children. I speak of his children.

KOJUGU: His first child is lame and doesn't walk.

INTERVIEWER: And the second?

KOJUGU: The second has shown the signs of leprosy, but it hasn't yet caused him to lose his hands. It has just begun. And the third – one of his hands has been cut off. He fell from a tree, and he broke his hand. There was no way to repair the fracture except to cut off the hand. He died. The first son, Nukulumba, is the same age as I am. In fact, he is still in his father's house, but he cannot walk except with the help of wooden sticks. He cannot work.[92]

The interviewer then asks Kojugu what the traditional explanation might be for such a series of disasters, and Kojugu replies:

KOJUGU: … Among us, the Africans, when you see the children of such a person – blind, leprous, lame – we say that it is the result of the ill-intentioned acts of their fathers. We explain it like this. This [explanation] stays in the minds of many people. But among us who really understand these things [that is, among the men of knowledge such as famous sculptors and diviners], those who really understand, these [children], in any case, show that a contract exists between their father and the things of the bush [djinns]. We calculate like this. If you are a great hunter and you kill many animals, whether you wish it or not, the nyama of the animals will appear in your children. If they don't become lame, they will become leprous. This is obligatory.[93]

In this passage Kojugu uses the example of the nyama of the animals killed by a famous hunter, but he might just as well have cited the nyama of the objects carved by a renowned sculptor, or the nyama of the plants gathered by a well-known healer. As we have seen, a spirit contract can provide benefits other than artistic inspiration, but, in every case, the payments are similar.

Madness and disability usually strike within the sculptor's family, although the artist himself is spared. However, spirits are voracious, and they frequently demand a sexual payment from the ambitious blacksmith. It is extremely unusual to find a renowned sculptor who has a normal sexual life. We have already seen that “things of the bush” tend to be female, and that fidelity to one's djinn three nights a week is the minimum requirement for maintaining a good spirit relationship. This requirement is stringent enough that it prevents important artists from having many wives. Kojugu was explicit on this point, saying:

KOJUGU: That can't happen [that a sculptor have many wives]. The [limit] on your possession of wives is two. You can't take three, and you can't take four. If you have taken sufficient wives – that is two, because you have much more work to do at night than in the day. It is for this reason that you can't marry many women.[94]

When Kojugu refers to the work done at night he is discussing the visions and explicit instructions the sculptor receives from his familiar spirit. As with abstract scientific thought in our own culture, this work is exhausting and requires both time and concentration, demands that place practical limits on the sculptor's ability to satisfy several wives sexually:

KOJUGU: If you take several wives and you perform the work of the night, often you sleep alone, you don't have intercourse with a woman, you don't sleep with a woman in the same bed. So, if there are many wives, some will become angry with you. The days assigned to certain [of the wives], if you refuse to go to sleep with them, saying that you are in the middle of doing something [some spirit-related operation], they will become angry. Again, with the law, the true law [traditional custom], the ambition you have to become progressively well-known, you will not achieve that place. Because, if you already know that you cannot have intercourse with her [on a regular basis], you should not marry her. To leave the meal of the stranger without protection, you don't touch it, you don't touch it.[95]

In this passage Kojugu refers to the custom of assigning each wife in a polygynous family one or two days a week to cook for and sleep with her husband. In a traditional household,[96] a wife whose husband does not have intercourse with her at least once a week can make a formal complaint to the female elders of her family. They will then communicate this complaint to the male elders of the husband's family. These old men will call the husband into their presence and reprimand him for having married a woman, but refusing to satisfy her sexually. The traditional view is that an unsatisfied woman will seek gratification elsewhere, and will inevitably establish an adulterous relationship with another man that will disturb male-to-male relationships and disrupt the village's peace. Thus, men are always counseled not to marry an additional woman unless they are absolutely sure that they can keep all their wives sexually satisfied. The demands of the sculptor's spirit often preclude keeping one wife happy, much less two, three, or four. In a culture where worldly power is traditionally expressed by the number of wives one marries, sculptors must resign themselves to a limited field of action.

Thus, both the Bamana and Malinke believe that a good relationship with a spirit familiar requires the sculptor to endure long periods of sexual abstinence and to marry only one or at most two women. In another passage from the same interview, Kojugu goes beyond the logistic problems presented by multiple wives, stating:

KOJUGU: It isn't the expense [of having more than one wife]. The things in your head [that is, your spirits] will not accept it. If you take one wife, if you take several wives, the things that are in your head will not be at peace with you. You will never agree, never at all.[97]

Kojugu's words, “the things that are in your head will not be at peace with you,” imply that something intrinsic to the spirit rapport opposes a real sexual relationship. It follows from the nature of the djinn – sculptor rapport that great ritual experts cannot enjoy full and aggressively male sexual lives. In order to work with a spirit, the sculptor must abandon some aspects of his masculinity, becoming a blank slate, a human antenna devoted to the registering and transmission of knowledge from the other world. The sculptor must literally do nothing, either sexually or in any other way; he simply waits and opens himself to communication. Waiting and opening oneself, or as the Bamana would express it, possessing dariya or “receptivity,” whether physically or emotionally, are quintessentially female stances.[98] The spirit relationship forces the normally aggressive sculptor to shift gears – in Bamana terms to “change” (ka yèlèma) – to adopt a passive and quasi-feminine attitude toward the female spirit, who displays an autocratic will worthy of the most powerful village chief.

The sculptor's passive position with regard to his spirit does not leave him untouched. The Bamana believe that a spirit's power over his human client can only increase with time. In Kojugu's words:

KOJUGU: In any case, that [the djinn] grows old with you, if you live with that thing, if it is a thing of the head which is tough, your thing [your djinn] will go along continually reinforcing itself.[99]

The sculptor may age and become physically less strong, but his djinn will continue to instruct him at night, endowing him with superhuman vision and ability. Almost inevitably at some point in this process, the spirit requires that the sculptor give up sex entirely, or she inflicts sterility or impotence on him. Again, in the words of Kojugu:

KOJUGU: If you are looking for fame in this world and you want everyone to come and consult you, the ritual operations that have to be performed for certain clients must be executed at a specific hour of the night. If this time arrives and you are thinking about a woman, you will spoil your client's work because you will move toward the woman. At this time, your client, who has left a faraway place to come and consult you, will not obtain a good result. If you are thinking about such a thing, or if the djinns with whom you are, if they don't like your problem of women, once you have had one or two children, the manner in which you are physically, if they tell you to remain like that, if you accept that agreement, no one will ever overcome you until your death. I, myself, whom you see here, that has occurred with me.

INTERVIEWER: What has occurred?

KOJUGU: The taking away of my virility. I, myself, I have no need of another child, they can take away my virility completely, but until my death no competitor will ever get the better of me.

INTERVIEWER: How did they take away your virility?

KOJUGU: To take away my virility – to make me like a woman.

INTERVIEWER: Does that happen to you?

KOJUGU: That happens to me.

INTERVIEWER: But you still run around after women?

KOJUGU: My time has not yet come, there remains a little while longer before my time comes.

INTERVIEWER: When that time comes you will abandon women completely?

KOJUGU: Completely, because I myself I took the oath.

INTERVIEWER: Ahan!

KOJUGU: Nhun.

INTERVIEWER: Then, it's a contract.

KOJUGU: Yes, it's a contract. If you like, it's a contract.[100]

Given the amount that Kojugu drank, it is highly probable that he experienced periods of impotence, but he viewed this not as a natural phenomenon but as one clause in his spirit agreement. However, he was perfectly well aware that impotence might have natural causes; in another interview he explained the difference between hereditary impotence – the result of having been conceived when there is no moon – and impotence resulting from a contract with a djinn:

KOJUGU: For certain people that is the reason [the spirit agreement is the reason for their impotence]. But for others it is a case of a hereditary illness. If you observe that knowledge and your work are not on the same route [the meaning of this sentence is obscure]. When the lunar month is empty [when there is no moon], if you conceive a boy at that moment, when he becomes a mature young man, he will be impotent. He has ceased to be human. There is no antidote. There is no way to stop it. If a sculptor happens to be born like that, people will think that it is his work with wood that has caused this. That he has refused to give a person [to his spirits] and that he has given himself and agreed to become impotent. That is in the case of a contract with the things of the bush. It is because of this [the contract] that he is like that [impotent]. But if the reason is the first problem I have cited, it becomes a secret between you, Allah, and your close relatives.[101]

With these words Kojugu tells us that the sculptor may have some choice as to which offerings to make to his spirit, and that he may deliberately choose his own sexual dysfunction. The aspiring sculptor can voluntarily ingest certain drugs that cause impotence, thereby fulfilling his side of the spirit agreement:

KOJUGU: If you yourself, you want it, there exist certain procedures among all the ritual operations known to black people, if you wish to execute them [these procedures], you can take away your virility completely. You won't have any need of women, women have no need of you, and you will continue your work like that. Nobody will ever know what you do in the affairs of men [ritual operations] until your death.

INTERVIEWER: But haven't you become a woman through that [these procedures]?

KOJUGU: Thus, you have become a woman, of course.

INTERVIEWER: Have you become a woman?

KOJUGU: You have become a woman. EE! You, you cannot perform the work of men in the house of women. Therefore, you have become a woman, you are not equal to any man.

INTERVIEWER: At this time, I myself am asking you, now, if a man changes himself and he abandons his virility completely, have you heard, do people, according to the mentality of black people, do you, yourselves, do you think – I'm not talking about the mentality of white people, I am talking about that of black people – do you think in your own thoughts, in your very own thoughts, do you say that this person is a woman, do you say that?

KOJUGU: We say that he is a woman. He has made himself a woman. He has made himself a woman, and the reason for which he has transformed himself into a woman, everyone knows it, we know it.

INTERVIEWER: But do you speak about it?

KOJUGU: No one talks about it. That is an incantation hidden in one's belly. If he [the expert who has changed himself into a ‘woman’] hears someone talking about that, the state in which he himself now is, he will transform that person [the one with the loose tongue] into that same state.[102]

Although Kojugu does not use the word furaw, or “drugs,” but rather refers to “procedures” that take away the sculptor's virility, the continuing conversation makes clear that he is talking about changes that result from the deliberate consumption of traditional “medicines.” For Kojugu, it goes without saying that ritual procedures are accompanied by “leaf medicines,” and that the combination can transform the sculptor's sexual capacity and gender identity.

In the previous passages, Kojugu describes the loss of sexual potency and the feminization of the sculptor's body as spirit payments, but djinns affect the artist's sexual persona in other ways as well. “Being like a woman,” in Kojugu's words, is a complex phenomenon that embraces the extremes of sexual behavior. Sculptors are noted for their sexual interests as much as for their long periods of disinterest, and both imply a loss of masculinity. In the Bamana world, sculptors tend to conform to two physical stereotypes: the imposing giants like Basi who are able to have sex well into their eighties, and the dried, withered, and birdlike types with high, feminine voices, who are considered especially dangerous. Both types undergo long periods of sexual abstinence prior to the carving of important ritual sculpture, and both types can abandon moderation when they are not engaged on an important commission.

To the Bamana, sexual indulgence is as “womanlike” as sexual abstinence. For instance, one withered ritual specialist had already married his third wife, the first two having died. His mastery of his medical speciality, the cure of impotence, had hitherto prevented and would forever preclude his engendering children. Moreover, although this birdlike healer's promiscuity was legendary, so was his inability to procreate. In fact, for the Bamana, a Don Juan profile, whether expressed in an imposing physique or acted out in numerous sexual encounters, is slightly unmasculine. The Don Juan spends too much time with women to be a real man. The djinns who bestow the power to carve Komo masks prefer a sculptor faithful to their interests, and the Don Juan will eventually come to grief if he does not obey their wishes. In the words of Kojugu:

KOJUGU: There exist some djinns, you will go for twelve days and you must not have sex with a woman. There also exist others for whom you must go for three days without touching a woman, and equally, there are some djinns for whom you must go for three months without touching a woman. If you encounter such djinns and they are slow, but you make haste to have sex, [the djinns prefer that a sculptor have sex only very rarely, but he goes ahead and indulges as often as he wishes], they will diminish you physically and leave you alone to live with other people like that [i.e., in a diminished state]. You will have great fame, but when people see you they will disdain you. Djinns do that.[103]

Although Kojugu does not explicitly state in this passage that the sexually adventurous sculptor loses his virility, he exactly describes the mixture of fear and disdain with which the Bamana regarded the promiscuous and birdlike ritual expert mentioned above. Clearly, the “diminished” man is not quite a man like others, no matter how great his healing powers or how famous his artistic creations. Furthermore, as Kojugu makes abundantly clear, diminution is not some ethereal psychic state; it manifests itself visibly and is, in fact, so clearly written on the artist's body that one can infer the sculptor's sexual bargain merely by looking at him.

If one applies a Western assumption that an artist like Picasso, who makes an overt display of masculinity, produces better art, one might assume that the impotent or feminized sculptor creates only lesser works. There is considerable evidence to suggest the opposite. Before returning to this problem at greater lngth at the end of this book, it is important to note that the loss of sexual capacity does not vitiate the power or aesthetic impact of the Bamana sculptor's productions. In the words of Kojugu:

KOJUGU: If he is not virile he can, of course, make a Komo mask. If you are not virile you can make one, and if you are virile you can make one. But you must know the ways of changing yourself [here “changing yourself” means the procedures that protect you from other envious sculptors]. If you live with a thing [a spirit], or if you have knowledge at a very high level, you can sculpt one even if you aren't virile. It won't spoil anything.[104]

The loss of sexual capacity is simply one spirit payment among many, and, as we shall see, it may imply the ability to create objects more powerful than those carved by the still-virile numu. The lack of generative ability in this world may actually enhance one's creative power in the alternate world of ritual operations. The Bamana and Malinke may view a sculptor's creations with an extra degree of fear and reverence precisely because they are aware that he is physically incapable of sexual relations or engendering descendants. In the Bamana mind, such an artist's sexual energy has been transferred to his creations, endowing them with unnatural life.

Sexual dysfunction is one category of self-inflicted illness with which the sculptor pays his spirit familiar, but he may also bargain with other disabilities or portions of his own life span. The Bamana explain a number of problems, such as the onset of blindness in old age, probably the worst affliction for any sculptor or painter, as the agreed-upon payment for a visual artist's previous gifts. For instance, Salimata Kone views her recent cataracts and her only partially successful operation as the inevitable result of her fame as the creator of a personal and widely recognized style of painted mud-cloth design. Like Salimata, sculptors believe that they bargain with the future, agreeing with their djinn to go mad or blind at a particular date, after they have carved a certain number of specified objects.

In these Faustian contracts, it is also common to negotiate for a limited number of years of artistic power, after which the artist abandons carving:

KOJUGU: When you reach fifty years, forty years, or seventy years and you have a good rapport with your djinns, you will do it, you will do it [he refers to the fact of abandoning carving]. The time on which you [meaning the sculptor and the spirit] were agreed, when this time arrives you will stop, and you will leave it [carving] alone.[105]

In this case the spirit's price is nondoing; the artist must abandon the activity in which he is most skilled and which gives him most pleasure, resigning himself to years of professional inactivity. Djinns are nothing if not sophisticated in psychological torture, for there can be no more frustrating situation than to be alive and healthy but forbidden to exercise one's supreme talent. Perhaps it is easier for the apprentice sculptor to make a different bargain, to exchange years of his life for the ability to make successful ritual objects. Better to die young than to live out the rest of one's life passively carving hoe handles, after having made supremely important ritual objects. Kojugu told us that djinns were very specific in the drawing up of their saratiw, sometimes even designating the day on which the sculptor must die:

KOJUGU: That occurs. Whatever thing you agree upon [with the djinn], even your life span, even the day that you must die, the djinn will tell you all this. When the contract arrives at the due date, even if you are about to embark on a long voyage, it will tell you not to travel, [it will remind you] that the contract has arrived at its date, and you will say nothing to your wife, you will say nothing to your child. You will say nothing to anyone. You will inform only your close friend, or your first wife, or your first son: “Now, my moment is close. Now, if I fall sick, don't wear yourself out in searching leaves [medicinal leaves], don't do anything else either. Leave it alone like that. My time has come to term.” You will say that to your close relatives. If you are a person who doesn't have a calm personality, if the time arrives and if you broadcast it to everyone, at that time the lineage of djinns will withdraw from your family. They [the djinns] will say that you have a light mouth.[106]

The sculptor who is informed of his own death in dreams must keep a cool head, make his preparations, and peacefully allow the completion of the contract. His decisions have long since been made, when, as an apprentice, he gave his word to his djinn. He has made his objects, he has achieved fame, and he patiently waits to pay the last installment on his lifelong plan.

If this is what the apprentice must face – the ‘giving’ of his most loved family members, the infliction of madness and disease on his children, the consumption of powerful personality-altering drugs, sterility, impotence, blindness in old age, years of frustrating sculptural inactivity, a shortened life, and certain knowledge of his own death – why do some apprentices give their word? Why do they assent to such contracts? How can anyone face such a future? We have seen that the Bamana believe that obtaining a spirit depends on a combination of what we would call inherited and environmental factors. In fact, Kojugu explained that sculptors agree to spirit contracts out of both choice and necessity. Nevertheless, his explanations suggest that choice frequently gives way to necessity, and that djinns actually coerce the sculptor, no matter how much the artist may wish to believe that his own decision placed him on the path to fame. In a long discussion, Kojugu stressed the sculptor's power of decision, yet his description of the community and family pressures surrounding the artist simultaneously negated the possibility of the sculptor's refusing a spirit contract:

INTERVIEWER: Now, I want to ask you, do you hear? Why, why do you make sculptures of people when you know that making sculpture contains great nyama, why? Why do you do it, when you know that this brings nyama, bad nyama, and yet you do it, why?

KOJUGU: The reason for which we do it [make sculpture] is the following; three villages, four villages, up to seven villages, if they assemble together and in a certain village there is a great man of knowledge – among us, the blacks, the men of knowledge are like the government officials of today – the affair that this man will arrange, no one else can alter this arrangement [he is referring to ritual, political, and sexual arrangements all at the same time]. When he says something, that thing is done. You will find that this man has no true child. In regard to his problem of children, this man has abandoned his problem of children, and he has chosen to win fame in order that his competitors should not spoil his fame. Good. Now, if you really know that all that [fame] doesn't interest you, you will abandon all these things of sorcery related to sculpture, you will abandon these things.

We execute our work in wood knowing that there really is nyama attached to it, but we execute the work nevertheless. The only men who really know anything – and indeed there exist many “knowers” – but the one who really knows something is the one who knows what will happen tomorrow, like the work that we are doing now [he refers to our interviews]. I, myself, I knew that this work would happen, but I have to know how I can preserve something for my children [here he means his entire extended family, not merely his own biological children]. Here is the way [he refers to the fact that we paid him in food for his interviews and that these payments enabled his extended family to survive the famine without any deaths]. The person who doesn't know these things, you will decide like that to make a sculpture, but at the time when you can no longer carve wood you will be left with neither children, nor yourself, nor even fame. There are many men like that among us, the black people. When these people have problems they will come to see us in consultation, and so we will tell them something courteously to calm them down concerning their problem. But aside from that, the thing that they really need to do, if you are not really in union with the djinns, and you have not made of your knowledge a friend [if you haven't spent all your time and energy in learning secret knowledge], and you have not done that which she [the djinn] wished, and you have not abandoned that which she did not like, she cannot be clear with you just like that. It is for this reason that many people among us black people stay mired in mediocrity. Here is how the situation [of the sculptor] is.[107]

When Kojugu says that there is a great man of knowledge who makes unilateral decisions for three, four, and even seven villages, and when he contrasts the cèkun’s authority with the vacillations of the sculptor who has refused to devote himself completely to his djinns, he suggests the power vacuum created by the absence of a completely confident decision maker. The villages need a fixed point of reference, an expert to whom everyone can take their multifarious problems in the surety of receiving an unambiguous response. The expectation that one can simply dump one's problems in the hands of the ritual expert and receive a solution, whether in the form of prescribed sacrifices, traditional drugs, psychological counsel, or political negotiation, acts as a powerful incentive for the ambitious specialist. Furthermore, the sculptor or ritual expert knows that he will lose his community's respect, he will “stay mired in mediocrity,” if he does not devote the necessary time to his djinn, acquiring the concentration that enables him to predict the future and thus maintain his position of power. In blunt terms, if you want power, you have to devote a large portion of your life to your djinn to obtain it.

Nevertheless, sculptors and other ritual experts respond to more than community need when they accept spirit contracts; they are often propelled by the understandable desire to emulate and surpass their father or another famous relative:

KOJUGU: There are two things. Your father is a cèkun [leader of men]. You are born in a region where your father is a cèkun. Good. He, he has put you into the world, and you are his first son. If your father dies, people will ask you for the secrets belonging to him. The secret works [ritual operations] that he had the habit of carrying out, if you, you don't do these, people will say that you have become someone who has thrown away the heritage of your father [implying a lack of respect for one's parent]. It is for this reason that the children of men who are cèkunw take the place of their fathers. They prefer to let fall their problem of children and that of the material goods of this world, in order to preserve their father's name and the name of their family.[108]

According to Kojugu, the sculptor's clients expect that he will have acquired his father's “secrets,” and indeed, some clients refuse to believe that a specialist does not know something and cannot help them. The son of a famous artist is in a cleft stick; he is assumed to have mastered his father's secrets, and, if he does not learn them, he is vulnerable to attacks both from irate clients and his father's enemies. However, if he accepts his destiny in life and defends himself by learning from his father, he is automatically subject to the demands of the family's spirit. We also need to understand that the Bamana do not view a refusal to learn one's father's secrets as a disinterested choice. Such a rejection is not only a lack of respect; it is tantamount to abandoning one's entire family, to placing one's individual interests before those of the group, and to openly stating that one's father is worth nothing. It is a primary act of rebellion and individualism, and it is difficult for most Bamana to conceive of such a gesture, let alone act it out. One's destiny is one's destiny, and there is no escape. Furthermore, the undutiful son who refuses the knowledge others would die for, risks his father's vengeance through death by poisoning or ritual operations, and few are willing to run such risks. One does not oppose a cèkun lightly. Finally, there is a strong personal incentive to learn one's father's secrets and to acquire a spirit, for who does not wish to vanquish his father by surpassing him? As the Bamana say, “E faden fòlò y'i fa ye,” or “Your first competitor is your father.”

We can explain the artist's acceptance of his spirit contract by citing community and family pressure, but the Bamana and Malinke give these forces a secondary place compared to the power of the djinn herself. Djinns have personalities, and when they want something, they want it, and will do everything in their power to get it. In a sense, the apprentice sculptor has lost the battle before it has begun, for a spirit's power always outweighs that of a human. A sculptor selected by a djinn has no alternative but to accept his destiny, since the spirit offers him only an illusory choice. Kojugu makes it clear that the rebellious sculptor who attempts to refuse a spirit contract will suffer as much or more as the one who accepts his sarati, although he vacillates between descriptions of a number of different, but invariably disastrous, fates that await the recalcitrant apprentice. At first, Kojugu states that the offended djinns will retaliate by killing the apprentice's children:

INTERVIEWER: Good. Now, the person who loses his children in this way, can he make offerings, or does he act as you have described if he doesn't accept his union with the djinns? Will the djinns kill his children?

KOJUGU: They will kill them. The djinns will kill his children.[109]

Then, in a further passage from the same interview, Kojugu specifies:

KOJUGU: She [the djinn] won't kill your wife, she won't kill your child, but if she doesn't kill you yourself, she will transform you into a naloma [dim-witted person], and you will be useless. She will transmit a grave illness to you, an illness that will cause people to repudiate you. She will do that.[110]

The sculptor who tries to evade a djinn may not necessarily lose his children, but he is bound to pay for his rebellion in another form. His intelligence may vanish, leaving him a half-wit; he may contract a disgusting illness that will isolate him permanently; or he may lose his life prematurely. Whatever fate the vengeful djinn selects, it is certain that she will despoil the rebellious sculptor's life. Clearly, there is no real choice as we understand it.

All gifted apprentices understand the constraints of their situation, especially if they have had visionary encounters with spirit familiars in childhood or adolescence. Thus, they negotiate their contracts carefully in an effort to preserve some semblance of health and family life. A contract that at first appears to be unnaturally severe (such as Kojugu's own), may be the hard-fought result of extended negotiations in which the sculptor balances one loss against another. Although the end result is never in doubt, Kojugu's evidence implies a certain level of choice between evils; one artist will negotiate the “gift” of certain children in order to protect others, whereas another sculptor will bargain with his own life span in order to save his children's lives:

KOJUGU: That which she tells you to do, if you execute these things in this way [the way the spirit has instructed you], even if you die, in any case, the way in which your children will come out of this situation, all these problems will be discussed between you and your djinn, all the arrangements will be made [the arrangements for transferring the father's knowledge to his children and for keeping the djinn in the family] and you will make the necessary offering. At that moment, even if you die, the djinn will stay in the family.[111]

In contrast to the recalcitrant apprentice who loses everything, the sculptor who accepts his destiny may be able to negotiate with his djinn, but he will not escape paying some price to the spirit world. Perhaps, in this system of inevitable loss, the sculptor's only real choice is whether he can conduct himself with enough dignity and courage to sway even the most demanding spirit, thus guaranteeing that the djinn remain in his family. Given the nature of spirit demands, premature death is not such a bad alternative after all.

Many sculptors cannot reach the standard of courage set by their spirits, and the djinns invariably see that they pay. In several different interviews Kojugu described the various fates that awaited a sculptor who breaks his djinn’s tanaw, or interdictions:

INTERVIEWER: Well, in the moment of executing this work [the actual carving of an important sculpture], if the sculptor is sitting in the middle of the djinns, and if he breaks their interdictions, can they kill him?

KOJUGU: They will split his skull in two.[112]

As we will see later on, breaking the djinn’s tana probably means contravening a rule requiring that the sculptor abstain from sex before carving, or failing to observe other ritual precautions such as refraining from urinating while sculpting a particular mask. Even when accidental, such contraventions are punished no less severely than an overt attempt to disregard the djinn’s power. According to Kojugu, such attempts are not infrequent and, indeed, it seems only human to want to get the better of these demanding women from the other world, who take everything away in return for intangible glory. Sculptors, like those deeply in debt, squirm and twist in their efforts to evade fulfilling their spirit contracts. As Kojugu says:

KOJUGU: Each one [of the great men of knowledge] has his djinn. That which is the rule for the thing of your head [i.e., your djinn] will not be hidden from you. Even if she tells you that you must offer a sheep in sacrifice every Friday [this would be a very heavy payment for any Bamana or Malinke], if you accept the contract, each Friday, even if you must [mortgage yourself] …, you must give this sheep as a sacrifice. Also, if you [and the djinn] have agreed on a contract and you haven't broken it, even if there are a thousand men of knowledge in the same place, the person who has never broken his interdiction [tana] nor his contract, he will go up [i.e., gain power]. You will not go down. The person who accepts a short contract with djinns to become rich, when he becomes wealthy, he tries to cajole the djinn in order to separate himself from her and to be rich [on his own without the djinn]. The djinn seduces you [in the direction of not observing the contract properly so that she can kill you]. The contract that exists between you – if you don't carry it out, you will lose your knowledge, your knowledge will be like a sealed gourd. There is something in the gourd, but the thing inside, someone who has not seen it cannot judge it. And your knowledge will be like that [i.e., useless]. Your knowledge will be inside you, but it will not be of any use at all. Nobody will know your name. No one will come to consult you. There are men of knowledge like that. The reason for that is that you have not respected the contract with your djinn. It is because you [and the djinn] have agreed on something, and you haven't respected this agreement. But if you [respect this agreement], you will go through your whole life, you won't lie, you won't be ashamed, and you won't do shocking things.[113]

According to Kojugu, spirits not only set harsh terms, but also attempt to seduce their clients into breaking the contract so that they may carry them off into the other world prematurely. The apprentice sculptor must not only negotiate his contract and fulfill its terms, but must also avoid the temptation to try and alter the sarati long after it has been sworn. Living with the long-term effects of a contract is never the same as agreeing upon it, and many men of knowledge are unable to pursue the course of action they have set for themselves. For instance, Kojugu explained the case of Manyan, a great ritual expert:

KOJUGU: Manyan foretold his situation. He foretold his situation. It became mixed up [i.e., it became a problem]. His contract didn't arrive at its term. He tried to do the impossible and stayed there with it.[114]

The rather obscure sentence, “He tried to do the impossible and stayed there with it,” indicates that Manyan attempted to evade the terms of his sarati, but died in the attempt. He very literally stayed in the other world, paying his djinn with his life. Given such examples, it is hardly surprising that most sculptors regard their saratiw or contracts as absolute, and that few emulate Manyan in trying to break them. Saratiw are for life, and a responsible artist will always explain this to an ambitious apprentice. Apprentices do not take on saratiw lightly; they know what they are getting into, and many draw back and return to the manufacture of hoe handles, terrified by the demands of the spirit world. Thus, advanced apprenticeship is not just a matter of skill and visual imagination; it also depends on the student's personality, his willingness to face a life of continuous payments, his resolution, and his desire for fame. Apprentices who pursue a master and a spirit are not merely gifted: they are determined, tough, willing to “take” human life and to sacrifice their own.

Although we can perceive a decision-making process at work, the apprentice who claws his way to the stage of being offered a spirit contract often believes that he has no choice but to negotiate, for he is well aware of the punishments spirits will exact if he refuses. Many sculptors’ seeming intractability may well result from their own sense that they have never had a choice; that they have been condemned from birth to living life with a spirit. The master artist's apparent toughness may actually be the by-product of a lifetime spent serving spirits, for the numuw whom the djinns select possess great intelligence and sensitivity; they are not the dullards in their families. It is these artists’ fine sense of discrimination that draws spirits to them and enables them to create magnificent art; yet this same gift also tortures sculptors with the knowledge of their destiny. Marked out from birth as ‘special,’ they know that their superior technical skill is merely the beginning of a lifelong journey punctuated by losses: their wives mysteriously die one by one, their children become leprous, blind, mad, or lose a hand, and they end their lives eating alone and surrounded by people who fear to touch them, sacred pariahs in a society where men walk down the street hand in hand, and women oil and dress each other's hair for hours on end. As time goes by, they spend longer and longer hours in the bush or in their consulting rooms communicating with their spirits, drinking in the information provided by their otherworldly familiars. This receptivity, this dariya that enables important artists to make startlingly accurate predictions of the future, implies an increasing passivity, an openness that places the famous artist in a frighteningly ambiguous space. For the djinns take not only wives and children, but ultimately even the sculptor's sexuality; like Kojugu, renowned artists foresee a future where they become “like a woman.” Human antennae placed at the disposal of the demanding, vicious, and yet gloriously seductive women of the other world, sculptors, the great decision makers of earthly society, float helplessly in the tides of the spirit world.

Perhaps now we can begin to understand the roots of the sculptor's strange personality; his alternating fits of rage and compassion, his moments of profound understanding and psychological perception, his sexual ambivalence, and his deep comprehension of both male and female clients. It is almost impossible to present an artist like Basi with a problem he does not understand, for has he not lived with his nephew's madness? Has he not abandoned his beloved sculpture for thirty years at his spirit's behest, and has he not spent his life watching those he loves the most vanish into the other world? Ambition and skill may have set Basi on his path, but the journey has become a pilgrimage of suffering. Apprenticeship creates great artists like Basi and Kojugu, but it also transforms them into tragic figures; they are born knowing that their prized inheritance of numuya or “blacksmithness” demands the attainment of fame, and yet they can only obtain that renown in exchange for human life. Sculptors cannot refuse their heritage, and yet, if they are humane, they cannot wholeheartedly embrace all that it requires. In the Bamana and Malinke world, the successful sculptor lives in a perpetual internal conflict from which death is the only escape. The artist has his back to the wall; he must kill to create, and he cannot refuse to create without being killed.

CHAPTER 3

The Human World

If we leave the world of djinns and turn to that of human beings, we find that inspiration alone cannot produce a satisfactory “medicine.” Although no blacksmith creates an important ritual object without his spirit's help, basiw are also the end result of communal decision making, lengthy negotiations, and complex financial arrangements. As it is produced, every sacred object acquires its own history, and, for the Bamana, this history is just as much part of the finished medicine as its horns or teeth. Furthermore, the tangled web of human relations from which the finished object emerges directly affects the basi‘s ability to act in the world. As we shall see, an object conceived in bitterness and hatred will function dangerously, if at all, but a medicine brought forth in harmonious cooperation will acquire beneficial and lasting powers. Why are the arrangements for a commission so complex, and how is it possible for them to affect a medicine's power as well as its style and aesthetic impact?

Criteria

Let us begin by examining the criteria that the Bamana use for selecting an artist, before we describe the course of the negotiations for a typical commission, and the financial arrangements that structure payment. Almost immediately, we find that the criteria for choosing a carver reveal striking similarities to those employed in evaluating women for marriage; in fact, clients assess the artist as though he were to become the ‘mother’ of the ritual object they are seeking.[1] We have already seen how the relationship with a spirit familiar feminizes the master sculptor, and we shall now find that this process has social as well as ritual dimensions.

Elders weigh a number of competing factors in choosing a sculptor; the age and sex of the artist, aesthetic preferences, manual skill, and, above all, the artist's sexual behavior. In our own society, it is unusual for a patron to investigate an artist's morals; it is sufficient that the individual is agreed to be one of the ‘best’ painters or sculptors of his time. In the Bamana world, however, a sculptor's moral reputation is the single most important factor in determining his selection for a commission.[2] We have already seen that the artist must submit to severe sexual restrictions simply to maintain a relationship with a spirit familiar. Breaking specific ritual rules results both in the alienation of the artist's djinn and in “empty work,” but elders also worry about the sculptor's sexual profile. Clients may not be aware of all the rules that govern the creation of important objects, but they can evaluate an artist's sexual history. It is not easy to hide adultery or abnormal sexual behavior within a set of linked villages, and a sculptor's clients will know if he has had affairs with other men's wives, if he has broken minor sexual rules (for instance, sleeping with his wife on a night that ought to have been devoted to his spirit), or if his wives have complained of his excessive sexual demands. Village elders seek an artist with an unblemished reputation for respecting the traditional laws that formerly ordered Bamana and Malinke sexual life. Certainly, it is possible for a sculptor to commit adultery while he is not engaged in an important commission without running grave risks, but his willingness to break the social code will stain his character, suggesting that he may not respect the stringent demands imposed by an important commission. Although the Bamana expect their sculptors to be cantankerous, they also expect them to act with a sense of honor and to have great moral integrity. A sculptor may lose his temper with a client and berate him for not producing the appropriate sacrifices at the right time, or he may put off finishing a commission again and again without giving a reason, but he cannot break sexual rules. Clients accept that a great artist may be difficult, but they also expect that the sculptor will be even harder on himself than he is on them.

Sculptors share these expectations, for their belief that sexual transgressions will destroy their objects’ ability to act in the world is so great that they will never consciously break sexual rules. Nevertheless, the same artists may think nothing of telling you face-to-face that you are not serious about a particular commission, that you haven't paid them enough, or that they have no use for you at all. Kojugu tells us the following:

KOJUGU: But if it happens that the affairs of your house [the relationships between people in your family] are spoiled, the work won't be good. What does it mean to say that the affairs of your house are spoiled? You, yourself are soiled, you are not clean, in any case you will make empty things [things that do not function]. You will not execute satisfactory work. Even if you execute a work, it will be detested by people. All this will fall back on you.[3]

Here, Kojugu refers to what will happen to the blacksmith if he enters the forge to work iron while unclean or “dirty,” but, as we shall see further on, the same rules apply to carving sculpture. Kojugu uses the word nògòlen to describe the sculptor who has broken sexual interdictions. Literally, nògòlen means “dirty,” as in the phrase said to children, “i bolow nògòlenw,” or “your hands are dirty.” However, when used by sculptors and ritual specialists, nògòlen means both unwashed and impure, or sexually contaminated. The word acquires this meaning because the Bamana believe that men who have had sexual relations are dirty until they have washed completely and changed their clothing. Bazin defines sanunya, the word Kojugu uses for “clean,” as “clean, pure, saintly” or, when used as a verb, as “to purify, to perfect something, to finish, to work something skilfully” (Bazin 1906, 510). However, Bazin does not state what Kojugu tells us, that the successful use of one's manual skill is dependent on the maintenance of sexual purity. The sculptor who allows his sexual desires priority over his ritual commitments will receive his reward; he will be “detested by people.” In the competitive world of rival villages and artists, there is no greater punishment.

The client's assessment of the sculptor's morals has an important parallel: when men select a second or third wife for themselves, or partners for their sons or grandsons, they investigate a woman's character at great length, for both the Malinke and the Bamana believe that a child receives its character from the mother. A woman must be physically strong to produce healthy children, but she must also be incorruptible. If she goes behind her husband's back by making arrangements to sell soap without informing him, if she erodes his stature in the community by gossiping about him, if she fails to let him know where she is going when she leaves the house, and, above all, if she has affairs, her children will learn to say one thing and do another; they will not only be undependable, but they will never achieve the compassion, fairness, and self-reliant strength that characterizes mògòw or true “humans.” When a girl steals food she is not offered, when a boy picks continual and unnecessary fights with his peers, and when a child of either sex defies society and insults his or her parents, men frequently shrug their shoulders and attribute the flaws in the child's personality to the mother. One of the reasons often given by men for polygyny is the observation that no matter how much one tests a woman, one cannot really judge her character before marriage. One can consult diviners, one can pretend disinterest and see whether the woman can tolerate neglect without flying into a rage or trying to find another fiance, one can watch her behavior toward her sisters, but one can only find out so much.[4] Once married, a woman may confound her husband's expectations by acting deviously, concealing her real motivations, or engaging in unexpected affairs. Men often feel deceived by wives who cannot meet the almost superhuman standards of conduct that they set up for them, and then search for second and third wives who will produce properly moral children. It is also true that the grandfathers who arrange first marriages for their grandsons and nephews have their own political interests at stake in forming these alliances, and the fourteen-year-old selected from a “good” family may turn out to be a most unappetizing individual when she matures.

What is of relevance to sculpture is that the Bamana consider a woman's character, and especially her sexual fidelity, the overriding determinant of her children's usefulness. When a woman gives birth to weak, disorderly, or disobedient children, the husband will not try to alter their character by changing his treatment of them or his handling of his wife. Rather, like Salimata, who dismissed a puling grandchild with the words, “I have no confidence that this one will be a person like Bakary,” he will simply write off these children as mistakes he has to live with. He will tolerate this wife's offspring, but he will put no energy into them, and as they grow up, he will exclude them from every important decision and from access to whatever traditional knowledge he possesses. Similarly, village elders will not take action against a sculptor who contravenes ritual rules. Rather, they will simply set his name aside and select an artist who has an unblemished record for purity. As with women, sexual behavior is the gauge that predicts the efficacy of the final product. The sculptor who is unfaithful to his djinn by sleeping with his wife at the wrong moment can no more produce an effective “medicine” than an unfaithful woman can give birth to a child with a solid personality. In both cases, successful creation depends on sexual purity.

Negotiations for women are lengthy, and the same is true for sculptural commissions. Just as a marriage is merely the endpoint of extended and generally private negotiations, so a finished ritual object represents and encapsulates months if not years of human interaction, divinations, economic transactions, conversations about the client's situation, and discussions about the form of the object to be carved. Furthermore, just as the emotional and economic relationship between the two families who arrange a marriage can make or break the resulting personal rapport, so the conduct and emotions of both partners to a commission endow a carved “medicine” with much of its power. Kojugu explicitly states that an object that does not result from a complex set of negotiations between artist and client, but is carved simply because the sculptor feels like it, is “a round thing,” “an ornamental thing,” and above all a useless thing:

KOJUGU: If you have carved a new one [a mask] like that in order to keep it like that [i.e., without using it immediately], and if you have carved it simply to please your hand and you have sculpted it because there is no work, then if you hear that it can't resolve anything [i.e., any problem], that the Komo mask belonging to a certain person can't resolve things, the reason for this can be found in the way in which this Komo mask was made. You carved it, but no one sought it from you, you simply made it like that and you put it on one side like that, saying that should a person come [in need of a Komo mask], you would give it to him. No one spoke to you about this problem [the problem of commissioning a Komo mask], but you carved it like that according to your own ideas – such a mask can not possess any strength. Only when someone gets up and comes to you to say, “I have need of a Komo mask” [does the mask have any strength]. Then you will discuss the problem and will come to an agreement. You cut it [the tree]. But to say that you will cut it according to your own whim like that, you will sculpt it and you will put it aside like that, this is like something that one sells. Such a thing resolves nothing. You can give it to whomever you wish, but he will simply have a round thing in his hands, an ornamental thing in his hands, but it will resolve nothing.[5]

This critical passage highlights an important parallel between marriages and ritual commissions; when Kojugu declares that a mask made simply to keep one's hands busy is “like something that one sells,” he uses the key term jago fèn or “trade thing.” Jago is a noun that Bazin defines as “commerce” or “trade” (1906, 149), and the verb is used to indicate any commercial transaction whose sole aim is profit. Ka jago kè, “to trade,” ka san, “to buy,”[6] and ka feere, “to sell,” are verbs that indicate exclusively economic transactions. What is important is that the Bamana never use any of these verbs to discuss either marriage arrangements or the exchange of economic goods for ritual objects, for neither transaction is perceived as ‘economic’ in our sense of the term. The use of such verbs in marriage negotiations implies that the woman in question can be bought and sold, and is therefore of slave descent. Needless to say, employing such terminology is a grave insult both to the woman herself and to her family. In marriage, one family “releases” goods to another for access to reproductive potential; it is the children of the marriage, not the woman herself, who will be the property of those who produce the laada or ritual payments. Similarly, the “owner” of a ritual object “releases” payments both to the sculptor and to the spirit world in return for access to the generative potential encapsulated in the ritual object whose guardianship he assumes. The “owner” of a Komo mask may reap his rewards in increased prosperity, but he does not “own” the mask; he merely guards it. In fact, one might almost say that the ritual object owns its “owner,” exacting endless sacrifices and prescribing what its custodian may and may not do with exacting precision.

Perhaps now we can understand why the Bamana use the verb ka furu, “to take in marriage,” to describe the process of acquiring a Komo mask. In both marriages and commissions the ‘buyer’ does not ‘purchase’ anything. Rather, he “lets out, releases,” or “lets loose” goods (ka laada bò) in order to obtain generative possibilities. When translated literally, the word laada means “traditions” (i.e., the goods prescribed by tradition), and the verb ka bò means “to go out,” “to make disappear,” or “to offer in sacrifice” (Bazin 1906, 74–8).[7] The Bamana and Malinke associate this ritualized offering of goods (ka laada bo) with a sense of nobility (horonya), wealth, and aristocratic largesse, in contrast to purely commercial transactions, which are inevitably soiled by profit motives.[8] Like women, ritual objects must be obtained through a rigorously “pure” procedure if they are to work.

We can see how this perspective controls the sculptor's output when we listen to Kojugu's scathing characterization of a mask carved at the sculptor's whim as “something that one sells.” Kojugu's words place this useless “round thing” firmly in the domain of commerce, for without its enveloping cobweb of human relations, relations that are objectified in the laada, or “traditional things” offered both to the sculptor and various spirits, the carved object is an empty and useless facsimile. The importance of “letting loose” laada lies in the perception that these offerings mirror the trust between spirits, sculptor, and client; when ritually slaughtered, the blood of the prescribed animals carries the clients’ speeches and the sculptor's responses into the other world, alerting and activating the spirits who will endow the finished object with power. Laadaw mediate between client, artist, and the spirit world, linking all three in an indissoluble bond whose visible result is the ritual object.

Not only is it impossible to “buy” either ritual objects or women, but another similarity links the acquisition of carved “medicines” and of wives. We have already seen that the Bamana examine far more than the sexual behavior of the women whose merits they ponder; they attempt to judge their general character. As in the West, character implies both trustworthiness and the courage, intelligence, and tenacity to overcome difficult situations. Does a girl respect those older than herself, does she work long hours without complaining, is she continually quarreling with her age-mates, and does her mother trust her with the money for the condiments for the daily meal? Just as the elderly men who arrange marriages anticipate that a devious woman will produce unsatisfactory or even harmful children, so these same elders judge that an untrustworthy sculptor will inevitably produce objects that fail to work. As with women, the Bamana believe that it is the character of the artist that either fills his creations with power or leaves them inactive, empty shells.

For sculptors as well as women, having a good character means more than observing traditional sexual rules. In evaluating a potential sculptor, clients will examine the artist's behavior in daily life. Does he keep his word or does he lie? Does he apply the same rules to himself and his own family as he does to outsiders? Does he twist traditional rules to achieve individualistic goals, or does he possess the strength of personality to remain an impartial arbiter of traditional law? A case in point occurred in Basi's compound. When his daughter, Nantene, arrived at marriageable age, he allowed her to choose her husband. However, by the time the date for the marriage arrived the young couple had quarreled, and Nantene no longer wished to marry her fiancé. Basi became enraged, saying that he had given his word to the other blacksmith family, and that his own family's honor was at stake. Besides, Nantene herself had chosen her husband. Nantene married her fiancé, but they continued to quarrel, and one day, in a fit of anger, she visited a ritual site. Here she swore on a famous oracle that she would never stay with her husband. Some time later Nantene's first son became ill and seemed to be dying slowly. The couple took the child to Basi twice, and each time he said that he could not heal his grandson because the cause of the illness was ritual, not physical. Finally, on the third visit, Nantene revealed her oath. Basi then told her that she should have consulted him before taking such a step, since the rule of this particular oracle was the following; if you swear by the oracle and you are in the right the other party dies, but if you are in the wrong, then your own family dies off one by one. Because Nantene had sworn to abandon her husband – an action contrary to all the rules of traditional law – her child had fallen gravely ill with an incurable bronchial infection, and she had condemned herself to a lifetime with her current husband. Her son would die unless her husband's family sacrificed a cow to the oracle. Both husband and wife railed against Basi, asking him again and again to reduce the sacrifice (the cow represented an unmanageable payment for the husband's family) and save the child's life. Basi responded that the child was indeed his grandson, and that it pained him more than they knew to prescribe this sacrifice, but that the oracle had its rules, that these were impartial, and that they could not be broken even for members of his own family. After a long discussion, the husband fled to his own village, while Nantene broke into tears.[9] The many witnesses of this daylong drama observed that Basi was one of the last sculptors left who still possessed the integrity to apply traditional laws even when they harmed his own family. By adhering to tradition, even when it conflicted with his personal wishes, Basi enlarged his reputation for fairness, increasing the confidence already placed in him throughout the region. When debating a commission, village elders may cite similar examples of a sculptor's integrity, and they may well select a technically less competent artist because of his reputation for absolute adherence to traditional law. A man who can sacrifice his grandchild for the sake of an abstract principle will not contravene the rigorous restrictions necessary for the creation of ritual sculpture.

Finally, the Bamana do not refer merely to sexual behavior, impartiality, and trustworthiness when they evaluate a sculptor's character, but also to the artist's ability to observe demanding ritual restrictions. Kojugu clearly stated the connection between correct ritual practice and the efficacy of a mask when he was asked whether one would choose to replace an old and effective Komo mask with a new one:

KOJUGU: If the old one is in a town, and the old one is strong and it does its work well, yes, the person who created it [the mask] – its [the masks's] force or its lack of force – all of it is the result of its creator. The wood that must be used to carve it, if you don't make it with that wood, and the day on which one must sculpt it, if you don't sculpt it on that day specifically, and the way in which one must make the offerings, if you don't make them in a proper manner, aah, it [the mask] won't have any force, of course.[10]

Kojugu tells us that the sculptor who is ritually observant will create objects filled with power, whereas the artist who cuts corners and infringes the rules that regulate every aspect of carving, from cutting down the tree to making the final sacrifices over the finished object, will fail miserably. Similarly, a pregnant woman who breaks certain interdictions, such as stepping over the cord that ties a donkey to a stake, will cause the nyama released by this act to attack her fetus with disastrous results.[11]

A village that commissions an object from a sculptor who lacks ritual knowledge runs enormous risks, for an artist who breaks traditional rules places his clients as well as himself in jeopardy. Kojugu describes the dangers that surround the carving of “the red horse” and “the little dog”:[12]

INTERVIEWER: Does one carve the little dog in that way [with the same interdictions as the Nkoson]?[13]

KOJUGU: The little dog – if you are carving it, up until you finish it, you cannot be in the middle of carving and call someone, saying, “So and so, come here.” You will not call anyone by name. Apart from that, while sculpting it you can chat and you can eat, but to call someone during the process of sculpting it, saying his name, you don't do that.

INTERVIEWER: Why don't you do that?

KOJUGU: That one [the one whom you call] will die.

INTERVIEWER: Tell me the others [i.e., the interdictions that apply to making the other objects under discussion].

KOJUGU: The red horse, you carve it until it is finished, but you cannot take it in your left hand to give it to its owner.

INTERVIEWER: And if you do it with ill will on purpose?

KOJUGU: If you do it with ill will, when you have finished sculpting it you take it in your left hand and you give it to him [the client] – this is when you are acting with ill will. Aah! you [normally] take it in your right hand, the hand with which you eat and you say, “So and so, here it is, your object is finished.”[14]

The existence of such rules means that the client must have enough confidence in the moral character of the artist to entrust his own life to the sculptor, for, once commissioned, the object acts on both sculptor and client. The client may not be aware of the specific rules governing the creation of “the little dog” and “the red horse,” but he knows that such interdictions exist and that their penalties may be life-threatening. He is certainly aware that, in commissioning a ritual object, he may be placing his life in the hands of the artist.

Sexual purity and strength of character may be more important than aesthetic judgment, but this does not mean that an artist's visual achievements carry no weight. Aesthetic factors also play an important part in the final choice of sculptor. Kojugu describes the role of an artist's “hand” in his selection as follows:

KOJUGU: No matter what village you come from, if you work [i.e., carve], everyone will say that, “this one has a good hand,” no matter what town you come from [i.e., this is an objective artistic comment that does not depend on one's wealth, family connections, or the power of one's hometown]. But if the mark of your hand comes out behind, people will contradict themselves. That depends on the way in which each person has studied.[15]

Kojugu uses the Bamana words bòlo nò, literally, “hand” and “trace,” or “trace of the hand,” to express the idea that each sculptor has a personal style that is recognized, criticized, appreciated, and debated by those who watch him work. As with mud-cloth dyers, artists are known by their “hands,” and, depending on the skill of the sculptor and the taste of the viewer, specific artists obtain particular commissions due to the quality and style of their work.

Geography plays an important role in such choices, for neighboring villages tend to commission objects from each other's artists. Furthermore, when sculptors do obtain commissions in remote areas, they usually change their style to suit the client. It would be unusual to find a sculptor from Buguni sculpting a southern style Tyi Warra for a client near Kita. However, clients from Kita might very well admire the Buguni artist and award him a commission on the basis that he would adapt his skills to carving a northern, ‘Kita style’ Tyi Warra (Fig. 10).[16] Villages may seek out a “stranger” sculptor, but he must be flexible enough to adapt his style to their expectations. In general, familiarity with a locally renowned artist's oeuvre and the trust accruing from long-term observation of his personality will swing the balance in favor of a known sculptor. Unless the blacksmith is a young man who receives an unexpected commission while traveling to view important objects, an artist must be famous and the client propelled by the desire to astonish and outdo his neighbors, to overcome the barriers imposed by regional style.

Bamana and Malinke clients have definite ideas concerning aesthetic success; they will not select an artist known for his N'tomo masks to create a Komo if another sculptor famed for his Komo masks is close at hand.[17] According to Kojugu, each elder who participates in a village decision will suggest the name of an artist, but it is the leader of the group who listens to these varying opinions, allows a certain time for debate, evaluates the emerging consensus, and puts it into words:

KOJUGU: If the people of a village don't have a Komo mask and if their thoughts are fixed on the problem of obtaining a Komo mask, they will say … [a pause while Kojugu thinks]. It is only the old people [old men] who will agree on it and say, “Indeed, we must seek a Komo mask.” At this time, everyone will cite the names of blacksmiths [sculptors]. Then the one who is at the head of all the men assembled, he will say, “Aaa, in my opinion, we must confide this [problem] to this blacksmith [sculptor] here.” Then they will say, “Ooo, we will stop [i.e., select] with this one that you have named.” They will say, “You must go and explain this problem [of the commission] to him [the blacksmith—sculptor].”[18]

What Kojugu neglects to specify (because to him it is self-evident) is that these powerful elders do much more than merely cite the names of famous blacksmith-sculptors. A village leader will wait silently during hours of discussion while his peers debate both the aesthetic merits of the works produced by the sculptors in question and the moral character of the artists themselves. Similarly, the elders who debate the merits of an adolescent girl will balance her personality and character against her physical strength, her weight, and her presumed ability to bear healthy children.[19] In both cases, the final selection depends on balancing the sexual profile, the character, and the aesthetic skill or physical appearance of the sculptor or woman in question.

Negotiations

Commissions may be public or private. Public commissions are negotiated in semisecret by an important elder, such as a well-known Kòmòtigi, on behalf of one or several villages. Private commissions are negotiated in complete secrecy by the object's future “owner.” In the past, public commissions were far more common than private ones, and the following discussion will focus on the decision-making and negotiating procedures followed for a public commission.

A Kòmòtigi sent to commission a mask may be operating on behalf of a single village, a section of a village, or several villages linked together by a formal alliance. His visit is the end result of months of debate. A Komo mask and, indeed, all important communally owned ritual objects or fòròba yiriw, are major investments for any community.[20] In the past, some objects were expensive enough that a single village could never afford them, and friendly communities might cement informal alliances by contributing toward the commission of a jointly held ritual object that would protect all the contributors. Such alliances had the political objective of binding the participants together in a ritually endorsed nonaggression pact, and might easily include ten or more villages. Before commissioning the single object that would become the keystone of such an alliance, each participating village would debate the commission on its own. These discussions did not include the mass of women, children, and younger men, although delegates from the young men's and young women's tonw or age-grade associations would take part, as would one or two prominent elderly women.[21] The female delegates would be consulted in private by several senior men, and their opinions quietly relayed to the select group who are the real decision makers in every Bamana and Malinke village. This council of elderly men might include the dugutigi or “owner of the land,” a representative of the first family to settle a village who makes sacrifices to the earth, the leader of the Komo society or Kòmòtigi, an elder famous for his powers of divination, an elderly representative of the village's slaves, an old and respected griot, and the old men who headed the village's most important extended families. Delegates might raise problems such as whether a neighboring and rival village could be trusted to abide by the pact, whether the demands of carrying water, brewing millet beer, and cooking for an additional major festival every year would weigh too heavily on the women, and whether the blacksmith being considered for the commission was really the best sculptor available. Once each village had concluded its discussions and arrived at a decision, delegates (usually the dugutigi and one or two other elders, including the head of the major secret association in the village) would be selected to attend a group meeting. Such meetings would be held in the tu or sacred grove attached to one of the participating villages, and would involve a similar process of debate and discussion. Normally, it might take days or even weeks to arrive at a consensus, and an alliance of villages might need to summon its ‘delegates’ several times in order to ratify the political agreement linking all the villages and discuss the choice of an artist, what payments might be demanded by the sculptor, and how to apportion the cost among the participants. The expenses could be so great that the alliance might have to wait several years before its subscribers could stockpile enough cattle and grain to embark on the commission.

In the case of a single village, the decision to commission a new ritual object was somewhat faster, but, once again, it involved the canvassing of opinions, and a process of consensus formation by the village council. These powerful elders would assemble privately, perhaps at 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning, and debate the merits of commissioning a new mask and the contending claims of various sculptors. Such discussions would inevitably reveal hidden political, economic, and social rivalries, conflicts that had to be resolved before a unanimous decision could be arrived at. In a large village, different quarters might express political and economic tensions by refusing to use the same Komo mask. Even today, it is not uncommon for sections of a town to strive to outdo each other by commissioning the most ferocious and impressive Komo mask from a famous sculptor. In the words of Kojugu:

KOJUGU: The problem of the Komo, of course, if the people of a town are divided into two parts and if they have suspicions of each other, this one here will say, “I will arrange that mine [my Komo] becomes the one that directs people.” But that one over there [the other quarter] will also say, “I will arrange that mine [my Komo] becomes the one that directs people.” Each one is with his own Komo. Each one comes to commission a Komo mask with you [the sculptor]. The one whose mask is respected, if it is really respected, this mask will gain in force [and overcome the other]. Because a jo [a secret association] is a thing of respect [i.e., the power of any secret association depends on its reputation and the respect paid to it]. After this, all the Komo will become one [i.e., when one mask and its owner clearly dominates another]. But if you are going to agree with one another, even if it is a case of three villages that unite for the problem of the Komo, [it is possible] to have a single Komo. But if you are not in agreement, a single village can be divided into three parts and each part will have its own Komo.[22]

When Kojugu states, “This one here will say, …” he underlines a recurrent problem in the Bamana and Malinke decision-making process. Consensus requires that every powerful leader, or cèkun, cooperate and subordinate his individual interests to the group effort. However, cèkunw frequently believe that they possess the ritual and political power to stand alone, to commission their own Komo mask, and even to refuse strategic alliances with neighboring villages. A tough leader can not only split a village by commissioning his own Komo, but, in a small village, he can also impose the onerous obligation of purchasing a new ritual object, whether the community wishes it or not. In the past, it was not unusual for a powerful leader to summon the village council and anounce that he had made the decision to commission a new ritual object, and that they must come up with the wherewithal to pay for it. As long as the cèkun lived, no one would dare to disobey him, although they might complain at his impositions and fear the increased quotient of power he would obtain through such an object.

This distortion of group commissions for individual goals is related to the fact that it was fairly common for adult men to commission their own “medicines” from sculptors. The head of an extended family might not only inherit several ritual objects, but might also commission a personal basi in order to increase his power. His younger half-brother might also be inspired by ambition, and seek redress for real and imagined grievances against his older sibling through a similar commission. Kojugu describes the way in which fadenya or competitive rivalry can multiply the number of commissions as follows:

KOJUGU: Here, among us black people, the lineage of blacksmiths, even if the village is large, the wood [i.e., the ritual object] belonging to the village as a whole is on its own. The ritual object belonging to the kabila [a group of associated villages linked by political alliances, ethnic affiliation, and geographic location] as a whole is on its own. The ritual object belonging to the whole concession [here the physical space – the concession – in which the extended family lives is used as a metaphor for the family itself] is on its own. The first son of the family and the father of the family [the oldest living male] and the rest of the family, for instance, if there are many people living in the concession, perhaps four or five grown men, and each one wants to be a leader, and the ritual object belonging to the group on which one depends; it's not the same thing [as having one's own object]; each one will seek his own personal thing [ritual object]. If you work [perform ritual operations] with the communal object, then, afterward you will execute your own personal work with the thing that belongs to you alone. Thus, you will obtain fame.[23]

Kojugu implies that communal objects do not always function to achieve individual goals, and that startling successes in arranging life to suit one's own desires are frequently explained in terms of the “medicines” belonging to important cèkunw. The Bamana often attribute an extended family's prosperity not to the family-owned mako nya yiri, which has been inherited through four or five generations, but to the powers of the personal objects commissioned by a living cèkun. Such basiw may function successfully, but there is a high level of individualism involved in their maintenance and use, for the cèkun has no responsibility to use them on behalf of either his extended family or the community at large. Thus, these objects are always somewhat suspect, and most great men of knowledge prefer to negotiate for such items in complete secrecy. In contrast, negotiations for communally commissioned objects are more frequently conducted with witnesses present, for the emissaries wish to avoid being accused of having distorted their mission or failed in their task.[24]

An emissary who seeks out a famous sculptor will find him enmeshed in the social world, for an important artist keeps his finger on the pulse of his own community, and indeed of the entire region. When at home, most sculptors are found in or near the forge, whether they are working iron, carving stools, or merely supervising apprentices. The forge is the site for numerous consultations, as both villagers and travelers salute the numu and then settle down to recount their problems and those of their village. In some cases, the sculptor will put his own concerns aside and take the visitor back to his ceso (literally, “man's house”) or private consulting room, where he may begin an extended divination before prescribing “medicines” and sacrifices. An important artist like Basi may well find a line of clients waiting for him when he returns to the forge, and many blacksmith compounds constantly harbor one or two long-term guests, who pursue a difficult cure or advanced instruction with the master sculptor.

Forges are usually set up at a crossroads or at the edge of town in a round excavation about a foot or a foot and a half deep (Fig. 16). This depression is surrounded by a small, mud-brick wall about a foot high, and a thatched roof supported by posts covers the forge. Although nonblacksmith men are permitted to cross the boundary into the forge, no women of any caste may enter. Even male visitors normally respect the boundaries of the forge, which is a sacred space as well as a working one, and usually stand or sit under the shade of a nearby mango as they pursue their conversation with the sculptor. An artist like Kojugu knows almost every visitor from the surrounding region, and will often identify them by voice without even turning around. Frequently, the sculptor also knows why the visitor has come to see him, although he will always wait for the stranger to put his needs into words himself. Many sculptors will even predict the arrival of unexpected visitors, having been forewarned by their spirits and through divination.

The forge is also a focal point for villagers who simply enjoy the blacksmiths’ humor, satirical tongues, and their lack of restraint in speech (they are allowed to make explicit sexual references in daily speech, a freedom denied to horonw, or “nobles”), and these regulars sit and watch the apprentices at work, keeping each other company as they chew tobacco, drink millet beer, and exchange bon mots. Their presence makes the forge an intensely public arena; once spoken, no word is forgotten by these ever-present witnesses. Although they delight in the sculptor's trenchant humor, they also watch him constantly, for a man who communicates daily with spirits is both powerful and unpredictable. A great artist has not acquired a “name” without becoming the cynosure of many eyes; every gesture is noted, and every word weighed in the balance by these spectators, who are all too ready to report any lapse from tradition to a rival sculptor. In daily life, the sculptor's enormous power is constantly channeled and supervised by these witnesses, and a famous artist like Basi must know how to contain his actions, defending himself both from the eyes that watch and the tongues that gossip.

The regulars at the forge will not fail to observe the arrival of the emissary sent to negotiate a commission. Important elders, such as the head of a Komo association, seldom travel, and when they do go to the effort of visiting a blacksmith, it must, so the observers remark, be for an important matter: a dispute within the hierarchy of ritual specialists, a question as to what to do with a sacred object whose owner has died and whose sons are Muslim, or a commission. The sculptor himself will hardly remain seated when he notes the stature of his guest; he will get up, return his visitor's salutations, and, after appropriate courtesies, suggest that they retire to his ceso where the real business of the day will occur.

Due to the public nature of the forge, an emissary will often choose to avoid the master artist altogether, and will simply arrive at the compound of another, “noble,” ritual specialist who becomes his “host” or jatigi. Among the Bamana and Malinke the host-guest relationship is a codified rapport with rules; the jatigi is not only responsible for lodging and feeding his visitor, but he also acts as a guarantor for his guest's behavior, and must be willing to resolve any conflicts created by the emissary. If the client abuses the jatigi‘s hospitality and that of his village, for instance by carrying off someone's wife, the host is responsible for his visitor's actions and must compensate the injured husband. The jatigi is accountable for his visitor's personal safety, and, were his guest killed, he would have to announce the news to the emissary's family and take responsibility for the death.

Likewise, the emissary who enjoys the jatigi‘s physical, political, and ritual protection must obey certain rules. He cannot wander heedlessly about the village without being accompanied by a representative of the host's family, who will watch that the unwary visitor does not step on sacred ground or break the ritual interdictions associated with particular people or places. The guest must also avoid the seductive overtures of village women who might be pursuing their own quarrels with his host, and try to use the stranger as a pawn in their own strategies. Finally, the guest must honor and respect both the jatigi and his friends with gifts, time, and attention; and in the future, when the host visits the guest's village, the emissary must be willing to take his former protector under his wing.

In precolonial conditions of constant political and physical insecurity, such rules made travel possible, but the Malinke and Bamana have also institutionalized the jatigi–dunan (host-guest) relationship to encompass the symbiotic rapport between a blacksmith family and its noble patron. Traditionally, most numuw from important smithing families were born into a relationship of patronage with a ruling, or “noble,” warrior family, and every politically powerful noble had ‘his’ blacksmiths, who lived in his village and owed their primary loyalties to him. In times of war such relationships were important, since blacksmiths were also the arms specialists, repairing and producing percussion guns, flintlocks, and, in the case of Samory Touré, repeaters, bullets, and cartridge cases copied from French and German models (McNaughton 1988, 35).[25] In peacetime the relationship became somewhat more elastic, although some numuw reported that in the past they had never farmed, since they could rely on their noble patrons for their entire grain supply.[26] Like griots, the blacksmiths attached to particular families often acted as historians, and might well know more about the noble family's history than the horonw themselves. When their patron married, the client blacksmith would often act as the go-between to arrange the betrothal and marriage ceremonies, and no noble would ever make an important political decision without consulting ‘his’ blacksmith. In fact, numuw could often make or break the policies of their ostensible superiors.

Figure 16. A forge hastily established by an itinerant blacksmith in one corner of an outlying compound in a small Beledugu town. Because of its temporary nature, the forge area is not excavated or surrounded with a wall. Since the woman talking to the blacksmith is postmenopausal, she is not considered disturbing to the young man, but she still sits just at the edge of the shelter that delimits the forge area. She wears an excision cloth (the N'Gale) entrusted to her for safekeeping by a young girl who has just completed this rite of passage. Photographed in a small Beledugu town, 2/21/77.

Given the nature of the host-guest relationship and its extension to an acknowledged patronage relationship between noble and smith, it is understandable why an intelligent emissary may prefer to approach an important but irascible sculptor through the artist's traditional patron. In this case, the noble's dual position as host to both client and sculptor enables him to act as an important intermediary, smoothing the emissary's way in the negotiations and ensuring that the artist will receive adequate payment.

If the noble in question accepts the emissary as his guest, the two men will exchange salutations; the visitor will be presented with water in which to wash, and then with food. Finally the two old men will sit together as the emissary receives visits from all the local dignitaries. Perhaps the visiting Kòmòtigi will say that he is here to arrange a marriage, and while all utter the appropriate benedictions, a few participants will quietly note that this marriage has been all but settled some months earlier, that this elder is far too powerful to concern himself with such a banal matter, and that there must be some other reason for the visit. However, the local elders chat casually with their visitor, evincing no interest in his mission, until 11:00 or 12:00 at night, when he retires, ostensibly to sleep. Then, once the Kòmòtigi is alone with his host, he explains that his real purpose is to commission a new Komo mask. The host, who has a lifetime of experience with the artist in question, will then proffer advice as to the probable cost, the best time and place to approach the sculptor, and may even offer to act as the intermediary for and witness to the negotiations.

At first the host will probably depart alone to warn the sculptor of the visit, and to allow him to select the safest and most private moment for the meeting. When the sculptor is finally ready, he will send his most trusted apprentice to summon the host and his visitor, perhaps just after dawn or during that critical period toward 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning when even the most interested spectators fall victim to exhaustion. When the apprentice has escorted the two nobles into the ceso and left them alone with the artist, the three old men will get down to the negotiations that matter.

No Bamana or Malinke enters hastily into an alliance that will last a lifetime, whether he negotiates for a woman or a ritual object. Although village councillors can speak openly and even bluntly when discussing a case of adultery or a conflict over land boundaries, they usually prefer slower and more subtle methods. We have seen that Bamana elders are expert at responding to a difficult issue by stating a proverb that simultaneously expresses their position and allows them to evade direct speech (Brett-Smith 1984, 135–9). No village elder, whether opening negotiations for a communal or a personal commission, ever approaches the problem directly.

When emissary and artist are finally face-to-face in the intimacy of the sculptor's consulting room, an interchange occurs that, in Bamana terms, is direct and open, but to us seems veiled and even obscure. Kojugu reports the words that cement the commission of a Komo mask as follows:

KOJUGU: They [the village elders] will say, “You will go and explain the problem [of the commission] to him [the chosen artist].” He [the emissary] will get up to go and call him [in the case where the commission has been given to a hometown artist], or, if it is the case that he [the emissary] has come to you [the sculptor], and if you are not with another person, he will sit down with you and say, “I have come for an affair.” You will say, “Yes, tell me what it is.” He will say, “I have come on behalf of the association of men. You must make great efforts to apply yourself seriously to the problem of making something for me.” Its name [of the Komo mask] is never said openly, of course. The emissary says, “I have come on behalf of the association of men.” You will answer, “All the things, or …? All the things together or some without others?” If it is a case of everything together [i.e., not only the Komo mask, but the flutes and other paraphernalia] the emissary will respond, “Everything.” This includes the Komo suruku,[27] the flutes of the Komo [Komo buruw], and the Komo saman (Fig. 57)[28] along with the Komo mask, … if you hear that it is a case of everything, … at that moment it is said that all these things will be in it [the commission]. But if you [the village] possess the Komo suruku, the Komo saman, and no Komo mask, you will specify the Komo mask. Yes, you will discuss the commission and you will reach an agreement about it. You will sculpt it [the mask], and you will arrange that it is taken to them [the village], and they will come with the laada [traditional ritual payments].[29]

The emissary first states that he has come for “an affair,” but the word he uses is mako, the same term that was examined in Chapter 1, where we found that ritual experts and carvers talk of mako dlan yiriw “wood/carvings that fix needs,” mako nya yiriw “trees/carvings that remedy needs,” and mako nyèlanw or “things that arrange needs,”[30] but not of ‘sculptures’ in our sense of the term. When we remember that Bazin defines mako as “need, necessity,” or “lack” (1906, 379), and that, for the Bamana, the term conveys a clear sense of urgency, we have a more complete understanding of the emissary's words. No sculptor hearing the word mako at the beginning of a conversation can remain unaware that his visitor is about to broach an important subject, possibly a commission. It is also significant that Kojugu explicitly notes that the emissary never mentions the Komo mask by name, saying only, “I have come on behalf of the association of men.” Here, the word he uses is ton, which is usually defined as a young men's or women's age–grade association.[31] Such associations assemble all the young men and women of similar ages together in work groups that farm and eat together. A village ton has its own field that it cultivates to provide the millet for beer and tot at its annual feast, and it also labors on the fields of each extended family in turn. In contrast, secret male associations such as the Komo are not tonw, but jow (the literal sense of jo is “law”), sacred associations with their own rules and sacrifices.[32] Here Kojugu uses the word ton in its most general sense as “association.” By using the more secular term ton, but clarifying it with the specification “the men's ton,” Kojugu twists everyday secular language to convey the sense that the delegate is really talking about a Komo mask, without having to name it. To a casual listener, the words will remain ambiguous, but an artist like Kojugu will read the hidden meaning in his client's speech. The Bamana and Malinke consider such defensive ambiguity to be an essential precaution, for, even at the dead of night, who knows what child has not been stationed near the door of the sculptor's consulting room, ready to report what he hears to his mother, who will then inform her family in a rival village? Commissioning a new Komo mask is a serious matter, and no one wishes to run the risk of having the affair spoiled if they can help it.

When sculptor and client have a long-standing friendship or some level of mutual respect, they discuss the commission only briefly. However, as with most verbal interchanges, the words uttered are only the tip of the iceberg. If village elders must debate a possible commission at length, so must the sculptor. A famous artist often responds to the offer of a commission by telling his visitor that he is not feeling well and cannot consider the problem right now. Can the visiting Kòmòtigi return in several weeks? Sculptors also cite family problems, such as the funeral of a distant relative, as a way of deferring their decisions. Or, having got wind of his visitor's errand, a sculptor may disappear into the bush, telling his family he does not know when he will return, and leaving his guest to kick his heels in annoyance. In some cases, such strategies indirectly signal a decision to refuse the commission, but in others the artist is simply playing for time. In our own case, Basi Fane was undecided as to whether it would be safe to carve the Tyi Warra mask, and his indecision kept me and my associate in suspense for five weeks.

Why should a famous blacksmith-sculptor like Basi Fane need weeks or months to decide whether to embark on another Komo mask, or even a less powerful object like our Tyi Warra? No sculptor, even Basi, will accept or refuse a commission without extensive divinations, sacrifices, and consultations with his spirit familiars. Let us take the case of our own commission. From our first appearance at the doorway to his compound, Basi was beset by fears that this foreign visitor, who ostensibly offered him an opportunity to distinguish himself, would in fact cause his death. He suspected that we might be setting a trap for him, and that acceptance of our proposal would bring the jealous wrath of every other important blacksmith in the Kita region down upon his head. The sculptor seemed terrified that other ritual experts would accuse him of having revealed secrets to a European, and would kill him for this “treachery” (janfa). Furthermore, he was also worried that the same experts would assume that he had received huge sums of money from us in exchange for the commission, and that he had kept these transactions hidden so as to increase his own personal wealth. Basi had good reasons for his defensive attitude; throughout the time we spent in his compound, the sculptor received emissaries from all the ritual specialists of the area. Furthermore, these visitors, who apparently stopped at the compound merely to greet the famous artist, were visibly consumed by curiosity about our presence. Basi handled their subtle questions with aplomb, explaining the details of our proposal and taking care to specify the payments involved in front of numerous witnesses. However, the pressure exerted by these ‘respectful’ visitors directly affected our commission.

First of all, Basi refused to tell us whether or not he would carve the Tyi Warra until the day he actually went into the bush to look for the dyafereke from which the mask had to be carved.[33] This was the twelfth of February, 1984, and he began the ritual carving the next day. Second, before he was willing to look for the tree, Basi insisted that we make a series of sacrifices in order to see whether the omens surrounding the commission were propitious. The first of these took place on the sixth of February, 1984, and was the Mansa su saraka, or, literally translated, “the sacrifice for the spirit of the ruler.” The Mansa su saraka is an offering made to the most famous ancestor of the man commissioning the ritual object. In our own case, the village ‘chief,’ who killed the requisite white ram on our behalf (Fig. 17), cited the names of Mr. Mara's grandfather and his most significant ancestor, a hero who had led one of the military contingents (kélé bolo) under the thirteenth century king of Mali, Sunjata. In addition to the pure white sheep, the client is also required to offer one hundred white kola nuts, but Basi permitted us to replace these with ten nuts. Basi himself chose the sheep, which had to fit certain requirements (he refused to specify what these were). At about 9:30 A.M. on the day of the sacrifice, the village ‘chief,’ Nci Traore, was summoned to Basi's compound. While Basi placed the ten white kola nuts in a calabash and my associate restrained the sheep, Nci pronounced the ancestral names over the animal and accompanied this with a portion of an Arabic prayer in addition to long, muttered, traditional incantations. At the end of the incantations, Nci asked Mr. Mara to place his right hand on the neck of the sheep, while the elder slit the sheep's throat. The animal took approximately five minutes to die, and, while it was being butchered, Basi split the kola nuts in half and handed one piece to each person in his compound. One of Basi's sons grilled the sheep's liver on the spot, and this was immediately eaten by all of the participants in the ceremony. The cekalen (Fig. 18), a portion of the vertebral column that must be consumed only by the client, was cooked and given to us to eat. By the time the sacrifice was finished, it was 1:00 in the afternoon and we were totally exhausted. However, the eighty-year-old Basi was still filled with energy, and at 2:00 he disappeared into the bush with a chicken to make a further sacrifice on his personal ritual objects. He refused to allow anyone to accompany him.

Figure 17. White sheep (saga jigi) offered together with ten white kola nuts in the Mansa su saraka to determine whether any harm would come to the author, her associate, or Basi Fane if he executed the author's commission. The names of Mr. Mara's father, grandfather, and foremost ancestor were included in the prayer-incantation spoken over the sheep before it was killed. Mr. Mara then placed his right hand just behind the neck of the animal while its throat was slit. Nci Traore, the village ‘chief’ who killed the sheep, is considered an extraordinarily holy person, and, when the sheep's heart was opened, it was found to be free of any blood clots, proof of Nci's purity. While the sheep was dying, Basi distributed the kola nut halves to everyone who had participated in the ceremony. Once the sheep had been cut up, the liver was immediately grilled and everyone present ate a piece. Another section, the cekalen, was reserved exclusively for the author and Mr. Mara's consumption. Photographed in Basi Fane's compound, 2/6/84.

Figure 18. The cekalen or portion of the vertebral column destined to be consumed by the patron (in this case the author and her associate) who is commissioning the sculpture. This portion of the meat is said to give those who consume it physical, spiritual, and psychological strength or barika. The bones were carefully saved and buried, lest they transfer some of this power to anyone other than the sculpture's “owners.” Photographed in Basi Fane's compound, 2/6/84.

It was difficult to obtain a clear interpretation of the Mansa su saraka, although its name and the prayers uttered before killing the sheep suggest that it is an appeal to the client's ancestors to indicate whether or not the potential commission is dangerous. The feared ‘dangers’ certainly apply to the sculptor, for Basi was absolutely definite in his declaration that no artist would ever accept a commission merely on the basis of a potential client's soothing words. Rather, he would wait and see what the Mansa su saraka revealed, and then act accordingly. Thus, according to Basi, sacrificial results are the crucial factors that determine a sculptor's acceptance or rejection of a commission. Furthermore, the Mansa su saraka also seems to be a protective measure for the client; presumably the appeal to Mr. Mara's ancestors would have served to warn us, as well as Basi, of any negative effects that might have resulted from the commission. In fact, Basi's comment that eating the cekalen would “reinforce our strength” (ka barika di mògòw ma), suggested that our solitary consumption of this portion would give us additional protection as we embarked on our dangerous enterprise.

One may ask how Basi decided that the results of the Mansa su saraka were favorable to the commission. According to Basi, the position taken by the four feet of the sacrificed animal determines whether a sacrifice is positive or negative. If the front legs are held straight, the client is straightforward and honest, but if these legs bend toward the back of the animal, the client is dishonest. If the hind legs are straight, those people who are subordinate to or depend on the client are honest, but if these legs bend toward the interior the client's followers are dishonest and may betray him. If there are no gouts of blood in the heart, then the person who actually killed the animal is pure. In our own case, the front legs were straight; thus, the sacrifice attested to our honesty, but the hind legs indicated some dissension among those connected with us. Nci Traore, the village chief who had killed our sheep, was found to be “pure,” a diagnosis that merely confirmed his reputation for saintliness within Basi's village.

Although the results of the Mansa su saraka were largely positive and certainly indicated no harm to the sculptor himself, Basi insisted on yet another sacrifice, which was carried out on February tenth, 1984. This sacrifice was called Ba biyen or Ba mansa biyen (Fig. 19). Although Basi would not explain the meaning of these terms, they can be literally translated as “the ram's liver” or “the ram's liver for the king” (the second phrase might also mean “the liver of the kingly ram”). The offering consisted of one large red and one large white kola nut, placed together with the finely pounded millet flour used to make dege (sacrificial millet balls or porridge, Fig. 20) and some water in a calabash. A speckled gray chicken was sacrificed, and as it died, Basi held the calabash in his hands, turning it first in one direction and then in another. As the calabash moved, the chicken appeared to turn first one way and then the other, and Basi informed us that he could direct the chicken's movements with the calabash. He would not explain either the meaning of the different items making up the offering, or how he had decided that this sacrifice was also positive. However, the next day he began carving a practice piece to retrieve his “hand,” and two days later, on February twelfth, he took my associate into the bush to look for the dyafereke from which he would carve our Tyi Warra.

Figure 19. Red and white kola nuts, dègè flour, and water in a calabash. These items were part of the Ba biyen, or Ba mansa biyen sacrifice made by Basi Fane the day before beginning to carve the first practice piece that preceded the execution of the author's commission. A chicken was killed to determine whether the sculptor could go ahead with the project. Photographed in Basi Fane's compound, 2/10/84.

The author's commission is a typical example of the fraught relationship that comes into being between famous sculptors and their clients. Basi's delaying tactics, his reliance on the mysterious answers provided by divination, and the speed with which he finally acted once these answers were discovered to be positive, are all standard reactions to the social and spiritual problems presented by the request to carve a new ritual object.

In the author's case the determining factor in accepting the commission appeared to be the results of the sacrifices just described, including Basi's private offering of the chicken in the bush, which, as we saw, he unfortunately refused to explain. Furthermore, he would not discuss the possibly related issue of whether he consulted his personal spirit regarding the commission; it may well be that the observable sacrifices were only the tip of the iceberg, and that the famous sculptor had also been engaged in a lengthy period of consultation with his djinn. According to Kojugu, djinns may not always oblige the sculptor and his client with a quick response, even though most artists are in constant communication with their spirits. The sculptor may require time to visit the place in the bush where his familiar spirit appears to him, or it may require weeks of sexual abstinence to receive a clear message concerning the commission. In the best case, the sculptor's djinn may have predicted this particular commission years ago, and the artist needs only to confirm the earlier information to accept it. Kojugu describes the artist's consultation with his spirit as follows:

Figure 20. Dègè balls offered by women as sacrifices. The woman offering the sacrifice gets up very early in the morning to pound sanyò (Pennisetum spicatum) into a fine white powder. The millet is pounded and sieved many more times than usual to achieve the desired consistency and color. Then it is mixed with a small amount of water to form the balls of raw dough shown here. The woman making the sacrifice silently makes her wish and places the balls in a bowl. She then offers the finished dègè to all the members of her compound and her neighbors. Refusal to take and eat one of these balls is considered an ominous sign of ill will. The dègè flour can also be mixed with water or milk to form a liquid porridge; it can then be drunk, or poured over ritual objects as an offering. When well made, dègè is a great delicacy. Photographed in Basi Fane's compound, 2/21/84.

KOJUGU: If you are together with a djinn, when the night comes, at a certain moment, in any case, if I am not mistaken, if the night has advanced to a certain moment, if she [the djinn] comes toward you, you will feel terror, and, immediately, you will think of her. She will wake you up. [She will tell you that] at a certain time, someone will come and propose a certain piece of work to you, and you must act like this [i.e., follow the djinn’s instructions]. At a certain moment, when someone proposes such a piece of work, you must refuse. But at another time, equally, someone will offer you a commission. This person who offers you the work; he is playing with you [i.e., the commission is not genuine, but is made to mock the sculptor, to harm him, or even to kill him]. “Yes, you must not accept it,” [Kojugu cites the advice of the djinn] or else, you accept it. “If you accept it, you will find yourself in a painful situation, but after this [this situation] you will surpass them.” Thus, when the day comes, you will calculate, and the knowledge will come back to you [the information that you have received from the djinn]. However, at the moment that you are informed of this during the night, during this same night you will forget it. When it becomes day, if you sit down and you reflect, then this will come into your head, the way in which this was told to you, and when someone approaches you [about a sculpture], you will do the work [i.e., refuse or accept the commission and carry it out according to what you have been told by your djinn], nhun.[34]

Like the author, the disconsolate client may wait for weeks or even months while the artist both divines and consults his spirits, but most emissaries wait patiently, for they are well aware that no sculptor can backtrack in the middle of his work and fail to complete the mask or figure he has begun. It is certainly possible that the sculptor may be struck down and paralyzed by his spirits in the middle of a commission, or he may die, the victim of a rival artist's poisoning or ritual work; like childbirth or battle, the carving of a ritual object places the sculptor at the still center of a contest between life and death, and, as with childbirth, he cannot stop the process, once it has begun, by going back on his word.

If we move from the otherworldly to the more practical aspects of the decision process, sculptors report that, in considering potential commissions, they place greater emphasis on their capacity to respect the necessary ritual rules than on the political or personal ambitions of their clients, or on the ultimate purposes of the objects they have been commissioned to carve. As we shall see, many of the ritual interdictions that govern the carving of sculpted “medicines” cannot be broken without causing the sculptor's death, and artists worry about whether they will be able to remain sexually abstinent for the time required to carve a particular object, whether the sacrifices offered will be sufficient to remove the nyama released by cutting a ritually significant tree such as the lènkè,[35] and whether their djinn endorses the commission. However, they often maintain a ‘know-nothing’ policy with regard to their client's goals (at least in public).

KOJUGU: The number of human figures in wood that I have made is more than nine. But if I want to cite the names of all those who acquired human figures in wood with me I cannot, because I cannot remember all of them. Good – if there is a stranger who arrives and persists, saying to me, “Kojugu, I have heard that you are of a certain stature, that you can make this, I have heard people speaking about your fame, and I have need of such and such an object,” then I don't ask where you come from or your family name or your personal name, and even if you are a thing from the bush [i.e., a djinn in human disguise], I am not Allah that I will know it. Even if you are a thing from the bush, I am not Allah that I will know it. But I will say that you must pay a certain sum. I have made many objects like that – in total, nine. Nhun, oò, the person who commissioned something with me, he commissioned it without my knowing if he will use it as a basi [medicine] or in some other way. I am not Allah that I should know this.[36]

Komo masks and other communally owned objects have clear public functions, but, in Kojugu's region, small human figures are usually commissioned by individuals (Fig. 3). Depending on the power and the “work” of the cèkun who orders them, these figures may be transformed into “medicines” with either a positive or negative valence. Kojugu is saying that, despite his vast knowledge of the prominent figures in his own region and their ongoing feuds, he takes care to distance himself from what he probably knows about the purposes of the images he sculpts. Given that Kojugu has an excellent memory, and that he has no trouble in recalling the number of figures he has carved, it is almost certain that he also remembers the names of his clients and has a very good idea as to their intentions. This is certainly true in cases in which he has been asked to carve communal or individual objects that require the sculptor to observe special interdictions in order to endow them with harmful power. However, like a reliable arms merchant or a Swiss bank, Kojugu declines to reveal either the names of his clients or any hint of their possible goals. As a technical and ritual specialist hovering outside the official realms of power, he must maintain a professional silence, a façade of not-knowing that protects him and his family, and that allows him to work for eminent and perhaps feuding clients. Kojugu's formulaic repetition, “I am not Allah that I should know this,” warns the interviewer that he is treading on dangerous ground, and that it is better to change the subject. A famous sculptor, like a renowned psychiatrist, will often know the inside stories of most of the prominent individuals and families within his region; but despite his well-known irascibility, his short temper, and biting tongue, the artist shrouds his commissions in an impenetrable silence. His problem is maintaining his fame, not passing moral judgment on his clients.

This attitude of nonjudgmental comprehension enables the sculptor to listen to his clients’ ritual and psychic needs with acute attention, but it does not extend to financial or aesthetic matters. Clients frequently arrive with unrealistic ideas about the cost of a commission or the feasibility of recarving an old mask to improve it. Sculptors consult with their djinns concerning the safety of accepting a commission, but once the spirit world has given its assent, they exercise their prerogatives as acknowledged masters of aesthetic judgment. The Bamana client often makes specific visual requests: the horns of their Komo mask must be longer than those of village x, the old mask had too many teeth, or the human figure must be a likeness of the client's grandfather. When the emissary or client approaches the sculptor, he will mention these specifications, and the aesthetic dialogue that results is an accepted part of the commission process, for the artist does not wish to carve an object that will diminish his reputation. Sculptors acknowledge that they have a responsibility to fulfill their clientele's visual expectations; a southern-style Tyi Warra mask will not pass muster in the Kita area. However, they also direct their more obtuse clients, often persuading them to commission a totally new object rather than trying to rectify an irremedial defect in an old one:

KOJUGU: If someone comes to tell you this, if they say that it has a certain defect, and [if they ask] whether you can remedy it, you will say, “Bring it here.” When they have come with the mask, if you find that you have the possibility of removing the defect, that's good. But if they arrive with it, and if you yourself you know that you can't remedy it, you will say, “If I do as you suggest, removing this defect here, all the rest [of the object] will be spoiled.” They will answer, “Wa! [exclamation indicating surprised comprehension], in this case you must carve a new one for us.” The problem of the new one will surface like that and you will carve the new one. But if they have come to show you the mask, if it is really disgusting, you will say, “Eeè! [Exclamation of horror.] Can't you leave that one and commission another, can you not look for another, since this one here is not useful? There is this defect here, there is this defect there.” They will sit down and look at it. They will say, “Aaah, that's true.” They will say, “Yes, make a new one for us and we will bring out the laada [traditional ritual payments].” You will carve a new one and they will bring out the laada.[37]

In this passage, Kojugu uses the French term défaut or “defect” to indicate the old mask's imperfections, and the phrase, n'a dun ma nyi yèrè bugu bugu, “if it is truly very bad” or, in a literate rather than a literal translation, “if it is disgusting,” to indicate the horrible quality of a mask that is totally devoid of aesthetic virtues. The words a ma nyi mean “bad,” whereas yèrè usually means “self,” but is here used adverbially as “truly,” and bugu bugu is an onomatopoeic word expressing an extreme degree of something. Thus, Kojugu adds adverb upon adverb to express his disgust at being presented with such a horrible mask. According to Kojugu, the sculptor reacts this intensely only if he sees a really ugly mask; if he can serve his client by recarving an object and removing its defects he will, but if not, it is his responsibility to make the client sit down and look at the object through new eyes. Kojugu also makes clear that, although the negotiations for a commission may encompass aesthetic debates, especially in borderline cases, the sculptor-blacksmith remains the final arbiter of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in sculpture. When a sculptor points out multiple defects in an old mask, the client does not attempt to argue, but trusts the artist's judgment and embarks on a new commission. In fact, due to the delegation of the responsibility for a commission to a respected elder, such discussions almost always occur between two ritual experts who have both viewed numerous ritual objects and have a clear idea of traditional aesthetics. The sculptor is certainly a visual expert, but his client is often almost as acute in his perceptions, for at the summit of the Bamana world, expertise of one kind flows into another, and it is rare for a famous healer or diviner to have a poorly developed visual sense.[38]

We have seen that the commission process is extraordinarily delicate, and, as Kojugu implied, when he stigmatized a mask carved simply because one feels like it as, “a round thing,” “an ornamental thing,” and a useless thing, the nature of the negotiations directly affects the commissioned object's power to act in the world.[39] As with a marriage, which cannot come into being without lengthy negotiations between two extended families, so the survival value and efficacy of a ritual object depends both on the sheer existence of negotiations and on their tone. Both the Bamana and Malinke are extremely sensitive to the slightest shifts in feeling and personality, and they believe that these subtle interpersonal factors influence a ritual object's ability to act. Objects conceived and carved in the midst of quarrels or violent emotions will inevitably run amuck, causing unpredictable disasters to be visited on both client and sculptor. Similarly, accurate divination can be “spoiled” by violent emotion, and an angry client who visits a diviner will be told that the expert is “away in the bush,” and left to cool his heels outside the consulting room. One reason that clients rarely talk when on their way to visit diviners and ritual specialists is that they wish to arrive enfolded in the silent calm that allows the expert to work with the maximum possibility of success. Likewise, an early morning sacrifice is always carried out at dawn with conversation kept to a bare minimum; loud voices or an extended discussion might interrupt the flow of communication to the other world.

The same rules apply to commissions; a sculpture can become a successful tool in this world only if both client and artist work in harmony, somewhat like partners in a tennis rally. Clients must meet their payments in full and on time, and must not place impossible artistic or ritual demands on the sculptor. Likewise, the sculptor should treat his patrons with consideration, moderating the payments required in view of the clients’ economic situation, respecting the rules that govern the creation of the object, and understanding his patrons’ needs. Like a marriage, a commission that begins with hostility and misunderstanding between the two partners will come to nothing, but an object that is the product of peaceful comprehension or a deep friendship between carver and client acquires great power. In our own case, it is possible that Basi made the author and her associate wait, immobilized in his compound for five weeks, so as to have the time necessary to observe our psychological makeup and assess whether executing our Tyi Warra would inevitably lead to recriminatory accusations and bad blood.

As with children, ritual objects often encode and materialize years of interpersonal relations. For instance, Basi revealed that he had refused all commissions for thirty years, but that he was planning to accept the task of making a “person in wood” or yirimògòni for a very old man in a neighboring village. This elder had ceremoniously offered Basi important gifts (principally livestock and cash) spaced over several years, before presenting the artist with his request for a yirimògòni. Basi had tried to evade the commission; but he could not refuse the gifts without insulting his friend, who stressed his deep need for such an object, and their lifetime knowledge of each other, in persuading Basi to pick up the adze. Because this elder had followed traditional rules of etiquette in honoring Basi with many gifts, the sculptor was cornered. He could not refuse to carve without spoiling both an important personal relationship and his own reputation, for to refuse would have been equivalent to repaying his client's generosity with an insult.

Sexual abstinence and morality, the impartiality with which a sculptor is known to apply traditional law, his meticulousness in respecting ritual interdictions, and his artistic skills, all affect the power of a finished commission. However, an object's powers also depend on the client's behavior, the calmness and single-mindedness with which he or his village approaches the negotiations, the ability and willingness to offer the traditional laada at the appropriate moments, the sophistication with which he handles both his “host” and the often recalcitrant artist, and his own level of ritual and aesthetic knowledge. Given these factors, the commission process is clearly fraught with pitfalls.

Pitfalls in the Commission Process

We have seen that a village emissary often lodges with a host who may assist the stranger with the negotiations for an important object. However, the jatigi can often be as much of a hindrance as a help, for a prominent “noble” may not be pleased at the arrival of a new ritual object in a neighboring village. Such an object will inevitably affect the balance of power, not only in that community, but throughout the entire region. It is certainly better to be warned of the potential shift in otherworldly forces earlier rather than later, but inevitably some hosts will attempt to block the commission by putting pressure on their sculptor to refuse it. The intelligent client is well aware that even an important sculptor will not accept a commission unless he has discussed the matter first with his patron. A generous patron, secure in his own powers, will do his best to facilitate the commission, but an insecure host may go behind his visitor's back and advise the sculptor against the project.

According to Kojugu, even in the latter case, the sculptor has the right to accept the commission, and to call his patron to account; for a noble who tries to control an artist's commissions exceeds the boundaries of the patron-client relationship. The jatigi may advise the sculptor, counseling him against a particular commission, but he must not dictate to the artist, whose caste status and specialized knowledge place him in a separate technical and ritual domain, outside the control of nobles. A blacksmith has access to special, otherworldly sources of information, and his decisions should not be dictated by the more secular concerns of his host.

INTERVIEWER: Good, formerly every family of blacksmiths had its host. Before, could one carve a sculpture for another person without consulting one's host? How could you carve for another person who was not your host?

KOJUGU: You will carve. The reason for which you will carve [is the following]: if someone comes to give you a commission, you will inform your host but you won't tell everyone about it. You will inform the head of the family [i.e., the oldest living male of the host family]. You will say, “People from such and such a place have come to seek a sculpture and as for me, I want to carve it for them.” [The host replies:] “Don't execute such a commission unless they present you with a slave who is a young man, or a boy slave and an unmarried female slave.” You and your patron, your host, when you have come to an agreement about it [the commission], you will carve it for them. If you are trusting people who believe well of others, if you are councillors one for the other [i.e., the host and the sculptor], you will carve it for a young male slave or a young female slave. You will add nothing to this [payment]. But if your host refuses that things progress in this way, [that it should] never, never, never [happen like this], you will say to him [the host], “You [the host and the client who gives the commission] are both on an equal footing for me. Neither of you captured me in war. I am a slave to neither of you. As for me, I cannot wield the hammer like that for nothing. The person who comes to me with respect, I will arrange his problems for him” [i.e., I will work for whomever approaches me correctly]. At that moment there is also another way [to solve the problem]: if you wish to convince him [your host], you soften your host up by saying, “This isn't a serious matter.” Then what he says, you also accept. But if you know that he will never, never accept your proposition, and he doesn't want your affairs to go well due to your competitors [i.e., the host is influenced in what he says by the sculptor's competitors], you, who are the blacksmith, if he hasn't said a really bad thing to you, if he hasn't spoken badly to you [i.e., insulted you], you will stand up in public and you will say to him, “I will make this for so and so. It is not because I underestimate [lack respect for] you today, it is not because I underestimate you tomorrow. You, who are present, no one sold me to you. You didn't capture me on the battlefield. I am not your slave. If I am not your slave, and if you didn't capture me on the battlefield, both of you [the host and the client] are equal in my sight. In any case, I am going to sell this to him. I am going to sell it to him.” We [sculptors] proceed like that.[40]

Kojugu's words underline what many scholars have noted,[41] that the numu‘s status is that of a free agent, a prized and feared technical expert, whose allegiance can be won through gifts and good treatment, but who cannot be ordered about like a slave. Furthermore, traditional law prohibits a nonblacksmith from raising his hand against a numu, no matter what the provocation; a patron's displeasure may be unpleasant, but an important blacksmith–sculptor does not fear physical punishment, and his sights are set on attaining widespread fame. If he has to defy his jatigi to achieve this goal, he will. The sculptor's mandate comes from the spirit world, not from his host; and in serving many masters rather than only one, he retains his independent status and fulfills his obligation to serve the community at large.

Despite Kojugu's ringing declaration of freedom, sculptors do pay attention to their noble patron's opinion. A patron is often well informed as to the client's motives, and sculptors frequently accept their jatigi‘s advice. Thus, the wise emissary seeks out the sculptor's patron (jatigi) as his own temporary host (also jatigi), courts him with numerous gifts, and requests his advice throughout the negotiations. In some cases, the patron's diplomacy may even persuade the sculptor to accept a commission he would much rather refuse.

If the village emissary negotiates his approach successfully, if both he and the sculptor agree on the desired form of the mask or figure, and if the artist's spirits have assented to the commission, there are, in principle, no further obstacles to prevent the work from beginning. However, several additional factors can affect the execution of the sculpture, and the client does not always receive the object he thinks he is getting. The Bamana hierarchy of age may determine who actually carves the mask; older sculptors such as Basi are not always at the height of their powers, but they always take precedence over younger men. A young and gifted artist who is offered an important commission at the age of twenty-five cannot begin to carve unless he has first offered the opportunity of executing the commission to all the older sculptors of ritual objects in his village:

KOJUGU: When someone asks you to carve any type of mask, if there is someone [i.e., a sculptor] older than you, you will go and cut down the tree, and you will give it to this person, and you will tell him that he should carve it because people have commissioned such a thing with you. You will do this saying that you don't have the time to make this object because the work involved is too detailed. “I cannot carve this because you are older than I am, and you don't have so many activities [i.e., responsibilities to fulfill], so you must make it. I will give you a present.” But if you have no one older than you are [who can carve the object], you will make it yourself. Nhun.[42]

Kojugu reports the polite circumlocutions with which the younger carver approaches his elder; he “does not have the time” to carve the commission, and the “work is too detailed.” In most cases, both sculptors are aware that the younger man has the time and skill to execute the carving, but the ritualized presentation of the commission to the elder blacksmith confirms the junior artist's respect (bonya) for the senior artist, reassuring both men that the client's preference has not overturned the overt hierarchy of power. The young artist also defends himself against possible jealousy (keleya) on the part of an aging sculptor, who may sense that he has been left behind by current fashion. A junior sculptor who fails to make this presentation invites the elder artist to direct negative ritual work (baara) against him, or even to poison him. It is of no use to create a reputation by carving a breathtaking mask if one dies shortly thereafter.

The presentation of the commission to the older sculptor also has positive aspects. Kojugu reports that the young man says the commission is “too detailed” for him. “Too detailed” translates the phrase baara misèkè misèkè ka ca, in which baara means “work” and ka ca means “too much.” However, misèkè misèkè is an interesting term since it is often employed in the phrase a ka tama misèkè misèkè, “she makes a play with her buttocks as she walks,” where it denotes the airs and graces of a self-consciously sensual woman. As Kojugu uses it, misèkè misèkè conveys a sense of fine detailing, like the barely perceptible scarification marks sometimes incised on the faces and bodies of the large female figures used by the Guan and Jo associations in the Buguni region. Young artists may be able to reconceptualize the lines of familiar objects such as Komo masks, but they have rarely mastered the accurate use of the tiny tools, similar to dentists’ instruments, that formerly existed for incising linear patterns onto a finished object. The older artist may respond that he is “too tired” to take on a major commission, but he carefully watches the young man, making suggestions where necessary, and showing him how to incise the delicate tracery that completes a finished object. The commission thus becomes an opportunity for the young sculptor to perfect his expertise.

In addition to questions of age, skill, and conceptual creativity, ritual factors may also affect who actually carves an object. A sculptor whose wife is pregnant should not carve a ritual object, especially a human figure. If the sculptor accepts the commission and then discovers that his wife is pregnant, he can either entrust the work to a reputable colleague or, if the pregnancy is only in its beginning stages, he can execute the commission in secret:

KOJUGU: You will carve them, but another person will not know about it. If your wife is pregnant you can sculpt alone, you are alone in the bush and you carve it [the commission] until it is finished. If it happens that the person who has given you the commission – you make the sculpture until it is finished and you give it to him, but nobody is aware of this except you and Allah alone and the owner of the object alone [i.e., the client]. But if everyone knows about it, you, another person, your knowledge will not hold weight [in the community]; your wife is pregnant and you are busy executing this kind of work? That isn't done. That is not good. That is not good. That is not good. That will spoil your affairs [in this case, the pregnancy].[43]

Once client and sculptor have agreed on a commission and the preliminary payments have been made, it may prove impractical to transfer the commission elsewhere, but the sculptor will not take a major risk, such as carving when his wife is pregnant, without informing his client; the nyama released by such actions may rebound, not only on the artist, but also on the “owner” of the object. Where any important shift in ritual rather than aesthetic practice is concerned, client and sculptor must share the responsibility, and the client will be informed if the sculptor has to transfer the commission to another artist for ritual reasons.

These examples suggest that while commissions always seem, publicly at least, to be given to a single sculptor, it is relatively common for two artists to collaborate, and the official ‘maker’ of an object is not always its carver. Although nonblacksmith observers (sometimes including the client) may remain ignorant as to whose hand has actually produced the object, other numuw distinguish individual “hands,” and are often well informed as to the rearrangements that may lie hidden behind a commission's public façade. A client may return home satisfied with his mask and, if the second carver's contribution has been purely aesthetic, ignorant of its real author; what is important to him is that the object fits a well-known type and that it works.

There are also exceptional cases in which, despite all the efforts of both the village emissary and his host, a sculptor absolutely refuses to carve. Like Basi, important artists frequently say that they prefer to decline commissions; they may decide that the risks involved in observing the necessary ritual interdictions, and in acting as a conduit of force from the spirit world into the human, are just too great. Nevertheless, only a very few sculptors have the supreme self-confidence to refuse a commission outright. According to Kojugu, only an artist who is confident that he has been able to control the future of his children, his grandchildren, and his grandchildren's children, through ritual “work” (baara) and spirit agreements, will take the risk of publicly refusing a commission. The Malinke call a man who allows himself to speak his mind spontaneously, without worrying about reprisals, a bò-n-kamaw, literally, “born like this,” meaning that the person in question arrived in the world with extreme powers and must be left alone to act as he wishes. Such men are often important artists, but Kojugu's description suggests that most sculptors are not quite confident enough to act as bò-n-kamaw and refuse commissions openly.[44] The sculptor may wish to tell a persistent emissary to go to hell, but even numuw cannot speak entirely without thinking. Blacksmiths are expected to speak frankly, but the outright refusal of a commission can expose them to attack by both envious rivals and humiliated clients.

As with most problematic messages in the Bamana world, an interchange that to us would indicate a mere delay constitutes an outright refusal for a traditional listener. Some delegates encounter sculptors who diplomatically protest their great enthusiasm for the commission and bewail the fact that they “have too much work right now,” politely requesting the client to return later. The sculptor may also name a price so high that no village can possibly pay it, or he may invent a mysterious illness that prevents him from working for an indefinite period. An experienced elder will soon read between the lines and judge whether the sculptor is refusing the task set before him or not, and if there is any way to persuade him to reconsider. A village emissary who manipulates the traditional rules of respect in an exceptionally subtle and intelligent manner may impress the artist with his personality, causing the cantankerous numu to make an about-face and agree on a commission he has previously refused. In the inevitable shuttling between the visitor, his jatigi, the sculptor's patron, and the sculptor, the emissary's personality makes an enormous difference to the success of the negotiations. In the author's case, it is clear that Basi would never have undertaken the Tyi Warra commission but for Mr. Mara's deep knowledge of traditional Malinke culture, his comprehension of Basi's social position in an evolving society, and his sympathetic understanding of the artist's problems.

A sculptor's desire to evade commissions becomes more understandable when one learns that artists run considerable risks in the human world, as well as that of the spirits, when they carve. The owners of the aesthetically powerful Dabà mask told me that their ancestors had put the sculptor who carved it to death so that he would not duplicate the object for anyone else (Fig. 4). Similar stories are often attached to other impressive objects, and Kojugu agreed that a jealous client might well kill the artist once his work was finished.[45] In such cases, the carver's clients appear to act on the principle that the ritual object's power is enhanced if its creation literally consumes the sculptor, shrouding the resulting work in the sacred terror that surrounds a ritualistic death. It is not surprising, then, that Bamana artists delay their acceptance of important commissions until they have consulted their spirits and performed repeated divinations.

It is entirely possible for a sculptor to turn down a commission, but it is almost unknown for a client to refuse a finished object.[46] Sculptors are well aware that shoddy work will ruin their reputation, and they calculate what will appeal to their client's taste. Most villages and individuals request a mask or figure “like that belonging to so-and-so,” or “like the old one,” and the following passage reveals that blacksmith–sculptors believe that they have a duty to fulfill such expectations:

KOJUGU: If they [the clients] have come and shown you the old one [the old mask], and they have asked you to make something similar – whether it is a case of the teeth or whether it is the horns, you will take account of that, you will take account of all that [the way in which the old mask is carved] inside yourself. You will take account of all that inside yourself. If you don't do that, if you make it simply to finish it as if you were carving it like any old mask, and so the horns of the old one – there are not many horns in the place where the old one has many horns, or, the place where you have situated the teeth is not in the same location where the teeth of the old one are situated – then, when you show it to its owner, he will refuse it. They will not bring out the laada [traditional payments for a ritual object], they will not accept it. Well, these things are true defects in your own work.[47]

As we see later on, the successful replacement mask adheres to traditional formulas but rearranges them in a slightly original and a more compelling manner than the old sculpture. Gifted numuw are not psychologists for nothing; gauging a client's probable reaction to a sculptural innovation is child's play for most artists, and it is extremely rare that a client actually refuses a sculpture. Although Kojugu referred to a client's refusal as a realistic possibility, he also reported that, in actuality, he had never heard of a sculptor whose carving had been turned down.[48]

The Economics of the Commission

We have examined the social, ritual, and aesthetic aspects of negotiating a commission; let us now turn to economic factors. The data discussed in this section represents only a portion of the complex economic arrangements entailed by commissions in the era just prior to colonization. Rapid development and integration into a monetized world economy have substantially altered the traditional Bamana economy, and, as we will see, the rules that structured payment for commissions have also changed. Although we were able to retrieve some important economic data, this discussion is far from complete, and the changing economics of sculptor's commissions deserves its own study.[49]

At the outset, we need to remember that what we term ‘payments’ for ritual carvings are still largely viewed as ‘gifts’ or laada by the Bamana, and one cannot, in theory at least, “buy” either a ritual object or a woman. Nevertheless, an extended family does not give up the reproductive potential of a daughter for anything less than years of work and “gifts.” Similarly, sculptors do not risk their lives to create the “medicines” that will generate children and fertile fields without recompense; the client expects to pay handsomely for any ritual object. We have seen that the Bamana do not “purchase” either women or ritual objects, rather they “let loose” (ka laada bò) the laada necessary for obtaining them. Nevertheless, despite the universal insistence on the conceptual difference between releasing laada and buying an animal in the market, commissions, like marriages, are also business arrangements. If sculptors are going to run the risks entailed in carving a ritual object, they must be well rewarded, and negotiations for a commission may bog down for months over the question of appropriate payment.[50]

Given the speed of economic change, it is extremely difficult to obtain any realistic idea of traditional laada, and the data presented here should be viewed as a sketch, not as a spreadsheet of the payment structure. Acceptable payments probably varied from region to region, and one should keep in mind that the information presented here is limited to the Kita area. Nevertheless, this data does present a relatively clear picture of the categories into which payments fell, and of their meaning.

Laada is a term that encompasses three types of payments:

1. Subsistence for both the sculptor and his extended family for the duration of the commission.

2. Ritual offerings made during the course of the sculpture's execution.

3. The exchange of cattle, other livestock, and/or slaves for the finished object.

In Western terms, the first two payments can be categorized as ongoing business expenses paid by the client, whereas the third represents the real ‘payment.’ It appears that the Bamana recognize this distinction, at least to some extent, since informants never referred directly to the subsistence support of the numu‘s family as being a part of the laada; they assumed that one would already be aware that any client would be expected to support the blacksmith and his dependents for as long as the commission lasted.

In precolonial times, subsistence support meant providing the entire millet supply for the carver's extended family (perhaps as many as eighty people) for the months or even years that an important commission required. The true value of this support becomes apparent only when one learns that a man of farming age eats between one and two kilograms of millet per day in the rainy season. Many villagers and ritual experts reported that they had ceased to commission ritual objects, not because they had forgotten either their use or the details of their manufacture, but because farmers can no longer assemble the surplus of grain necessary to support the sculptor. Ritual objects have simply become too expensive for the average village, and physical insecurity no longer pushes village groupings into forming the political alliances that generated the enormous surpluses of the past. Economics, not lack of ritual knowledge or need, has curtailed contemporary commissions.

It is important to note that a sculptor's subsistence support directly parallels the requirement that a girl's fiancé work a certain number of days per farming season for his future in-laws. Failure to perform the required years of labor jeopardized the marriage arrangements. In fact, children born during these years remained the property of their mother's family until the bride-service was finished, when they were transferred to the father's lineage. In some areas, it was common for a woman to remain in her own family until her first child was seven or eight years old and the years of service were finally completed. As we shall see, objects, like children, are retained by the sculptor until the prescribed laada are complete.

In addition to the basic supply of grain, clients were expected to present a sheep or a goat to the blacksmith's family every so often, and to pay his other ongoing expenses. These might include the costs of marriages or funerals for members of his family, the animals slaughtered at baptisms, and clothing for the entire extended family. Given that an important artist might require months of communing with his spirits to obtain the information necessary for the creation of an important object, the subsistence commitment was a major burden. Thus, the ostensible laada cited by Kojugu might amount to no more than a kola nut,[51] but the real cost of supporting the blacksmith's family prevented all but the wealthy from commissioning personal ritual objects.

In fact, the economic structure of traditional commissions parallels the traditional agricultural practice of farming as an extended family on communal fields (forobaw), and using this harvest to feed all members of the family, including the aged and the very young. Most precolonial ritual objects were probably paid for by groups: extended families, entire villages, or groups of villages. In the same way that the opportunities for amassing wealth from one's personally owned field (jonforo) were extremely limited, so, in the past, individual commissions were few in number. Today, many sculptors attribute the ills of modernization to the increasing number of personally owned ritual objects that individuals are now able to commission because of the changing economy. Most Bamana have ceased to farm as extended families; the new practices of cultivating as a nuclear family, and of leaving the village to work for oneself in the modern city, allow relatively young men to commission their own objects. Blacksmiths emphasize that, although they accept these commissions, they take no responsibility for their clients’ exclusively personal goals, and they complain that few families or villages have the community spirit to commission the really important objects that will act on behalf of the group. In the sculptors’ eyes, the new plethora of individually owned objects harms the group, for in the Bamana world, one person's gain is another's loss, and the young man whose personal “medicine” succeeds in gaining him a coveted job as a buoy[52] in Bamako is inevitably spoiling his companions’ chances.

Today, subsistence support has largely fallen by the way, and sculptors often add a large cash sum to the traditionally prescribed laada as a rough equivalent. This is possible because the exact details of the living expenses covered by the client seem to have been negotiated separately for each commission. Apparently there was no set number of mude, or one-to-two kilogram measures of millet, for each type of object, since neither sculptor nor client could tell exactly how long a particular commission might take; this depended on the djinns, on events in the sculptor's life (for instance, unexpected deaths), and on each artist's working methods. Some sculptors might spend a year preparing to carve a Komo mask, whereas others might carve the same object after only three months. The client could usually calculate the minimum subsistence required for a particular object (most objects have a minimum time frame required for their production), but he could not foresee the maximum cost of the commission.

Although the subsistence expenses might be considerably more than originally foreseen, no artist ever has his client completely at his mercy, for custom did and does prescribe the offerings that must be presented to the sculptor during the carving process. Similarly, in marriage arrangements, the animals presented to a girl's family during the negotiations were usually set by tradition. When the Bamana speak of the laada exchanged for a ritual object, they think first of the animal offerings made during the course of carving. These sacrifices are considered essential to the success of the commission; an object carved without offering the correct laada at the appropriate times will be useless and empty. It may be aesthetically pleasing, but it will not work.

The first formal sacrifice is that offered by the sculptor to the tree he cuts. For a Komo mask, this consists of a red cock (yiri ju la bin sisè, “the chicken for the cutting of the root of the tree”) and “ten large red kola nuts” (dan worow bilen tan). Although the color of the cock and the kola nuts may change depending on the object, the sacrifice remains the same for every tree that is felled, and, in theory at least, the client provides these goods.[53] If this sacrifice is not made, the nyama released by cutting down the tree will attack both sculptor and client with disastrous results.[54]

This ritual offering has an important parallel; when an emissary of a Bamana or Malinke family requests the ‘gift’ of a woman, he presents the head of the girl's extended family with ten kola nuts. If they accept the nuts, the woman's family agrees to the marriage; but if they refuse, the emissary knows that his mission has failed. Like the blacksmiths and griots who are the traditional negotiators for marriages, the sculptor seeks the use of reproductive power on behalf of his client. However, the artist does not negotiate between two families, but between the human client and the spirit world, which controls the tree and the reproductive potential that flows through it.

If the first offering places the sculptor in the position of an emissary who negotiates for reproductive power, the second identifies him with the woman herself. This offering is made, either when the sculptor is in the middle of carving, or immediately after he has finished. The client presents a sheep or a goat to the artist's family, which kills it and cooks a special dish that must be consumed by the sculptor alone.[55] Similarly, if a bride is found to be a virgin, it is customary for the man's family to present a sacrificial sheep or goat to the woman's relatives. The bride also receives special dishes of chicken, or other choice meats, cooked in a highly peppered sauce (the same method of preparation used for the sculptor's meal), so as to fortify her during the week-long retreat that follows the official marriage. This week of seclusion and intensive lovemaking is intended to produce a child as quickly as possible. In both cases it appears that the ritual meals are intended to strengthen the person who creates, whether bride or sculptor, at a time when they are losing intense energy in the production of a being (the child or object) that will have its own vital force and an independent ability to act in the world.

Finally, when the sculpture is finished, the client must provide a series of animals and other goods that are carefully gauged according to the type of ritual object produced. These laada are set by tradition, and even the most avaricious sculptor would hesitate to alter them. Nonblacksmith ritual experts are equally familiar with these final ‘payments,’ so there is little opportunity for disagreement on either side. Similarly, in the past, a woman's final move into her husband's extended family occurred when the laada were completed by a substantial payment of cattle, grain, or even slaves. Such ‘payments’ were settled at the beginning of the marriage negotiations, and although there was no universal scale that rigidly controlled these obligations, families expected to invest approximately the same laada in order to obtain women of similar ages and physical capacities.

The list of final laada for sculpture presented here is far from comprehensive, but it does begin to provide an overview of the kinds of costs incurred for different objects. The examples to be discussed show that the Bamana hierarchy of laada does not always correspond to our aesthetic evaluations. For example, a small carving of a human figure commissioned by an individual (Fig. 3) can be much more expensive than a group-commissioned Komo mask (Fig. 2). However, the way in which laada diverge from our expectations provides us with an illuminating glimpse into Bamana thought.

Let us begin with two objects that are commissioned exclusively for personal use: a Kòmòtigi‘s (head of a Komo society) personally owned flutes, and figures commemorating twins. Both Kojugu and Moussa Travélé mention the existence of wooden and iron flutes or horns used in Komo society rituals.[56] A Komo leader will commission miniature replicas of these flutes as part of his personal armory of defensive “medicines.” The Kòmòtigi uses the miniature wooden flutes first to warn those who provoke him, and then to inflict bad fortune on his opponents or even kill them.[57] Kojugu reports that the ritual expert pays a modest amount for his flutes:

KOJUGU: He will give [the sculptor] two chickens, a ram, and ten red kola nuts. He will give these things.[58]

The cost seems to correspond fairly accurately to the personal nature of the object; the small wooden flutes are not essential to the functioning of the Komo society, but they are significant to the Kòmòtigi himself, who needs their protection.

Both the Malinke and Bamana frequently commission wooden figures that replace a dead twin. The Bamana consider that twins are one entity; only rich men can marry a twin, for every gift presented to one's wife must be matched with an exactly similar object given to her double.[59] According to Dieterlen, male twins formerly married the same woman (1951, 87). Because of the belief that twins constitute a single person, the death of one presents an enormous threat to the survivor. The living twin will not be able to continue life unharmed if the dead double is not provided with a locus for stabilizing his or her spirit, or ni,[60] and nyama. Thus, the family commissions a wooden figure[61] that is given the dead twin's name, receives the double of every gift presented to the living twin, and accompanies the living twin through circumcision or excision. When the living twin marries, the sculpture is presented with a carved partner (Dieterlen 1951, 87). According to Kojugu, twin figures might be commissioned either by the survivor's family or by the village as a whole. Unfortunately, he did not specify what conditions prompted a village rather than a family commission, but he did say that the laada were different depending on the client.

KOJUGU: If you come [to a sculptor], if you have had twins and one of them has died and the other is living, you will order the filani yiri [literally, “twin wood” or “twin sculpture”]. You will give an old chicken together with an old cock and a goat, and you will present them to the sculptor. But if the whole village demands this work from the blacksmith, you [the sculptor] will say, “The price of this work is a bull.” Then you [the village] will bring out the bull and will present it, together with a ram, as the price of the work. The ram is used to make sauce with [it is killed and cooked in a sauce presented to the carver when he is working]. They will bring out these things to give them to you.[62]

Kojugu's statement that the filani yiri requires “an old chicken” and “an old cock” is far from insignificant; “old” animals are those that have had sexual intercourse. The Bamana consider that neither men nor women are complete human beings unless they have experienced sex. In the pre- and early postcolonial period, the strict enforcement of the traditional sexual code prevented sex before marriage. One could become a complete human being only by marrying. If the sculpted figure is to function as a replacement for the dead twin, then only the sacrifice of “old” animals (those that are sexually active) will result in the creation of a figure that ‘lives’ and is complete. The animal's sexuality will endow the figure with a similarly active sexual charge, thus preserving the living twin's ability to marry and procreate.

The preceding passage also demonstrates that the laada for an identical object can change depending on the wealth of the client. A village has more surplus at its disposal than an individual, and the payments for a filani yiri commissioned by a group are far more (a bull and a ram) than the outlay incurred by an individual (an old chicken, an old cock, and a goat).[63] The two levels of payment correspond to the scale of the problems that the objects will resolve; a family-owned filani yiri is used by the survivor to replace the lost twin, whereas a village-owned twin figure can become a cult object in its own right. Since twins represent an ideal of maximum fertility and wealth, their figures can be used in petitions for prosperity and children, and a village-owned twin figure may be expected to realize the vows of many different devotees, including visitors from other regions. Presumably the sculptor alters his normal working procedures, and observes additional ritual precautions, in order to endow a village-owned figure with the force required to satisfy so many different clients. A village commission is more charged with anxiety and more open to failure than an individual one, and the artist can legitimately demand much higher compensation for the risks he runs in carving it.

In addition to twin figures, the Bamana sometimes commission small human figures to commemorate a favorite wife (baramuso), a dead grandfather, or a close friend (Fig. 3). In some cases the individual portrayed has died, and in others he or she is still alive. These statues are intended as portraits that can be recognized by any viewer who has known the model. However, the Bamana and Malinke concept of likeness is very different than ours; its rules will be discussed later. For the time being, let us look only at the payment structure of these individually commissioned figures. In principle, the laada are the same as for a twin figure: ten kola nuts, an old chicken, an old cock, and an old goat.[64] The client must also provide both white and red kola nuts (one of each), and white and black chickens (one of each); the sculptor sacrifices these over the human figure while it is being carved. When combined with special incantations uttered by the artist, these sacrifices endow the sculpture with power. However, if the sculptor realizes that the object he is carving will have unusual power,[65] he requests a sheep from the client as well.[66]

The laada for a portrait figure do not seem terribly heavy at first glance. However, when Kojugu elaborates on the payment structure by comparing the cost of a human figure to that of a Komo mask, one realizes that traditional rules permit the sculptor to reject a yirimògòni commission by raising his fee. In commissioning a human figure, the client's personal relationship with the artist as well as his financial standing is at stake.

INTERVIEWER: Good, are the people [artists] who create human figures and the people who create Komo masks, are the sacrifices that they make and the other things [the laada], are they the same? Are the laada the same? Are the trees that one uses the same?

KOJUGU: The trees are the same. Weren't you speaking about human figures in wood? The things carved in wood that resemble people? But they call them “people in wood,” [yirimògòniw]. It is as if it were a person, but it is in wood. The laada are the same. If you yourself you are truly going to carve a person in wood, and you want to make it as a true, true ritual object, the laada are more difficult [i.e., more expensive] than those prescribed for the Komo itself. For a Komo mask it is a question of offerings. But those [laada] for a person in wood – it [the statuette] is put in the place of the person himself. If you are going to carve that for a person, you will – the thing that the sculptor himself desires – you say that the person has only to give you that [thing]. [The sculptor says,] “I am going to make it and to make something like this is not good [i.e., it has extraordinary nyama, and the sculptor may incur great penalties in creating it].” The understanding exists between you [the sculptor] and the owner of the object [the client] – you will carve it in accordance with this understanding. But if it seems good to you, for example, if it is like us, you and me [the interviewer and Kojugu], the way in which we are together now, I can say that I will make it for you, and if you are dear to me, I will make it for nothing. I will say, “My friend, give me one kola for this.”[67]

If a sculptor wishes to favor a particular client or a close friend, he can carve a yirimògòni for almost nothing, but he is also permitted to demand heaven and earth; “the thing that the sculptor himself desires.” A request for several bulls or slaves might easily prevent a client from obtaining a memorial figure or impoverish him. However, the latitude permitted the sculptor in regard to personally commissioned yirimògòniw does not extend to objects considered essential to a community's survival. A village cannot function without a communally owned Komo mask; therefore, the sculptor's payment consists of strictly regulated offerings made throughout the process of carving.[68] The artist cannot impoverish one village at the expense of another, since both communities have an equal right to obtain access to a Komo mask, but he can favor one individual over another. Thus, the traditional cost of an object does not necessarily correspond to a Western aesthetic evaluation; it is possible for a small, unimposing, and sometimes badly carved human figure to cost much more than a startlingly impressive Komo mask bristling with quills and horns.

The final payments for many communal and individual objects were set apart from the other costs of the commission in that they usually required either cattle or slaves, or both. Likewise, in the past, the last ‘payments’ offered for women were also of this type. We have seen that a sculptor's jatigi or host can counsel him not to accept a commission unless he is presented with “a slave who is a mature young man and a female slave, or a boy slave and an unmarried female slave.”[69] This passage implies that the sculptor is working for an individual client, but in another interview Kojugu lists the slaves whom a famous artist can request from an allied grouping of villages in the same geographic region (kabila).

KOJUGU: The problem of wood [carving], you will execute it in this way: people will consult you. If the kabila wants to give a commission for a sculpture, they will come to ask you to carve it for them. You will make it and give it to them, while claiming a female slave nursing her child or a stallion with its saddle and all its accessories. You will carve it [the sculpture] for the kabila.[70]

Neither passage specifies the nature of the sculptures that require such reimbursement, but Kojugu makes it perfectly clear that both personal and group commissions may require a final payment in slaves. Why was this type of laada so essential to both sculpture and marriage negotiations?[71]

It is fairly clear why the loss of a woman's reproductive potential would require reimbursement with a token of equivalent value. Slaves, grain, and animals all contribute to the reproductive potential of the family that obtains them. Slaves replenish the labor and the children lost by ceding a girl to another family; grain guarantees survival; and animals, like women themselves, reproduce. Furthermore, all these items can be used by the bride's family to acquire other marriageable women – the essential vehicles that will enable her family to reproduce, make good its temporary loss, and even increase its numbers.

When we turn to sculpture, we need to make a radical shift in our perspective to view the finished ritual objects, which we call ‘art,’ as essential reproductive tools. Let us remember what the client is ‘buying.’ His sculptural “medicine” will create wealth. Perhaps the client will find that his sterile wife unexpectedly becomes pregnant; perhaps an unusually large number of his cattle and goats will survive the first few months after birth, increasing the size of his herds; or perhaps the object will provide its new “owner” with access to unforeseen political power within his village. If the client is a village or village group, this effect will be multiplied, for the object will respond to many petitioners rather than one, it will engender children in numerous families, it will increase the village's livestock, and it will set the town or kabila firmly in place as an important political center.

However, the client's newfound access to reproductive power is gained at the sculptor's expense, for ritual objects “bring in” benefits to their “owners” and disasters upon their makers in a balanced equation. Let us also remember what the sculptor risks when he creates an object that condenses and channels the diffuse generative power that wells up from the other world. First of all, the artist may lose his life at his clients’ hands. Such an event may be rare, but tales about it are common enough that the possibility must always lie at the back of the sculptor's mind. Second, although every important artist is well aware that each commission contributes to his fame, he also knows that it inevitably hastens the fulfillment of his Faustian contract. Each time he creates a “medicine,” the sculptor brings madness, physical deformity, or death itself one step closer to claiming his children. Inevitably, he will ask himself whether this commission is not the one that will act as the final catalyst for his favorite wife's death, his own impotence, or the end of his shortened life span. For, in a never-ending cycle, spirits force sculptors to sacrifice close family members, and even themselves, to create the objects whose generative powers will then enable the artist's clients to fight death, sterility, and famine.

If commissions entail the loss of the sculptor's sons or wives, we can understand why ritual objects can be acquired only through a ‘gift’ of slaves who can farm or produce children. Kojugu specifies that the laada for important sculptures are “a slave who is a mature young man and a female slave, or a boy slave and an unmarried female slave.”[72] Mature young men and boys can farm productively for many years, supporting the childless sculptor in his old age, and an unmarried female slave can produce replacements for the children lost to the spirit world. Emotionally, slaves cannot replace family members, but they can provide the labor that will enable the sculptor and his diminished family to survive and even become wealthy.

Sculptors, like extended families, must be recompensed with the equivalents of what they lose. In this economy of exchange, one cannot “buy” (ka san) either women or ritual objects; they can be received only as the recompense for an offering, for something “let loose” (ka bò) by the new “owner.” Just as the sculptor takes an oath (ka sarati ta) to exchange vitality or life itself for artistic and ritual power, so the results of this power are exchanged for human beings captured in battle, the ultimate pawns in the game of human and spirit-world exchanges. If the sculptor offers his spirits his children's physical death, then the client offers the artist socially dead human beings. In this exchange the artist inevitably loses out, for a socially dead but physically living human being cannot compensate for the body and soul of one's wife or child. No slave, however desirable, can balance the equation, and with every commission the sculptor is left with an ever-accruing residue of nyama, of leashed pain, loss, and growing power. It is hardly surprising that Kojugu tells us:

KOJUGU: In any case, that [the djinn] grows old with you, if you live with that thing, if it is a thing of the head that is tough, your thing [your djinn] will go along continually reinforcing itself.[73]

Just as the artist's wealth increases with each commission, so does his nyama, his acceptance of extraordinary human losses, his self-control, and his personal authority. The greater his fame, the more he will have been forced to surmount disaster and control his feelings, and the more impressive a figure he will become. It is this subjugation of the self in the face of overwhelmingly powerful pressures from both the human community and the spirit world that gives an eighty-year-old artist like Basi an air of high-voltage tension, of unleashed energy barely contained within a human body, and of almost extrahuman perception. For in making and receiving ‘payments’ the great artist has had to confront his inability to control either loss or gain; he has been forced to go on in the face of disaster, to acknowledge and accept his destined role as the creator of objects that will destroy either him or his immediate family. To one who bears this burden, a couple of slaves is shabby recompense for the task of condensing and transforming the floating power of the spirit world.

Given this demonic set of equations, certain otherwise confusing payments fall into place. In 1984–7 one could find and buy forged-iron slave shackles in the antique section of any large Malian marketplace, for the equivalent of about five dollars. Given their contemporary price and their numbers, one might assume that shackles were cheaply bought. However, Kojugu tells a different story:

KOJUGU: One made these [the slave irons, jonnègè] and one connected them together. One made these for [the payment of] a slave woman nursing her child. A male slave and a female slave and a young girl slave [i.e., this was the total payment]. One made all these for that [payment]. But we are no longer in the epoch of slavery. Therefore, we cannot talk about the problem of slaves.

INTERVIEWER: You can say it, because it is something that has passed away. If you don't talk about it to us, how will we know about it? Won't it be lost?

KOJUGU: It will be lost, it will be lost.

INTERVIEWER: Good, why did one give slaves for these things? Because the work was difficult, the djinns were more difficult, or, well, it was a custom, or what?

KOJUGU: There wasn't any problem of djinns in it. There wasn't any problem of angels (mèlèkèw) in it. If you don't give a slave, and if one made them with ill will [i.e., without having received an appropriate payment], and one gave it [the shackles] to you, it wouldn't work.[74]

Kojugu tells us that the slave shackles “will not work” without an appropriate payment in human life. One can take a prisoner in battle or in a raid (sò boli) without shackles, but one cannot transform a free noble (horon) into a trade good without them. If we view the making of slaves as a system for producing transferable goods, then the ownership of shackles is essential to production, for the shackle is both the transformative agent and the visual sign of the social death that constitutes slavery. Like the hoe, which is worth “two village chiefs,”[75] the shackle is invaluable, and its capacity to limit human movement, to place a human life at the disposal of his or her owner, must be recompensed in kind. The instrument for inflicting social death must be paid for in human life.

For, in the Bamana system of psychic equations where all returns to zero, one cannot buy the means to ‘kill’ human beings (even if the ‘death’ is social) unless one pays in human beings. So, in another circular exchange, slave owners pay with human beings they already own for the instruments used to make captives into slaves. The same system of equivalences that structures the Bamana system of sculpture and marriage payments controls the purchase of pedestrian tools such as shackles. Since shackles, like profoundly important ritual objects or women, “bring in” human beings to their owner, their cost is “the same.” The buyer is paying the human price of the transformative power embedded in the blacksmith's product, whether the item is a mundane tool of the slave trade or an extraordinary sculpture.

If the exchange of human lives and deaths sets the scale and boundaries of traditional laada or ritual payments, it is not surprising that sculptors hesitate to alter the rules. Whether subsistence support, incidental expenses, or the final payment, laada are laada, and in principle, at least, they remain firmly set in place. A sculptor exaggerates laada at his own risk, but he can diminish his own payment or split the burden of the prescribed offerings with his client; in fact, tradition places the responsibility for completing the laada on the artist. For, once the commission has been accepted, the sculptor's spirit is liable to prescribe additional offerings that must be made by the artist himself:

KOJUGU: That [the nature of the sculptor's djinn – Kojugu sidesteps the interviewer's question, which concerns the exact nature of djinns, and responds with a discourse on appropriate laada] depends on the tree. That depends on the tree. While saying to a certain one – if a certain person comes and gives a commission to you, you will act like this, you will speak to him like that, and it [the djinn] will tell you to offer this and [the djinn will tell you] that he [the client] must offer a certain thing for his commission, and you, yourself, must also give a certain thing as an offering. [If you do this] the person who has come to give you the commission will be satisfied, and you, you will have fame, and someone else will come to you [for another commission]. The djinn will tell you all that. But when this person [the client] comes toward you, the offerings that you have just been told about, you must make [contribute] a part of them, but if you make that person who has come to see you bear all these expenses, and you tell him that he himself must make the two sacrifices [i.e., the client's sacrifice and also the extra sacrifice prescribed by the djinn], at that moment, the power given you by your thing [your djinn] will disappear little by little in the direction of the person who has given you the commission, and it will affect you [i.e., if the sculptor makes the client produce the goods prescribed by the djinn as well as the traditional laada, the sculptor's power will diminish, and an equivalent power will accrue to his client]. You will be teaching him [the client], and you will find that he has taken away all your power. This will happen because you have acted out of malice. But if you don't have the [economic] means, but it has been asked of you that you make offerings, if the person for whom the sacrifice has been predicted [the client] comes [to you], you will tell him his sacrifice. Even if you have to take out a loan, the thing that you have been told, you must offer it. If you don't do this, at the moment when the owner of the object [the client] arrives, if you know that he has the means and that he will accept what you tell him because he is afraid of you and respects you and he is ashamed in front of you [a facet of being respectful], and if, in this situation, you tell him [what you need for your own sacrifice], and if he provides that thing, then it [probably the sculptor's djinn] will serve him, and it will never, never again render you any service.[76]

Kojugu tells us that the sculptor must respect his djinn's wishes, that spirits request offerings from the artist as well as from the client, that the blacksmith cannot evade these laada, and that he cannot push these off onto his client. A sculptor who evades his responsibilities by shaming the client into producing both the officially sanctioned laada, and those requested from the artist by the spirit, will lose his power. The disgruntled spirit will transfer to the client all the benefits that would have accrued to the sculptor, and it is the client who acquires the authority and power that the artist loses. It is certainly possible for a famous sculptor to become exigent, requesting excessive laada out of malicious ill will, and placing the whole burden of the commission on the client; but such an artist will fall victim to his own stratagems. Deserted by his djinn, he will soon fall back into impoverished obscurity.

Tradition not only enjoins moderation on the artist, but also requires that he balance the needs and relative prosperity of those who seek his help. If only wealthy individuals or villages can afford ritual objects, existing economic differences will quickly accelerate, for an important function of the basiw commissioned from a sculptor is to “bring in” wealth. Custom holds that poor men and villages should not be denied access to these critical tools for improving their lot; the sculptor can diminish the laada required for a particular object if he perceives great need and a striking absence of resources.

KOJUGU: If they come to you at the same time, the person who is a great leader [i.e., the wealthy client], you will place a great burden [heavy laada] on him because he is a great leader. This is if he comes to seek out a thing for a leader with you. But the one who comes to seek out the thing for the poor man with you to save his spirit [Kojugu really means his life here], you will place on him only the burden appropriate to a poor man. But if you put a vast burden on a poor man because he is poor [and therefore desperate for the ritual object], and the other one is a leader, and you are frightened of him, the thing that you make for the leader will not work. You must create for each as it is fitting. Then each one will have satisfaction.[77]

As the technical expert with access to the other world, the sculptor must maintain a social equilibrium; he has sought his skills on behalf of the entire community, not in order to accentuate the privileges of those who already wield power and wealth. If the artist squeezes the impoverished and curries favor with the wealthy, he will pay a price. A decision to abandon the traditional ethic of fairness will assure that the resulting sculpture lacks any power to act. In the end, the artist too will suffer, for powerful men do not take kindly to being treated lightly, and they will blame the blacksmith for his creation's impotence. The sculptor's fame will erode, and he will no longer receive commissions from either rich or poor. However, the artist who generously forgoes his own ‘payment,’ or splits the laada with his poorer clients, will be rewarded with increasing fame. For what villager will not be amazed to see a destitute friend acquire sudden wealth after commissioning a basi, and who will not broadcast this startling shift in status far and wide? Whether an accurate reflection of reality or not, my informants believed that a sculptor who unethically favored one client over another would forfeit his powers.

Sculptors subscribe to an ethic of ‘equal access,’ but this does not mean that the artist, like a marriage broker, abandons his own unspoken tug-of-war with his client. We have seen that no matter how many “gifts” the sculptor receives, he always loses out to the client; for no slave or horse with trappings can replace the son “taken” by the artist's spirit. Furthermore, the “owner” of the new “medicine” walks away with a catalyst for engendering many sons, and for acquiring wealth far greater than that presented to the sculptor. Artists, like families facing the loss of their daughters’ reproductive power, attempt to redress this imbalance by manipulating the nyama attached to the payment of laada. In this situation, as we have discussed in the Introduction, nyama is released by speaking. Thus, both parties attempt to remain silent on the question of payment as long as possible, in order to push the nyama attached to the transaction off onto the other. An intelligent sculptor will try to evade specifying the conditions for his work – and above all his own final payment – at the beginning of the commission, and tradition forbids him to refer to this subject after he has begun to carve. The artist who bypasses the issue of his final fee at the beginning of the negotiations must not respond, even to direct questions from his client, until the work is finished. Then, client and sculptor engage in a subterranean battle as to who will bear the nyama attached to opening up the subject of the laada:

KOJUGU: If, at the moment of sculpting he [the client] asks you, “What is the payment for that?” or if, when you have finished carving, he asks, “How much does that cost?” you say, “Aaah, we didn't agree on a payment at the beginning of the work.” At that time, that which you receive [the payment is left up to the client], you will pass the payment over the head [of the object] [This idiom, ka fèn soki i kun na, translates literally as “to pass something over the head of something else,” but here it is used metaphorically to express the idea, “to transfer the responsibility of the commission”], and the nyama is not on you [the sculptor]. But the person who has commissioned the object also does not bear the nyama.

INTERVIEWER: And in the case where you don't do this?

KOJUGU: If you don't do it, the nyama will spoil you. It will put your family behind [your family will not have many children, and they will be either physically disabled, mentally deficient, or moral liabilities]. This will destroy your extended family, destroy your concession [Kojugu uses the word for concession to stand for the extended family] completely. The concession [the family] will not be dispersed; nevertheless, it will never be well constructed [will never amount to anything].[78]

Superficially, the nyama of the sculptor-client exchange appears to be attached to the payment of the laada specified during the preliminary negotiations. However, the Bamana actually have a more subtle view of nyama; it does not land on the speaker because of the impurity associated with discussing an economic arrangement in explicit terms, but rather because, in opening up this question, the speaker assumes responsibility for the entire venture and all its cumulative nyama. When the client is forced to open his mouth and inquire, “How much does this cost?” he takes the responsibility of making the decision to create the object on himself, and it is the weight and aftereffects of this decision that constitute its nyama. If the artist broaches the subject of the laada first, he has taken control of the situation; and despite the fact that the object in question is carved for another person, it is he who will bear the nyama.

Kojugu tells us that “the person who has commissioned the object also does not bear the nyama,” but this statement, made near the end of a discussion that portrays the sculptor emerging as the victor over his client, is probably polite window dressing. For every exchange, whether ritual or commercial, involves a release of nyama; among the Bamana the essence of the drama is not who benefits materially, but who is forced to assume the imponderable and crushing force of the nyama attached to a transaction. Many people prefer to lose out in a financial negotiation, to pay more than necessary for a purchase, or to be more generous than their friends, out of the deep-seated belief that the nyama attendant on any interchange will hit back at the person who has ostensibly won the encounter. Better to be poor in material terms, but not to spend one's life in constant anxiety over when and where the nyama will strike. Thus, a man who receives the disquieting gift of an immaculate and expensively embroidered gown will be relieved when a spark from a cigarette burns a small hole in it; the nyama attached to such a luxurious gift has “gone out,” and the recipient can enjoy the robe without anxiety.[79]

Kojugu's words make clear why the sculptor tries to shift the nyama to his client. A sculptor who has traded several children to a djinn for access to “secrets” is playing a game in which the loss or gain of a horse with trappings is an infinitesimal reward. What matter if the horse comes or goes, so long as the nyama of the commission leaps over the sculptor's extended family and comes to rest on the ambitious client? Let the client speak of payment first and bear the responsibility for the process he has started. The sculptor may know that this commission is the last his djinn will permit, or that it is this sculpture that will be the catalyst for his son's death or his own impotence. The artist has already assumed an enormous burden merely by choosing to carve ritual objects, so why should he increase his otherworldly payments by taking on additional nyama? The sculptor will not break his ethical code by favoring a rich client over a poor one, but that does not prevent him from avoiding damage to his family when possible.

If the complex negotiations over a commission really conceal a battle over responsibility and nyama, it is not surprising that one Komo mask does not equal another. A finished commission is not just an empty, “round thing,”[80] in Kojugu's words; it is the sum of the struggle between artist and client over nyama. One mask does not equal another, because different personalities negotiate different agreements over each commission; the stipulated laadaw for a Komo mask are always the same, but the ancillary payments and the nyama generated by two different negotiations never are. Because of this, an artist cannot under any circumstances give one client's object to another, even if the client is late in assembling the final laadaw.[81]

KOJUGU: You will carve it [a new Komo mask] like this in case [of a problem with the old one]. Perhaps, if the old one becomes spoiled and the new one has already been placed on one side, you will put it in the place of the other [the spoiled one]. But if this new mask stays with you [continues to be held in reserve by the sculptor], if someone else comes and desires it, and it is the case that it is still with you [its “owner” hasn't picked it up], you will give it to its owner [the sculptor will make haste to give it to the client who commissioned it, since it cannot be transferred to the new client].[82]

Kojugu tells us that it is unethical for a sculptor to give one client's property to another. However, more lies behind his statement than commercial honesty; we have seen that finished objects are the sum of the personal rapport, the economic negotiations, and finally the power struggle between artist and client. Each of these human relations carries its own charge of nyama, and it is this unseen force that constitutes one part of the object's power. Were a sculptor to give one client's object to another, the recipient of this charged ‘gift’ would inevitably suffer the effects of the nyama accrued through his neighbor's negotiations. The artist cannot play fast and loose with this deadly power; he cannot inflict the nyama of client A on client B, for B has not made the decision to take on the responsibility of commissioning the object in question. Were a sculptor to engage in this kind of musical chairs, the nyama would come back to rest on him with increased negative power.

The practice of reserving each object for its owner parallels the traditional procedure for handling marriages. In the past, the head of an extended family would request a girl in marriage for a specific male dependent. Once this assignment was made, it was almost impossible to change, since each woman represented a complex set of negotiations and years of labor performed by her fiancé. At least one World War I veteran reported that his bride, who had been selected before he went off to fight, had been reserved for him until it was known whether he was alive or dead. On his return to his village, she was there, waiting. As with a ritual object, another man could not benefit from the labor and ‘gifts’ offered on the ancien combattant’s behalf until his fate was known.

If we keep in mind that laada cannot be transferred from one person to another, we begin to understand why the Bamana and Malinke will not use the verbs “to sell” (ka feere), “to buy” (ka san), and “to trade” (ka jago kè) to refer to either the acquisition of women or of ritual objects. Superficially, laadaw appear to be one part of a commercial exchange between two extended families, or between artist and client. However, for the sculptor, the kola nuts, chickens, goats, sheep, horses with trappings, and male and female slaves, are merely tokens of an ongoing struggle over the redistribution of nyama. For the client, as for the head of an extended family who invests in a woman, the real question is not cost, but whether the object, like the woman, will work. Will the sculptor, like an ideal woman, adhere to the high moral standards that will enable him to create a nyama-filled ‘child,’ an object laden with contained power, ready to intervene in the visible world and able to change it? For objects, like children, do not emerge untainted from impure sources.

In choosing an artist, the client seeks an individual of high moral standards as well as aesthetic skill. But as the author's own experience demonstrates, it is no easy task to win a master sculptor's acceptance of a commission, because the client approaches a man who is already scarred through his contact with the spirit world. By loading the artist with gifts, and by supporting the sculptor's extended family for an almost unlimited period of time, the client can put the sculptor's back to the wall yet once again. As a young man, every important blacksmith has had to endorse the losses demanded by his djinns; now, in the fullness of his powers, he must accept the limits imposed by his clientele. Placated by his clients’ generosity, he must agree to venture into the force field that is the domain of spirits one more time, to ask his djinn’s help, and to bring back the unseen powers that assume a shape under his hands. In youth a sculptor's djinns coerce him, and in middle and old age his clients push him quietly but inexorably toward increasing isolation and his own death; for with every commission, the artist's own nyama grows. As he carves first one, then two, and then, perhaps, seven or eight Komo masks, a carver begins to move from the world of the living to the world of the dead and of spirits. An artist who has carved seven Komo masks is no longer the same young man who created his first chef d'oeuvre in a slightly new style. He has developed an increasing mastery of the spirit world, he has surmounted an increasing number of deaths, and, with every stroke of his adze, he transfers a higher valence of nyama to the object he carves. Indeed, a master carver at the height of his powers seems to radiate waves of high-intensity nyama. It is hardly surprising that clients hesitate to approach the sculptor directly, that he sometimes disappears into the bush at the mere mention of a commission, and that the negotiations for a ritual object are fraught with tension and anxiety. For in his body, whether wasted and birdlike or gigantic and tough, the sculptor contains a resevoir of otherworldly powers, and as within the forge's boundary, the unseen and the visible worlds combine in the persona and presence of the master numu. When willing, the great sculptor can step across the gap that separates daily existence from the world of the spirits; he can petition, seduce, and control the forces that shape life and destiny. If his djinns agree, he can stride off into the bush to bring back the wood that will clothe an unseen power in a visible garment.

CHAPTER 4

Trees and Tools

Trees

The sculptor who walks out into the bush may not return for a long time. Important artists can spend months hunting a specific tree, and throughout this period the blacksmith wanders over a large territory, killing animals for food, or stopping in hamlets and villages to eat or obtain grain. The Bamana view these apparently aimless movements as one means of making direct contact with djinns, for these creatures are more easily accessible in the wind and emptiness of the savanna, in the luxuriant trees and creepers that surround ponds or streams, and on the tall, red termite mounds that dot the landscape. While his client feeds his family, the sculptor works in a different and solitary manner, walking, talking aloud into the air, repeating incantations that will induce a shy djinn to come out from its hiding place, and meditating on the ritual object he is to carve. These lonely travels separate the artist from the clamoring demands of his extended family, the day-to-day work of the forge, and the endless requests by client after client; they allow the sculptor to concentrate his thoughts, to obtain precise instructions from his djinns, and to visualize the object he will carve.[1]

At some point in these wanderings, djinns will tell the artist the precise location, height, shape, and species of the tree he is to cut in order to carve a specific object.[2] This information is of the utmost importance, for the success or failure of the completed object depends far more on the accurate fulfillment of these instructions than on the sculptor's visual skills. It is one thing to receive instructions from a djinn, but it is quite another to carry them out. Thus, Kojugu informs us that locating the correct tree for a sculpture is the most difficult part of the entire commission:

KOJUGU: Every tree cannot be used [for sculpture]. One can't use all the trees [that exist]. To say that I can leave [the village] and enter the bush and see the tree [immediately] and cut it … one can't use every tree. It is this that makes the search for the tree very difficult.[3]

In another passage he elaborates on this statement, specifying that one of the difficulties encountered by the sculptor is to find a tree growing in the correct position:

KOJUGU: The thing that is the most difficult – it's seeing the tree; this is what is the most difficult. To see the tree is the most difficult [thing]. If you see the tree, to really see it in the position it must be in – this is what's difficult.[4]

Given the ecological degradation of the savanna zone where Kojugu lives, it is possible that locating an appropriate tree is far more difficult now than ever before, but the unusual features that characterize trees suitable for sculpture must always have made the entire proposition a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack. Kojugu remained untroubled by the problem of obtaining instructions from spirits, but commented quite without irony that “the thing that is difficult is to find the wood, because it is necessary that one walks, you walk!”[5] (Fig. 21) Kojugu also admitted that it was hard for any artist to carve an object that would really please him, but he stressed the even greater difficulty of the endless search for the tree.

In fact, Kojugu distinguished blacksmiths with the ability to create basiw from those only able to carve children's dolls, by their knowledge of the rules that determine which trees are suitable for ritual objects:

Figure 21. Basi Fane searching for the dyafereke out of which he would carve the author's commission. According to Kojugu Cissoko, this is the most difficult part of making ritual sculpture; he said, “The thing that is difficult is to find the wood, because it is necessary that one walks, you walk!” Photographed in the bush by the author's associate, 2/12/84.

INTERVIEWER: Can all the blacksmiths who can sculpt Komo masks, can they all make human figures in wood? Does every blacksmith who can carve a Komo mask, can he carve human figures in wood?

KOJUGU: They can make human figures in wood, but the process of making them is different. To carve them, thus, to carve them only to give them to children as a plaything and the ones that one makes to be ritual objects – this isn't the same thing. The people [blacksmiths] who can make them as ritual objects are not numerous.

INTERVIEWER: Well, what is the difference between these blacksmiths? Why are there so few of these people [the ones that make ritual objects]? What difference is there between them?

KOJUGU: This is the difference between them; some people look at the things that are already sculpted in order to carve; that is for playing [i.e., this occurs when you are making a plaything]. But, if I take a tree, if I cut it, and the thing that I have to make is a wooden figure to be used ritually – the person who doesn't know this tree [i.e., what kind of tree is appropriate for this type of figure][cannot carve such an object]. Nevertheless this tree exists, and it is a tree on its own [it is a member of a specific species, growing in a specific and identifiable way]. One has to be cut by night; this tree is on its own [is a specific one]. You must cut another next to a body of water, a body of water that never dries up and this tree, too, is on its own. Equally, the one that you must cut on the summit of a mountain is on its own. Again, the one that must be cut in the cemetery, this tree is on its own. So, the person who doesn't know these differences, but all he knows is how to carve [can't make ritual objects] – this is why I say that there aren't many blacksmiths who can carve ritual objects. This is the reason why I said that.[6]

Kojugu tells us that important sculptors know which species are suitable for what objects and the places where desirable trees must be located; average blacksmiths lack such an expertise. The master artist is distinguished both by his botanical knowledge and his ritual expertise; without the latter even a skillful carver will make only empty dolls.

Trees are no exception to the Bamana and Malinke rule that every object, whether living or dead, has its own quotient of nyama. As with animals and people, different trees possess varying intensities of nyama, and the sculptor who learns what species of tree must be cut at midnight to obtain the wood for a Komo mask, is learning the methods to channel and contain nyama. Sculptors assign different degrees of nyama to particular species for both technical and ritual reasons, without distinguishing between these two categories. For instance, a tree like the lènkè[7] is famous for its connection with the mythic (and possibly historic) father of all blacksmiths and sculptors, M'Fa Jigi, as well as for its proverbial hardness and resistance to termite damage.[8] Sculptors who confront a lènkè wish to protect themselves from its intensely powerful nyama, but they also desire to conserve enough of this power within the raw wood, that the finished carving will contain the tree's energy and will channel it into action.

Before exploring the domain of ritual meanings, let us first examine some technical constraints that affect the sculptor's choice of tree. Sculptors usually prefer to work in hard rather than soft woods; harder woods are said to possess a more intense nyama. Both the renowned lènkè and the jala[9] are fibrous and difficult to cut, whereas the dugura[10] and the sanan[11] are known for their hardness. The benbe[12] and the balenbo[13] are also desirable woods. Other trees are seldom used in sculpture of any type because their wood is too soft:

INTERVIEWER: Why don't you use the fonfonfogolon?[14]

KOJUGU: It isn't a wood that is hard. If you use it, you will not even have half an hour's worth of work without it spoiling [breaking]. We don't use the bumu [kapok tree][15] because it isn't a wood that has a long life, together with the dubalen.[16] That has a short life span too. The kobo[17] isn't used because it has a short life span, together with the mango[18] – it, too, has a short life span.

INTERVIEWER: It isn't some problem with their djinns – nothing of that sort?

KOJUGU: It isn't a problem of djinns. It's nothing except that these aren't woods that have a long life span.[19]

In this passage Kojugu states that technical suitability is a primary reason for the selection of particular trees. However, when he continues his discussion, ritual factors come to the fore. In the case of the lènkè, this wood's proverbial hardness turns out to be much less important than its miraculous and incomprehensible ritual power. In fact, a general preference for working in hard woods that will withstand the ravages of time can give way before the ritual charge carried by a soft wood: N'tomo (and even Komo) masks are often deliberately carved from a kapok tree (bumu) riddled with termite damage, because the Bamana associate these insects with fertility and agricultural productivity. Although technical suitability is important, sculptors ultimately place much more value on what we would call a tree's ritual associations.

Let us then look at the sources of trees’ nyama, for the ideas associated with powerful trees may reveal much more about ritual objects and their purposes than the technical preference for harder over softer wood. Among all the trees suitable for ritual sculpture, Kojugu, Nyamaton, and Basi all singled out the balenbo and the lènkè as possessing exceptionally high valences of nyama.[20] Kojugu Cissoko explained that the balenbo was the tree against which M'Fa Jigi placed his belongings when returning from Mecca:

KOJUGU: When M'Fa Jigi came from Mecca, the tree against which he placed his sack – long, long, long ago, this was the balenbo. Because of this, its trunk is used for many works of this sort [i.e., many ritual sculptures] – the trunk of the balenbo is implicated in these things.[21]

M'Fa Jigi is a mythic figure who functions as the prototypical inventor and artist; wherever he appears, Jigi represents the creative power of men and their ability to master the world through technology. The Bamana believe that M'Fa Jigi was the father of all blacksmiths. He is said to have visited Mecca on the hajj, and when he returned down the Niger river, he brought with him the prototypes of all the sacred ritual objects used in male initiation associations. Today, blacksmiths still invoke M'Fa Jigi as the ancestor of all bulaw, they still name sons after him, and they still marvel at his extraordinary capacity for invention; M'Fa Jigi is not only supposed to have brought home the sacred Komo objects, but, anachronistically, he is also reported to have invented the outhouse and the bicycle.[22] Given Jigi's miraculous powers and his ability to create, it is hardly surprising that the balenbo against which he placed his sack (presumably containing the sacred Komo objects) should have been infused with nyama, or that this tree should now be used to create Komo masks.[23]

However, the lènkè is even more powerful than the balenbo, although its generative power is not so immediately apparent. According to Kojugu, it is the most effective, if the most dangerous, choice for a Komo mask, since it is the home of djinns.[24]

KOJUGU: One can use the lènkè. If you don't find the balenbo and if you don't find the benbe, if you find the lènkè, you can make it [a Komo mask] with the lènkè. Indeed the lènkè is good, because it is the tree of djinns. But if you have made many [masks] with it, many indeed, the way in which you end will not be good. It is for this reason that people [sculptors] are afraid to use the lènkè.

INTERVIEWER: [in a tone of noncomprehension] Many people?

KOJUGU: The end [i.e., death] of many leaders of the Komo society – it is not good.

INTERVIEWER: Will such people die or will they become mad?

KOJUGU: Such a person won't become mad. But his speech will become – if he can't fulfill all the laada [if he can't make all the appropriate offerings], his words will become empty [he will say things that aren't true, he will be regarded as a liar]. Eè! [exclamation in a tone of horror] unless you offer the customary laada to the djinns.[25]

Superficially at least, the lènkè appears to have destructive, not creative powers, but let us examine Kojugu's declaration more closely. Why is the sculptor so horrified at the lènkè’s power? In precolonial times, Komo objects made from the lènkè or balenbo stood as judge and jury in important legal trials, where opponents swore life and death oaths on them. The objects were believed to kill the petitioner who had sworn falsely, thus adjudicating complex cases. Such objects were manipulated by their “guardians” or “owners” (tigiw), effectively the local Komo officials, who were supposed to be incorruptible. A Komo leader who abused his powers and manipulated the objects in his own interest would cause the death of innocent victims (perjurers were poisoned by Komo society leaders, acting on behalf of the powers contained within the objects). At his installation, every Komo leader or Kòmòtigi swore to act honestly, taking the sacred Komo boliw and the earth itself as his witnesses. A mere adept might lie or spout “empty speech,” but a Komo leader could never betray his oaths by lying. Kojugu fears the lènkè precisely because objects made from this tree have the capacity to seduce a Komo leader into lies, and a lying Kòmòtigi soon falls victim to his objects, if not to his disillusioned followers, who will not wait long before taking justice into their own hands.[26]

Some Kòmòtigiw apparently abused their powers by poisoning association members for their wealth; the property of anyone killed by the Komo fell to the society. Because of this possibility, the man selected to head the Komo submitted to the strongest known sanction, that of the earth itself. When taking office, a new Kòmòtigi still swears an oath on a red termite mound, and rinses his mouth with a liquid containing seeds found in the fine soil taken from the interior of the mound.[27] The mound and its seed kernels invoke the fertilizing power of the ground, the original mother, as witness. The Kòmòtigi swears by the vast creative matrix of the earth that he will be honest, promising to use the destructive powers of the objects created from the lènkè in the service of his community, not himself.

This oath is not light. Both the Malinke and the Bamana conceive of the earth as a primeval mother, and they identify termite mounds with the female sex. In the Mande world, the female sex is both sacred and terrifying; men take their most profound oaths by invoking their mother's sex, and a woman can damm a man forever by removing her pagne, pointing to her sex, and cursing the offender with its power. Both men and women will forever ostracize a man so cursed, unless he begs forgiveness and persuades the offended woman to revoke her oath. The gravity of the Kòmòtigi’s vow on the termite mound parallels the power of the oath sworn on the female sex in daily life, for in taking the termite mound as his witness, the Kòmòtigi invokes the massive power of primeval creativity. Thus, for Kojugu, the lènkè is a dangerous and nyama-filled tree precisely because it can seduce the Kòmòtigi into perjury on the sacred earth, thereby leading him to a self-inflicted death.[28] This destructive power makes the lènkè especially suitable for the creation of a death-dealing mask like the Komo.

Kojugu's commentary on the lènkè tells us that the nyama released by cutting a tree exacts a heavy payment. Not only must the ambitious sculptor bargain with his djinns, offering his life, his sexuality, or his children in exchange for artistic skill, but the hunt for the tree has its own price, a price that easily surpasses tired feet and months of separation from one's family. The greater the nyama of the tree, the more dangerous it is to cut, and the more powerful the finished ritual object. A tree's nyama can not only bring about the sculptor's death, but can also put an end to his ability to engender children. However, in a bitter exchange, the object the artist carves may well become an entire village's solution to infertility. Thus, Kojugu advises against cutting a tree he calls dugu tunun or “hidden in the earth”:

KOJUGU: If you see a tree, if it is a good tree, if it is a tree possessing nyama – there are some trees that have their roots totally buried. You can't see a single root outside [the ground]. We call this tree dugu tunun. This isn't good. The dugu tunun – if you cut the dugu tunun it isn't good.

INTERVIEWER: What does it do?

KOJUGU: Cutting the dugu tunun brings sterility fast. It brings the death of any children who are already born very quickly. Next, a tree whose trunk is completely straight and then splits into two branches positioned in an east-west direction [a Y-shaped tree], and the sun rises in its eastern branches and falls in its western branches, it isn't good if you cut this tree. There is also a tree – when you see it standing it seems good to you, but from the earth up until you have gone beyond the height of a man there are no branches, right until high up, and then, where the branches show themselves, they are in a group of three, it isn't good. Then a tree that you have come to see and you wish to cut down, but its roots are buried and there are no traces of any termites that crawl up it – you must leave this one alone. If you cut it, it will not be good [for you]. The things that I know about the problem of trees, those things that were shown to me by my relatives, that's it.[29]

Kojugu's characterization of dangerous trees seems arbitrary, but his description makes more sense when we understand the implicit association of certain physical features with sterility. The buried roots of the dugu tunun function as a sign for the sculptor's children, who should spread out around him like the roots of the tree. The roots’ invisibility is a bad omen, for by cutting the dugu tunun the sculptor will transfer this quality to his own children; if already born they will die, and if predicted through divination but not yet born, they will never take shape inside their ordained mother.

This interpretation depends on understanding the Bamana use of the term ju, which means both “roots” as in “tree roots” and “roots” as in “source” or “family origin.” One often hears expressions such as “A ju bora Kita fan fè,” or “His roots come from the Kita region.” In this passage, Kojugu reverses the normal order of things and uses ju to mean descendants rather than ancestors. However, the association of the term with vague family connections is so widespread that most Bamana would have little trouble understanding the meaning of the dugu tunun's hidden roots. Furthermore, just as a tree depends on its roots for sustenance and survival, so important personalities in the Bamana world are said to depend on the manpower and allegiance provided by children and supporters. A tree without visible roots has no obvious means of physical support. Likewise, an important personality cannot be identified and properly presented to the world without numerous children and clients. Thus, the dugu tunun’s isolation represents the loneliness, poverty, and solitary unhappiness of a sculptor who has been stripped of his children.

The tree that is bare until it suddenly sprouts three branches probably represents a state of isolation similar to that symbolized by the dugu tunun.[30] Finally, the tree whose roots are not only buried, but which bears no traces of termites, leads us into a much more far-reaching discussion of the sculptor's attempts to localize and control generative power.

All my informants agreed that whether a balenbo, a lènkè, or a nyamacenin,[31] the best tree for making a Komo mask grows directly out of a termite mound (Fig. 22).[32] Furthermore, the trees that are used for the Komo can often be employed for other ritual objects, on the principle that if the wood is powerful enough to make a Komo mask, it is powerful enough to make almost anything else. Thus, when Kojugu states that finding a tree is hard because “it is necessary that one walks, you walk!” he may well be thinking of the difficulties in locating an appropriate tree that is also growing from a termite mound. When moving through the bush, one does occasionally see such trees, and if one is accompanied by a sculptor, he will stop and commit the location to memory for future use.[33] The artist engraves these spots in his mind, for their trees will eventually be used for Komo masks or other ritual objects whose details he will obtain from his djinn.

Because of its importance, Bamana sculptors use a tree growing out of a termite mound and the Komo mask carved from it as their standard reference point in any general discussion of sculpture or aesthetics. Thus, it is especially important to understand the conceptual links between termites, Komo masks, and generative power; and in fact, we will find that termites provide clues that lead toward an understanding of the sculptural process itself.

Among both the Bamana and the Malinke, termites and their mounds are a primary sign for, and vehicle of, fertility. It would be hard to overestimate their importance. The mounds’ physical appearance is spectacular; as one travels over the dry and frequently rocky savanna with its sparse vegetation, these careful constructions emerge singly or in groups in the most unlikely places. A flat area whose gravel barely covers the rock beneath can boast numerous grey-black towers about a foot and a half or two feet high, and approximately one foot wide. These betere sow, or “homes for the beterew,” are built by, and house, black worker termites called baga baga kisèw.[34] According to Kojugu, such mounds are also referred to as “termites with hats,” or gabanma because the shape of the older termite hills resembles a straw hat with the crown crushed down onto the base.[35] A second and even more startling variety of termite, which Kojugu calls “the ones with the big mouth” (Macrotermes natalensis), build tall red mounds as much as five or six feet in height, whose extraordinary turreted shapes remind one of Gaudi's buildings.[36]

There are several practical, everyday reasons for the association between termites and fertility; the Bamana observe that both types of termites are organized and intensely industrious, and they marvel that these tiny but powerful insects can build such large mounds in unlikely places. An insect that can find and carry the dirt to construct a sizable home in the midst of a flat rocky surface is nothing if not productive. Thus, both termites and their mounds are associated with hard work, productivity, and victory over tough environmental conditions. The Bamana are also aware that termite larvae and workers, or nymphs, found in the center of the mounds, are excellent food for their poultry, and one often sees a farmer returning from his fields at sundown laden with porous chunks of grey dirt crawling with insects.[37] Both the multiplicity of the larvae and the fact that the insects provide a rich diet for the primary sacrificial animal, itself a sign of fertility, associate termites with ideas of abundance.

Finally, every villager believes that termite mounds are a last-resort source of food. In times of terrible famine (for instance, 1983–6) the Bamana search out termite mounds and break them open, carrying away the bottom center portion of dirt. Because the Bamana believe that the dirt contains the husks of wild and cultivated grains, they sift it, and then cook it in a dish similar to millet paste or tot, eating this as an alternative to avert starvation.[38] In 1984 and 1985 many Bamana reported that they had survived first by eating wild grains, and then by plundering termite mounds, and no mound remained that had not been eviscerated in the hope of obtaining food. Thus, termites are not only signs for agricultural productivity and human industry, but they also appear to provide a material means of survival in extreme famine conditions.

Figure 22. Basi's apprentice, Kege Danyogo, felling the dyafereke selected for the author's sculpture. The tree is growing directly out of a red termite mound. Photographed in the bush by the author's associate.

Every Bamana child sent out into the bush to gather termite larvae for the family's chickens is well aware of these insects’ importance, but most people remain ignorant of the hidden powers that are also associated with termites. In Kojugu's words:

KOJUGU: There are termites, but the person who doesn't understand their secret – he will not understand [their meaning]. So termites, the type of termite mound that you have just described [a betere so created by “black” termites], where there are termites – this can resolve major problems just as it can also spoil important matters. But it is very difficult for people [normal people] to uncover their secrets [the secrets of the termite mounds]. They can resolve major problems just as they can spoil great affairs.[39]

The reason that an apprentice sculptor must learn to decipher the secrets of termite mounds is that the insects and their homes are doors into the world of the spirits. Each mound houses at least one djinn, and it is the termites who listen to the directions given by the spirits and carry out their orders in this world.[40] The insects possess the power to “resolve major problems” or “spoil great affairs” because of their direct link to the djinns, and it is with these spirits that the sculptor must communicate before he breaks open a mound or cuts a tree growing from it:

KOJUGU: Termite mounds, these are the places of djinns. If you don't see [a djinn] and you want to break into the termite mound, at the moment when you are going to break it you must say, “Pardon me, I don't see anything.” At this moment, if the thing [the djinn] that is right in front of you is not willing to come out from there [to show itself], even if you climb up on it, nothing will happen to you.

INTERVIEWER: Then, there are djinns there?

KOJUGU: [in assent] Nhun.[41]

Kojugu summarizes the correct procedure for summoning a djinn out of a red termite mound. Djinns tend to frequent the towering red cliffs called daba sow, and in fact daba can be translated literally as “large doorway” or “large entrance” as well as “large mouth,” and so may be translated as “house,” “village,” or “place.” Thus, their name itself suggests that these constructions are doors to the other world. Moreover, their fiery orange-red coloring, so reminiscent of blood, also marks the mounds as points of contact with the world of the spirits.[42] This color is very similar to the rust red of the Basiae and N'Gale cloths worn by Bamana women after excision. Bamana women explain that this rust-red color will strike fear into the hearts of the initiates’ enemies when they see the ritual cloths, and that such people will die during the succeeding year.[43] Because of its associations with blood, both women and men regard a rust-red, whether on textiles or in a termite mound, with trepidation; the color evokes fear and the sense that one is in the presence of something dangerous. It is also significant that Bamana men frequently select scraps of rust-red cloth to adorn the death-bearing Komo mask. Whether or not a sculptor actually sees a djinn on the daba so, both its name and its coloring proclaim that it is a gateway to the spirit world, and the cautious apprentice does well to ask its spirit's pardon before climbing up to cut down the tree growing from its summit.

For the Bamana, one infallible proof that djinns are present in or near the fiery red mounds is that animals like to rest in their shadows. Just as a tree barren of termite tracks, or a house foundation unvisited by lizards (basaw), warns of sterility, so places frequented by animals signal abundance.[44] Game animals generally lurk in the deepest and most abundant vegetation or cluster around water sources, and both these environments are associated with fertility. In savanna areas, the tall red termite mounds are often isolated sources of shade and protection, and Kojugu observes that animals not only shelter there, but also choose this spot to give birth:

KOJUGU: Nhun, because … people say that the termites with the large mouth, that their houses are places for djinns, because many animals go to lie down and rest there. The antelopes minaw[45] give birth there and many other things [animals] go to give birth there.[46]

For Kojugu, the antelopes who seek out the tall, red mounds are placing themselves under the protection of the djinns who inhabit the daba sow at their most extreme moment, the moment of birth when life and death hang in the balance. In Kojugu's mind, no further proof of the termite mounds’ miraculous powers is needed; animals sense the other world far quicker than humans, and that the mina chooses to give birth in the shadows of the daba so, demonstrates the incontestible presence of djinns and their sheltering power.

Given termites’ everyday associations with industriousness, agricultural productivity (the term daba is also the name for a hoe), and abundance, it is hardly surprising that the mina’s choice of a termite mound as a place to give birth should link the insects to fertility. However, termites possess another, even more important connection to creative power. The Bamana observe that the hollow interiors of termite mounds are cool and that, when solid, their finely processed dirt is damp; (perhaps as a result) they believe that termites build their mounds only where the insects detect an underground water source.[47] Since every source and body of water harbors its own djinns, these spirits add their presence to that of the other spirits that may be resting in the shade of the mound or spending their day there.

Djinns of the water have a number of important links to fertility. First of all, the Bamana live in an environment that is totally at the mercy of an unpredictable rainy season, and water is a precious commodity. Second, traditional experts report that the water buried deep below a termite mound is really the outburst of a hidden, underground stream that runs below the rocky savanna. The Bamana believe that all such underground streams eventually connect, producing a fluid network of interlocking watercourses that ultimately flows into the Niger river (Fig. 23).[48] Thus, the roots of a tree growing out of a termite mound, amid miles of barren, iron-red savanna, draw their nourishment from an underground stream detected by the termites. In fact, it is the djinns of the stream that protect the tree and allow it to grow in such an unexpected spot. Like the tree that Kojugu cites when he says, “You must cut another next to a body of water, a body of water that never dries up and this tree, too, is on its own [is a specific one],”[49] the tree that emerges from the dry red dust of a termite mound grows next to water, but the water is invisible to man.

If all water possesses generative power, why is the fact that a tree growing out of a termite mound is linked, via the underground stream, to the Niger river, so particularly important to sculptors like Kojugu? We should remember that when M'Fa Jigi, the mythic inventor and artist, returned from Mecca bearing the prototypes of all known ritual objects, he traveled down the Niger river in a canoe. At some point, he beached the canoe and descended onto dry land, but in so doing he dropped two of his most sacred objects into the Niger; and these boliw were transformed into two species of water creature, a fish and a snake:

NYAMATON: One was the N'tigin [electric catfish].[50] The other was the N'kara [a venomous water snake].[51] When he was crossing the river, his boliw fell into the water, two boliw. One was the N'tigin. The other was the N'kara. If the N'kara bites you in the water, if there is no one nearby, but you, you are three [i.e., if there are three people in the party], you will have to act fast. You must pull up water from the Niger in a bucket and set it next to you, and then you must sprinkle it over the one [who has been bitten] from time to time. If the water does not dry on his body [if he remains soaked] he will not die. But if the water is allowed to dry, and if you have not applied the jògò [a medicine whose nature Nyamaton did not explain] to him, he will die. That one is a certain kind of serpent. He inhabits the river. That is the N'kara. The other is called the N'tigin. This one, this one is a female boli. If you place your hand on it, you will tremble, you will jump, and you will fall down. But later you will come to yourself and you will be able to get up.[52]

Nyamaton goes on to explain that the N'tigin fell from M'Fa Jigi's right hand and is thus female, while the N'kara fell from M'Fa Jigi's left hand and is thus male. Nyamaton identified the right hand as “female” because everyone uses it all the time. However the left hand's use is limited; it can be employed only when bathing one's private parts and during sex.[53] This hand is “male” not only because its use is restricted (like access to male secret associations), but also because men are instructed to use it to guide their penis into their wife's vagina during intercourse. In principle, a man is supposed to avoid touching his own or his wife's sex with his right hand.

The gender identification of the N'tigin and the N'kara is important for two reasons. First of all, the snake and the electric catfish are alternate male and female forms of the sacred ritual altars or boliw used by Bamana male secret associations and created by blacksmith-sculptors. Second, the N'kara and the N'tigin can be correlated with the male and female sex, as observed in premature births. Salimata Kone reported that midwives examine the bodies of spontaneously aborted children and that, after four months’ gestation, they can detect the sex of the child. She said that “if it [the sex] is like a lizard [basa], it is a boy,” while that of female infants is “like a toad.”[54] The lizard and the toad appear to be correlates for the N'kara and the N'tigin, for the undeveloped penis that resembles the snakelike tail of the lizard is also a visual analogue for the N'kara; and the round, “toadlike” sex of the girl corresponds visually to the round muzzle of the N'tigin catfish. In a general sense, the Bamana compare the sex of the undeveloped boy to snakes or lizards, whereas they associate that of the undeveloped girl with toads or a fish with a round jaw.

Additional data on the N'tigin not only supports this comparison, but also links the catfish/boli to successful childbirth and the female sex. N'tigin are considered a delicacy and are frequently eaten, but their skins are carefully preserved and hung up to dry. In cases of prolonged and difficult labor, these skins are soaked in water, and the woman who is giving birth drinks the solution in order to accelerate her delivery.[55] The N'tigin recipe is well known, and the solution is actually said to have long-term effects, hastening every birth subsequent to its use.[56] The Bamana observe the N'tigin’s ability to generate electric shocks, and the recipe clearly aims to transmit this electrifying power to the woman in labor, shocking her into delivering the child.[57] Thus, the N'tigin is not only a visual analogue for the female sex, but its skin is actually used as a drug to intensify the most fundamental female activity – that of giving birth. The N'tigin may also have another, less overt relationship to the female sex. Men are frequently said to tremble from sexual desire; touching the female sex is said to “shock” men and to cause them to tremble in much the same fashion as a shock from the N'tigin. Elders advise young men to use caution when making love and to try, when possible, to avoid touching their wife's sex, a mode of conduct that parallels the gingerly manner in which fishermen handle the N'tigin.

This information provides us with a chain of striking transformations; M'Fa Jigi's male and female altars, or boliw, fall into the Niger river and transform themselves into the snake (N'kara) and the round-muzzled fish (N'tigin). These creatures are analogues for the lizard and toad that are mentioned in Salimata's descriptions of the male and female sex. The N'tigin is further identified with the female sex through its medicinal use in difficult childbirths, and by the similarity between the “shocks” produced when a man touches a woman's sex, and those received when he touches the fish. A sculptor who seeks a tree to carve a Komo mask is trying to replicate the original, magical objects belonging to M'Fa Jigi. He may not be able to go back to the Niger river to cut a tree growing by its banks (a tree that presumably would have been in direct physical contact with the N'kara and the N'tigin, the only contemporary remains of M'Fa Jigi's boliw); but he can find a tree that grows out of a termite mound. The roots of this tree reach down to the invisible stream that connects the mound to the Niger river, and through this watery link, however elongated, the isolated tree absorbs the original creative power of M'Fa Jigi vested in the N'kara and the N'tigin. The N'kara and the N'tigin transfer the power of the original boliw, of which they are alternate forms, to the waters of the Niger, and this power then moves along the mysterious underground channel into the termite mound and the tree growing out of it.

The associations with agricultural productivity, powerful djinns, and the creative energies of M'Fa Jigi, explain why trees growing out of termite mounds should be especially desirable for ritual sculpture. However, Salimata Kone recounted a predictive dream that suggests that the shape of the mounds also enables them to function as images of fertility on a more abstract level. The Bamana interpret certain dreams (sugow ka farin, “dreams that are hard”) as carriers of information about the future.[58] Both men and women have “hard” dreams, although they are more common for men. These dreams often predict pregnancies, and may even tell a man the sex of his future child. In Salimata's dream, a termite mound is the site where Salimata and her friend battle a horde of snakes:

Figure 23. Drawing showing the imaginary underground stream connecting the tree growing out of a termite mound with the Niger river.

SALIMATA: I myself, I dreamed that we [Salimata and a female friend] went looking for firewood. On the way home we arrived on a termite mound. I, I saw immediately that there were many serpents curled around one of her feet [the friend's feet] and I said, “Nyabara, here are many snakes on your foot.” I said, “Ah! indeed there are two snakes!” She replied, “Have you looked at your own case? I, I have a snake on my foot and you, equally, you have some.” I, I said, “Eh!” In the dream of serpents, in any case, I knelt down and followed the traces of her footsteps [this phrase is unclear; the translation given is literal], and the snakes came and crawled up on me until they fiilled my hand. There were many. He [an angel or a djinn who has appeared in the previous part of the dream][59] attacked them all, and he bent their heads [Salimata's Bamana is idiomatic and somewhat unclear here, but the phrase probably means that he decapitated the snakes], and he threw some here and others there. After that there was only one left. I did the same thing for her [presumably Salimata imitated the angel and disposed of her companion's snakes]. And at that moment she said, “You go on with the ones [snakes] that belong to you.” I replied, “The ones that are at my feet – these ones won't arrive at the village.” Then I myself did the same thing for my foot [took the snake off it], but I became pregnant. She, too, she became pregnant, but both the pregnancies spontaneously aborted when they arrived at the third month. I observe this [the truth of predictive dreams, which was the subject of the interviewer's original question] concerning myself.[60]

In Salimata's dream, the fertilizing snakes find the women when they climb a termite mound, and Salimata even kneels down, uniting her body with the mound, as the snakes swarm up from the earth and cover her. The dream implies an analogy between a woman's body and a termite mound, while the decapitated snakes who “will not arrive at the village” represent the spontaneous abortions both Salimata and her friend will suffer. The dream suggests that Salimata is unconsciously comparing the height and substance of the termite mound, swelling out of the earth, with the rounded belly of pregnancy.[61]

This identification leads us to a further interpretation of the tree growing out of a termite mound. If, as Salimata's dream suggests, the mound is an analogue for a pregnant belly, then the tree growing out of it (and the mask it eventually becomes) corresponds to a child. This interpretation is substantiated when we learn of a striking similarity between the way in which the Bamana handle used, and nonfunctional, ritual sculptures, and the manner in which they dispose of the dead bodies of deformed children.

The Bamana return carved basiw that have lost their powers, or are too dangerous to keep, to the djinns from whom these “medicines” came (often the spirits that inhabit the Niger river), by taking the objects far out into the bush and placing them on termite mounds, where the insects devour them.[62] Thus, the spirits that originally provided the nyama-filled basiw take them back once their usefulness has ended. Similarly, Salimata Kone describes how, traditionally, the dead bodies of children with severe birth defects are entrusted to male elders, who carry them out into the bush and return them to the spirit world by placing them on ant heaps:

SALIMATA: People who are mature, very mature, they give them [the dead children] to these people. This is because these people, since they know the medicines for many things, nothing can happen to them [i.e., touching the dead children does not contaminate them because they possess antidotes for this]. They give such a child to this kind of person. These people [the mature ones] go and place it [the dead body] on the ant heap and turn their backs. But if this is not the case, if you don't have this in your mouth [if you haven't mastered the medicine that will protect you], if you go to leave such a thing there, the djinns will make you enter a certain door [they will inflict ill fortune or even death on you]. Everyone can't do this. The great works of which everyone speaks, if it isn't a case of [if you aren't a person who can execute] similar works, those ones [works] that can take men [kill men] – some of these ones exist [men who master such “great works”], the spirits are totally unable to approach them. This type of person [this type of dead body] is given to similar kinds of people [people who can execute great works]. A person of this type will place it [the dead body] on the ant heap. Is it a djinn, a dwarf,[63] a bilisi?[64] One doesn't know. This person, in any case, goes and throws it [the dead body] there, but you can't kill such a child.

INTERVIEWER: You don't kill it [a deformed child]?

SALIMATA: No. If you throw it away, the things that are its owners [i.e., the djinns of the ant heap], they will come and take it.[65]

We have already seen that the sculptors who create ritual objects reach into the spirit world in order to channel some of its powers back into the domain of humans. However, the Bamana believe that elements of the spirit world can also emerge spontaneously in the human universe in anomalous forms. Salimata tells us that deformed children are really the creations, and therefore the property, of spirits. When such creatures unexpectedly appear in the human world, the only thing to do is to return them to their “owners,” the spirits, via a ntinkinyèso or ant heap. The elder who calmly places a misshapen, dead infant on an ant heap, and turns away to leave it there, is merely returning the spirit's property to its home. Similarly, the blacksmith who abandons a useless mask on a termite mound is simply returning their own creation back to the spirits who generated it.

Both termite mounds and anthills are doors to the spirit world. Whereas the sculptor seeks to enter into contact with spirits and pull their power into his own world for human use, when he talks to a termite mound before cutting the lènkè growing out of it, the ritual expert who returns a misshapen, dead infant to the other world is taking something that should exist only in the spirit world and returning it to its rightful place. Unlike termites, who bestow the benefits of the spirit world on humans, the black ants adjust the balance of power in the other direction, by reclaiming those human possessions which really belong to the spirit world. Because the black ants are able to remove a farmer's entire harvest from his granary and take it back to their ant heap in a single night, and because they continue their work even when it is dark, they are viewed as agents whose activity on behalf of the spirit world is usually destructive. If termites cycle the positive, generative powers of the other world into the human, then the black ants remove these benefits and take them back to their original owners. However, like the termites, the black ant's powers are far from negligible, for, as we shall later see, their home is one of two sites where female carvers create the supremely destructive “medicines” of the Bamana world.

The parallel between the disposal of distorted infants and of useless ritual sculptures is further evidence for our hypothesis that the Bamana view their ritual objects as children. We have already seen that only sculptors who observe restrictive sexual rules can produce ritual objects that work, just as only women whose behavior is above reproach can give birth to physically normal and psychologically satisfying children. Like a normal child, a working ritual object requires ongoing care, and when it loses its powers or threatens to turn on its owners, the object is delivered back to the spirits who bestowed it, just as the Bamana return distorted and misshapen infants to the other world.

The sculptor who “walks, you walk!”[66] in the search for the correct tree, confronts far more than the actual scarcity of full-grown trees whose wood is hard enough to carve. Not only must he find a nyama-filled tree of the correct species, but the appropriate tree must grow out of a termite mound; in addition, the sculptor must be able to cajole the spirits who inhabit this gateway to the invisible world, and he must have the courage to attack a living thing that still possesses a direct connection to the original creative powers of M'Fa Jigi. Kojugu is not joking when he says, “To see the tree is the most difficult [thing]”; he is simply stating what every advanced apprentice already knows: selecting the wood for carving is more than a technical matter, and, as we shall soon see, cutting the tree may involve additional risks for the unwary numu,[67]

Cutting the Tree

Sooner or later, the solitary artist will come across the right lènkè in the right position, and then he must confront a host of further problems. It may take several days to cut down a particularly thick lènkè, and the task is not easy when one has to stand on the crumbling ramparts of a termite mound, but this is the least of the sculptor's problems (Fig. 22). Both expert artists and their apprentices run grave risks in cutting a nyama-filled tree. According to Kojugu, the nyama involved in cutting and then carving significant trees such as the lènkè or bumu is far more potent than that encountered in the forge, although the physical dangers of working iron are greater:

INTERVIEWER: Now, between the two, working iron and carving sculpture, which is the most difficult?

KOJUGU: Working iron.

INTERVIEWER: Why is working iron difficult?

KOJUGU: The reason is the fire.

INTERVIEWER: What does the fire do to a person?

KOJUGU: You place the iron in the fire, you work the bellows, the iron becomes red, you take it with the pliers, you place it on the anvil, and you beat it. Perhaps, if there is no one next to you to warn you, the pliers can let the iron escape. If it doesn't wound you, it can wound someone else nearby. That's why carving sculpture is easier than working in the forge. But between the two, carving sculpture and working in the forge, the sculptor and the blacksmith, it is the sculptor who becomes blind faster, long before the blacksmith.

INTERVIEWER: It's him who becomes blind quickly?

KOJUGU: Indeed, indeed.

INTERVIEWER: What is the reason for that?

KOJUGU: The nyama of the wood.[68]

Kojugu reiterates this statement in another interview saying, “Between the two of them, it is the nyama of the wood that is greater. The nyama of wood is great. [Indeed], wood possesses nyama.”[69] On a technical level, blacksmith-sculptors fear the physical danger of the forge, but the greatest danger lies in the nyama of the wood one cuts.

Any numu who cuts a tree for any purpose, whether secular or ritual, will suffer the force of its nyama if he does not take certain precautions. In fact, the Bamana believe that this nyama is so strong that the carver must make a yearly sacrifice to protect his tools. When the yearly rains end, in late September or October, working blacksmiths assemble their carving tools and sacrifice several chickens over them.[70] Each carver also offers a chicken to any tree that he cuts, irrespective of its eventual use. However, the expert artists who fell trees that possess an intense level of nyama, such as the lènkè or the bumu, run the greatest risks. What are these risks and what can they tell us about the nature of the trees suitable for ritual sculpture? Kojugu says:

KOJUGU: There are some trees that you may cut without reciting the incantation [to ward off the nyama], and nothing will happen to you. But there are other trees, if you cut these and you don't carry out the [procedure that is the] antidote, yes, this can bring sleeping sickness. If it doesn't bring sleeping sickness, all your hands will change later on; the palm will contort itself into a face up position, and the back of the hand will move to the interior. This happened to me. This happened to me. The interior of my hand came into a face up position, and the exterior twisted itself into the interior. That happened with a tree that we call the bumu.

INTERVIEWER: That was what sort of bumu? Did it have a red trunk?

KOJUGU: It was a large one, very large. The bumu was on a red termite mound; it was completely straight and very white till high up the tree. When I was wandering about I saw this bumu. I liked it. It pleased me to an extraordinary degree. I put down my things, I set myself to it, and I began to cut. At the first stroke of the adze the bumu began to cry out – “Sheeee!” [Kojugu imitates the sound made by the bumu]. Right up until I had finished completely cutting this bumu and it had fallen, it made the same cry. Then, while I was cutting the head [the top of the tree] off, it kept on crying. I stopped, I hesitated, and I left it there. I said, “Tomorrow I will come for him.” But before the next day the interior of my hands reversed itself, and the exterior took the position of the interior. An old blacksmith was at the neighboring village. His name was Mamadou Koroba. It was him who cured me. It is no lie, the affair of the nyama belonging to wood.[71]

Although what happened to Kojugu's hands was never completely clear, he is probably describing a neurological disorder or a temporary paralysis that could well be a response, to both the physical stress of cutting a huge tree and the anxiety aroused by felling a nyama-filled tree without taking proper precautions. Kojugu's description is important, not only because it testifies to the severity of the nyama released by cutting a tree incorrectly, but also because he humanizes the bumu. The tree has a head (kun), a word which the Bamana regularly use to refer to the upper branches, and it cries out “Sheeee!” like a human being in pain. Other sculptors and ritual experts reported that in addition to crying out in pain, some trees cry and even bleed like people, when cut.[72] Basi Fane recounted that the sacred tree of a neighboring village was accustomed to “flee,” moving around from place to place, and other informants reported that some trees could kill a blacksmith's wife.[73]

In a world where even the smallest pebble carries its own charge of nyama, trees certainly possess a significant quantity of this force. However, Kojugu explains the devastating consequences of cutting ritually significant trees without taking appropriate precautions, by asserting that each important tree has its own “thing of the head.” The carver must contend not only with the tree's quotient of generalized nyama, but also with the tree's djinn:

KOJUGU: Aaa, indeed, the real location of the nyama belonging to the wood lies in the cutting of the tree. The place where one cuts the tree – that may have nyama or it may not have nyama. If you don't observe it [the tree] very carefully, if you don't, you can underestimate [the power of] any tree whatsoever, you can underestimate it. Indeed, the true trees [ritually important ones], they all possess something that guards them. The way in which a person lives with something like that [a djinn], the tree too, it also has its “thing of the head” [djinn]. Oo, if you become a person who really knows about these things [trees], you are able to leave the “thing of its head” [the tree's djinn] alone. When its djinn gets up and goes to walk somewhere else, then you can cut the tree without its knowledge. Then it [the djinn] will say, “Aa, if that had happened when I was present, he wouldn't have cut it [the tree].” If you find the djinn sleeping, you can cut the tree. The noise of the tree falling will wake it [the djinn] up. He [the djinn] will say that death, that death and sleep are similar, that if he [the sculptor] had found him [the djinn] awake, he [the sculptor] wouldn't have been able to cut the tree. These things happen in this way. Many things exist [i.e., the world is full of many marvels].[74]

Like other spirits, those inhabiting trees are vindictive, and the sculptor who attempts to cut an important tree without paying proper attention to the instructions provided by his own djinn, risks blindness in addition to sleeping sickness, hernias, and paralysis.

INTERVIEWER: Good, are there certain djinns who can fight with blacksmiths at the moment when they are carving ritual objects?

KOJUGU: These djinns exist. If you don't offer the laada that you should use when cutting a tree, the djinn will fight you, it will fight you very hard.

INTERVIEWER: How does such a battle take place?

KOJUGU: The way in which this kind of fight takes place, if you don't offer the laada that the djinn has demanded that you give, and if you go off and cut the tree, if Allah doesn't help you, people will have to take your hand to lead you back to the village [you will go blind and have to be led home]. If people don't take your hand to lead you back to the village – to take your hand – that means among us black people to be blind. Between the village and the bush you will become blind. If you don't become blind, you will have a hernia, this will happen to you. I myself whom you see here, that happened to me, Kojugu. I, Kojugu Cissoko, that happened to me. The witnesses are alive right up to the present. I cut a young bumu. I had been told what the laada were. I didn't accept them [he didn't make them]. I closed my eyes and I cut it, and my hand reversed itself. The part that is above went below, and the part which is below went above. This happened to me, Kojugu, and I had a hernia. Ever since this time, I have realized that I didn't do what I had been told to do, and I didn't carry out these things in the manner that I had been instructed. Nhun.[75]

The Bamana believe that a personal djinn can fight with other spirits on its owner's behalf, and in fact the first step in eliminating an enemy is to find a spirit who will take on and conquer one's opponent's djinn.[76] Presumably, spirits communicate with each other and can detect each other's habits and weaknesses, just like humans. Kojugu's description suggests that the sculptor's djinn first acquires information about the behavior and personality of the spirit who inhabits and guards the desired tree. The djinn then informs the sculptor as to the precautions he must take, if he is to attack the tree and overcome its spirit. Thus, an artist may be advised to make further sacrifices, in addition to those prescribed by tradition, before cutting a tree such as a bumu or lènkè. The blacksmith who ignores this advice will lay himself open to the nyama unleashed by his foolhardy attack, for the vengeful tree and its djinn will certainly react, inflicting blindness, sleeping sickness, hernias, paralysis, and a host of other unnamed ills on the hapless sculptor.

To avoid the nyama of wood, the sculptor must be open to his djinn’s instructions and follow them assiduously. These precautions fall into two basic categories: the making of offerings (laadaw) and the repetition of incantations (klissiw). When he prepares to fell a tree for a Komo mask, the sculptor offers its djinn a red cock and either two or ten red kola nuts, whether the tree is growing out of a termite mound or not.[77] The knowledgeable artist is careful to offer these laadaw, since the failure to do so will bring ailments – lameness, deafness, and neurological damage – that will effectively prevent him from ever carving again.[78] Furthermore, if he is attempting to cut a nyama-charged lènkè, the sculptor must also make an additional sacrifice, unless he wishes to suffer the ignominious end reserved for a Kòmòtigi who forswears his sacred oaths:

KOJUGU: If you want to offer the laada demanded by the djinns, rice dègè [dègè balls are small, truffle-size balls made from a pure white flour mixed with water. They are placed in a bowl and then offered as a sacrifice. Dègè is normally made from millet flour, but here Kojugu specifies that the balls should be made from rice flour. Fig. 20],[79] rice dègè, three balls of rice dègè, together with two white kola nuts and a white cock, these are the traditional offerings to the djinns. You will bring these together, and you will offer them in sacrifice to the djinns, and afterwards you will cut down the tree. These are the laada for the djinns.[80]

The offerings Kojugu describes are white because this is the primary color associated both with the dead and with spirits. In Muslim-influenced regions, white is the traditional color of mourning, and the Bamana frequently refer to the land of the dead as kolowjèdugu or “the town of white bones.” The djinns who move in and out of this ambiguous territory are often thought to have white skin and long hair; their skin color is one of their more terrifying attributes, since it connotes death and nonhuman status. In contrast, black or blue-black is perceived as the color of fertile ground, life, and healthy, functioning human beings.

The case of the lènkè suggests that the “chicken for felling the tree” and the kola nuts constitute the minimum laada, but that the artist may vary the offering by making additional sacrifices when necessary. For instance, Kojugu cites the case of an unspecified “very difficult wood” that requires an additional goat:

KOJUGU: For the antidote to the nyama [of the tree] you offer a chicken. If it is a very difficult tree [a tree with very great nyama] you offer a goat and a chicken and kola nuts. Whether it is a case of three red kolas or seven red kolas, you will still offer them.[81]

Kojugu tells us that the number of kola nuts and the type and number of sacrificial animals may vary, but the sculptor must offer the minimum laada – a chicken and some kola nuts – if he is to avoid falling victim to the nyama of the wood. Kojugu reports that a sculptor can never begin work without making this offering, saying:

KOJUGU: We found it [the practice of making an offering when cutting a tree] like this when we were born.

INTERVIEWER: Hun?

KOJUGU: From the time we were born we saw our parents practice this [offer these sacrifices]. But as for me, I have never taken this chicken from anyone since I began to be a numu.[82]

Kojugu stresses the importance of the “chicken for cutting the tree” (yiri ju labin shè), by insisting that the custom of making this offering predates his own birth. It is thus one of those primeval laadaw for which there is no circumstantial explanation except, “We came into the world and we found it that way.” Such an offering is not dependent on a spirit's whim or the results of a particular divination; like the rhythm of dry and rainy seasons it is a given, self-evident law of nature. Then Kojugu begins to boast a little, drawing attention to the fact that he has always chosen to provide the chicken himself, and has never depended on a client for it. Kojugu is not only saying that he is well off, but he is also emphasizing that he has always sacrificed a ritually suitable chicken; even when the laada are offered on behalf of a client, sculptors and ritual specialists often prefer to select sacrificial animals themselves, for they know that they will select an animal without hidden flaws. Ritual specialists are reluctant to depend on the client's expertise in such a matter, for if the sacrifice is flawed and the displeased djinns turn on them, they have far more to lose than the client.

In principle, appropriate laada dissipate the nyama released by cutting a significant tree such as a lènkè, a balenbo, or a bumu. However, most artists are extremely cautious; they approach cutting a tree with stealth, and they deliberately cloak their intentions behind a bland statement that conveys nothing at all to an uninformed listener. When my interviewer deliberately suggested to Kojugu that he might make an explicit statement such as, “I am going to cut down a tree,” to a fellow blacksmith, Kojugu responded to the contrary:

INTERVIEWER: Good, now, all these different actions [all the actions involved in making a sculpture from chopping down a tree to polishing the finished object], do they have a name? Like, for example, if you are going off into the bush to cut down a tree, and you wish to communicate this to another numu in the presence of a third person sitting there, how do you say it? If you are going to cut down a tree in the bush?

KOJUGU: Aah, if you are going into the bush and there is your blacksmith friend who is there?

INTERVIEWER: Nhun.

KOJUGU: Your blacksmith friend who is sitting next to you, but you must go off into the bush?

INTERVIEWER: Nhun. And you know that you are going to cut down this tree to carve a ritual object.

KOJUGU: You will tell such a person, “I am going to wander about nearby” [“N’ bèna n munu munu dafèla in na”]. Or if you wish to cut a certain tree [Kojugu cites a second case in which the fellow blacksmith sees the felled tree], the person will ask you, “What are you going to make with that?”

[You say], “Someone asked me for something and I want to make it.” Or sometimes I say, “I need it.” There is always a name [i.e., a way to say what one is doing without saying it.][83]

The use of such circumlocutions tells us that cutting down a tree is a serious matter, similar to a visit to a diviner or to the making of a sacrifice at dawn. Just as no one ever explains why he or she is sacrificing a white sheep with a red star on its forehead, so the sculptor refrains from putting his purpose into words.

As we have already seen, words have great power for the Bamana and, once uttered, they are never forgotten; their nyama can change the balance of power in both the everyday and the spirit world. A man who reveals the reason for sending every male member of his household on an exhausting three-day search for the appropriate sheep, takes the risk that his younger brother may execute ritual work that will render the sacrifice useless. Similarly, a sculptor who reveals that he is about to carve a Komo mask may suddenly discover that his chief rival has “attached” his hands (a y'n bolow siri) and that he can no longer wield the adze with his customary panache. In the tightly bound world of a small village, those who talk risk both ritual interventions and overt interference with their projects.

Thus, the numu who has listened to his client's family problems; who knows who has broken a tana (interdiction), thus transforming their old Komo mask into an “empty,” nonfunctioning shell; and who has given his word that he will do his best to carve a new “head” equal in authority to the old mask, remains silent. His “affairs” (kòw) are his own, and he is accountable to no one except his djinn and his client. When they inquire where he is heading with adze in hand, inquisitive neighbors and fellow blacksmiths are fobbed off with an amusing joke or a bland statement-such as, “Oh, I am just going to stroll around in the bush.” – and although the more knowledgeable spectators know that an important artist does not set off into the bush for nothing, they grudgingly accept that perhaps it is better for them to know nothing of what occurs there. After all, does their sculptor not break off conversations to speak unintelligibly into the air, does he not stay awake far into the night when everyone else sleeps, and does he not disappear and reappear days later for no reason at all? For one who has spirits, a stroll in the bush may mean many things, and perhaps it is better to remain safely ignorant.[84]

Sculptors may refer to their ritual projects in veiled terms, but they use the power of words to dissipate the nyama released by cutting a significant tree. An artist protects himself from trees’ nyama by offering appropriate sacrifices (laadaw), by shrouding his projects in deep silence, and finally, when he discovers the appropriate tree, by chanting incantations or klissiw. General forms of speech are normally referred to as foroba kuma or “communal language,” but it is jonforo kuma or “individual speech” that concentrates individual will (nganinya) and becomes a powerful weapon in the form of incantations.[85] As a category, jonforo kuma or “personal speech” includes formulas for performing magical feats such as rendering oneself invisible or causing a timorous djinn to manifest itself by daylight; incantations for healing illnesses; and passages of poetry that celebrate the Komo or other jow. Normally klissiw are transmitted from master artist to student, and the ambitious apprentice is required to develop a memory that allows him to retain an incantation word for word the first time he hears it. Every klissi has its own rules for transmission: this one must be stolen from its owner, but if it is memorized imperfectly its nyama will destroy the thief; that one can be repeated only three times for the apprentice; and this other one must be repeated over and over until it is graven in the memory of each Komo initiate.

In the Bamana world, speech is charged with nyama, not only because it breaks the self-containment of silence, but because it comes from the mouth, the contaminated gateway through which both poison and food can enter the human body. Like food or poison, klissiw connect the speaker to objects, people, and spirits in the world outside his body. These verbal bridges composed from ritualized words communicate power to the objects they address and flatter, but they also open the speaker's body to physical attack, compromising that same body's silent integrity. Like the spittle that inevitably accompanies them, klissiw transfer the sculptor's inner essence to the tree he addresses, seducing and propitiating its djinn with honeyed words, so that the artist may wield the adze with impunity.

KOJUGU: The antidote for the nyama of the wood, that is the secret of black people. It is an incantation [klissi]. You pronounce it over the axe while walking in a circle around the tree and while cutting it.[86]

Another blacksmith, Yoro Jan Bagayogo, also reported that the sculptor walks around the tree, talking to it, before he takes up his adze to cut it. Yoro Jan specified that the artist tells the tree his client's name, so that its nyama will “pass over” the sculptor and fall on the client.[87] While talking, the sculptor manipulates the nyama inherent in the words he uses, conveying it both to his axe and to the waiting tree. The nyama of these words attacks that of the tree and its spirit, battling with it and reducing its strength, so that the sculptor can begin his physical assault. The klissiw also strengthen the power of the artist's tools, verbally honing their edges and ensuring that they cut the tree, not the numu. When combined with the sacrifices that have already diminished the tree's nyama, klissiw are a potent tool for winning the invisible battle that predetermines the tree's demise. For, to Kojugu, it is not the laborious task of chopping through the trunk, but rather the conflict of will and nyama between artist and tree, that is the real problem.

The sculptor may offer the prescribed laada, he may avoid blindness, lameness, deafness, paralysis, and neurological damage, he may utter his klissiw correctly, and he may manage to cut his tree without incurring any immediate harm, but the wood may still be worthless. According to Kojugu, a tree must fall in the correct direction at the correct time for it to be of any real use. Only certain hours and certain days are suitable for felling the trees that will become ritual objects. For instance, an artist who plans to carve a Komo mask will take care to cut the tree on a Friday or a Saturday:[88]

KOJUGU: If it is us, if it is us who will cut it, we will cut it on Saturday morning, carve it in the bush and finish it there. It doesn't come into the village, you understand.

INTERVIEWER: Saturday morning? Will the sun be up or will it still be dark?

KOJUGU: You will find that the sun has come out just a little. The sun has not come up enough to arrive in the sky. Yes, it won't have left the ground very much at all. We cut it at this hour.

INTERVIEWER: But don't you cut it at night?

KOJUGU: Didn't I tell you that each person has their own tradition? Some people may cut it at night.[89]

The choice of a Friday or Saturday may be related to the belief that djinns are more accessible on these days; we have already seen that the sculptor must devote Thursday night (which is considered to be the beginning of Friday) to his djinn, and Fridays are a common day for circumcisions and excisions.

In addition to timing, the Bamana and Malinke evaluate the manner in which the tree falls once it is cut, and each direction has its own meaning:

KOJUGU: If the cut tree doesn't fall in a good position, you must abandon it.

INTERVIEWER: What does that mean, to say that the tree has fallen badly?

KOJUGU: When you cut a tree, supposing you wish to make a mortar or a door. If the tree falls toward the west, you leave it there. We say that you will not obtain anything good [the word for good used, nafa, is a general term that includes riches, intelligence, a good wife, etc.] from it. If you have cut the tree and it falls toward the south, you will obtain good from it. If it falls toward the east, you can work with it, but you won't obtain the profits in the year in which you carve it, only in the following year.

INTERVIEWER: And when it falls toward the north?

KOJUGU: Toward the north. If the tree falls toward the north, aah! The benefits will go more to your friends than to you.[90]

Kojugu's interpretation of north and east remains obscure, but a tree falling to the west is probably associated with the setting sun and therefore with declining power. A tree that falls to the west may convey this effect to the sculptor, reducing his wealth or his personal nyama. The Bamana associate the south with fertile land, abundant rains, and agricultural productivity. Thus, a tree that falls southward indicates that the sculptor will improve his situation by carving it. Sculptors probably use additional, more detailed interpretations of both directionality and timing in evaluating the exact status of the tree they have felled, but neither Kojugu nor other artists were willing to provide these explanations. Like recipes for herbal medicines, such information is the backbone of the sculptor's knowledge, and although Kojugu was perfectly willing to discuss the nature of the artistic process and aesthetics, he was seldom willing to share his specific expertise with a non-numu outsider.

If we take a step backward and consider the entire process of selecting and cutting a tree for ritual sculpture, we find that practical considerations give way to ritual ones at every turn. For instance, the best trees for Komo masks are far from suitable by Western standards; they grow out of termite mounds, and the wood may well be damaged before the mask is even finished. However, the Bamana consider that the fertilizing power communicated to the wood by the termites is well worth the physical disintegration built into the mask. Even ritually suitable trees may be unusable due to the strength of the djinns that inhabit them, for no sensible sculptor will try to carve a tree like Kojugu's bumu. A tree that cries out in pain or paralyzes the sculptor is best left alone, no matter how attractive it may seem. Finally, an artist may protect himself against a tree's nyama with copious sacrifices and lengthy incantations, only to find that it has fallen toward the west and that he must leave it lying unworked in the bush. Time and again, practical considerations are outweighed by signs from the other world. Yet, for sculptors, these signs are not vaguely mystical; they are concrete warnings of trouble ahead. Like Kojugu, the sculptor who fails to offer the appropriate laadaw will become paralyzed, and the artist who insists on carving a tree that has fallen toward the west will see his powers diminish. Experience shows that it is just as dangerous to cut a tree without offering the necessary laadaw as it is to walk off into the bush without a gun or an adze. The expert sculptor clearly masters a broad spectrum of botanical knowledge, but he must also immerse himself in ritual precautions, for in the constant struggles of a nyama-charged world, both are critically important.

Tools

Practically speaking, the artist requires two things to carve ritual sculpture: wood and tools. Some of the tools wielded by the blacksmith were mentioned at the beginning of Chapter 2, and it is now time to turn to the full panoply of carving equipment. Today, most numuw obtain the metal for their tools from leaf springs (iron alloyed with other metals), collected from worn-out French vehicles and other discarded Western equipment (McNaughton 1988, 31).[91] However, in the precolonial period imported iron was a luxury, and even in the early colonial period it seems to have been rare. Traditional smelting continued well into the twentieth century, and McNaughton (1988, 31) reports that local iron ore was still being smelted in the Bèlèdugu around Banamba, as well as in the Wasoulou region and some areas of Western Mali south of Kayes, in the late 1960s. We have already mentioned that certain selected blacksmith families held a monopoly on smelting iron, and knowledgeable numuw still keep meticulous account of which families possess this right and who purchased it from whom. Guan nègè, nègè fiyn, or guan nègè kolo (traditionally smelted iron) (Fig. 24) was obtained by placing iron ore mixed with charcoal in a chamber dug a foot or two into the earth and extending upward into the upper dome or the tall, chimney-shaped shaft of the furnace.[92] Furnaces were constructed from mud bricks, with materials such as rotting millet straw, animal dung, and pulverized portions of termite mounds incorporated into the mud, to add strength and resistance to heat (McNaughton 1988, 32). Long ceramic air tubes conducted preheated air into the center of the furnace, while another set of channels drained off the slag (McNaughton 1988, 32). The iron itself collected together as a spongy mass that could be retrieved once the furnace cooled. In the past, smiths obtained anywhere from two to three hundred pounds of unworked bloom at a single smelting, and most families smelted only once a year (McNaughton 1988, 32).

Figure 24. Nègè kolo, or traditionally smelted raw iron, conserved as a “sacrifice” by Salimata Kone. Salimata reported that the ore had been smelted in 1930. Photographed in Salimata's compound in a small Beledugu town, 4/1/84.

Traditionally, smelted iron was esteemed both as a technical marvel and as a ritually charged substance with transformative abilities. Today, smiths guard such iron with great care, for they do not know whether they will be able to obtain more. Only traditional political leaders and ritual specialists who are on good terms with a master blacksmith now have access to guan nègè, for in this era of imported iron an important numu will disgorge only tiny portions of the precious metal to his close friends. Blacksmiths say that in the past, every tool was made from traditionally smelted iron:

KOJUGU: The iron that one formerly used to make an adze, in former times this iron was guan nègè [traditionally smelted iron], but it was the bones of the iron [guan nègè kolow] from the furnaces that people employed for axes, adzes, awls, and chisels. One also used guan nègè to make anvils and hammers.[93]

Although contemporary blacksmiths now make everyday implements from Western iron, ritually significant tools and objects must still be made from nègè fiyn, for equipment such as the ritual anvil or the macelike object (mògòw bon yòrò, “the thing for striking people”) carried by the Komo masquerader, will lose its power unless it is formed from “pure” iron.

When blacksmiths refer to traditionally smelted iron as “pure,” they are not saying that Bamana or Malinke iron is without mineral impurities. In fact, traditional iron always retains some slag residue that makes the surface metal both harder and more brittle. Numuw still believe that tools made with traditional iron are able to hold a sharp edge longer than those formed from the imported and, by Western standards, the technically purer metal (McNaughton 1988, 31).[94] In contrast to the Western notion of purification as a refining out of extraneous qualities or materials, the Bamana view the creation of “pure” metals or objects as an inclusive process. For instance, when Kojugu calls the gold placed inside every Komo mask, and which gives the headdress the power to kill, the “true, true, true gold,”[95] he refers both to the fact that this is gold that has come directly out of the ground and has never been worked before, and to the practice of making sacrifices to the metal before smelting it. “Pure” gold is not merely unworked; it is gold that has received the blood of sacrifice:

KOJUGU: One kills a dog for that [the gold]. One makes an offering of a red cock, a large red kola nut that one first divides, and then one kills the red cock. Finally one kills a dog as an offering. Even today we do that at home. Even today we do that at home. Even today we do that at home. You can kill a dog and a red ram.[96]

Kojugu does not specify whether some of the blood is allowed to drip into the molten gold, but other informants suggested that “pure,” or ritually sacred, metals traditionally incorporated some sacrificial blood. The dog cited by Kojugu is a standard replacement sacrifice for a human being. To fully understand the meaning of this sacrifice we should recall that blacksmith families who possessed the right to smelt iron were required to sacrifice a copper-colored, red-haired, ‘albino’ infant (gon bilen or kun bilen)[97] once every sixty or seventy years to maintain their prerogative (Brett-Smith 1987, 7–8). Thus, “true” gold received a dog's blood and “true” iron a human being's. In both cases, the “truest” or “purest” metal was that which had received, and possibly incorporated, a blood offering, not that from which all other substances had been excluded.

“Pure” metal may have received a special charge of nyama from blood sacrifice, but in the case of iron, it has also been smelted according to traditional rules. In most cases, the “purity” of traditionally smelted iron does not derive from sacrifices, but from the ritual precautions observed by blacksmiths during the smelting process. Traditional iron is “pure,” both because those who smelt it are uncontaminated by sexual activity and because their abstinence, like the metallic impurities that give traditional tools a sharper edge, endows the iron with extra power and nyama. For the Bamana, guan nègè is “pure” because it incorporates a higher transformative charge than imported iron, which is inactive and ritually dead when compared to the traditionally produced metal. What gave the living quality to “sweet iron,” and how was it produced?

When the head of a bon da, or “major lineage,” of blacksmiths decided to smelt iron ore, all the men of the lineage were required to abstain from sex; younger men went so far as to send their wives back to their own families, or even retreated into the bush, if they felt unable to withstand temptation. The clay furnaces or guan sow were always hidden deep in the bush, where they were built in groups of three, one bearing breasts and a female sex and one representing the male. My informant did not specify the gender or identity of the third furnace (Brett-Smith 1987, 6). The fuel and the iron ore were placed in the female furnace, while a ritual iron staff or guan nègè (Fig. 11; guan nègè is the name used in the literature for this type of iron staff, as well as being one of the terms for traditionally smelted iron) was placed in or near the wall of the male furnace. For the Bamana, guan nègèw did far more than merely supervise the smelting process; they actually provided the power that refined the iron ore. It was the guan nègè, not the heat of the furnace, that allowed the raw ore to be transformed into a refined and workable product (Brett-Smith 1987, 6).

Once the female furnace had been stoked, the assembled blacksmiths proceeded to divine, first by throwing kola nuts, and then by sacrificing twelve male red goats and a red cock. If the sacrifices expired with their heads pointing toward the east, the smelting would produce “pure” iron. When the sacrifices had been completed successfully, the blacksmiths closed the opening of the furnace and began the smelting. During this process no one could leave the sacred spot, and the numuw consumed the sacrificed animals only after the older men had opened the furnace to take out the finished iron. Throughout this ritual, which might take anywhere from two to five days,[98] all the blacksmiths went nude, and no woman entered the clearing where the furnaces stood with the exception of one postmenopausal woman who “had become a man” and provided the nuwuw with drinking water. Moussa Diallo explained her presence as follows: “Nògò tè d'e la – guan tè mògòw nògòlen dè fè,” or, “You are not dirty (i.e., menstruating) – the furnace doesn't like people who are tarnished with dirt” (Brett-Smith 1987, 7). (In the latter part of the sentence he is probably referring to sexual contact on the part of the male numuw as well as menstrual blood.) The presence of a fertile woman or sexual activity by one of the participating smiths would cause the smelting to fail.

Why does “pure” iron carry so much nyama? Moussa Diallo's description of the furnaces as possessing male and female sexual organs, the fact that blacksmiths were nude while smelting, and the categorical restriction on the presence of fertile women, suggests that the transformation of ore into usable iron was seen as a sexual process. The rules for smelting seem to imply two fundamental metaphors: sexual intercourse and childbirth. The nude blacksmiths might be viewed as engaging in a symbolic reenactment of sexual intercourse by stoking the female furnace with wood and ore and by lighting the fire within it. The fire would thus become an extension of the blacksmiths’ virility, and the receptive furnace that contains it becomes the crucible that produces a ‘child,’ the pure iron. The smelting process is thus assimilated both to intercourse (between blacksmith and furnace) and childbirth (of the iron by the furnace).

If the furnace functions as a metaphoric woman, then the rule that forbids the presence of sexually active women is understandable; real women would be challenging competition for the mud-brick tower that demands the blacksmiths’ exclusive attention. The numuw‘s physical and mental energy must be directed toward the jealous furnace, not toward their wives. Furthermore, a menstruating woman would introduce the possibility of failure, for menstruation signals the absence of pregnancy as well as potential fertility. For the particular month in which it occurs, menstruation represents the absence or death of possible children, and, as an active sign of infertility, it would contaminate the process of gestation occurring within the female furnace.[99]

This interpretation receives additional support from the use of the word for furnace, guan, as the term employed to indicate the cooking fire on which the wife who is on duty prepares meals for her husband; other cooking fires are merely called tasumaw. In a polygamous household, each wife is assigned two or three days a week to cook for her husband. The woman who prepares her husband's food also sleeps with him, and it is perfectly polite to ask a woman bent over a fire, “E be guan na bi?” or “Are you at the hearth today?” to find out whether she is sleeping with her husband that night or not. The Bamana and Malinke consider the food prepared by the wife on duty to be almost sacred, for it lies at the heart of family life. Women will often hand over regular cooking to a daughter or niece, but they will never abandon the guan. For, a woman who ceases to prepare this meal herself is making a public statement that she has entered menopause and is no longer sexually active. The association of the guan, or ritualized hearth fire, with a productive female sexuality corroborates the interpretation of the furnace (also called guan) as a representation of a woman's body, and smelting as a process analogous to both sexual intercourse and childbirth. Further support for this interpretation is found in the work of Jonckers, who mentions that the Minianka traditionally identified furnaces with women's bodies, whereas they considered the iron slag thrown up by the fire within the furnace analogous to male sperm (1979, 118). Having done its fertilizing work, the iron slag presumably dripped out of the female furnace like semen after sex, while the pure ore incorporated the fertility of the men who had created it.

When we remember that blacksmiths often dug into the ground to find iron ore, the sexuality of smelting acquires another dimension. According to Dieterlen (1951, 114), the word guan is also used to indicate the spot where raw ore is mined, suggesting, as we have already seen in other contexts, that the earth is assimilated to the female sex. Thus, the process of mining ore and transforming it into pure iron can also be considered as a sexual act, with the earth, visually represented by the furnace, as the ultimate female partner.

If these interpretations are correct, and smelting was treated as though it were a reenactment of both childbirth and sexual intercourse, the ‘living’ quality of guan nègè makes much more sense. The result of smelting, the “pure” iron ore, is the ‘child’ of the blacksmiths’ technologically achieved union with the female earth. The offspring of a union between a nonhuman entity and living numuw, the iron incorporates the essence or “bones” (guan nègè kolow) of both the earth and the men who have remained sexually abstinent in order to create it.[100] “Pure” iron becomes an entity that is half human, half earth; it incorporates the process of fusion between man and earth that takes place during smelting, thus acquiring an extraordinarily high charge of nyama. In most cases this nyama acts as a positive, creative force, for it incorporates the fertilizing power the blacksmiths have withheld from their wives during their abstinence. Thus, tools made from guan nègè are loaded with a procreative ability beyond the normal: an adze of “pure” iron will create a ritual object charged with the ability to render sterile women fertile, whereas an adze of imported, Western iron will produce an inert, and “empty” shell of an object.

Blacksmiths take the creative powers of guan nègè for granted; to them it goes without saying that one must use traditional, rather than imported, iron to carve the ritual objects that will resolve problems of sterility. However, Kojugu did note an important exception that highlights the creative power normally attached to traditionally smelted iron. If the smelting process proceeds as planned, the guan nègè will have a positive, fertilizing charge, but if the master blacksmith dies while the ore is still in the furnace, the metal acquires an equally intense negative force. Like excrement taken from a dead body, the iron acquires the contaminating ability to kill. This guan nègè, whose smelting has witnessed the death of its creator, does not create; it destroys, and it is therefore a key ingredient in the mògò bon yòrò, the macelike object wielded by the Komo society masquerader. When performing, the Komo masquerader carries the mògò bon yòrò in his left hand; he uses the instrument to strike the heads of recalcitrant society members, who have repeatedly broken association rules or have committed other grave offenses. If the offender manages to escape this blow, he will be dispatched later by poisoning. Kojugu tells us:

KOJUGU: But the guan nègè, the numu who has died and who has left his iron in the guan so [the furnace], his iron will be taken out and will be worked to be the “object that kills through hitting” [mògò bon yòrò]. Since this [the iron and the blacksmith] has already become the night [su], its properties – if one uses them to hit you, you will become the night [su] as well.[101]

Kojugu uses a revealing play of words to express his meaning: su means both “night,” as in “the night is dark,” and “corpse,” as in “the corpse is rotting.” When Kojugu states, “Since this has already become the night,” he is referring to the fact that the blacksmith in charge of the smelting has died or “gone to sleep” in the “night” of death, and he is also telling us that the iron produced by this numu has become supremely destructive. Like the blacksmith's dead body, to which it is assimilated, the iron can now transform those it touches into corpses, or, as the Bamana would guardedly say, “nights.”

When a blacksmith uses imported iron to carve a cattle trough or a stool, he has no qualms; the utensils will work regardless of the metal employed. Nevertheless, such iron is ritually dead, for it has not been created by men who have observed the rule of sexual abstinence. The maker's primary bond with the earth has been broken by congress with human women, and the resulting iron has no life; it will cut, but what it cuts will be “empty.”[102] However, the creation of ritual objects requires the use of iron that possesses the power to fertilize, for basiw must be able to give, as well as to take life. Thus, the important artist keeps a second, old-fashioned set of tools made from traditional iron hidden in his consulting room.[103] The ritual restrictions observed at its creation endow the iron used in these tools with life-giving power, a force that is half man and half earth. It is this mixture, this highly concentrated fusion of man and ground, that is so essential for the creation of ritual objects. Other carvers and women must never touch such tools, for the ritual instruments must not be contaminated by any chance of sexual contact.

It proved impossible to convince any blacksmith to display his ritual tools or allow them to be photographed.[104] In many cases, sons or apprentices have contaminated or lost the ancient instruments,[105] and some artists have actually given up making ritual sculpture because they have been unable to keep their inherited tools separate from the everyday ones.[106] One often finds ancient tools, which formerly served ritual purposes, converted to secular use. However, it is still unclear whether the contemporary separation between ritual and nonritual tools is a postcolonial development, or whether an important sculptor always kept a set of ritual tools in his consulting chamber.

Although they were unwilling to display ritual tools, several sculptors provided lists of their secular instruments, which allowed the following compilation:[107]

Tools for Carving

1. Jele: An axe with which the sculptor cuts down trees and lops off their branches. Most sculptors own several of these.[108]

2. Sonbe: A large adze with the blade set at an extremely acute angle, used to remove bark from tree trunks after they have been felled. Most sculptors also own several of these (Fig. 25).

3. Sèmèw: Adzes. These come in groups of two or three. McNaughton (1988, 26) notes that they can be used as axes, saws, knives, chisels, or planes (Fig. 26).

a) Lèsèlan sèmè kunba (“carving/sèmè/large head,” or “the sèmè with the large head”): Used for reducing the tree trunk to blocks of wood; appropriate for beginning to outline a sculpture.

b) Sèmè kunba (”sèmè/large head,” or “the sèmè with the large head”): Used for blocking out the major shapes of the sculpture.

c) Sèmè ncinin (”sèmè/very little,” or “the small sèmè“): Used for carving after the major areas of the sculpture have been blocked out.

4. Katlèkè or katlèni: An awl used to pierce holes. These come in different sizes, and many sculptors own several.

5. Loyi (also called sòonò): Another type of awl.

6. Sònimba, sòninan, or sòninfara (“claw/big,” “claw” or “claw nail” or in a literal translation, “the fingernail”): A curved chisel used to delimit the final lines of the forms throughout the carving process. Most sculptors possess only one sònimba (Fig. 27).

7. Kaka: The kaka nyè kunba (”kaka/eye/large head” or the “large kaka“) and the kaka nyènuguninta.

a) Kaka nyè kunba: A large file used to reduce the thickness of wood.

b) Kaka nyènuguninta: A small file used to remove minor irregularities in a wooden surface. Both files are used to sharpen the sculptor's other metal tools.

8. Yiri ma nugu (“wood/thing/polish,” “wood polisher”): A tool used after the kaka nyènuguninta for polishing the finished surface of the wood.

9. Jagi: A chisel with a curved blade like a sickle used to carve out the interior of mortars. The jagi apparently replaced the jè ku, an older and heavier instrument of the same shape used for the same purpose. Both drums and mortars were heavier in the past than presently (Fig. 28).[109]

10. Sògòlan: The verb ka sògò means “to pierce.” Thus, this tool is probably an awl, although Kojugu merely mentioned it without defining its use.

11. Kòsi: Use unknown. A tool mentioned by Kojugu.

Tools Used in the Forge

1. Kulan: The anvil (Fig. 30).

2. Fandaga, fangolow, or fanwolow: The bellows (Fig. 31).

3. Fankun: The small pottery cover for the ends of the wooden pipes that channel the draft from the bellows into the fire. This clay structure also includes a basin that holds the charcoal fire (Fig. 31).

4. Gorodaga or gborodaga: The water basin in which hot iron is cooled.

5. Fuluma: The hammer.

6. Tori: A hammer used to beat the iron after it has been given a rough shape with the fuluma.

7. Balanw: The pliers. There are usually several pair in use at once in any forge.

8. Tòntòn: Iron lever for splitting iron or wood.[110]

McNaughton adds a carving knife (muru) with which blacksmiths apply the finishing touches to their work (Fig. 29), a bow drill (frin frin la), and a set of awls (doliw) to this list of the carver's tools (1988, 26–8).[111] When discussing the forge, he provides another name for the gorodaga, calling it the fan daga (McNaughton 1988, 28).[112] The equipment cited above constitutes the numu‘s basic tool kit, although further research may alter this list.

Today, numuw leave their everyday tools in the forge overnight, and most blacksmiths casually borrow each other's implements when necessary. A great sculptor will expect an advanced apprentice to bring his own tools with him, but he may also help the younger man forge additional, specialized instruments. A boy learns to carve or to forge iron by using his father's or uncle's tools, but sooner or later he makes or is given his own set. Earlier, we saw that the first tool made by the apprentice is usually the sèmè, followed by the jele. These instruments are made first, partly because they are the two most commonly used tools, and partly because their simple forms enable the apprentice to master their production at a young age. When forging these blades, the apprentice furnishes the raw force needed to mold the red-hot iron, but the master artist supervises him and adds the expert strokes that give the iron a smooth cutting edge.

KOJUGU: If the apprentice makes them [the blades], if he cannot polish [them], then the master artist himself approaches to polish them so that all the surfaces are smooth. We, we say that one makes the mouths equal [that one gives the iron a flat surface] and that one smoothes them. This is the work of the master. The apprentice carries out the work that demands strength, like beating [the iron]. He cannot straighten, and he cannot equalize. When he arrives at these places [the places that demand this type of work] that is the job of the master.[113]

Master numuw not only finish the apprentice's blades, but they also teach him just how far he can sharpen his new tools. Blacksmiths insist that their tools must be well maintained with a good cutting edge, for a client who demands a hoe handle in a hurry will lose confidence in his smith if the numu lingers to sharpen his sèmè:

KOJUGU: But if the adze does not have a sharp edge, if the sèmè is not sharp, and the bellows do not work well, when a person arrives in haste [to give you a piece of work], he will lose his faith in you, and he will obtain nothing. It is due to this that these things [the sèmè and the bellows] are difficult.[114]

However, blades can be sharpened so much that they will either break or bend when used, and the apprentice must learn the limit to which he can file his instruments:

Figure 25. Sonbè, or large adze, used by Basi Fane to carve the author's Tyi Warra (Fig. 10). Photographed just outside Basi Fane's compound, 2/13/84.

Figure 26. Sèmè, or adze. Most carvers own at least two or three differently sized sèmèw. Photographed in the Jitumu region, 6/10/84.

Figure 27. Sònimba, sòninan, or sòninfara (“claw/big,” “claw,” or “claw nail”; or in a literal translation, “the fingernail'). A curved chisel used to delimit the final lines of the forms throughout the carving process. Most sculptors possess only one sònimba. Photographed in the Jitumu region, 6/10/84.

KOJUGU: If you file the sèmè [adze] and the jele [axe or large adze] and you sharpen them, if you file them extremely thin so that they go beyond the limit, they will not be able to work. Their blades will not break, but you will not be able to work with them. Then, they must be sharpened up to a certain limit. If you sharpen them more than that, beyond this limit, then, when you are working, the edge [of the blade] will always bend. The blade will always bend.[115]

As the apprentice matures, he learns how to judge the sharpness of his blades, how to reach but not exceed the iron's inherent limits, and how to make smaller and finer tools. A gifted student will soon progress from making a sèmè or jele to the smaller awls and files, and he may also inherit tools from his relatives or teacher.

Many tools are passed from generation to generation, and an apprentice who receives his grandfather's blades must often replace their worn-out handles. Numu Madou Danyogo reported that his jè ku or jagi (the chisel used for carving out the inside of mortars and drums) had been made by his father-in-law, Siri Kante, a famous blacksmith who was already an old man when the French arrived in Kolon (Fig. 28). When Numu Madou Danyogo married Siri Kante's daughter, he took both the jè ku and a sòninfara (another type of curved chisel) from her older brother, Da, who had preserved his father's equipment. However, Numu Madou found the chisel too heavy for his taste and was unable to work with it. Numu Madou had also inherited another chisel with a curved blade from his own older brother, Tinyetigiba; he had used this instrument so much that he had been forced to replace its handle three times.[116]

Figure 28. Jè ku (or jagi) belonging to Numu Madou Coulibaly and made by his father-in-law, Miri Kante. The jè ku is a chisel with a curved blade like a sickle used to carve out the interior of mortars. The jagi is actually a lighter version of the more traditional instrument shown here. The jè ku is older and heavier than the jagi; both drums and mortars were heavier in the past than presently. This jè ku was made from traditionally smelted iron. In the past, women were not allowed to touch or even see the jè ku, lest they contaminate it with menstrual blood or vaginal secretions, thus causing it to wound the carver. Photographed in the Jitumu region, 6/10/84.

Figure 29. Muru, a knife used to execute the final details of a sculpture and to burn designs into the finished object. This is usually, but not always, made by the blacksmith himself. Photographed in the Jitumu region, 6/10/84.

Figure 30. Kulan, or anvil, being used to forge a metal spatula (biyen) used for painting mud cloth. The anvil is treated as though it were the senior man in a blacksmith compound; it is informed of the birth of every blacksmith child, and its personality is said to be capricious and vindictive. Blacksmiths consecrate a new anvil by offering it kola nuts, a cock, and sometimes even a goat. Photographed in a small Beledugu town, 2/21/77.

Sculptors who reuse old tools and replace their handles must guard against employing fragile woods. Kojugu reported that the following woods are unsuitable for use as tool handles, because they are neither hard nor resistant:

Changora[117]

Bumu[118]

Nere[119]

Fonfonfogolon[120]

Dubalen[121]

Kobo[122]

Mango[123]

Sculptors believe that using changora wood for tool handles brings bad luck. In contrast, the woods suitable for use as handles are selected for their hardness and resistance, not for any ritual significance:

KOJUGU: The ngenu[124] can be used for the handle of an axe, for the handle of an adze, and for the awl. At home we have a tree that we call the nsèkènè[125] – this has a trunk of the width of this tree here in the family [he points to a tree of medium height]. We use it for the handles of axes or of awls. The ntomin[126] is used for the handles of axes and of adzes. There is another tree, the suajè,[127] which has prickers. This is used for the handles of axes. It can also be used for the handles of adzes and awls.[128]

Once an apprentice has accumulated a relatively complete set of tools, he may ask the master teacher's help in making a kulan or anvil, so that he can set up his own forge (Fig. 30). In the past, kulanw were always made from traditionally smelted iron, but current scarcity forces many blacksmiths to work on anvils of imported iron. While the elder who is at the head of every extended blacksmith family continues to make sacrifices to the sacred and nonworking anvil of traditionally smelted iron inherited from his ancestors, other adult numuw also make offerings to their own working anvils. In fact, the anvil is considered so powerful that even when a new one is forged from imported iron it will receive a formal consecration:

Figure 31. The bellows, fandaga, fangolow, or fanwolow, and the clay barrier that covers the pipes from the bellows, the tondo or fankun. The tondo also includes a basin that contains the charcoal fire. Kojugu compared the bellows to the male sex, and the tondo to the female sex. Photographed in a small Beledugu town, 2/21/77.

KOJUGU: If you make a new anvil, if you make a new anvil, you will plant it in the ground, you will break kola nuts [over it], you will pour water from the gèran [a container that is probably the same as the gorodaga) over it, you kill a cock for it, and even, if you have the means, you can kill a goat at the beginning of the rainy season.[129]

The Bamana believe that the anvil has a capricious and vindictive personality; blacksmiths may be forced to work on an anvil made from imported iron, but they are not prepared to take the risk of offending a kulan, even one with little nyama. Whether forged from traditionally smelted or Western iron, an anvil will provoke serious accidents unless it receives the appropriate offerings. The anvil's personality and its crucial function within the forge override the usual distinction between traditional and imported iron. In this respect the anvil is unique, for no other tool, not even the much-used adze, receives individual sacrifices.[130] Furthermore, blacksmiths commonly make other tools such as awls, chisels, and adzes for nonblacksmith clients, but it is almost impossible for a nonblacksmith patron to obtain an anvil.[131]* For men like Kojugu, this single, unbreakable lump of iron represents the sum total of blacksmithness (numuya), and it would be unthinkable to hand over this locus of power, this nonhuman but dangerous being, to a nonblacksmith, however wealthy.

Any consideration of the anvil and its meaning raises the issue of the sexual symbolism that is frequently ascribed to crucial tools, both in our own culture and among the Bamana.[132] Many African societies perceive the act of blowing air through the bellows and into the clay barrier that covers the pipes leading from the bellows, while hammering the red hot iron, as paralleling sexual intercourse (de Heusch, 1956), and there is certainly a functional similarity between the two processes. Kojugu explicitly linked portions of the forge with the male and female sex:

KOJUGU: The tondo is the woman's sex. The two skins of the bellows [here he actually means the pipes that conduct the air from the bellows into the fire] which enter into the hole of the tondo are the male sex [Fig. 31).[133]

Such identifications may vary slightly from person to person: for instance, Dieterlen (1951, 119) tells us, “La forge répresente l'artisan: le four est son corps, le soufflet ses testicules, la tuyère son sexe, le feu sa tête,” but the association between forging and the sexual act remains constant.

Not only did Kojugu identify the bellows’ pipes with the male sex and the tondo with the female sex; he also identified some of the smith's other tools with specific body parts, bestowing a human identity on the inanimate instruments:

KOJUGU: I have told you the meaning of the anvil, haven't I? I tell you that the anvil is like the master of a concession, the master of a concession who is at the head of the family. The hammer is the hand. The clay barrier that covers the pipes of the bellows represents the belly. The pliers represent the hand, because one uses one's hand to take hold of the pliers. It is the pliers that can grab hold of something. That means that the pliers are the hand. The chisel is the thing with which one cuts. If someone gives you a kola nut, you break it with your teeth, and you chew it. We cut iron with the chisel. That is its meaning. The skins of the bellows represent something; if you work the bellows, you raise your hand, and then you let it fall, and you raise your hand with the skins of the bellows, and then you let them fall.[134]

Thus, like Dieterlen's sources in the fifties, Kojugu is convinced that the smith's equipment corresponds to different parts of the human body.

Dieterlen also suggests that the sculptor's tools once possessed gender:

“L'appartenance sexuelle domine toute l'existence terrestre de l'être humain: les objets, les outils portent les marques feminines ou masculines, selon les règles de la division du travail: les chiffres trois [l'homme] et quatre [la femme] sont des raccourcis du sexe” (Dieterlen 1951, 71).

However, when Kojugu turned to the tools used in carving, his explicit gender identification of the sculptor's equipment became much vaguer. Kojugu did not report the practice of marking tools with either three or four lines to indicate a male or female gender, and he seemed uncertain as to whether the sculptor's tools could be identified as male or female. He alternated between denying that such associations existed and providing tentative identifications of the axe and adze (Fig. 26) as male, and the knife (Fig. 29) as female.[135]

At times Kojugu even implied that some tools, which other informants identified with specific body parts, were simply utilitarian instruments. For instance, when discussing the sònimba (a chisel with a semicircular blade, Fig. 27) he first stated the following:

KOJUGU: We use it to draw [especially small and delicate designs] on the wood. We also call it the sònninan, “the clawed one.”[136]

This name, and an identification of the sònimba with human fingernails (by nonblacksmiths in the village of Kolon), strongly suggests a correspondance between the tool and the body part. However, in one late interview Kojugu stressed that blacksmiths do not pay much attention to the gender and meaning of tools, but are more concerned with their ability to function:

KOJUGU: I have understood [what the interviewer is asking], but one can consider them [tools in general] as a part of man, and some people think that they ressemble parts of a human being. But as for us [the blacksmiths], we consider it as an instrument for work, because if you use it to work wood, there is a hole by which the twisted shavings of wood come out. They don't stick. So it doesn't hamper you in the work, and it doesn't produce any defects in your work. That is why we make it in a curved shape, and it is for that reason that we call it sònimba.[137]

It appears that nonblacksmiths are prone to ascribe either a gender or a correspondance with a particular human body part to the tools for carving, whereas some blacksmiths view their instruments from a more functional perspective.

Despite his practical attitude, Kojugu called his ensemble of carver's tools by a name that evokes an interpretation in terms of gender. He reported that blacksmiths refer to their complete inventory of tools as cèya minaw (literally, “the things of men”) or mako nyè minaw (“the things that arrange needs”), expressions that are also employed to indicate the ritual objects produced using these utensils.[138] This is a revealing usage, for the Bamana commonly refer to a woman's breasts and sex as muso minaw, “the things of women” or “the equipment of women,” whereas the male sexual organs are simply called cèya, “man-ness.” Thus, the idiom used to designate the blacksmith's tools implicitly compares male efforts to master and transform the world by using cèya minaw (“the things of men,” tools and sacred objects), with women's attempt to make the most of their own breasts and sex, the muso minaw or “the things of women,” in order to make their way in the world. Whereas women enter the world endowed with the ‘tools’ necessary for arousing desire and creating children, men must make their instruments in the forge or the bush.

The sexuality ascribed to the forge, Dieterlen's 1951 data on the gender marking of tools, Kojugu's vagueness over whether tools have gender, other nonblacksmith informants’ identification of specific tools with specific body parts, and the expression cèya minaw (“the things of men”), all suggest that the Bamana may once have viewed the carver's tools as possessing a male or female gender and as corresponding to specific body parts. However, since a tool's gender entails no ritual restrictions and makes no overt difference to its use, many of these associations may have been lost or only partially transferred to sculptors such as Kojugu, who grew up in the colonial era. It is hoped that further research may clarify this question, but it is also possible that the gender of tools is a part of traditional culture that has been lost.[139]

In contrast to gender, Kojugu had no hesitation in ascribing human qualities or a human character to certain tools, and he associated their shapes with traditional wisdom concerning human relations. For instance, Kojugu explained that the katlèni or awl signifies that “every person should be straight [honest] with the other” (“an k'an tilen nyògòn ye”); the jele or axe signifies that “each person must be clear [honest] with the other” (“an k'an jè nyògòn ye”); and that the sèmè or adze (Fig. 26) is the “hope and protection” (jigi) of blacksmiths. He interpreted the sèmè’s shape as representing the statement that “people must work together” (“an ka an sinsin nyògòn na”). Kojugu's phrase implies that people should not allow themselves to be separated by their individual interests, and is a traditional endorsement of group solidarity.[140] He also elaborated on the meaning of the katlèni, saying that it represents “an honest child”:

KOJUGU: The child that it represents is an honest child. If you are not honest, you cannot work. That is the meaning of the katlèni. Nhun.[141]

In making this interpretation, Kojugu is telling us that both sculptor and client must be “straight” or honest with themselves and with each other, if their joint venture of producing an object is to succeed. Like the ideal child, partners in a marriage, or a large extended family, they must place joint or group interests ahead of individual concerns, otherwise the commission will become contaminated by quarrels and disagreements. Such dissension will affect the accuracy and “straightness” of the cuts made by the axe and the adze. Like the holes the katlèni drills at the edge of a mask, the human relations that ‘create’ the ritual object must be “straight,” “correct,” and “honest,” if the sculpture is to succeed.

The association of particular visual characteristics – straightness and accuracy – with moral qualities is also found in Bamana mud-cloth design. In the midst of the tieli ju or “carrying net” pattern, two facing V shapes encode the idea of complementarity and mutual support (Fig. 32). In the case of tieli ju, the facing V shapes visually enjoin the newly married bride, who traditionally transported her pots and pans in a tieli ju or net bag made from string, not to undermine, but to support and complement her husband.

In yet another passage, Kojugu provides an elaborate example of this type of interpretation, when he compares the large adze's capacity for cutting sizable chunks of wood to the energy and force of a young man. In contrast, he interprets the small adze's more delicate strokes as representing the elderly sculptor, who has a finely tuned visual sense and can calculate the exact effect of even the smallest strokes.

KOJUGU: The large sèmè is used to take out the force of the wood. When one arrives at the delicate sections, you use the small sèmè. This signifies that what you can do in your youth [here one understands that Kojugu means, “What you can do in your youth will not be possible in old age”]; when you are old, you will know how to organize your work [you will calculate your work very exactly].[142]

Kojugu's image of the little adze's small, finely calculated strokes encapsulates the delicate precision acquired by the elderly sculptor, an idea that is expressed orally in the Bamana proverb, “Kòròya kun ye nyèma jo ye” (“The reason for old age is to reflect on things”). Kojugu tells us that the visual relationship between the large and small adzes corresponds to the human relationship between the experienced but frail master carver, and his energetic and vigorous, but still inexperienced apprentice. Like the objects they carve, the large and small adzes acquire human attributes, and it is these characteristics that transform the sculptor's tools into alternate, humanlike beings.

Figure 32. Tieli ju mud-cloth pattern being painted by Salimata Kone. A tieli ju is the string bag in which a bride's cooking utensils are packed to be carried to her husband's home. The latticework created by a repeated pattern of crossing lines in the design (whose ‘skeleton’ is seen on the left of the photograph) is compared to the latticework created by the string bag when it is stretched open. The tieli ju pattern is usually composed from smaller design units, which refer to the complementarity that creates a good marriage. Photographed in a small Beledugu town, 4/15/84.

Today, many sculptors seem to have forgotten the exact details of the correspondences that transform a tool into an analogue for a human being, and Kojugu himself retained only a partial knowledge of these associations. However, although the interpretations of tools vary from blacksmith to blacksmith and from farmer to farmer, both numuw and non-numuw acknowledge that ritual tools are different from those in everyday use. Sculptors focus their attention on the tanaw or restrictions that govern the use of all tools, and especially ritual implements. In principle, tools used to make ritual objects are inimicably opposed to women, whether or not the woman in question is actually menstruating or is of childbearing age. Just as no woman may step across a man who lies down on a mat to rest, for fear of contaminating him and rendering him impotent through possible contact with menstrual blood, so women should not step across tools, even everyday ones, carelessly thrown down. For this reason, among others, women do not normally cross the low wall that surrounds a blacksmith's forge, and numuw try to keep their tools within this barrier. If a woman should step across an adze, an axe, or any other instrument, the carver will quickly discover that his once-sharp blade has dulled, although no one has used the tool. Today women are now allowed to see most of the tools in everyday use, but they still must not touch or even see the chisel with a curved blade that is used to carve out the inside of drums and mortars (Fig. 28):

KOJUGU: The thing that a woman must never, never, never touch is the jagi.

INTERVIEWER: The jagi?

KOJUGU: Nhun [yes].

INTERVIEWER: Is this used to carve?

KOJUGU: It carves. The mortar in which millet is pounded – it's a tool for carving out the interior of that – that is the jagi.

INTERVIEWER: Why are women forbidden to touch that?

KOJUGU: I don't know why women must never touch that. But if a woman touches it, and it happens that she is dirty [that she has had sexual relations and has not washed] or that she is menstruating, and she touches it, if the jagi cuts you, you will stay with that wound a long time. It is due to this that we protect it carefully. Among blacksmiths, all the things that one uses to work [the tools], if it were not today [if it were some time in the past and one obeyed traditional rules], all these things are protected things.[143]

The concave shape of the mortar in which women pound grain associates it with the cavity in which a child grows. Ritually significant drums are often said to be covered with human skin, and their circular, hollowed-out shapes are frequently associated with the roundness so prized in women's bodies. It may be that the jagi‘s curving blade, and the rounded objects it produces, recall the female shape so vividly that any additional contact with real women would render its blade doubly harmful to the men who use it. The sculptor who uses the jagi to hollow out the feminine shapes of mortars and drums cannot afford to let this curved iron touch a living woman, lest his ability to create abstract ‘women’ backfire, leaving him, like a woman, with a wound that does not heal. In his last sentence, Kojugu says that “if it were not today all these things [tools] are protected things,” informing us that the rules applicable to the jagi formerly governed many similar tools, both ritual and nonritual.

Today, only a master sculptor will hide the inherited ‘ritual’ tools made from traditionally smelted iron, but all sculptors observe the interdiction that forbids a blacksmith to pick up his tools and carve immediately after sexual intercourse. Any tool, ritual or nonritual, is apt to cut the artist who does not respect this rule, and most accidents are attributed, not to the negligence of women or children, but to the carelessness of the artist:

KOJUGU: I tell you, if you see that you have been cut, you cannot put the blame on a woman or a child. Perhaps you will find that you yourself were dirty [impure] on coming to work. This is why the tools of your work have wounded you. It is what I have told you. I have said that no other person can take the blame for this on his head, I tell you that it is you who must take the blame. If you have sexual relations with a woman, and you don't wash yourself, and you go to sleep, and then you leave for your workplace, and you touch your tools. You have been imprudent in bringing together the work and the person that you desire. And if you are dirty, when you cut yourself, no one has wounded you, you have wounded yourself. This is what I have told you.[144]

Most sculptors will not invite disaster by neglecting to wash after sex and going directly to the forge.

Nevertheless, less direct circumstances can catch a blacksmith unawares. If an artist breaks the rule that forbids sexual contact between all blacksmiths and members of the Fulani (Peuhl ethnic group), or if he merely sleeps in a bed where someone else has made love, he can contaminate his tools and suffer their vengeance:

KOJUGU: If the following happens to a blacksmith, if he is wounded by any metal object – if it occurs that you have had sexual relations with a Fulani [Peuhl] woman, and you enter the forge while dirty, whether it is the adze or the axe – it is necessary that one of your tools wound you. Or even if you have had sexual relations with your own wife without washing, and if you leave for the forge to work simply to please yourself while still dirty, you have lied. You will be wounded. I, myself, was wounded by the awl. Its blade pierced me here [he shows the interviewer the palm of his hand] and came out on the other side next to the muscles. It happened at a time when we had gone in search of girls [for sexual relations]. If you have slept [here, had sexual relations] in a dirty bed [a bed where someone else has had sexual relations] and you are not aware of it, then you come home from town, and you lie down to sleep. That morning, after going into the forge and while piercing the handle of a hoe – the awl was red hot, and when I wanted to force it into the hoe handle [to pierce it], the awl slipped and came in this direction to pierce me here. The head [tip] came out on the other side. Nhun. Nhun. And then there is the problem of the anvil, if it takes you, you will wound yourself very easily [Kojugu means that if you break one of the interdictions associated with the anvil, it will exact its penalty quickly and vindictively; one cannot take the anvil lightly].[145]

Given the numerous opportunities for contamination, and the impossibility of controlling every apprentice's sexual behavior, the master carver's reluctance to share his ritual tools with anyone else is understandable.[146] If his ritual tools are always kept hidden in his consulting chamber, in whose shadowy interior even the most boastful and courageous apprentice fears to tread, he can use them to make ritual objects without fear.

Throughout this chapter we have seen that technical distinctions, such as that between hard and soft woods or traditional and imported iron, are intertwined with beliefs about power. The lènkè is not only one of the hardest woods available, but its nyama is overpowering, for it can seduce the Kòmòtigi into actions that will guarantee his death. Similarly, tools made from traditionally smelted iron not only possess a better cutting edge than instruments of imported metal, but they condense and communicate a living charge of creative power to the objects they fashion. Thus, selecting a tree or picking up an adze is never a purely technical matter for the Bamana or Malinke artist, and any technical description requires a conceptual analysis of the ideas and associations attached to particular trees and tools.

An apprentice's attempt to become an important artist is far more than a quest for better manual skills; it is an odyssey in search of the ability to master and control nyama. Implicit in this search is an ever-expanding knowledge of plants, metals, and, above all, the ‘ritual’ rules that will allow the apprentice to cut a bumu without incurring paralysis, or to pick up his awl without piercing his hand from front to back. Not only must the artist learn the correct sacrifices and incantations with which to approach the djinns that guard a tree growing out of a termite mound, but he must control his own sexuality, remaining abstinent or purifying himself before he picks up the adze. As in smelting, the blacksmith-carver's self-discipline, abstinence, and ensuing detachment from the human world transform the artist into a mediator with the forces that surround him, the final channel through which M'Fa Jigi's original generative energy flows from the Niger, along the underwater stream, through the termite mound, and into the finished object. By submitting himself to the ritual restrictions without which technological skill is useless, the sculptor changes himself. He becomes not only more skilled, but also different, untouchable, and removed from the milieu that surrounds him. Technological knowledge, and, as we shall see, acute aesthetic perception, become inseparable from ritual status. However, before exploring these profound changes in identity, let us examine the aesthetic system that determines the sculptor's actions once he has picked up the adze.

CHAPTER 5

Carving and Aesthetics

The Enterprise

We have seen that Bamana sculptors believe that trees possess their own nyama, their own personalities, and even their own djinns. Likewise, tools can act with human venom, piercing the sculptor's hand or flying, red-hot, out of his grip to slash his arm. In this world where inanimate objects have wishes of their own, the final act of carving almost becomes a conversation between the living wood, the obstreperous tools, and the sculptor's will. Making a “wood that arranges a need,” becomes a ritualized dialogue between the unseen and the seen, the invisible and the material. In order to charge the resulting object with power, this dialogue is structured primarily by ritual, not by technical rules.

The ritualized discipline that enables the sculptor to produce working “medicines” bears little ostensible relation to what we in the West understand as aesthetics. However, when the master carver finally begins to cut the unformed block, an aesthetic system is at work, for one Komo mask looks very much like another, and one human figure resembles the next. Like any artist, the Bamana sculptor thinks about what he is going to carve and cuts the wood according to identifiable principles. In the process of making an object, ritual discipline fuses with aesthetic sensibility, and, as we shall see, the two intertwine and reinforce one another.

We have already seen that any object that does not result from a complex set of negotiations between artist and client is “a round thing,” “an ornamental thing,” and, effectively, a useless thing.[1] After stating this, Kojugu goes on to say:

INTERVIEWER: So, it is not traditional to copy a Komo mask and put it aside to keep it?

KOJUGU: Hun?

INTERVIEWER: It isn't traditional?

KOJUGU: To carve it and to keep it next to one?

INTERVIEWER: Yes.

KOJUGU: To keep it just like that?

INTERVIEWER: Yes.

KOJUGU: In case [of a demand for it], like that?

INTERVIEWER: Yes.

KOJUGU: It isn't traditional. Whoever does that [makes and keeps a mask like that], he will give people something of no value. It [the mask] will resolve nothing [no practical problem].[2]

Kojugu finds the idea of carving for the sake of carving so incomprehensible that he must cross-question his interlocutor several times to make sure that he has heard the question correctly. Even more than his denial, which is emphatic enough, Kojugu's difficulty in comprehending exactly what he is being asked suggests how foreign he finds the concept of art for art's sake. The idea of carving in a social and functional vacuum shocks Kojugu, yet he has no trouble expressing the aesthetic principles that order his carving once he has been given a commission. Bamana artists do work according to aesthetic principles, but these aesthetic goals always remain embedded within the social need for a particular object. Purely artistic objectives are never enough to stimulate the creation of a finished sculpture, although we shall see that ambitious artists may practice their skills by making ‘sketches,’ which they then destroy. In Kojugu's words:

INTERVIEWER: So, one doesn't make a new Komo mask except when people need one?

KOJUGU: Nhun.

INTERVIEWER: This is so or it is not so?

KOJUGU: Except when people have need of one. So, to carve one and set it aside like that, we don't do that.[3]

In the Bamana and Malinke world, carving a serious object like a Komo mask for pure pleasure and aesthetic satisfaction, would not only be an individualistic and therefore a fundamentally asocial gesture, but would also relegate these critically important “medicines” to the domain of children's toys and “play” (tilon).

Kojugu explicitly stated that carving ritual sculpture could never be play, nor does it even approach play, despite the theatrical aspect of many masquerades, such as the Tyi Warra:

KOJUGU: Hmmm. It isn't play [making sculpture]. All the ritual objects have their own way of being [here Kojugu means that the creation of each mask imposes specific ritual and aesthetic requirements]. The whole village will say, “Sculpt something to perform for us.” When you have carved this thing, you have something that can be played [here, played means performed]. But for the objects that are the secrets of men – that is not for playing or performing, one doesn't play with that, that doesn't even approach play. No.[4]

Kojugu tells us that some masks, like the Tyi Warra, which are performed in full view of women and children, are playful in the sense that they are performable, but that the “things of men,” the serious objects like the Komo, the Konon, and the Nama, are the very opposite of playful. The person who “plays” with a Komo mask (Fig. 2) risks death itself, and making such a mask is “work” (baara), not “play.”

This categorization of ritual carving as “work” has important overtones. In saying that sculpture is not “play,” Kojugu is not only telling us that ritual objects are the end result of complex human interactions, a specific commission, and a lifetime relationship with a spirit familiar; he is also placing the sculptural endeavor within a category of difficult but essential operations. Preparing the soil, sowing seed, weeding, harvesting, and threshing grain are all “work.” Herding animals, doing errands for an older brother, and resolving a quarrel through negotiation are also “work.” Other types of social interaction such as singing at a wedding, arranging a marriage, and attending a funeral are also “work;” that is, they are both difficult and essential to ongoing life. The man who does not walk ten miles to attend an uncle's funeral will soon find himself ostracized from family meetings, and the elderly woman who refuses to adjudicate a quarrel between two younger neighboring women will suddenly discover that no one presents her with the extra food that enables her to survive.

At the deepest level of existence, sexual relations, too, are considered as baara or “work,” at least within the context of marriage, whereas sexual relations outside of marriage are tilon or “play.” The Bamana do not make this distinction because there is less sweat or physical energy expended in illicit sexual intercourse, but because husband and wife “work” to produce children, whereas illicit relations will, it is hoped, produce no issue. Furthermore, husband and wife must perform both psychological and social “work” to maintain the often precarious understanding that enables them to engage in sex. A wife who detests her husband must mask her own feelings enough to flirt with her husband and seduce him into sex, and a man saddled with an unsuitable wife must cover up his distaste for his partner with appropriate social behavior. Finally, sex within marriage is “work” because every detail of behavior was, and sometimes still is, determined by rules that constitute a ritualization of the sexual act. For example, the interdiction that forbade a man to see his wife's sex or to touch it with his right hand invested the female genitals with an almost sacred power. Sex for the production of children was simply too serious a matter to remain unregulated or left to chance. In performing the sexual act to produce children who are their grandfather's and not their father's property, both man and woman are fulfilling the instructions of, and assenting to the arrangements made by, their elders; they are laboring as instructed to produce the bodies needed by the extended family, and they are engaging in an activity whose success or failure remains mysterious and unpredictable.

Kojugu's emphatic statement that carving sculpture “doesn't even approach play” places carving in the same fundamental category of “work” as sexual intercourse. Of course, in some sense, herding goats and carving ritual sculpture are both work, but the Bamana and Malinke also distinguish between different levels of “work.” One of the few endeavors comparable to carving ritual objects in social weight, fear, ritualized restrictions, and danger, is sexual intercourse.

One important distinction between “work” and “play” is that work is inevitably performed for communal benefit, whereas “play” is performed only for the individual's pleasure. Because the sculptor who carves for his own pleasure, without having received a commission, is satisfying only himself, he is “playing” at something that should be treated as serious “work” undertaken on behalf of the group. Thus, in Kojugu's mind, carving for the sake of carving is not only incomprehensible, it is actually a kind of blasphemy, for in “playing” with carving the artist distorts a sacred and highly ritualized endeavor into a shallow and even trivial occurrence. For Kojugu, aesthetic gifts in themselves are not important. Rather, their value lies in the fact that they allow the artist to create an object that can function effectively for the community that has commissioned it. If taken on their own, aesthetic goals will lead the sculptor astray into a dangerous individualism; but when used for a communal purpose they can bring fame, renown, and above all, more effective communication with the other world. Despite his highly developed aesthetic sense, art for art's sake is not merely a conception foreign to Kojugu, it is one that actually threatens the entire enterprise of carving as he and other artists understand it.

The Place of Carving

Given that carving ritual objects is “work” of the most serious kind, it is understandable that, like sex, it does not take place in full public view. Sculptors sometimes bring the wood blocks they have cut from the appropriate tree back into the village, storing them behind their concession, until the time appointed for carving the object arrives.[5] More frequently, they store the blocks in a remote but sheltered area of the bush, an area that they are almost certain no woman, child, or non-numu man will visit. It is here that they will sequester themselves when the moment arrives to carve.

In some areas, sculptors prepared the wood before beginning to carve it, and such preparation might take months or even years. Masan Diarra reported that prior to colonization, sculptors in the Buguni area used to age wood by boiling it in enormous human-sized pottery jars filled with oil.[6] This procedure might be performed several times until the wood was soaked through with oil, acquiring a deep black color, and increased weight and resistance. Once boiled, sculptors conserved the wood over long periods of time, and sometimes a carver would have the opportunity to sculpt wood blocks treated by his father or grandfather, while preparing new ones to be used by his descendants. Kojugu and other northwestern Bamana and Malinke informants did not report this practice, although it may also have existed in this region in precolonial times.

Whatever its preparation, all my informants agreed that the wood for ritual, as opposed to nonritual sculpture, could not be carved in public:

KOJUGU: But if you are sculpting games [here he means dolls] for little children, we don't hide for that. You make such a sculpture openly, and when you have finished it, you give it to the children, and they will play with it. But the ones that are useful [i.e., the ones that have an important function without which society cannot operate], really, it isn't an easy thing for everyone to see them in the open. Nhun.[7]

When a ritual expert like Kojugu says that, “it isn't an easy thing for everyone to see them in the open,” he doesn't mean that this is an occasional occurrence; he wishes to say that in his experience, it is impossible for non-numu men or women to watch a skilled artist at work on a ritual object. In typical Mande fashion, Kojugu relies on the hearer's intuition to complete the gaps in his statement, and to understand that his seemingly tentative words really constitute an emphatic denial of the possibility that an artist might carve in public.

In a longer passage, Kojugu highlights the many practical reasons for the artist's seclusion while carving important sculpture. He describes the scene that will occur, should a blacksmith choose to carve an object in his forge, commenting that the continual interruptions of the various bystanders are so distracting that no one in his right mind would choose such an environment for serious work:

KOJUGU: If you have cut the tree, and you have come with that, and if people see it in your hand, and then it must be carved to become a certain thing, before you have finished the complete sculpture, the people who are sitting [next to you] will heat your belly [will irritate you]. So, certain people think that it [making sculpture] is like a pregnant woman, and when she gives birth, if it is not a boy, it will be a girl. So, if there is someone whose mouth is too fast [who talks too much], if he asks you, “What are you going to make with that?” you will answer that he has only to sit down and watch. “Sit down and look at what I'm doing.” Oò, if you don't want to tell people [what you will make with the wood], you will say, “Sit down and watch me.” But if that doesn't seem good to you, you can say, “I am going to make what is inside me.” Well, if you don't wish to turn away the person who is in front of you at all, if you have made all your calculations [the sculptor has calculated all the shapes of the object in his head already, and he has also calculated what the person sitting next to him will ask], you will leave him alone as he is [you will let him ask his questions], and you will explain what you are doing to this person, and then you will carve it. The reason for this is also that if you carve something in front of many people, you will find that there is another artist there, and he will cast his eyes on it [your sculpture] and then, he too will be able to make the same thing. But if you carve the thing behind people's backs, then the way in which the carving was made will irritate many blacksmiths [will arouse jealousy], and they will ask you …

INTERVIEWER: Say the rest. You said that you carve it behind people's backs.

KOJUGU: I said that I make it behind people's backs for this reason; it makes no difference if it [any type of technology] is a work of white people or of black people, it is the knowledge of the secret parts that separates a person from his colleagues. You must explain this part to people. If you want to teach this [the secret parts of the knowledge] to your child, you will go with him into the bush, and you will show it to him.[8]

Kojugu categorizes the possible bystanders: the talkative, stupid, and untrustworthy viewer who must be firmly instructed to “sit and watch me”; the quiet but inquisitive man who can be fobbed off with the obvious statement that “I am going to make what is inside me”; and the old, trusted friend, perhaps another blacksmith or family member, to whom the artist can explain his intentions in detail. Kojugu then says that in addition to breaking the artist's concentration, the bystanders may also constitute a real threat to the master artist, for should an envious rival join the group around the forge, he may seize the opportunity to steal the artist's ideas. In fact, the very act of watching a competitor work may arouse so much jealousy that the sculptor's rival will be inspired to poison him or to perform ritual actions directed against him. Finally, Kojugu tells us that what distinguishes the real expert, even a Western one, from the mediocre technician is his level of secret knowledge. For Kojugu, no sane expert would wish to display his mastery of arcane knowledge in public lest it be stolen. Rather, the master sculptor who wishes to teach his son the secrets of carving takes him into the bush and instructs him there.

At the beginning of the passage, Kojugu emphasizes the level of privacy required to carve a ritual object by comparing the project to childbirth. Just as only one or two midwives attend a woman who is giving birth, so a sculptor confides his most important projects only to his closest male friends. For instance, it is very possible that Basi would inform his inseparable companion, the old slave Bakary Traore, that he was leaving to carve an important object in the bush, but he would ask only his favorite apprentice, Kege Danyogo, to accompany him.[9] Just as a woman in childbirth requires a trusted midwife, so the great sculptor must have an assistant to bring him water, adjust his garments, and stand guard over the secret work area, fending off any possible disruptions that might jeopardize the sculpture in process. If the assistant is a promising student, so much the better, for just as a midwife learns her craft by watching numerous births, so an ambitious apprentice learns by watching the master artist at work. As Kojugu's last sentence indicates, the apprentice may even have the opportunity to memorize particular incantations or to try out special techniques, if the master artist wishes to use the event to perfect his pupil's skills.

Kojugu's comparison of carving to childbirth suggests the extent to which the famous artist, like a woman in childbirth, segregates both himself and his work from the ongoing routine of daily life. Artists select a secluded workplace for carving ritual objects to increase their concentration, to avoid annoying interruptions, to evade the eyes of rival sculptors, and above all, to escape polluting contact with women. For instance, blacksmiths who are in the process of forging or carving ritual objects deliberately avoid returning home at night or entering the kitchen:

KOJUGU: I have already told you that if you enter [the kitchen] and the woman is in the middle of preparing food in the kitchen, while at the same time you are in the middle of working, and the work that you are doing is difficult, and you don't wish anyone to know its secret, you cannot do it with another person [present]. If the woman is having her period, and you, you have stepped in her footsteps, you have come and stepped in her footsteps, and then you go off to work, and you sit down to continue your work, people say, in any case, that you have made an attractive thing, but this thing will have no power, and it won't bring you any good results. That is the reason that the blacksmith shouldn't enter the kitchen.[10]

Important sculptors shun women for fear of contaminating themselves and their ritual work through contact with menstrual blood. This substance is so powerful that merely stepping in the footsteps left by a menstruating woman can drain their creation of all its power to act in the world. Furthermore, no numu ever really knows whether any particular woman is menstruating or not, and indeed, the woman herself may be unaware that she is bleeding.[11] To avoid possible risk, it is better to leave the village entirely, and to seclude oneself in the bush until the ritual object is finished.

As with everything else, however, there is at least one exception to this rule. A secluded clearing in the bush is commonly held to be the standard location for carving, but Nyamaton Diarra reported that numuw seek out the tomb of a woman who has died in childbirth as the most desirable site for carving a Komo mask. When the mask is almost finished the blacksmith returns to the forge, where he incises its details. When asked why sculptors choose this particular site, Nyamaton responded:

NYAMATON: What is the worst death? It is when a pregnant woman dies.

INTERVIEWER: That is worse than all other deaths?

NYAMATON: That is worse than all other deaths – for a pregnant woman to die and for her child to die with her. If a single death is a wrong, what about two? People say that a certain person has remained on the battlefield of women. The battle of women – that is when a pregnant woman dies. They [the numuw] need her tomb. They go and do their work on it.[12]

Every corpse is filled with unleashed nyama, but the body of a pregnant woman carries an especially high charge of this unpredictable power because it represents two deaths rather than one. Such a death is unbearable, since it negates the tantalizing promise of new life inherent in pregnancy. Even today, many Bamana carry the corpse of a pregnant woman to a lonely spot outside the village, where they lay the body flat on the ground, and then cover it with tree trunks and large stones so it is protected from animals. The corpse is not interred, but is left aboveground so that its nyama will dissipate into the hinterland of the bush rather than contaminating the earth. The Bamana believe that if the corpse were buried in the normal cemetery area inside the village, the community would suffer numerous similar deaths and a devastating drought.[13]

Nyamaton is not explicit about how the sculptor manages to climb up the barricade of wood and rocks to work above the corpse, and it may well be that the artist merely carves next to the tomb. However, the nyama of such a body is so contaminating that it easily transfers its power to the object on which the sculptor is working. In fact, tradition prescribes this location as “the best” for carving a Komo mask (Fig. 2) precisely because the object will acquire an intensely negative power from the dead woman. It is expected that Komo masks be able to kill unruly association members, and that they act as channels for the dangerous powers that possess their wearers.[14] One of the most difficult problems facing the carver is how to imbue the finished mask with enough nyama that it will fulfill these expectations, for a Komo mask that cannot work harm is, in Kojugu's words, “empty.” Carving the Komo mask next to the dead body of a pregnant woman is a guaranteed method of increasing the headdress's destructive powers.

Despite its nyama, the tomb of a woman who has died in childbirth remains an exceptional site for carving ritual objects. Most ritual sculptures are carved by men who seclude themselves in clearings that lie far beyond the village. Their goal is not to incorporate, but to avoid, the catastrophic powers associated with women. By carving in the bush, male sculptors hope to escape the ever-present possibility of contamination through contact with menstrual blood or sexual intercourse.

The Timing and Pacing of the Carving

In addition to the place, the time at which a ritual object is carved affects both its purpose and its final level of power. Sculptors calculate with great precision the day and time when they will carve an object, and the choice is determined by tradition, divination, instructions from djinns, and inbuilt caution. For instance, sculptors do not always carry out their spirit's instructions immediately, for competitors and their djinns are capable of presenting the carver with false information in order to delude him into breaking his “contract,” or carving an object at an inauspicious moment. Kojugu tells us:

KOJUGU: It is for this reason [fear of treachery by other sculptors who may influence the artist's dreams through their own djinns] that in bula families, if you are working, if you receive information about the work in dreams during the night, you will wait one month, and then two, and then you will carry out the work in the third month.[15]

Each time an important sculptor receives a commission, he must assess whether or not it is a sophisticated trap that will lead to his eventual downfall. Such an assessment requires multiple divinations, contact with spirits through dreams and wanderings in the bush, and a carefully thought through evaluation of all the information available to the artist. In consequence, it may take months or even years for the sculptor to overcome his anxieties, and locate the right time and the right day to carve a ritual object. Furthermore, the period of sexual abstinence traditionally required for carving certain objects can lengthen the period of preparation by months. In contrast to the actual carving, which can occur in a sudden burst of speed, the period of preparation is long and slow-paced.

These lengthy delays seem to provide the time necessary for the artist to think through the visual possibilities available to him. He can, and apparently does, imagine and reimagine the exact shape of the object, the length of a mask's horns, the number of teeth it will have, and the size of its ears. Bamana and Malinke carvers do not normally sketch an object in the dirt, or carve rude mock-ups, before embarking on the critically important ritual piece. Rather, they use this lengthy preparative period to visualize and revisualize the object in their minds, creating and discarding successive images, until they have arrived at a satisfying aesthetic solution to the problems presented by a Komo mask or a human figure.

Sooner or later, the sculptor will decide that the moment has come to embark on his commission, and will set aside a particular day for carving. The apprentice carver will learn that most objects must be carved on specific days of the week, although these traditions can and do vary from region to region and carver to carver. In regard to human figures, Kojugu remarks that each figure type corresponds to a particular day of the week and month:

KOJUGU: I, I told you that we make it on a Thursday. That object is the sankan [literally, “popularity,” a human figure designed to bring popularity to its owner] of women. We can also make one [another type of human figure] on Mondays; this one is made for traditional learning [to acquire learning]. We also make them on Fridays; those ones are made to have power. Whether you wish it, yes or no, this occurs in this way. Nhun. When people ask you between the false [human figures that have not been carved on the correct day with the correct precautions] and the true, “What is the most numerous?” [You answer,] “The good ones [the ones that have been correctly made] are rare.” Each thing does its work. Throughout the seven days of the week, the day that you must select for carving a sculpture, the wood that you must select to go with that day, if you work on that day to give it its appropriate use [the use corresponding to the wood and the day of the week chosen], it will never fail. If you work during that precise moment, and you give it the appropriate use, it will succeed. Every object has its particular day [for being carved].[16]

When Kojugu states, “Whether you wish it, yes or no, this occurs in this way,” he is telling us that the process of carving sculpture is subject to immutable natural laws. Each object must be made on the day associated with the qualities the ritual expert wishes to capture and control. Although the sculptor can choose the day of the week on which he carves, he cannot alter the set of associations between days and qualities; these are as immutable as the mysterious laws that cause a woman to go into labor at a particular moment on a certain day, and thereby control the destiny of her child.

According to Kojugu, men usually begin carving ritual objects on the third day of the lunar month,[17] and Komo masks are carved very early on a Saturday morning.[18] However, Kojugu's statement is unusual, since several other informants reported that the trees for Komo masks were usually cut down and the mask carved on Fridays, and this association seems to be the more widespread.[19] As mentioned in Chapter 2, the Bamana consider that the night before, rather than the night after, a particular day belongs to that day, so that their Friday night is our Thursday night, and so forth. We have already seen that sculptors customarily devote Thursday nights (the Bamana Friday night) to their female djinns, and the Komo mask would ordinarily be carved on Friday morning, the morning that follows the most propitious night for djinn communication. This timing enables the artist to work immediately after, and directly out of, his spirit's inspiration and instructions. Friday is also a suitable day for carving a Komo mask, for, as Kojugu observed, powerful ritual objects are created on Fridays.

The sculptor's concern with timing does not end with the choice of day and time. According to Kojugu, sculptors calculate each blow of the adze; the first cut into the raw wood must be correctly placed to start the sculpture off in a fruitful direction:

KOJUGU: The method of accomplishing the action of carving itself, if you come with that [a piece of raw wood], if you have come with the wood, and you want to carve, you sit down, and you turn toward the river [he means the Niger river and the south], and you place your back toward the north. You take up the adze, you take the adze, and then you make the first cut of the adze, and you take the janba [the first chunk of wood that detaches itself when you begin to carve], and you place that down on the earth, and you sit on it.[20]

The Bamana believe that the trajectory of any future action is predetermined by its beginning; for instance, one never begins a trip or a business venture on a Friday, because actions undertaken on Fridays repeat themselves. If one leaves town on a Friday and has a flat tire, one will inevitably continue to have flat tires throughout the entire trip. If the first Friday goes well, the remainder of the trip will also be easy, but most people feel that it is safer not to take risks, and to begin an important endeavor on a Thursday or Monday, since these are auspicious days. Likewise, the Bamana examine the first appearance of any strange phenomenon – its “beginning” – for indications as to whether the event bodes ill or well. For example, a villager might deliberate over the first words spoken by a European in order to ascertain whether the stranger's visit is propitious. Similarly, when Kojugu says that the sculptor sits down facing toward the Niger river, he tells us that the artist is carefully positioning himself to make the first cut while facing south, the direction of abundance and fertility. In facing this auspicious direction, the blacksmith transfers its qualities – the ability to produce abundantly – to the object he carves.

Not only does the blacksmith turn carefully toward the south to make the first cut in the wood, but he also controls the timing of each blow from his adze. Whereas some sculptures can be produced in a matter of hours, others take months, as the artist spaces his cuts over many days:

KOJUGU: If it is a true ritual object, some sculptors make three cuts of the adze each day. Some make nine cuts of the adze each day, nine cuts of the adze. If you are in this situation, up until the moment that you have finished the work, whether that takes ninety days, forty days, or three months, you will not touch a woman.[21]

Kojugu does not explain whether the sculptor employs lengthy rhythms, in order to give himself large blocks of time to meditate on the placement of the next cut and its aesthetic impact, or whether these unusual carving patterns are predetermined by tradition and depend on the identity of the object carved. However, when Basi Fane described carving one of his commissions, he not only specified that the wood had to be left alone for forty-five days after being cut, but added that when he began to carve, he worked on the object gradually, so that he would have time to meditate on what he was doing, implying that aesthetic concerns dictated his timing.[22] Clearly, both tradition and the aesthetic difficulties presented by a ritual object alter the often startling rapidity of a sculptor's normal work pace, and force him to think through the effects of each adze stroke before making it.

Despite this description, sculptors used only very fast carving rhythms when they were observed at work on nonritual objects. Comments by working artists such as Basi Fane and Yoro Jan Bagayogo, and Kojugu's statement that the competent blacksmith must always keep his axe and adze well sharpened, indicate the speed normally expected of a carver. Kojugu himself does not seem to have always followed the slow rhythms he mentions for carving ritual sculpture; in another passage, he implies that a Komo mask could be finished in three or four days, while commenting that it requires too much detailed work to be finished in two days:

KOJUGU: Two days will not finish that [a Komo mask], of course: this work, this work has too many details. Nhun.[23]

It is possible that the slower rhythms described by Kojugu are those once used by famous carvers of the past, and that contemporary artists have abandoned them, telescoping the process of making ritual sculpture into shorter and shorter time periods. If so, such a development would parallel Salimata Kone's abandonment of her mother's mud-cloth painting technique, where each stroke of the bamboo spatula was carefully placed so as to leave a faint, white ‘shadow’ between it and the previous mark. Salimata abandoned this time-consuming ‘shadow’ technique in the late 1960s and early 1970s in order to speed up her work pace, and to earn the money necessary to compensate for the economic gap left by her husband's death. A telescoping of the sculptural process would also parallel the collapse of the ritual retreat following circumcision from a period of three or four months to three or four weeks.[24] Unfortunately, Kojugu does not tell us whether the painstakingly slow rhythms he describes date from a particular period in the past, or whether such rhythms are still used for certain ritual objects.

In another, longer passage, Kojugu implies the aesthetic importance of maintaining a continuous flow of adze strokes, undisturbed by any untoward interruptions. Women in particular are banned from the forge as well as from the sculptor's bush retreat, since their bantering talk distracts the blacksmith and causes him to alter his steady rhythm of work, producing defects in the finished object:

KOJUGU: Indeed women don't even approach us as well as our tools, except for blacksmith women, who can approach our workplaces. Whatever the nature of the woman, she doesn't approach us. We don't want that. If we are in the middle of working, we don't allow another woman to approach us [any woman who is not herself of the blacksmith caste]. We don't appreciate that at all. If a woman approaches you, and your spirit becomes engaged in the conversation, there will be a part of the work – at the moment when you are in the middle of speaking – suppose that happens while the adze is descending, then it will cause a defect in the work. Even if you are in the middle of forging iron, one part will be distorted. That happens because of such conversations. It is for this reason that we don't accept the company of women in our workplaces. We don't like that. That must not happen.[25]

McNaughton (1988, 24–6) has already drawn attention to the musicality of blacksmiths who work their bellows in well-known drum rhythms, and a similar but less specific rhythmic sensibility seems to determine the carver's strokes. The presence of nonblacksmith women would distract the carver, breaking his concentration and causing him to lose the highly developed coordination of hand, eye, and timing that allows the desired shapes to emerge from the rough block of wood. Kojugu's statement suggests that, as with mud-cloth painting, the achievement of specific aesthetic effects depends on maintaining a particular rhythm of work; it is slightly easier to understand the intensity and presence of pieces like the famous guandusu figures, when one learns that tradition may have restricted its carver to making only three adze strokes a day.

The control of timing – the choice of day, time of day, the situation of the carver (sexually abstinent and facing a particular direction), and the rhythm of the adze strokes – sets boundaries on the sculptural enterprise. It forces the sculptor to channel his energy into short, intense periods of work, or, at the opposite extreme, to focus his thought and preparation on only three adze strokes. Basi, for instance, spent almost five weeks thinking about my request that he allow himself to be photographed while carving, making sacrifices and performing divinations to determine whether he could accept the commission or not, deciding what type of object to carve, and selecting a location for the work. However, when he finally took up his adze at 6:00 one morning, he worked almost nonstop until night fell at approximately 6:30 P.M. He continued to maintain this pace throughout the following day, and finished carving the Tyi Warra mask (Fig. 10) about noon on the third day of work. He then spent the early part of the afternoon singeing it black in his forge and decorating it with red seeds, cowrie shells, and mirrors. The entire operation took only three days, but the decision making and preparatory stages lasted four and a half weeks. Throughout this time period, my request for a carving was Basi's primary “problem,” and he spent hours cross-questioning my assistant as to the motivation for such a request, and deliberating whether accepting such a commission would violate traditional rules and inspire attacks by other sculptors. When he finally sat down to carve, it was as if he had suddenly decided to unleash all the mental energy and concentration accumulated throughout the previous month on the unresisting wood. This focusing of aesthetic, intellectual, and emotional energy throughout a lengthy preparative period, and its final release in the act of carving, seems to be characteristic of the Bamana and Malinke sculptural process. For, in similar fashion, the sculptor who is allowed only three adze cuts per day presumably channels all his psychological and aesthetic power into those three strokes. In this alternative use of time, each day becomes the empty backwater that produces three momentous actions, but the ratio of meditative time to active time corresponds to that demonstrated by Basi. Carving ritual objects is not a daily activity whose continual practice leads to the creation of an ever more impressive oeuvre; rather, it is the final endpoint of a subterranean and invisible thought process, a mental working and reworking of all the available visual possibilities, that ends only with their final condensation into a single, charged object.

The Artist's Motivation

With all this in mind, what is the sculptor trying to achieve when he at last finds himself secluded in the bush early on a Saturday morning, face to face with a block of wood? What goals motivate him as he makes that first critical cut into the resistant lènkè? Simplistically, he wishes to acquire fame, “to find a name,” ka tògò sòrò, to become “a person who makes important sculptures,” yiriw baarakèbaga, and to be called “a ngana of wood carving,” yiri lèsèlan ngana. What do these expressions imply? Togo literally means “name,” but it is frequently used to mean “reputation,” and ka sòrò means “to find.” The sculptor is trying to find a reputation. In the second phrase, yiriw means “woods,” or in this case, “sculptures”; baara means “work”; kè comes from the verb, ka kè, “to do”; and baga is a suffix that indicates the person doing something. Thus, yiriw baarakèbaga translates as “the person who is doing the work of sculptures,” or in other words, the person who knows about and is making important sculptures.

Yiri lèsèlan ngana is the most difficult of all the phrases sculptors use to indicate their goal in life. Yiri, once again, means “tree,” or “sculpture,” lèsèlan is the past participle of the verb ka lèsè, “to carve,” and ngana is almost untranslatable. In principle, ngana is a great hero or a great human being. A ngana can be man or a woman; a female ngana is called ngana muso, for muso means “woman.” Ngana are capable of great exploits – the first man on the moon is a ngana – yet the word also implies the presence of an inbuilt flaw. Ngana musow are frequently sterile and develop their tough, achievement-oriented personalities in compensation for their lack of children. Male ngana, like Basi, may have terrible tempers that frequently escape their control; their children are often failures or less than satisfactory, and they have difficulty maintaining equable relations with their wives and relatives. Almost by definition, a ngana lives outside normal social conventions, and his or her behavior is often asocial and on occasion disruptive. Nevertheless, the leadership, the inventions, and the discoveries produced by a true ngana are indispensable to society, which alternately courts and avoids these tragic heroes and heroines. Normal people need nganaw, but they do not wish to deal with them every day, for nganaw are well known to be exacting, and they are not infrequently vengeful. In some sense, one cannot become a ngana at will; rather, one suddenly wakes up to find that, like it or not, one has already acquired this reputation as the direct result of pursuing a particular activity with single-minded determination. One realizes the tragic price paid for this achievement only after it has become reality.

Although men and women of every ‘caste’ can become nganaw, famous sculptors fit the definition perfectly. No apprentice, however ambitious, quite realizes the full implications of becoming a ngana mògò or “person who is a ngana” but the middle-aged sculptor has made enough spirit payments, that he can only hope he will attain the precious status for which he has already forfeited his wife or child. Acquiring the status of ngana through the creation of important sculpture is not quite the same as acquiring a “name.” Great artists are always famous among the Bamana, but this fame is not necessarily widespread. For example, Basi is a ngana, but this does not mean that every Malian who can cite the name of his country's president recognizes Basi's achievement, or knows his family name and his village. Any president has certainly acquired a “name,” but not all presidents are nganaw. One may acquire fame and still remain a weak human being; but, if one is tough enough, one can be a ngana without having one's name on everyone's lips. In general, nganaw are those celebrated by the cognoscenti: the healers other healers consult, the blacksmiths other ironworkers celebrate, and the sculptors other artists envy. A ngana does not care about the opinion of the masses; he seeks the respect, admiration, and fear of the few who really know his craft. Furthermore, there is something hidden and secretive about nganaw; their tough-minded lack of emotion in the face of devastating events, and their withdrawal into the arcane minutiae of their expertise, present an impenetrable façade to friends and clients. A ngana is both unknown and famous at the same time.

When we think about the secrets involved in making sculpture, about Kojugu's continual statements that no one except his wife knows the details of his spirit contract, and about Basi's complete refusal to be tape-recorded lest he betray his knowledge, then we begin to understand the ambivalence that surrounds “acquiring a name” or becoming known as a ngana. In Kojugu's words:

KOJUGU: I have told you already, if the positions for changing yourself are large, and again, if the positions for changing yourself are large, in both these cases, you will have fame. If you can't change yourself very much, and you can only circumcise, then you will do that. You will acquire fame for that. If you are a sculptor, this isn't a banal thing, it is a hidden thing. People, in any case, can know that you carve sculpture, but whether it is wood alone or not, whether it isn't wood alone or not, whether you come from this village or that, or if you come from this group of villages, people will not learn that quickly.[26]

Kojugu tells us that a truly famous expert will be able to acquire several different skills and move easily between them (“if the positions for changing yourself are large”). An important artist can work in both iron and wood, and at the same time he may circumcise, perform other types of surgery, and cure snakebite. The artist who is a ngana is almost always multitalented, and uses his or her very disparate skills with equal facility.

However, as in Basi's case, the skill by which a ngana gains his public “name,” (tògò) is usually not carving. Basi's ability to cure intractable skin diseases was known as far away as Dakar, but his sculptural achievements were “a hidden thing.” Only local people were aware that he carved ritual objects, and only his region's ritual experts knew which objects he had made and for whom. Just as the objects themselves are hidden from view and guarded by one or two powerful elders, so Basi's reputation as a carver was restricted to an inner circle of cognoscenti. Sooner or later ritual experts from other regions who had reason to commission a sculpture, who needed to repair a disintegrating piece, or who sought a sculptor to whom they might safely entrust an exceptionally dangerous ritual object whose owner had died, would hear Basi's name.[27] Careful inquiries among their peers would then elicit the admission that this blacksmith did indeed carve and repair objects, and would be able to conserve the basi in question. The elders who were familiar with Basi's abilities would give out his name only when someone revealed a truly serious problem; at other times, they would evade any discussion that might lead to his identification. Those in the know maintain this level of secrecy to protect both themselves and the ngana mògò. A ngana already has numerous clients. He is always overburdened with responsibilities, and does not appreciate a client who arrives to consult him over a trivial problem. In fact, he may lose his temper with such a petitioner, berate him for his request, and send him back home posthaste. Thus, other ritual experts hesitate to pass a client on to a true ngana unless it is absolutely necessary, for they are not about to use up their good will over trifling matters. A ritual expert who unnecessarily sends a client to a ngana risks both his relationship to the ngana and to the client. A ngana is simply too important and too unpredictable for his name to be cited without careful forethought.

The trepidation that surrounds an important sculptor who is a ngana has an important aesthetic corollary. Even elderly ritual experts avoid comparing one Komo mask with another, for they do not wish to offend any gifted sculptor, whether living or dead. Many Bamana have a highly developed visual sensibility, and, given photographs of unknown objects, are well able to elaborate on aesthetic principles. However, no one wishes to incur the wrath of a living ngana, or even that of a dead artist's descendants, by implying that one mask is less successful than another. Unless an informant is a sculptor himself and absolutely sure of his ability to protect himself from his rivals, he will hesitate to say anything that might possibly be construed as praise of one object and denigration of another. In fact, the standard response to questions of quality is, “They are both good.”

This internalized terror – that someone will remember and repeat even the most innocuous comment made about an object to its maker – precludes open aesthetic discussions. A similar terror dominates the sculptors themselves, who are never immune from fear of their competitors. The mere act of carving an outstanding object places its creator in danger from attacks by rivals, for in this economy of scarcity, success can be obtained only at the expense of others. An artist who becomes a ngana prevents someone else from occupying that position. A sculptor who makes an object of extraordinary aesthetic power awaits the revenge of his competitors. Both the Bamana and Malinke openly acknowledge the dangers inherent in artistic success, and Kojugu had no hesitation in describing the dubious rewards that await a superlatively gifted artist:

INTERVIEWER: Good, now I want to ask you: the blacksmith who can work well, the one who is a good sculptor, will people kill him because his work is very beautiful? Do they work with spirits against him, or do they lance the korotè [poison] at him, or do they work sorcery against him, or is it other blacksmiths who harm him because of his work, because it is excellent work? The one [the sculptor] who imitates djinns by creating extraordinary things.

KOJUGU: That happens. If you become a knowledgeable sculptor [he uses the French term savant for knowledgeable] of a certain type.

INTERVIEWER: Say it in Bamana.

KOJUGU: If you are able to work [to carve], and you have learned how to carve in your head in a certain way [he means if you are creative and able to invent new and striking forms], or you have encountered the things of the bush [djinns], if there isn't someone very important behind you, if you don't have an excellent protector in an important person, if you try to make extraordinary things, among black people, they will throw poison at you to kill you.

INTERVIEWER: Well, how will they kill you?

KOJUGU: Poison.

INTERVIEWER: Well, why?

KOJUGU: Or they will work sorcery against you to render you blind and to make you lose your ability to work.

INTERVIEWER: But is it other blacksmiths who will do that, or the person for whom you are working [i.e., the client, as in the case of the Dabà, cf. Chapter 3]?[28] Or …?

KOJUGU: Other blacksmiths [rival sculptors] will do it. Other blacksmiths will do it together with your paternal uncles or even your mother's co-wife. All these people can rouse themselves to work sorcery and spoil you [destroy your life and/or vision].[29]

As Kojugu indicates, important artists often know one another personally, and a sculptor of Basi's stature always knows who his enemies are and which blacksmiths he is competing against. When Basi considered agreeing to carve for me, he spent much of the four and a half weeks before he picked up the adze calculating his competitors’ responses and mentally reviewing their aesthetic skill and their knowledge of poisons. Would executing this strange commission be the catalyst that would energize his rivals into undertaking another series of attempts on his life? Would the resulting increase in his reputation be worth the potential harm carving might bring? Finally, Basi decided to take the risk of executing the commission, but he insisted that he carve the Tyi Warra mask in full public view so that he could not be accused of giving away traditional secrets. In fact, throughout the three days it took to carve the mask, numerous elderly men or their emissaries stopped by to “greet” Basi. These “greetings” were a veiled, if unsubtle, way of watching the work in progress and making sure that Basi did not do anything in front of us that could have been construed as secret. Needless to say, the Tyi Warra mask that resulted was somewhat lacking in inspiration and aesthetic effect. Although Basi seemed visibly frustrated that he had ‘lost his hand’ after thirty years of refusing to sculpt, it is also possible that he deliberately decided to produce a rather poor object in order to convince his potential critics that he had broken no tradition. If he must carve, then carving a rather unsatisfactory mask in public was the best possible means of protecting himself from future attack.

In the Bamana world, the terrors of success are manifold, and it is the foolhardly artist who denies their existence and fails to balance his ambition against the dangers inherent in achieving too great a fame. A sculptor may arrest his career unexpectedly, refusing one commission after another, if he senses that he may have carved too many powerful objects too soon. Kojugu underlines the caution that restrains the pace of an artist's career, when he describes how a responsible master carver staggers the commissions he will allow a promising apprentice to accept:

KOJUGU: If you direct someone [an apprentice] to make sculpture, before he begins you will wash him [with protective medicinal plants], you will wash him with trees [with concoctions made from the leaves, bark, or roots of specific plants and trees]. When he has just begun [to carve], you will wash him again. When he has made two or three [objects], if you are intelligent, you will stop him there, and then you will seek another road whereby he can continue to carve. If someone continues to work without stopping, and you don't have important methods of changing yourself [of protecting yourself], people will make you go in [a metaphoric way of saying that your competitors will destroy you], if the trees [probably the nyama of the trees the apprentice cuts] don't destroy you, other men will destroy you. It is for this reason that if you are making important sculpture, if you execute a commission once, twice, or three times, someone else will not know about it. Then, people will say that you have executed a single commission, and it is that one that you have been working on. It's like this.[30]

Kojugu cites several methods of protection: washing with medicinal plants, ceasing to carve while obtaining defensive ritual secrets and medicines (“important methods of changing yourself”), and concealing the number of objects one has carved. Commissions are often given, executed, and handed over to their “owners” in secret, for those few experts in a ngana's confidence already know what he is carving and for whom, and the sculptor is better off if most people remain ignorant of his achievements.[31] If only a few people are aware of a commission, there is less likelihood that a lifelong rival will direct poison or ritual work against the sculptor. Important personalities gain their seemingly faultless knowledge of every event within their region through a complex network of gossip and confidences; a mere association member may have no desire to harm a famous sculptor, but his careless words may inadvertently inform the artist's rival that he has lost a prized commission to the ngana, with disastrous results.

Aesthetic Objectives

Most nganaw take some defensive measures to protect themselves against the jealousy of their competitors, and it is certainly true that no artist can pick up his adze and approach an untouched block of wood without numerous fears crowding into his mind. Yet, once the long agony of indecision is over and the sculptor begins to carve, he displays an extraordinarily single-minded concentration on the task at hand. Like Basi, he may carve nonstop for two or three hours, or even for two and a half days. Throughout this period, artistic as well as social goals guide his hand. What are a great sculptor's aesthetic objectives?

The sculptor who aims to become a ngana must have mastered many types of carving; he must be able to turn from Komo headdresses (Fig. 2), to N'tomo masks, to human figures (Fig. 3) without any difficulty. He must have mastered “the positions for changing oneself.”[32] In Kojugu's words:

KOJUGU: If you are an important man [a master sculptor], you must seek to master everything, and if people have not caused you to have misfortunes where you live, and if the things of your head [your djinns] have not caused you misfortunes, you can easily carve both human figures in wood and Komo masks very well.[33]

Kojugu tells us that the artist must set his goals high: he must not limit himself to one particular art form. Furthermore, if he has managed to evade conflicts with his family, his village, and his spirits, he will be able to move easily from one task to another, altering his approach in view of the object commissioned. Despite his assumption of ease and flexibility, Kojugu is well aware that this task is difficult:

KOJUGU: But, when one sits down to sculpt, to make something that pleases you, that is what is difficult. After that, if you are making [an object], you work in the fashion that pleases you, and you polish it [the object]. If you hear, “I am going to polish something,” it is because it is a thing that pleases the person.

INTERVIEWER: That is true.

KOJUGU: If it isn't a thing that pleases you, won't you throw it away?

INTERVIEWER: Yes, that's true.[34]

When Kojugu tells us that a satisfactory sculpture is “a thing that pleases” he uses the word sago. Bazin (1906, 501) defines sago as “wish,” and also lists the verbs, sago kè, “to obey,” and sago mené, “to conform to someone's wishes” or “to satisfy someone's desires.” Thus, a sculpture that pleases is an object that obeys the artist's wishes and conforms to his desires. Kojugu's use of sago, with its connotations of obedience and conformity, indicates that the sculptor maintains an inner picture of the object he wishes to make. As we shall see, this inner picture must fit an image inherited from the past; visual conformity with both the sculptor's and audience's expectations is much more important than inventiveness.

The ngana is expected to excel within inherited limits. When asked to describe how he evaluated other sculptors’ work, and photographs of masks, Kojugu responded:

KOJUGU: I, I will say that [whether a mask is good or bad aesthetically], basing myself on the form [sawura] of the sculpture, according to what I think. If I find that it is not as I think [it should be], I will say, “This sculptor is not good.” He should have made this section descend, or he ought to have lowered the head like that, but if it is as it should be, I will say, “This sculptor is good.” I, I know it like this in my head [i.e., I know what is good and bad]. If the person could not give generously of [ka bugubugu] his capacities, as soon as you see it with your eyes, you will see a defect in it. Then you will judge that it is not a real defect, but that this defect has occurred in the sculpture because the carver is not good.[35]

Kojugu tells us that he compares the finished sculpture with an internal picture of the type of object in question. If the carving corresponds to the conventions that govern the type, and the sculptor has also been able to inject his own sensibility and energy into the object, then he has succeeded. Kojugu uses the verb ka bugubugu to express the transfer of energy from the sculptor's hand and spirit to the carving. The Bamana normally use this verb to mean “to shake [a tree] to make its fruits descend” (Bazin 1906, 89), or “to stir [a liquid] to separate out its impurities” (Dumestre, 1981, no. 1, 175). Bugu is also the name given to a small hut with a thatched roof, and to the hamlets built of such huts where farmers live during the rainy season while cultivating fields far from home. In addition, it is the name of a blue-and-white check weaving pattern; both the Bamana and Malinke commonly sew a strip of this cloth into the center of white shirts or white pagnes as a saraka or “sacrifice.” Diviners frequently prescribe this “sacrifice” as a device to enhance the wearer's fertility or prosperity. A sheet made entirely of the bugubugu pattern is sometimes placed under a bride to receive the blood from the first sexual relations and to enhance her fertility. It is thought that the check pattern resembles the multiplicity of huts that enlarge a small hamlet (bugu) into a real village, and the term bugu has connotations of growth, fertility, and abundance. Thus, when Kojugu says that the unsuccessful sculptor cannot “bugubugu” he means that this artist has not poured himself into his work, he has not given generously of himself without holding anything back. If we extend the metaphor implicit in the use of the bugu patterned cloth during sexual relations, Kojugu tells us that the artist has been unable to empty himself into the object as a man empties himself into a woman. The unsuccessful sculptor has been unable to achieve that rushing release of energy that creates a masterpiece swiftly and surely.

Kojugu's use of the word bugubugu, with its implicit sexual metaphor, suggests an analogy between successful sculpture and the sexual act. Chapter 6 will pursue a more detailed analysis of this conceptual link, but it is important to remember that the artist who is able “to give generously of himself” has denied himself any sexual contact for weeks, months, and possibly even years, and may even be impotent. Furthermore, the ngana has been living without sustained human contact for weeks or months prior to beginning the commission. Consciously or unconsciously, it would seem that the ritual restrictions on human and sexual contact prior to carving enable the sculptor to build up an intense level of contained energy, which he can then discharge into the resulting object. The aesthetic effect of this long restraint seems to be an increased capacity to focus on the task at hand, and a direct transfer of the sculptor's mental image into finished carving. Sexual energy is channeled and transformed into aesthetic realization.

The Bamana sculptor works within a framework set by tradition, but Kojugu distinguishes between the man of talent who merely produces a simulacrum of other sculptures, and the real artist who can imagine new forms and improvise upon established norms. Despite the bias toward tradition, a true ngana must possess a creative imagination, not just visual skill:

KOJUGU: I tell you that to see carvings, and to make a beautiful sculpture, and to win great fame in that, that depends on the intelligence of the eye [nyèlakekuya]. That is different from that which is inside [imaginative capacity]. The person to whom you describe something, and you explain to him all the special aspects [of the thing], if he then makes the object, we regard him as a cunning person [mògò kekuma]. If you see a thing with your eyes, and then if you make it, you are considered a cunning person. However, if you [the cunning carver] haven't laid eyes on it, then you won't be able to carve it. This difference exists between people.[36]

The “intelligence of the eye” is a literal translation of Kojugu's expression, for nyè means “eye,” la is a suffix denoting “of,” and kekuya is “skill,” “intelligence,” or “cunning” (Bazin 1906, 280; Dumestre 1987, no. 5, 814). Kekuya is used to indicate extraordinary manual skill, but it also carries connotations of trickery and shortsightedness; a person of large vision and great human understanding is not usually described as kekuma or “cunning.” In using this expression and contrasting it with “that which is within,” Kojugu is telling us that manual dexterity and the capacity to reproduce an object that he has seen can only carry the sculptor so far. The artist who possesses a capacity for visual mimicry will certainly win a name for his astounding technical feats, but, bereft of a model, his lack of imagination and creative capacity will leave him at a standstill. For Kojugu it is certainly important to be “cunning,” but only up to a certain point. If a sculptor's dexterity is not matched by his imaginative ability, an intelligence “of the inside,” he will never become a ngana. He may well enjoy the superficial reward of passing notoriety, but he will never achieve the profound respect that blacksmiths accord a truly creative artist, a real ngana mògò.

In Chapter 2 we saw that the master sculptor avoids presenting his pupils with a model, but rather asks them to carve a replacement for an object that has been damaged, based on a verbal description.[37] This task separates students with an intelligence “of the inside” from those who merely possess manual skill. However, despite Kojugu's continuing declarations that imagination and creativity separate the truly gifted from those who are “cunning,” even nganaw must follow tradition. The “inside intelligence” usually creates an image that reworks shapes established as appropriate over many years. In fact, Kojugu tells us that his inner, mental image of a Komo mask allowed him to carve a mask so close to the old one he had been asked to replace that an uninformed viewer would easily assume that both pieces were by the same hand:

KOJUGU: What was asked of me was that I should carve a new Komo mask, and that they would sell the old one. I sculpted a new one, and I finished it before I had set my eyes on the old. Since it was already conceived in my inside [my mind] – whether you have seen it or you haven't seen it [the old mask], if you have conceived it in your imagination, you will carve it. I sculpted it, but it happened that the old one had not come out [had not appeared in public so that Kojugu could see it]. When it [the new one] was finished, I said to the owners, I said that their thing was finished. Aa, he [probably the guardian of the old mask] said that he would bring the old one so that I could evaluate it. Well, when the old one arrived, when he arrived with that, and I also had arrived with the one that I had carved to place them next to each other; it was as if one had weighed the two on a balance and one had found them equal. It was as if the hand of a single person had made both of them. It was like that. This was what troubled them [The client village was troubled by the uncanny likeness of Kojugu's sculpture to their old mask. In the Bamana world, Kojugu's ability is regarded as evidence of a spirit relationship and special powers that make their possessor both awe-inspiring and terrifying].[38]

The word Kojugu uses for “conceived in your imagination” is karannen, from ka kalan “to read, study,” or “learn” (Bazin 1906, 260; Dumestre 1987, no. 5, 758–9). Ka kalan is often used in reference to memorizing the Koran, and implies that one is learning something by heart, or at least profoundly. Kojugu is trying to say that he had a clear and very concrete image of the Komo mask in his head, as if memorized, before beginning to carve. In another passage from the same interview, Kojugu contradicts himself, by saying that he had viewed the old mask before carving the new one.[39] It appears that he saw the mask briefly, committed it to memory, and then carved his own Komo without the presence of a model. When Kojugu tells us that he carved the new mask without having seen the old, he is really saying that his mental image was not dependent on a model, but was the result both of viewing the old mask for a short time, and of a lifetime's exposure to similar objects.[40] Kojugu's realization of the pattern inscribed in his memory was so complete, and so much in conformity with his viewer's expectations, that both the old mask and the new seemed to have been made by the same person. For Kojugu, this continuity of vision is a positive characteristic:

KOJUGU: I only saw it [the Komo mask from Daoudabugu] and whatever thing you see, if you absorb it into your spirit, and it makes your heart joyous – yes – you execute your own work in this manner. Yes, if it isn't better than the old one, then, too, the old one is no better than mine.[41]

In the eyes of the audience, Kojugu has achieved the true ngana’s aesthetic goal: he has carved a mask full of its own energy and life, and yet the forms of this mask can hardly be distinguished from those of the old sculpture.

Kojugu's distinction between an intelligence “of the eye” and “of the inside” acknowledges a difference between artists we would characterize as inspired and those lacking any breath of creativity. Sculptors who can transmit a sense of living energy to their work, who restructure established visual norms, and who occasionally invent completely new visual paradigms (such as the Dabà), must obtain their ideas somewhere. The Bamana and the Malinke lack a single word equivalent to ‘inspiration,’ but they recognize the internal process of obtaining a new aesthetic vision. The word itself may be absent, but the concept of being inspired is well defined. The Bamana employ several different verbs to express different degrees of sculptural creativity: ka bò, ka dilan or ka dlan, and ka dan. Ka bo is the most general of these verbs, for it can mean “to go out, to appear, to cause to go out, to disappear, to unveil, to take off (as in clothes), to discover, to distance oneself from something, to produce, to engender, to separate, to distinguish, to offer in sacrifice,” and in the case of sculpture, “to make” (Bazin 1906, 74–8; Dumestre 1981, no. 1, 154–6). When used by sculptors, bo usually implies both making and finishing an object, and covers the entire trajectory of the carving, from the giving of the commission to the receipt of the completed object by the client. When a sculptor remarks, “Ne ye Komo kunw naani bò,” “I carved four Komo masks,” he means that he made, finished, and delivered four masks, not that he invented four different variants of the mask.

Ka dilan or, as it is often pronounced, ka dlan, is somewhat more complicated. Bazin (1906, 103) translates ka dlan as “to arrange, to repair,” and Dumestre (1983, no. 2, 290–1) as “to make, fabricate, arrange, repair, prepare.” Ka dlan is much more specific than ka bo, and is used primarily to indicate manual, and particularly artisanal, activities. One “arranges” a suitcase full of messy clothes (ka walisi, from the French, valise, dlan), one “repairs” a bicycle (ka nègèso dlan), and one also “arranges” or “fabricates” a ritual object (ka mako nya fèn dlan). When a master carver says, “Ne ye nin dlan” (“I made this”), one knows that he has picked up the adze himself, but when he reports, “Ne ye nin bò,” it is possible that he has only negotiated the commission and supervised the apprentice who actually “fabricated” (ka dlan) the object.

Of all three verbs, ka dan is the most interesting and difficult to translate. Bazin (1906, 96) defines ka dan as “to make, to institute,” and “to create,” and Dumestre (1983, no. 2, 197) as “to lie down, to extend, to place, to believe, to make, to create.” Ka dan indicates that one has invented or created the idea of something as well as the thing itself, whereas ka dlan refers only to manual fabrication. One says “Allah ye mogo dan” (“Allah created man”) to indicate that God invented the idea of human beings. A blacksmith who invents a new mask type, or whose rendition of a familiar type is truly inspired, has “created,” or “invented” (ka dan); but a blacksmith who carves without imagination, without the “intelligence of the inside,” has merely fabricated a wooden thing.

Ka dan carries a sense of inspired creativity, but blacksmiths also use this verb in a specific and highly technical manner. Numuw say that they “forge iron,” ka nègè fa (literally, “to fill,” or “to kill” iron) (Bazin 1906, 182–3), or ka nègè dilan, to indicate that they are working with the iron to transform it into a usable object. However, they use the verb, “ka nègè dan” to describe the process of smelting. In Kojugu's words:

INTERVIEWER: They are not the same?

KOJUGU: No, to work iron [ka nègè dilan].

INTERVIEWER: Together with creating iron [ka nègè dan], are they the same thing?

KOJUGU: It's not the same thing. Ka nègè dan, to “create” iron is like – if you, yourself, you think [about this problem], with us black people, at the time of the furnaces, to smelt the iron so that you yourself you could make it come out [of the furnace] in order to give it the use that you wished. Ka nègè dilan, “to fabricate iron,” that refers to any iron that you get hold of and work into whatever you have need of.[42]

Ka dan thus carries a sense of primary creativity, of making something from scratch, that is much more basic than ka dilan, which indicates that one is working or transforming something that has already been created. An inspired sculptor can “create” a Komo mask (ka Komo kun dan), but he cannot “create” the wood out of which the mask is carved, he can only “work” it (ka yiri dilan). Ritual objects can be both “created” and “fabricated,” but wood can only be “worked.”

Where does a sculptor who “creates” (ka dan) a new variant of the Komo mask type obtain his inspiration? The gifted sculptor is always in contact with a spirit familiar, and the Bamana believe that artists receive detailed visual images of the objects they are destined to carve from their djinns:

KOJUGU: The djinn will come during a dream at night to tell you, “Carve a particular object,” but the thing that tells you this – you don't understand its nature. You will be silent about this. When it is day, the manner in which you have been instructed, you will make it like that, and you won't say anything to anyone [about the dream]. People will ask you, “Eè! So and so, you have just begun a new piece of work?” and you will merely reply, “My thoughts settled on this.” If you respond to people in this way, toward the end, things will clarify themselves, that is to say, what one must make this like this and what one must make like that [the forms of the different sections of the object]. One finds it [the form of the object] with it [the djinn].[43]

This passage suggests that the dream image depicts the outline and main forms of the object, but leaves the details “to clarify themselves” during the course of the work. Different artists probably receive dreams of differing specificity, depending on their temperament and aesthetic sensibilities, but the spirits who provide this inspiration always insist on secrecy and obedience. The sculptor must not discuss the image he has received with anyone else, even other carvers (the fictive interlocutor cited by Kojugu in this passage is probably another sculptor who is curious to see what the master artist is making). Furthermore, the sculptor must obey the spirit's instructions without necessarily understanding them:

KOJUGU: If this happens to you [that you have an idea for a new sculpture], and you have seen it [you have received a mental image of the object], and you are not really asleep, but you are on the alert [half awake and half asleep], in this case, when the information of the night arrives concerning carving, you make it. When you make it, when you make it, [sometimes] you have not been told what problem it will resolve, but you will carve it and set it aside there. If you set it aside and keep it for one year, two, three, and in other cases even seven years, you will be told the reason for which you have sculpted it. But you will execute everything on the day on which you have been shown it [in the dream]; on this day you will do everything to carve it and to keep it there with you.[44]

We have already seen that a carver will make an empty object, a mere “round thing,” if he carves an uncommissioned mask simply for the pleasure of carving, but when a djinn directs the artist to create a sculpture, the sculptor must go ahead with it immediately, even if there is no client in sight. The object is not empty, because it is the direct result of a message from a spirit, who will eventually reveal its “owner” and its use to the carver. In describing this process, Kojugu is well aware that what we would call inspiration comes and goes with startling rapidity, and that creative ideas often arrive when we least expect them. The dream image of the object is liable to vanish if the artist waits until the correct social moment to execute it. In fact, the djinn–sculptor relationship provides a rationale that allows the artist considerable latitude in responding to aesthetic stimuli. As with the European concept of inspiration, djinns can appear at any place and any time, their demands override all the normal contingencies of daily life, and the concrete visual images they transmit through dreams are the direct source of the gifted artist's creativity.

The Bamana not only are aware that inspiration comes and goes, but they also recognize that some artists need an outside stimulus to produce. Kojugu described his collaboration with his “master,” Bourama, reporting that he watched while Bourama carved, and when the older man was about “to lose himself somewhere,” Kojugu corrected him.[45] In another passage, Kojugu elaborates on some sculptors’ need for a collaborator, acknowledging that certain artists require this stimulus to create, whereas others need solitude:

KOJUGU: Some people can execute work [sculpt] even if they are with another person, but others work without anyone else there – even if there are ten people [present], you alone, you can carry out your own work [i.e., your concentration is such that you will continue to work along your own line of thinking, even if there are ten people present]. Each one has his calculations [method].[46]

A colleague's comments, or a client's description of an object he has seen in another village, may be the catalyst that allows the artist to communicate with his djinn, to rethink old forms, and to create a truly original object. Inspiration is dependent on outside stimuli as well as on inner communication with the artist's djinn.

Master and pupil may well collaborate successfully, but, like Basi, most artists become completely absorbed in their task and ignore their surroundings while working. Kojugu describes how onlookers’ comments can both help and hinder the sculptor's progress:

KOJUGU: When you have cut down the tree, and you have come [back into the village] with it. Then, if we [a group of blacksmiths] are seated together, you will say, “Numuw, here is your hand!” and they will say, “May you agree with your foot!” Then you sit down, and you say, “Wa! We will all learn together.” Some will say, “Make it like this, make it like that,” and others will say, “Make it this way, make it that way.” But using this method, there is no way to begin. Thus, in whatever manner you have begun, you must continue like that in order that it will improve.[47]

In making his ritualized salutation, “Numuw, here is your hand!” the sculptor is acknowledging that his hand cuts into the wood on behalf of the group, and that he accepts his colleagues’ participation in his work. The response, “May you agree with your foot!” expresses a wish that the sculptor enjoy a high degree of manual coordination – the hand and the foot must not be doing different things, but working together – and gives the artist permission to undertake the individualistic enterprise of carving. The artist then states, “We will all learn together,” in order to allow his peers to discuss the work at hand, to pinpoint the special problems attached to making this particular object, and to make suggestions about the best way to execute the commission. The sculptor listens to this advice, takes it in, and considers it; but once he has begun to carve, he obeys the dictates of his own artistic vision, lest this well-meant counsel derail the project. Working in the presence of other blacksmiths allows an exchange of visual ideas that can alter the details of an artist's vision, but it cannot replace the dream image provided by his djinn. Nevertheless, the experience of watching other sculptors carve seems to be an important catalyst for communicating with one's own spirit and receiving new inspiration. Sculptors carve objects that comment visually on their competitors’ efforts, and many artists seem to receive dream images just after watching a colleague at work or seeing a particularly striking mask.

Receiving inspiration from djinns or from the work of competitors makes sense when we consider the high level of abstraction in much Bamana and Malinke art. Neither well-known mask types like the Komo (Fig. 2), nor unique creations like the Dabà (Fig. 4), are known for their ‘realism.’ However, Kojugu suggests that even highly abstract objects like the Konon or “bird” mask of the Komo society may be inspired by visual experiences.[48] An encounter with a particularly startling bird, animal, or plant, may well act as a catalyst for the invention of an ‘abstract’ form:

KOJUGU: The head [mask] of the Konon is the large head of the Konon; one can even say that it is the head of the dugon.[49]

INTERVIEWER: Well, is it that the dugon is a bird sorcerer?

KOJUGU: Nn, nn [no].

INTERVIEWER: Then, why have they used the example of the dugon’s head [as a model for the mask]?

KOJUGU: Ehe! Ehe! Ehe! It is their thoughts that have directed them toward it [the dugon]. It is the nature of the work [of sculpture] that if your thoughts are aroused by something, if your calculations become important in your head, you will put yourself on that.

INTERVIEWER: I know well. But, among black people – black people don't do anything without a meaning to it. We, we have destroyed our culture ourselves, but the Europeans haven't destroyed their culture themselves.

KOJUGU: They didn't make that [the Konon mask] in the image of the dugon by sorcery. You will see that the children and adolescents can trap all the birds and bring them home to the village except for the dugon. If one is talking about the dugon – and I'm not talking about a hunter with his gun – I am talking about the little, stupid things that children do in the bush to trap quail, ntolenw,[50] and wild pigeons, trap them and come home with them, but never, even if you assemble one hundred old people together, people will tell you that never, ever since their youth and up through their old age, they have never seen a person hold both feet of the dugon in the hand and bring it into the village. The Konon’s head is made to resemble the head of the dugon for this reason.[51]

Stimulated by seeing a dugon in the bush, the artist “calculates” or thinks about its appearance until he can carve a mask whose forms evoke the presence of the bird. Kojugu uses the verb ka kènyè to express the idea of resemblance; Bazin (1906, 286) defines ka kènyè as “to be equal to, to be similar to, to make equal, to adjust, to adapt, and to coincide,” while Dumestre (1987, no. 5, 835–6) gives the meanings, “to coincide, to correspond, to be equal to, to be at the same level with.” Carving a mask that “resembles” the living bird consists of creating forms whose effect on the viewer “is equal to” that of the dugon. The forms themselves may be ‘abstract’ rather than ‘realistic’; however, the artist's goal is not to ‘represent’ the bird in the Western sense of the term, but to encode its most essential characteristics in the wooden shape. Indeed, the reason why achieving this “resemblance” is so important is not visual at all: in using the dugon as a source of inspiration, the sculptor is trying to convey an abstract concept – that of elusiveness – rather than a ‘realistic’ image. The visual “resemblance” or “equality” between sculpture and bird is important because it clothes the abstract power animating the Konon mask in a material shape. The mask's evocation of the living bird, whose elusiveness is legendary, demonstrates the impossibility of capturing or controlling the spirit that animates the headdress and its wearer. The artist uses the visual “resemblance” to convey a message about the nature of the Konon spirit; the dugon functions as an appropriate model because its outstanding quality – elusiveness – is the same as that of the spirit, but the Bamana do not believe that the spirit of the Konon necessarily ‘looks like’ or ‘is’ a dugon. Even more than its form, it is the abstract quality associated with the bird that inspires the sculptor.

Kojugu explains how the dugon becomes a source of inspiration by stating, “It is their thoughts that have directed them toward it,” and he also notes that sculptors report that “my thoughts settled on this,”[52] when they respond to questions concerning the source of their ideas. Inspiration may come in the form of a dream image, but the sculptor investigates and explores these images in his “thoughts” before he picks up the adze. Important artists are famous for their absentmindedness, their apparent deafness when one asks them a simple question, and their habit of talking into the air, presumably to spirit familiars. This vacancy is only a veneer that cloaks the artist's concentration; ritual requirements allow little latitude for carving trial objects or correcting misplaced cuts in the wood. The sculptor must be absolutely sure of the image he wishes to produce before he begins work, otherwise he will make irreparable mistakes or be unable to finish a Komo mask in several days. Kojugu describes this process of “thinking” about an object prior to carving as follows:

KOJUGU: [repeats and summarizes interviewer's question] Will you think about the thing [you are going to carve] before you have even cut down the tree?

INTERVIEWER: You have cut it down.

KOJUGU: You have cut it down, but before this you have reflected deeply [on the object to be made] when it [the tree] was still living.

INTERVIEWER: That's it [that's the nature of my question].

KOJUGU: You must think on it. Nhun.

INTERVIEWER: You must think about it?

KOJUGU: Nhun [yes].

INTERVIEWER: Will you think about a woman or a man [about carving a male or female figure]?

KOJUGU: You must think about it. The thing that you have thought before leaving your house, you must make it like that.[53]

Through this process of thinking, the sculptor has already fixed the shape of the object he is to carve before he even cuts down the tree. However inspiration comes, whether via a dream image, the sight of a competitor at work, or through a visual experience of the world around him, the sculptor must still “think” before carving. In this thinking, what aesthetic principles guide the artist, enabling him to refine and redefine the visions that catch him unawares as he lies half awake on his mat?

As in painting mud cloth, the Bamana do not consider that detailed work on small sections of the carving is particularly difficult, although it may be time-consuming. Rather, the most taxing problem to confront the artist is how to arrange the different shapes that make up the sculpture in a harmonious manner:

KOJUGU: The action of carving, of placing the different parts, each one in relation with the other, it is this that is difficult.[54]

Each shape should conform in size and appearance with a typological model imprinted in the artist's memory, while the forms themselves must be counterbalanced against each other so that they attain an equilibrium. A few seconds earlier in the same interview, Kojugu describes the process of making sure that the different features of a Komo mask interlock harmoniously, mocking the ridiculous mask that will result if this goal is not kept firmly in mind.

INTERVIEWER: How can you say that it [a mask] isn't good? If the teeth are long or if they are short, or if the ears are long or if they are short, or if the horns are long or if they are short?

KOJUGU: Neither the length of the horns, nor their breadth spoils it [the mask]. The head [mask] of the Komo itself, its head that you look at like that, it should not go beyond its [correct] size, nor should it be smaller [than that; i.e., there are traditional limits for the size of a Komo mask].

INTERVIEWER: Its normal size is how many meters or how many hands [high]?

KOJUGU: I think that we [blacksmiths] measure everything [every sculptor retains a clear concept of the size appropriate for each object he may be asked to carve].

INTERVIEWER: Good, now, there where we were, we were on the question concerning the manner of making the Komo mask. If you look at a Komo [mask], how can you say that it is good, that's where we were.

KOJUGU: Nhun.

INTERVIEWER: Now if a blacksmith carves a Komo mask and you, you have heard of it. If it happens that he has misplaced the horns, can you say that this horn could have been placed here? Can you say that it is good? Can you say that it is bad?

KOJUGU: If I am looking at the horns that are on it, there can be horns – if you wish, you can place them on the nose, but it won't be an attractive thing. If you carve, and you really haven't done it well, if I can see the reason that has caused it to fail with my eyes, I know it [why it has failed] by the manner in which you have placed the horns, the manner in which you have placed the horns and also the eyes, and then the nose, the distance between the nose and the mouth and their limits [their traditional proportions], and the manner in which the mouth should be made. One lip should not be longer than the other, but it is the jaw that should be long and the forehead. If I don't see these things [the correct proportions], then I will say that the sculptor is not good, or that he has made mistakes.[55]

Kojugu tells us that he judges a Komo mask by examining the relationship between its various features. If the horns, the nose, the mouth, and the ears are each carved in proportion to each other, and if these features form an ensemble that conforms to the mental image of the mask type inherited from the past, the carver has succeeded. However, an artist who exaggerates wildly by breaking the traditional pattern and putting a horn on the Komo‘s nose, has been not inventive but ridiculous. The great sculptor aims to create a measured and reflective transformation of a familiar type, not to break the boundaries of the inherited pattern.

The intelligence “of the inside” that permits a sculptor to create (ka dan) a Komo mask whose thrusting horns balance the chasm of the mouth, demands intense concentration, for the desired equilibrium is not easy to attain. If the sculptor does not spend sufficient time “thinking,” and the finished object does not reflect the artist's inner image, it has failed:

KOJUGU: The ideas according to which you are going to fabricate it [the object], you have already meditated on these until you have mastered them, you have reviewed these thoughts in your mind. If you don't see the image of the object that you have conceived [after finishing the carving], if you haven't seen the lines of this image, you will say, “I made a mistake in this sculpture.” This is how one knows that one has made errors.[56]

In another passage, Kojugu admits that the task of getting the carving to correspond with the sculptor's inner vision is difficult, but he adds that it is possible if one avoids dispersing one's attention:

KOJUGU: It is difficult to make all of these things [masks cited by the interviewer in his question: the Komo, Kore, Konon, and N'tomo). But if you are someone with a clear mind, you can … indeed, this work, you will take it on in your mind. The execution of all of these is difficult, whether it is the Komo or the Konon, none of these objects is understood easily, but one's intelligence eases the task. Indeed, if you have absorbed the design [here he uses the French word “dessin“] inside yourself, if you have settled down to it [to thinking about the carving] and you haven't dispersed your attention, you can make it swiftly.[57]

When Kojugu says, “if you are someone with a clear mind,” he uses the expression hakili jèlen. Hakili simply means “thoughts” or “intelligence,” but jèlen is difficult to translate. According to Bazin (1906, 156), the adjective jèlen means “white, clean, clear, manifest, pure, certain, sure.” jèlen is often translated as “white,” but it is much more common to employ it in the sense of “clear” or “spotless.” Washed laundry is jèlen whether it is white, yellow, red, or blue, because it is clean. Likewise, a person who is jèlen is unambiguous, direct, and clear; he means what he says and keeps his word. In fact the true opposite of jè is not black (fiyn), but the sinister term dibilen, “obscure” or “muddled.” Jèlen also has implications of sexual purity; a sculptor who picks up his tools immediately after sexual relations is neither “clear,” nor “clean”; a jèlen tè. Thus, Kojugu's phrase, “n'i kèra hakili jèlen ye” (“if you are someone with a clear mind”), implies not only that the sculptor has focused his intelligence on the problem at hand, but that he is at peace with other family members, his village, and the clients whose commission he undertakes. Furthermore, he has not been distracted by either licit or illicit sexual relations; both mind and body are unsullied and open to profound thought. It is out of this “clearness” that the artist can obtain a detailed inner picture of the object he is to make.

The adult ability to recognize and reject “obscure” alternatives, whether visual or moral, is critically important to obtaining the intelligence “of the inside,” the power that allows one to create a balanced and harmonious carving. Children, as well as artists whose gifts are exclusively visual, lack this awareness. Kojugu describes the capacities and limits of gifted children and adolescents as follows:

KOJUGU: There are some uncircumcized young men – if they see something with their eyes, if they are true blacksmiths, if they see it with their eyes, they will carve it. But the real use – one doesn't tell him that, but he [the uncircumcized young man] will carve it in the form of a certain mask, but no one will tell him its use.[58]

Uncircumcized youths are not told the meaning of the object they so easily carve, for they have not yet entered the Komo, they have not been given permission to marry and enjoy sexual relations, and they have not yet had to face the difficult decision to refrain from sex in order to cultivate a spirit familiar and to carve.[59] They do not know about “obscurity,” so they cannot really be “clear.” Their visual gifts are usable, but the objects they carve will not bear the imprint of a profound mind; their sculptures will not express the depth of “thought” and vision that characterizes the ngana who has confronted the demands of his djinn, accepted the price he must pay for his gifts, and continued to work. Just as the djinns themselves are harsh and violent in addition to being “clear” and straightforward, so the vision that is “white,” “manifest,” and “certain” (jèlen) encompasses anger and tragedy. For the “intelligence of the inside” sees and experiences the full range of violent and destructive emotions; the mature ngana “sees” evil as well as good, and the objects he creates are “clear” precisely because he has experienced both and can distinguish between them.

Kojugu acknowledges that in children, the gift for copying a model may hold the promise of artistic maturity, but he reiterates his preference for the artist who has obtained a clear inner vision:

KOJUGU: We say, “Nhun, a certain artist is with a certain person, if you describe this thing to him, how it is made with all the details, you explain all the details of how it is made to him, he will make it just as you have described it, he will do this.” This is the type of blacksmith that we prefer [the one who can make an object from a verbal description without needing a model]. We [Kojugu] learned to work like that. After that, if you have seen it [the model] with your eyes – that is studying with the eyes. But if you are able to create it thus, it is not your strength as a ngana, it is not your power. You have been told and you have heard; people have told you that the thing is short or it is long or it is black or striped, that its feet are like this and the eyes are like that, the back is like this and the front is like that. If you are told all this, you will make all the calculations in your interior, and then you will carve it without any of his [the person who has commissioned and described the piece] relatives knowing about it. We, we carve like this. These ones are called “sorcerers.”[60]

Kojugu praises the sculptor who can reassemble an object in his mind from a purely verbal description, and then realize it in raw wood. In contrast to those artists who require a model, the sculptor who possesses imaginative ability is a subaga or “sorcerer.” The Bamana often refer to subagaw in negative terms, but the term can also be a compliment. Some sorcerers are certainly capable of invisibly consuming their relatives and friends by night; these victims grow thin and die mysteriously as they are offered by novice subagaw to older members of their fraternity. A subaga can also leave his physical body (fari) sleeping on the bed, and his ja or “shadow” can transform itself into an animal (for example, a hyena, a lion, a large turtle, or a vulture) in order to roam the bush. No one ever quite wishes to say that any particular ngana is a “sorcerer” in this negative sense, for subagaw are invariably powerful. Thus, an ill-intentioned “sorcerer” is always someone ‘other’ and never a member of one's own group. However, people are prepared to call a great healer, sculptor, or ritual expert a subaga so long as they make clear that they are using the word in a positive sense. Any inventor who imagines a hitherto unknown device is a subaga in this sense of the term. For example, my informants frequently made statements like, “Tubabuw ye subagaw ye, u ma awion dlan?” or “Europeans are sorcerers, haven't they invented the airplane?” Europeans are unknown, strange, and ‘other,’ and they have mastered technical secrets that enable them to imitate birds and fly. Their miraculous power of flight, and the unknown methods through which they have obtained this ability, make them quintessential “sorcerers.”

Likewise, a famous sculptor who disappears into the bush for months at a time, who converses daily with spirits, and whose children die mysteriously and sometimes unnaturally, becomes an ‘other’ whose creation of powerful ritual objects remains an impenetrable mystery. The artist who conceives new objects in his mind and carves them in secret, is almost a prototypical subaga. Society cannot do without him and his inventions, but no one wishes to look too closely at the means by which he has arrived at his solutions. To be called subaga is to be acknowledged as a master of the unknown, as the creator of hitherto unseen miracles like the Dabà, but it is also to be feared and to be left alone with one's spirits. Thus, when Kojugu says, “This is the type of blacksmith that we prefer,” or “These ones are called sorcerers,” he is acknowledging that even among blacksmiths, those master artists who can create an original vision in their minds, those who possess an “intelligence of the interior,” are simultaneously feared and applauded.[61] To be a master sculptor is to have conquered the miraculous, to have inner as well as exterior vision, and to be a “sorcerer.”

The sculptor's concentration on obtaining a mental image of the object he is to carve, and his focus on nonvisual similarities between the ‘model’ and the sculpture, make copying as we know it in the West problematic. The apprentice sculptor may travel to see a famous object, and he may even receive a special dispensation to examine it in private, but he does not sit down and copy from the model, stroke by stroke. Just as griots self-consciously develop an extraordinary facility for memorizing praise poems or epic poetry the first time it is heard, so blacksmiths acquire a spectacular visual memory. An ambitious apprentice must be able to focus the blurred outline of a famous mask as it performs by night, to grasp and memorize the wooden shapes that create this flickering image, and then create his own reimagined version of the object. Kojugu says:

KOJUGU: You learn. Some learn to carve. For certain people learning this doesn't take time. The things that these people see, just with their eyes [without picking up the object and examining it], they can make these things.[62]

The apprentice's visual memory must produce a clear mental image that can serve as an internal model for his carving. The resulting mask must satisfy both the demand for originality and the test of comparison with the ancient ‘model.’ Kojugu describes the success of his Daoudabugu commission in exactly these terms:

KOJUGU: Before I sculpted mine [my Komo mask], they showed me the old one and its aspect – its sight was sweet to me, but, I, too, I carved my own and I showed it to them. Then they said, “Was it my grandfather who had carved the old mask, or perhaps it was my father who had carved it?” I answered that my father was not accustomed to come here and that my grandfather, too, did not have the habit of coming here.[63]

Kojugu does not cite the elders’ astounded response to seeing the old and new masks side by side to prove that he can copy a model line for line and shape for shape. Rather, he wishes to demonstrate that he does not need the old mask in front of him to absorb its spirit, and to adapt his own personal “hand” to the Daoudabougou style. Kojugu's mask is not a ‘copy’; it is a new Komo whose style and feeling is so close to that of the old mask that it deceives the incredulous viewers into believing that Kojugu's father or grandfather made the original object.

Kojugu's aversion to copying is based on more than its reduction of the imaginative process to rote actions; he considers that it actually leads the artist astray, corrupting and confusing his clear mental image:

INTERVIEWER: You have said that if you place the old Komo mask next to the new one while you are in the process of carving the new Komo, that this will disturb your spirit. What is the reason that you will be perturbed? What disturbs you?

KOJUGU: If I said that this would perturb me, it is due to two things: placing one next to the other, and observing the one that you are in the process of making, and simultaneously observing the one that is already made. In doing this you will make mistakes while working. If you are a true, true blacksmith, once they have shown it to you, if you turn it and turn it and turn it, and you observe it, you turn it and you look at it, and you turn it and you look at it, once, twice, three times, and if you say, “That's good like that,” at this moment you have seized its essence in your spirit, and you give it back. If you observe in the manner that one must observe it, you will be able to work [in a style similar to it] according to your own ideas. If no one says to you, “Do it like this,” or “Do it like that,” if you just look at the old one like that with your innermost self, and if you capture the idea in your belly, you will work and make it as it pleases you. But if you work on the new one and at the same time you are looking at the old one, it is obligatory that one part will fail. One part will spoil itself while you have your eyes open on the other one. At that time it will be the eyes [rather than the hand] that works. One sees, but it is one's intelligence [and spirit] that works, it is the sculptor's intelligence that works well and gives him renown. I myself work like that.[64]

Kojugu uses the verb ka lajè (Bamana) or ka lòjè (Malinke) to express the idea that the sculptor must observe, examine, and consider the old mask very carefully.[65] He does not simply look at the ancient Komo. Rather, he picks it up, turns it over, examines it minutely and commits its forms to memory. However, when the artist finally returns the old mask to its owners and begins to carve a new Komo, “it is his intelligence that works,” not merely his memory. In the process of considering the old mask, the sculptor has conceived his own ideas of what a Komo headdress should be, and it is this mental image that will enable him to carve a new mask successfully.

Kojugu tells us that the presence of the old mask will lead the sculptor astray, causing him to commit errors in the new carving. In another interview Kojugu confirms that he would never wish to look at an old mask while he is carving a new one, lest the shapes of the old impose themselves on him and cause him to lose his concentration:

INTERVIEWER: Good, now, if people want you to imitate their Komo mask, will they come with that [the old one] and place it next to you in the bush – how does this happen?

KOJUGU: To imitate it?

INTERVIEWER: In the case that you are carving a new one.

KOJUGU: If people have come to tell me that they want me to carve a new Komo mask?

INTERVIEWER: Nhun [yes].

KOJUGU: To come with the old one and place it next to me?

INTERVIEWER: Nhun [yes].

KOJUGU: Nn, nn [no]. I will carve it, if you have told me [to carve the new one], simply, I will calculate it [imagine it] in my head and carve it until it is finished. Then I will tell you that the thing you asked me about is finished.[66]

No sculptor of worth would imitate (ka ladege) an old mask, nor, indeed, would he ever measure an old mask with either his hand or a cord. The gifted artist is fully capable of grasping both the dimensions and the proportions of the old mask in his head, and he relies on his intelligence and spirit to direct his hand as he carves a replacement piece:

INTERVIEWER: If someone gave you a Komo mask right now, so that you could carve one [a similar one], and the old mask was placed next to you, how would you measure it? Would you measure it with a stick? Would you measure it with your hand? Would you measure it with your foot, or, well, would you measure it with your eyes, with your intelligence and with your thoughts?

KOJUGU: I cannot answer on behalf of anyone else, but if it is given to me, Kojugu, while telling me that I must carve a similar one, I would not measure it with my hand, and I would not measure it with a cord – indeed, I wouldn't measure it in any way at all. But if I cast my eyes over it three times, I will take its measurements, all its true measurements, I will take them, all of them, with my inner knowledge; I will carve it in the same manner as the old mask.[67]

In this passage and the one preceding it, Kojugu tells us that sculptors seek to maintain both a physical distance and a conceptual gap between the old mask and the new, for it is the absence of a direct model that enables the sculptor to work successfully. The new mask resembles the old when it manages to capture the essence and intensity of the ancient object and to convey a similar feeling to the viewer, not when its forms are identical with those of the old carving.

Copying may be problematic for the Bamana, but the carver who faces an untouched block of lènkè wood still operates according to a concept of resemblance, even if his ideas seem somewhat strange to a Western viewer. The sculptor cannot stray too far from traditional norms; if he places horns on a Komo mask's nose he will become ridiculous, and he will certainly never win a name for himself. The critical features – horns, large gaping mouth, teeth, and ears – must be placed in approximately correct positions, and, as Kojugu emphasizes, their interrelationship must be carefully calibrated so as to form a balanced and somewhat conventional whole.

However, the Komo‘s abstract forms do not highlight the Bamana and Malinke concept of resemblance nearly so well as portrait sculpture.[68] Here, the model facing the carver is a living or dead human being, not an old Komo mask, and the sculptor's clients expect him to make an object that will immediately summon up the person in question. When asked if it were possible to capture the image of a grandparent in wood, Kojugu replied:

KOJUGU: That was done – taking the image of one's grandparents.

INTERVIEWER: Nhun?

KOJUGU: A certain thing [a sculpture] is a certain one [a specific person], a certain thing is a certain one, making such a thing, making such a carving and saying, “This sculpture is so-and-so”; and making another carving and saying, “This sculpture is so-and-so.” Each sculpture has its own name, and each one has its own place [here, place means function: every sculpture is made for a different purpose, or to represent a different human being]. You will execute the work for this purpose, it's like this.[69]

Kojugu does not say that the wooden figure “resembles,” or “is similar to” the grandparent in question; he uses the construction, “X ye Y ye,” or “X is Y,” to indicate that the sculpture actually replaces the person in question. This construction is often used to explain abstract images, such as mud-cloth designs; when pointing to a four-lobed cross, dyers will state, “Nin ye baara fyere so ye” or “This is the flower of the gourd plant” (Fig. 32). While the non-Bamana viewer is tempted to assume that this statement indicates a visual resemblance, even if highly abstract, the Bamana also state that “X is Y” when the two items in question are dissimilar in visual terms. In fact, “X is Y” most commonly designates two items that may or may not have an obvious visual resemblance, but which function in exactly the same manner. In this case, the carving of one's grandfather “is” one's grandfather, because one can put it in the old man's place and talk to it as though he were still alive. In many cases “X is Y” because X functions as though it were Y, not because it necessarily looks like Y.

‘Portrait’ sculptures are carved to “be” or function as the person they replace, but they do not necessarily resemble that person in our sense of the term. In the following passage, Kojugu describes a possible use of a carving made to represent his living wife, Dusu:

KOJUGU: She [Dusu's close woman friend] will come and take it [the carving of Dusu], if it happens that you [Kojugu and the friend] get along. When one has carved it, supposing Dusu's friend saw it and said, “It's Dusu's husband that has made this. This sculpture is the second Dusu in wood.” I [Kojugu] kept it there [put it aside]. If Dusu were to die, if Dusu's friend had need of it, she would come and take it. But we [Kojugu's family] wouldn't agree that she take it and keep it for herself. This loan could be for three years, or four years, or even ten years, and during this time she could keep the sculpture. But the path by which the carving left – it must come home by the same route [i.e., if the sculpture is a loan, it must be returned].[70]

The sculpture is the “second Dusu in wood” because it bears some visual sign that alerts the viewer to its identity, and because it can be put in Dusu's place. The grieving friend can borrow the statuette, wash it, dress it, and talk to it as though to her dead companion, and in so doing assuage her sorrow.[71]

How can Dusu's friend identify the statuette as “the second Dusu in wood” if it does not bear a ‘realistic’ resemblance to the dead woman? Kojugu explains:

KOJUGU: There are two things; we situate the resemblance in the feet and in the head. If the person's feet are large, you will enlarge the feet of the sculpture. I – my grandfather – if he placed his foot here, there was no other man in the vicinity who had the same feet. You would make the feet [of the statuette] like that. If the head is large, you will enlarge it in the sculpture. My grandfather, precisely in our region – if he couldn't carry a burden, then no one could lift it there. If he couldn't do something, no one else could do it. If he couldn't lift a burden, then no one else could carry it. Nhun.[72]

In carving a representation of an individual like Dusu, sculptors do not seek a line-for-line and shape-for-shape similarity to the human being of which the carving is a ‘portrait.’ Rather, what concerns the artist is the need to mark a sculpture with a distinctive and obvious characteristic (such as large feet or a large head) so that it can be identified as a particular person. Just as a new Komo must display the same key features as old and familiar ones, so the statuette must direct the viewer's attention toward the most distinctive characteristic of the person portrayed. However ‘abstract’ the style, the statuette will still read as Kojugu's grandfather, provided it has enormous feet, for its viewers know that his feet were the old man's identifying mark. The feet become an almost abstract sign that informs the viewer that the statuette has been made with the intention of resembling Kojugu's grandfather. Once this signal has alerted the viewer to the statue's identity, he can make the functional equation “X is Y,” or “X ye Y ye.” The viewer then knows that he must handle the statuette as though it were the person in question:

KOJUGU: It [the carving of a deceased old man] will be placed in his own place. What is the reason for which one puts the sculpture in the place of the old man? If the people [in the old man's household] know the words that one uses to make offerings [the incantations and ritual words that one uses to communicate with spirits and the dead], then they will place the sculpture in the place of the old man. But even if they don't know these incantatory words, in any case, you possess something [with the ownership of the sculpture]. Then, it becomes a thing whose use one no longer knows. Nn.[73]

Because the ‘resemblance’ depends both on a highly abstract feature such as the size of the feet, and on the viewer being able to link this feature to his prior knowledge, ‘portraits’ can lose their identity within one or two generations. Despite this potential for loss, the statue is still valuable: a young man may not recognize his great-grandfather in the figure he has inherited, but he is well aware that such an object was intended to be a portrait, and as such, incorporates the powers of the human being represented. With the passage of time, access to the specific abilities (for instance, success in hunting) attributed to the individual depicted by the statuette may be lost, but the figurine always retains a more diffuse power that can be appealed to for help with a variety of problems.

Kojugu implicitly acknowledged that the task of creating a resemblance to a living person was much more difficult than simply translating the shapes obtained from a djinn into the familiar forms of a Komo mask, when he declared that the hardest task for a carver was the creation of a twin figure (filani yiri), and when, in another interview, he described the difficulties involved in carving a human figure (yirimògòni) (Fig. 3).[74] Given the sculptor's training and his prolonged attempts to obtain visionary images through a spirit familiar, it is hardly surprising that creating a resemblance to a living person should pose special problems. For the focus of traditional apprenticeship is not on this world but on the other, that invisible but parallel order that lurks behind the signals that diviners, ritual experts, and sculptors interpret with such apparent ease. The visual phenomena that Kojugu “observes” and memorizes are signs from the other world. Their importance does not lie in their appearance, but in their function as an abstract code that enables the artist to communicate with the invisible.

The Process of Carving

Apprenticeship teaches the artist to master this code and to translate it into carved shapes, harnessing the inspiration that comes from the alternate world. Along the way, he must protect himself by ingesting special drugs, he must aim for a visual equilibrium that does not threaten traditional assumptions, and he must develop his visual memory so that he can recall the exact features of a mask he has seen only briefly by night. Finally, he must maintain a sexual abstinence that assures his purity when at last he picks up his adze. With all this behind him, as he banishes the crowding thoughts of possible reprisals, how does the artist proceed?

Let us take the example Kojugu seemed to prefer: the task of carving a Komo mask. Just after dawn, secluded in the bush or on the grave of a woman who has died in childbirth, the sculptor moves toward his tools. Suddenly he stops, lets his hands drop, and hesitates (ka kusun) like an animal sensing danger.[75] Perhaps his tools are not “white” after all, perhaps one of his apprentices has failed to wash after having sexual relations and has picked them up. In this new age of tubabuya or “Europeanness” one never knows, and it is better to be safe than sorry. So, in Kojugu's words:

KOJUGU: Yes, if you are going to execute a job that is secret and that is also difficult, if you hesitate [ka kusun] you say, “My adze and my axe – someone dirty has touched them!” Anyone could have touched them. You cannot be Allah and know this. Then you take them, you sit down, and you file them. At this time, if you yourself are pure, the manner in which you yourself are, all your tools for carving will be like that.[76]

Then, reassured that both his own body and his tools are pure, the artist finally picks up his adze and attacks the raw wood (yiri kulukutuma) (Figs. 33–35).[77] The word sculptors use to designate an uncarved block of wood, kulukutuma, is significant; Bazin (1906, 329) defines it as “globe, disk, mass, substance,” but Dumestre provides a far more evocative definition. According to Dumestre (1988, no. 6, 980), the first meaning of kulukutuma is “nude” or “naked,” and then “round.” As his primary example of the word's use, Dumestre cites the phrase ni cè y'i sigi ka a muso kulukutuma sigilen ye, or “When a man sits down and sees his wife completely nude.” Dumestre's definition suggests that the paradigm of roundness is a woman's body; it is the fullness and three-dimensionality of a woman's curves that incite desire, and the “raw” or “naked” wood would seem to await the sculptor in much the same way as a desirable woman. Not for the first time, the vocabulary of carving contains an implicit metaphor of sexual union.

Positioning himself so that he faces the fruitful south, the artist sits flat on the ground, his legs spread apart, and holding the “raw” wood before him, he begins to work (Fig. 38).[78] According to Kojugu, there is no one place where a sculptor should begin:

KOJUGU: An, an, as for that [the place where one attacks the wood], the place where your hand leads you, if the place to begin seems to be there, your hand … if only you have the courage to begin somewhere, then you will work there.[79]

However, ritual objects must not be carved with the right hand, but with the left, the same hand that is used to clean the genitals and to introduce a man's penis into a woman. As a hidden thing (a “secret,” gundo), an activity that, as we shall see, reverses the normal and natural processes of life, ritual carving can be executed only with the hand that is usually rejected, the ostensibly useless “man's hand.”

Figure 33. Yiri kulukutuma, the “nude,” “naked,” or “round” rough wood that is the sculptor's raw material. Basi Fane's apprentice is finishing the task of stripping the bark away from the block of wood; he holds his axe in his right hand, because the Tyi Warra will not be used ritually. Photographed in the bush by the author's associate, 2/12/84.

Although the sculptor may begin anywhere, his first task is to block out the broad outlines of the object, whether it is a Tyi Warra, a yirimògòni, or a Komo mask (Figs. 39–43). Kojugu uses the verb ka ma paron paron to describe this process when he says, “N'i ye a maparon ni sèmè ye fòlòn k'a jate jate sigi, …” or, “When you have sketched it out with the adze, and you have marked the limits [of each shape] …”[80] Ka ma paron paron is not listed in either Bazin or Dumestre, and it would appear to be a technical term used exclusively by sculptors. Another way of indicating that one is at the first stages of carving is to say, “Ne bè yiri walaki,” or literally, “I am uncovering the wood.” Ka walaki usually means “to take the bark off,” or “to take the leaves off” (Bazin, 1906, 656), but Kojugu uses it in the technical sense of executing the first, sketchy stage of a sculpture. Bazin (1906, 656) translates the related verb, ka walaka, as “to take the leaves off, to dismount (as in a gun or an apparatus),” and “to take off clothes.” According to Bazin (1906, 656), ka walaka and ka walaki both derive from the same Arab root, waraqa (a noun meaning “leaves” as in “leaves on a tree”), and the two verbs’ meanings are so close that the sense of one probably affects the use of the other.[81] If the untouched block of wood is poetically described as “naked” (kulukutuma), then we may infer that the term ka walaki carries similar overtones of “taking the clothes off” or “uncovering” (ka walaka) the sculpture hidden within the inert mass. These metaphors suggest that the sculptor is not only viewing a “naked” thing in the untouched block of wood, but that he is actually “taking the clothes off it” when he sketches out the object's first rough shapes.

Figure 34. Basi Fane measuring the length of yiri kulukutuma necessary for the Tyi Warra mask he is about to carve for the author. Basi uses a stick to measure the length of the block; he will then judge by eye how much of the stick's length is superfluous. Photographed just outside Basi Fane's compound, 2/13/84.

Figure 35. Basi's apprentice, Kege Danyogo, cuts the shortened block of raw wood in half to expose the termite damage (Fig. 36), which will be removed before Basi begins to carve the mask. The Kita-style Tyi Warra mask is flat enough that it requires only half the circular block of wood. Photographed just outside Basi Fane's compound, 2/13/84.

How does a master sculptor “take the clothes off” the wood to reveal a Komo mask? Kojugu describes the order in which the sculptor attacks the different features of the mask as follows:

KOJUGU: Now [after making the first cut in the wood], you will carve it, you will begin to make the sculpture. First you will calculate the head, and when the head has been calculated, then you will measure the face, you will choose the position of the eyes, you will choose the position of the nose, and you will cut it [the wood] on the basis of these calculations. When you have marked the position of the nose, you will turn to the mouth, and you will calculate the distance between the nose and the mouth. Then you will turn it [the wood] and choose the position of the ears. When you have carved the region of the ears, you will finish it by making the mouth appear. When you have determined the size of the mouth, before you carry the sculpture to its conclusion, you will make the space between the neck and the chin, you will determine this carefully, and then you will carve it so that everything is balanced. After that you will carve the neck, and as to the horns, if you are going to put horns on it, then you will position the horns. If you don't make horns, if you are going to make it flat, you will carve it just like that. When you have finished, you will adorn it with cowries and birds’ heads. In my case, the things that I know concerning the Komo take place like that.[82]

Kojugu tells us that the sculptor marks out (ka jate sigi, ka jate bò) the shapes in this order, but this does not mean that he must finish carving the eyes before beginning the ears. Artists first mark the main features in the order cited here, but they turn the sculpture continuously as they work so that the object's features emerge stage by stage. The wood is removed level by level so that the eyes, nose, mouth, and ears are all two-thirds finished at the same moment. Kojugu and other sculptors use the verb ka dèsè (Bamana) or ka lèse (Malinke) to describe the process of stripping the layers of surplus wood away from the object's final shape (Figs. 44–45). Ka dèsè is a technical term that designates the action of chipping away at the wood with an adze; it lacks the metaphorical overtones of kulukutuma and ka walaki. Ka dèsè can also be used to mean “to carve” in a more general sense, as in the sentence, “Ne ye Kòmò kun dèsè,” “I carved a Komo mask,” or “I made a Komo mask.”[83]

Despite the speed with which many sculptors work, the process of stripping away the excess wood does not proceed without interruption. When Kojugu says, “Ka yèlèma ka tulow fanfèla makaran” (“Then you will turn it [the wood] and choose the position of the ears”), he uses the verb ka makaran. Dumestre (1989, no. 7, 1128) translates ka makaran as “to think of, to take care of, to watch over, to protect” and “to defend.”[84] Kojugu uses ka makaran to indicate that the sculptor not only turns the mask over, but also that he concentrates, focusing his attention on the critical problem of positioning the ears. Basi regularly took such lengthy pauses during which he considered, evaluated, and in Dumestre's terms “watched over” and “protected” the progress he had made, and reflected on his next step (Fig. 46). During this process, the sculptor pays more attention to the interrelationship between the various parts of the mask than to individual sections, for he can easily lose the sense of balance and proportion that are so essential to a successful carving. Then, when he has finally made a decision as to what is necessary, the artist will once more pick up his adze and proceed rapidly ahead.

Figure 36. The block of raw dyafereke wood cut in half to display the full extent of the termite damage. Photographed just outside Basi Fane's compound, 2/13/84.

Figure 37. Basi's apprentice, Kege Danyogo, removing the termite-damaged section from the block of dyafereke wood used to make the author's Tyi Warra. Photographed just outside Basi Fane's compound, 2/13/84.

The same sense of proportion governs the penultimate stages of carving. Kojugu tells us that when the sculptor has completed most of his work, he “will make the space between the neck and the chin, he will determine this carefully, and then he will carve it so that everything is balanced.” Once again, Kojugu uses the verb ka makaran to express the careful consideration the artist gives to the relation between neck and chin. However, he also employs another term, ka o dalakanya, to describe the visual balance between these features. In literal terms, ka dalakanya means “to make the mouths equal,” or “to make the shapes equal,” and the verb perfectly expresses the process of shaving away the excess wood until every feature of the mask rests in a calibrated equilibrium with every other, and the artist has achieved the sought-after sense of balance.[85]

Achieving the correct proportions is probably the most difficult task facing the sculptor, but according to Kojugu, every carver finds certain, specific features of a Komo mask especially troublesome:

KOJUGU: Haven't I told you that each person has his own way of working? If it is I, Kojugu, who makes it, the part that is the most difficult for me is putting in the details of the head – giving its form to the head – that is what I find difficult. If I can produce this form [correctly], and there are no defects in any part of it, the rest is easy. But everyone has his own way of taking the work. For some, you will find that carving the nose is the most difficult thing for them. For others, it is carving the mouth that is the most difficult. Or then again, for certain people, it is making the ears, or again, some can carve everything easily, but then one arrives at the place where one must carve the horns – that is the most difficult part. For me, that isn't difficult. Outlining the head alone is what is difficult for me.[86]

Although Kojugu reports that other sculptors find it hard to carve the nose, the mouth, the ears, or the horns, his own problem in outlining the shape of the head may be more widespread than he admits. It is interesting that Salimata Kone identified the drawing of the first tentative black lines that divide a mud cloth into its five standard sections, as the most difficult visual task facing any mud-cloth artist (Brett-Smith, 1982a, 66–8). Salimata spent long periods of time looking at the empty cloth and assessing where she should place the ‘outlines’ that would determine the proportions of the design. Furthermore, other, younger dyers often asked her to perform this task for them. When asked why they requested her help, she replied that many dyers could draw complicated designs, but few could plan the composition of a cloth and draw the preliminary lines. She stressed that drawing these lines was the greatest challenge that faced any mud-cloth artist, and commented that the balance of the finished cloth depended on making an astute judgment at this critical stage. Similarly, Kojugu reports that the first step in carving a mask – determining and marking the circle of the head – is the task he finds particularly difficult. Judging from Salimata's estimate of the same problem in another medium, we can hypothesize that most carvers probably find the preliminary task of outlining both the head and other sections of a Komo mask especially difficult, although they may also encounter problems in completing its other features.

As in mud-cloth design, we find that sculptors do not set the critical proportions according to any predetermined measurement. The master artist determines the size of a Komo mask's features by eye:

INTERVIEWER: And the horns? Do you measure them, or, well, how do you make them?

KOJUGU: It's not measured. It's not measured. You carve them according to the calculations of your eye. Apart from that we don't measure them.[87]

However, some other features are carefully counted. For instance, Kojugu reports that sculptors count the number of teeth in a Komo‘s mouth:

Figure 38. Basi Fane begins to work on the “raw” wood. The artist sits flat on the ground, his legs spread apart, with the block of dyafereke wood between them. This is also the position used by traditional mud-cloth dyers when painting a cloth stretched over a calabash placed between their legs. Photographed just outside Basi Fane's compound, 2/15/84.

Figure 39. Basi Fane uses a knife to mark lines delimiting different areas of the Tyi Warra mask on the “raw” block of dyafereke wood. Kojugu uses the verb ka ma paron paron to describe this process of sketching out the main features of an object when he says, “When you have sketched it out with the adze, and you have marked the limits [of each shape] …” This stage of the carving can also be described as ka yiri walaki, “to uncover the wood.” Photographed just outside Basi Fane's compound, 2/15/84.

KOJUGU: We count them.

INTERVIEWER: How many teeth are there?

KOJUGU: For a person there are thirty-two teeth. But you make four or five teeth for it [a Komo mask] above, and below you make three or four [teeth].[88]

It is possible that these numbers have a specific meaning that is explained to Komo society members, but if so, Kojugu did not reveal it. What is clear, however, even from watching Basi work on his Tyi Warra mask, is that the number of horns, teeth, and other ornaments – such as birds’ skulls – is carefully calculated. In the case of the Komo, the birds’ heads and the horns with which the headdress is adorned may well possess a secret meaning that is explained only at higher levels of initiation. For instance, when asked to identify the “mouth” of the Komo mask, Kojugu did not refer to the gaping jaws that are a standard feature of every headdress:

KOJUGU: To say that [where the mouth is located] is a very great thing [it is very difficult and dangerous to put this into words]. With us, if you see the head of the Komo association [here Kojugu means the medium wearing the mask], the part that we are afraid of – the mouth – the part that we say is the mouth – you are afraid of that. It is not this part [it is not what seems to be the mouth]. The real mouth is located on the upper part [of the mask] – it is in the place where the hat is located [Kojugu uses the standard Bamana term, fugula, for “hat,” but it is unclear to what portion of the top of the mask this refers].[89]

Kojugu was unwilling to specify the location of the Komo‘s “real” mouth, but his statement doessuggest that small details, such as the number of teeth or horns and the conformation of the mask's upper surface, can have hidden meanings.

Figure 40. The lines cut into the block of dyafereke wood mark the upper end of the eye sockets, the upper edge of the brow, and the height of the wooden stumps, which will support antelope horns when the Tyi Warra mask is decorated. The topmost line delimits superfluous wood, which will be removed during the first stages of carving. Basi estimated the relative distances between these lines by eye. According to Kojugu, the artist's most difficult task is to establish the proportions between the different parts of a mask. Photographed just outside Basi Fane's compound, 2/16/84.

Finishing such details involves careful work with an adze or knife (Figs. 47–48).[90] In the past, master carvers apparently used a separate set of tiny instruments similar to dentist's tools to execute this portion of the work, but all the carvers interviewed had either lost or never possessed this equipment (Fig. 49). Sculptors refer to these details as nyèmènèw, from nyè, “eye,” and ka mine, “to take,” or “to seize.” Thus, horns, teeth, eyes, ears, and other details are, literally translated, “things that capture the eye.” Once the artist has finished the nyèmènèw, he must then polish the completed mask:

KOJUGU: When you have finished carving it, you polish it … you perform the work of carving it and the polishing together. You will … after you have first marked the outlines of the sculpture with the adze, and then you have marked all the measurements, when the first tasks have been completed, and you are at this point, you will carve the rest carefully, you will… . There is a blade of an adze – it is the width of a finger – you use this blade, which is as thick as your finger. That is used for polishing certain places [probably details]. Then, the large adze itself, that is used for polishing other places [broad expanses of wood].[91]

In this passage Kojugu uses the verb ka manugu, “to polish,”[92] but sculptors also use the term ka nukuli.[93] Both verbs are technical terms meaning “to smooth” or “to polish,” and have no metaphoric overtones. However, another passage in which Kojugu describes the various stages of carving is more suggestive:

Figure 41. The Tyi Warra mask as Basi Fane strips away the external layer of wood in order to “uncover” (ka yiri walaki) the rough outlines of the mask. Photographed just outside Basi Fane's compound, 2/16/84.

KOJUGU: In the first place, I begin by situating the head. You must position this “drawing” very carefully, and then you make the other details. You begin the outlines of each section and then you finish them. At this time you can take up your tool, and you can finish it. When you have finished carving it, you polish it. It happens like that.[94]

Not only does Kojugu use the French word dessin to describe the markings that situate the outline of the mask's main features, but he also employs the word manyòkòlòn in the sense of “detail.” Manyòkòlòn is a term that is often used to describe the plethora of chains, watches, scarves, and other adornments worn by women, as in the sentence, “A manyòkòlònw ka ca!” or “She is wearing too many ornaments!” Manyòkòlòn is a slightly pejorative term, and is frequently used in the sense of “frills.” According to Dumestre (1989, no. 7, 1152), manyòkòlòn is also a vulgar term for a man's penis, which is thought of as his “ornament.” What is interesting in the context of carving is that the most common usage of manyòkòlòn is to designate a woman's ornaments. If the mute and untouched block of wood is “nude,” kulukutuma, like a desirable woman, and if it has been “disrobed,” ka walaki, by the sculptor as he works, it is now being adorned with feminine decorations, the manyòkòlònw. Once again, the terminology of carving places the artist in a sexualized rapport with the wood he works.

Figure 42. Basi Fane strips away wood from the uppermost section of the Tyi Warra mask. He is “uncovering” (ka yiri walaki) the shape of the three protruding pegs that will be used to hold the antelope horns with which the mask will be decorated. Photographed just outside Basi Fane's compound, 2/16/84.

Figure 43. Basi Fane uses the jagi to scrape out the interior (ka suruku) of the Tyi Warra mask. He is still engaged in “uncovering” (ka yiri walaki) the rough shape of the object. Photographed just outside Basi Fane's compound, 2/16/84.

Figure 44. Basi Fane begins to strip away layer after layer of wood in order to reveal the Tyi Warra mask's final form. Kojugu and other sculptors use the verb ka dèsè (Bamana) or ka lèsè (Malinke), “to carve,” to describe this process. Photographed just outside Basi Fane's compound, 2/16/84.

When the artist has finished polishing the mask, he burns it black, using the red-hot surface of his carving knife or adze (Figs. 50–51). At this point the mask is in some sense finished. However, our experience with Basi Fane suggests that it cannot yet act to resolve human problems, for it has not received the final imprint of its creator's power. To activate the Tyi Warra, Basi had his apprentice, Kege Danyogo, pour water, in which a piece of paper bearing divination signs had been dipped, onto the mask (Fig. 52). Previously, Basi had muttered incantations over the water and spit into it. One of the sculptor's earlier comments sheds some light on this procedure; Basi had observed that its maker's saliva was the most important factor in the success of any ritual sculpture, and, in fact, the bath in the saliva-filled water seems to effect a physical and spiritual transfer of the sculptor's essence to the carving.[95] Basi's example suggests that the sculptor very literally spits life into the object, enabling it to act in the world. This physical link to the carver may also explain the insistence on the sculptor's sexual abstinence; his spittle should contain the most concentrated possible extract of his being in order to animate the mask and send it out into the world with power to act. If the sculptor dissipates his powers through sex, losing some of his vital essence through ejaculation, he will be unable to give life to his creation. Similarly, we will see later that a new mother is forbidden to have sexual relations until her child is weaned, so as to focus her exclusive attention and care on the infant, launching it into life with some chance of survival.

Figure 45. Basi Fane uses an adze (sonbè) to continue stripping away surplus wood. Photographed just outside Basi Fane's compound, 2/16/84.

Figure 46. Basi Fane holds a block of wood at arm's length while he pauses and reflects (ka makaran) on the next step in the carving. The wood he is holding was to become a practice piece, which Basi carved to get his “hand” back before begining the Tyi Warra mask. This object turned out to be a rather disappointing ‘portrait’ head of M'Fa Jigi, apparently influenced by Western visual norms. Photographed just outside Basi Fane's compound, 2/13/84.

During the second stage of the ‘consecration,’ Kege Danyogo took the piece of paper bearing the divination signs and used it like a sponge to rub the remainder of the water and karite nut oil (si tulu) into the surface of the headdress. Basi refused to divulge the names and meanings of the divination signs written on the paper, and he was also unwilling to provide us with the text of the incantations muttered over the water, or to explain them. Likewise, he would not discuss the significance of the karite nut oil. Basi's refusal to discuss these procedures, and the fact that the ‘consecration’ was hidden from public view (it took place inside the shelter over Basi's forge at 5:30 P.M. on the day Basi finished carving the mask), suggest that it is the procedure of animating the mask through its maker's saliva, not the actual carving of the object, that is the most critically important act in creating an “object that resolves needs.” Famous sculptors can certainly create forms that astonish, but beyond their visual creativity, which is most often appreciated by other blacksmiths, they are feared as nganaw and “sorcerers” because they can infuse an “empty” object with a peculiar facsimile of living energy.

The focus on the maker's energy and behavior as the critical component in creating a successful “medicine” is evident in discussions of the “ornaments” with which many ritual objects are decorated. Both Basi and Kojugu reported that these decorations – items such as bird, dog, and monkey skulls, animals’ horns, porcupine quills, cowries, and the mirrors and ntonbilen[96] seeds on our Tyi Warra mask (Figs. 55–56) – are applied at the discretion of the artist, and are usually determined by tradition or a desire to “frighten people.” Kojugu stresses that many “medicines” without “ornaments” work as well, or better, than those with them:

Figure 47. Basi Fane executes the final stage of the carving, which requires detailed work with a knife or adze. Sculptors refer to these details as nyèmènèw, or “things that capture the eye.” Photographed just outside Basi Fane's compound, 2/16/84.

Figure 48. Basi Fane carves the Tyi Warra mask's “ears,” one of the details (nyèmènèw) that emerges during the last stages of carving. Photographed just outside Basi Fane's compound, 2/16/84.

INTERVIEWER: Good, now, I am asking you, have you ever heard the reason why some Komo are ornamented with porcupine quills, and many others with birds’ feathers, and many other kinds of fur? But then there are some where you won't see anything. Why is this?

KOJUGU: That depends on the preferences of each one [sculptor and/or the mask's “owner”]. Some, when they obtain things, they put many of these bizarre things on it to frighten people. In other cases they do this so that the object will be liked by people. Some others, even if they obtain them [the bizarre things], they don't put anything on them, they don't add any birds’ feathers or porcupine quills, but if they decide on something, that thing will succeed.

Figure 49. The newly forged blade of a miniature sonbè created by one of Basi's sons at his request. In the past, master carvers used a separate set of tiny instruments to carve the final details of ritual objects. Basi complained that his sons had borrowed these tools without asking him, used them to carve nonritual objects, and then lost them. He ordered one of his sons, Moriba, to forge a miniature sonbè so that he could execute the final details of the Tyi Warra mask. However, Moriba was unable to forge a blade small enough to rival the lost tools, and Basi lost his temper. The old man denigrated the imprecision and lack of skill characteristic of modern blacksmiths and refused to use the finished blade, except to burn the surface of the mask black after he had completed the carving using the larger sonbè. Photographed in Basi Fane's forge, 2/13/84.

Figure 50. Basi Fane using the miniature sonbè blade to burn the surface of the finished Tyi Warra black. Photographed in Basi Fane's forge, 2/17/84.

If they decide to destroy something, that thing will be destroyed.[97]

Like other ritual experts who made similar comments concerning the ornaments on hunters’ shirts and hats, Kojugu tells us that the number and bizarreness of a mask's decorations do not reflect its ability to act in the world. A mask's efficacy depends on its maker's will and character, not on the number or variety of its manyòkòlònw:

KOJUGU: A Komo that doesn't have many decorations – one can't say that it is a Komo without power. The ornaments are simply like those [initiates] that one calls timidenw,[98] Thus, they are there to frighten people so that they know that it is something one should fear.[99]

Because its “ornaments” do not affect the ritual object's power to act, adorning a finished mask is a much less anxiety-filled procedure than consecrating it. In fact, some artists allow one of their less-expert apprentices to help them apply a mask's manyòkòlònw. For instance, Basi Fane called one of his older sons, a middle-aged man who was trustworthy and intelligent but had little interest in learning to carve ritual objects, to help him with the task of gluing commercially made mirrors and ntonbilen seeds onto our Tyi Warra (Fig. 56). Both Basi and his son relaxed and joked during this part of the proceedings, in startling contrast to the solemnity that had surrounded the ritual washing of the mask. Although Basi supervised the adornment of our Tyi Warra, some sculptors consider that their job is finished once the carving and polishing is completed, and they hand over the unadorned carving to its “owner,” who will add the appropriate decorations and orchestrate a public consecration.[100]

Whether the basi is ornamented or not, the sculptor's final transaction with his client is almost always anticlimactic. To receive the mask, the client must have “let loose” the agreed-upon ritual payments. In fact, the sculptor begins to carve only when he has already received many of these laadaw and has formed an accurate estimate of his client's honesty. If the client has proved deceitful, the artist will never even pick up his adze, for a sculptor carves only for a client who has proven his good faith. Thus, the master artist who finishes his work awaits the arrival of the final payments with little anxiety, and, in Kojugu's words:

Figure 51. Basi Fane using the red-hot blade of a knife to engrave decorative details on the donkan stool (Fig. 13) made for the author. Photographed in Basi Fane's forge, 1/24/84.

KOJUGU: Then I will tell you that the thing you commissioned is finished. Yes – its owner will come, yes, and we will make an exchange. I will tell him the laadaw, and he will offer them, and I will take it [the mask] and give it to him.[101]

Like the giving of the commission, this final exchange takes place in secret, for as we have seen, the sculptor does not necessarily wish to broadcast his completion of the carving, and the client has similar reasons for keeping the transaction quiet. A new and powerful basi poses an inevitable threat to the existing power structure, for the artist's carving will now begin to act, to solve “needs,” to cure sterility, to transform the poor into rich, to harm its petitioners’ rivals, and to acquire a reputation (Fig. 10).

Once carved, a mask or figure alters the intermeshing net of invisible forces that structures the human world. The presence of a new ritual object may diminish the powers previously wielded by other basiw; it may enable its owner to compete with a hitherto unchallenged village leader, and this unusual success may then inspire other ambitious men to commission further objects. The new basi may not only enlarge its maker's fame, but it can also jeopardize its maker's life by becoming too well known and arousing the envy of the sculptor's rivals. Both sculptor and client want the object to work, but both have experienced enough fadenya (“competitive rivalry,” see Chapter 1) to know that survival comes first, and survival demands both silence and discretion. Like the djinn who inspired it, a new basi often arrives at its home with little fanfare and under cover of darkness. Little by little, it will gain its reputation from the powers inherent in its wood, the tools used to make it, the offerings “let loose” during its creation, and, above all, by the sculptor's correct behavior and purity.

Figure 52. Kege Danyogo, Basi's apprentice, pouring water in which a piece of paper bearing divination signs (Fig. 53) has been dipped, over the Tyi Warra mask to consecrate it. Basi also muttered incantations over the water and spit into it. The sculptor refused to discuss the meaning of the divination signs, and it proved impossible to persuade him to give the text of the incantations or to explain their meaning. Although Basi carved the mask in full public view, the ‘consecration’ was hidden, since it occurred inside the shelter covering the forge. It took place at about 5:30 P.M. on the day that Basi finished carving the mask. Photographed in Basi Fane's forge, 2/17/84.

Figure 53. Paper bearing the divination signs used in the consecration of the Tyi Warra mask. The paper was dipped in the water poured over the mask (Fig. 52), and then used like a sponge to soak up karite nut oil (si tulu) and rub both water and oil over the Tyi Warra‘s surface. Basi refused to explain the significance of these signs. Photographed in Basi Fane's forge, 2/17/84.

Figure 54. Basi Fane using the wet divination paper like a sponge, to rub water and karite nut oil over the surface of the Tyi Warra mask. This was the final stage in the ‘consecration’ of the mask. Photographed in Basi Fane's forge, 2/17/84.

Given the fears that an artist must surmount to begin carving, one may well question whether every commission proceeds smoothly toward this quiet exchange of laadaw for basi. Do sculptors never make mistakes, and if they do, what happens? Throughout our work Kojugu emphasized that the artist must put everything aside, including any fears of his rivals, in order to pick up the adze:

KOJUGU: If you execute this work [the carving of a commission], you must think about nothing else. The work that you are in the midst of doing and the reason for which one is working – these are two different thoughts.[102]

Kojugu tells us that the artist must repress the “reason for which he is working” and its concomitant fears in order to concentrate, and indeed his words are an accurate description of Basi's total single-mindedness while creating our Tyi Warra. Yet, despite Basi's concentration on his work, the resulting Tyi Warra did not conform to his high standards, and he was visibly disappointed in the mask. Kojugu himself emphasized the element of uncertainty inherent in carving when he said:

Figure 55. Western-made mirrors and glue used in the decoration of the finished Tyi Warra mask. According to both Basi and Kojugu, such “ornaments” (manyòkòlònw) are applied at the discretion of the artist. The range of manyòkòlònw used on different masks includes bird, dog, and monkey skulls, animal horns, seeds, porcupine quills, cowries, and red cloth. In everyday usage, manyòkòlòn is a slightly pejorative term often used to describe the plethora of chains, watches, scarves, and other adornments worn by women. Photographed in Basi Fane's consulting chamber or cèso, 2/22/84.

Figure 56. Basi Fane gluing one of the Tyi Warra mask's mirrors in place. He is assisted by one of his most trusted older sons, Seri Fane. For the finished mask see Fig. 10. Photographed in Basi Fane's consulting chamber or cèso, 2/22/84.

KOJUGU: You look at it as a simple block of wood first, but once you have sat down to reflect on what it should become – when you are sitting next to the wood, you will reflect. And then you will be able to say that it will become a man [in the case of carving human figures], but you can also arrive at a moment in your calculations where you will say, “Aaah! I will transform this into a woman.” You will say that the character of a man has not appeared. It can be a defect in the wood itself or even in the process of carving. But if you decide to change the object into a woman, the error won't spoil anything. It's like this that one changes things.[103]

The numerous restrictions on carving ritual objects clearly prevent most sculptors from practicing by carving “empty” objects. In fact, when Basi wished to accustom his hand to carving again after thirty years of rejecting ritual commissions, he practiced by creating an ugly, somewhat representational human head and a small doll, but he did not carve a trial Tyi Warra. Once he had begun the Tyi Warra, it had to be the object commissioned, no matter whether the mask turned out well or not, for Basi could not repeat the series of sacrifices and internal debates that had led to his finally beginning the carving. These procedures, and the time they took, were as much a part of the completed mask as any of the mirrors or seeds Basi applied to it. To carve another similar mask he would have had to accept another commission and begin the entire process of divinations, sacrifices, and debates all over again. The traditional strictures that prevent carving for practice may result in a high rate of changes in completed objects, although contemporary sculptors are also hampered by the decreasing number of commissions.[104]

Despite his strong feeling that, once begun, a mask or figure must be completed and used whether it turns out well or badly, Kojugu did say that some sculptors actually burn their failed objects:

KOJUGU: You will cut it with blows of the adze everywhere and burn it [the failed object]. You don't give it to anyone. If I make a mistake in the process of carving, I can't give the spoiled object to someone saying, “I made a mistake.” I will use the adze to cut it [to deface it] – cut it and burn it. So, if I make a mistake in carving it, I alone [will know], so that another person doesn't know about it.

INTERVIEWER: That's not serious [a reassuring comment]. Do all blacksmiths act as you have described, or, well, how do they act?

KOJUGU: Nn [no]. It's not all blacksmiths. All the others are not the same as I; there are some, if they make mistakes, they give the object to children saying, “Take this, I wanted to make something like that, but I made a mistake.” You can't pass your whole life throwing things away like that; you won't have any secrets [if you do that].[105]

The intense period of thought and visualization that precedes a ritual commission enables Bamana and Malinke sculptors to avoid much of the preparatory work, the sketches, drawings, and mock-ups with which we in the West are familiar, and yet sculptors like Kojugu probably produce fewer “spoiled” objects than many Western artists. Nevertheless, there is also greater social latitude for artistic failure than in the West. Art is produced to “work,” not for its own sake. In Kojugu's world of invisible powers, ritual observances take precedence over aesthetic skill, and it is possible to produce a “spoiled” object that will still work with startling efficacy as a “medicine.” Kojugu clearly possesses great aesthetic sensitivity, and he takes care to burn his failed carvings, but as he himself says, “All the others are not the same as I.” Blacksmiths and other viewers note and judge aesthetic success or failure, but the ultimate criterion for fame is function, not ‘beauty.’ A basi is successful if it works – it may or may not be ‘beautiful.’

We have seen that the wood for sculpture must contribute its own nyama to the finished object, that only “clean” tools can create a functioning basi, and that the sculptor, too, must be “pure” or sexually abstinent to carve an important object. Moreover, he must obey numerous traditions that specify the location of the tree he cuts, how it must fall, when he should carve, where, and how fast. At every turn, interdictions determine the artist's behavior, hemming him in and confining him within a web of ritual restrictions. Many of these rules seem arbitrary and confusing. Why does the client have to kill a goat and serve a special meal to the sculptor? Why should the artist sequester himself in the bush? Why should he refrain from sex for months before he picks up his adze? Why does the creation of the nkoson demand that the sculptor avoid defecating while working?[106] Why are the Bamana so insistent that it is the maintenance of these tanaw or interdictions that endows a basi with power? Do these rules possess a pattern, and, if so, what can this pattern tell us about the nature of the sculptural enterprise?

To answer these questions we must return to the issue of payment. We have already discovered that the sculptor loses children, wives, time, and even his virility itself to his spirits. These ‘payments’ restrict the scope of the artist's life, just as the rules discussed in this chapter limit his daily actions. The decision to embark on the creation of ritual objects requires payments of many kinds, but all necessitate the sculptor's removal from ordinary life, his withdrawal into an unseen universe, and, ultimately, a “changing” of his very nature. We have seen that his spirits place the artist in a passive and ultimately a feminine position, but what do the many rules that control the process of carving achieve? A mere listing of the various laws that govern selecting a tree, cutting it down, and carving is insufficient; we need to examine the premises that give rise to these rules, the pattern that they form, and the purpose behind them. This, then, is the subject of the next chapter.

CHAPTER 6

Sacred Secrets

“Gundow jujò ye min ye, ceya ni musoya”

“The root of all sacred secrets is the following: Man's penis and woman's vagina”

Nyamaton Diarra, April 15, 1984; second interview

The multiplicity of rules that surround the Bamana sculptor appear arbitrary and inexplicable. Nevertheless, there have been hints of two unifying ideas that will be the focus of this chapter. Once we seize these conceptual equations, we will find that they illuminate and reorder the data presented in Chapters 4 and 5, and that the sculptural process rearranges itself into a clear and coherent pattern.

In Chapter 2 we saw that a djinn‘s demands force the artist to abjure sex with his living wives, to devote himself to his spirit familiar, and to lose his procreative power by becoming impotent or engendering only maimed and deformed children. Kojugu explicitly refers to a physical process of feminization:

INTERVIEWER: What has occurred?

KOJUGU: The taking away of my virility. I, myself, I have no need of another child, they can take away my virility completely, but until my death no competitor will ever get the better of me.

INTERVIEWER: How did they take away your virility?

KOJUGU: To take away my virility – to make me like a woman.[1]

Spirit familiars demand loyalty, sexual fidelity, and receptivity from their artist clients, the same qualities Bamana men seek in their wives. Although the spirits themselves are overwhelmingly female, familiarity with them demasculinizes the sculptor. In the Bamana world artists must pay for their ability to create sculpture by voluntarily accepting a form of invisible castration that effectively puts their sexual organs out of commission, altering their gender identity, and becoming, at least partially, ‘women.’ Female djinns are powerful, exigent, manipulative, and categorical in their decisions, and like masterful women in real life, they feminize their followers.[2] However, sculptors apparently have no overt sexual contact with their spirit familiars. What is the process that feminizes the sculptor?

Kojugu, who is a middle-aged artist, tells us that he has not yet acquired a completely passive and asexual identity, saying, “My time has not yet come, there remains a little while longer before my time comes.”[3] Yet, he also asserts that once his “time comes” he will abandon sex completely. Kojugu's statement suggests that feminization is an incremental process that gains increasing strength as the once-youthful apprentice ages, carving first one, then two or three, and finally, like Kojugu himself, as many as seven Komo masks. Just as the sculptor's abilities and his “things of the head” increase in power with age, so the passage of time and the execution of successive commissions requires that the artist make additional spirit payments, that he accept increasingly painful losses, and that he adopt an ever more passive and ‘feminine’ stance. By definition, a middle-aged sculptor who has carved seven Komo masks is both more dominated by and open toward his djinn than an eighteen-year-old apprentice who has just accepted a “contract” with the spirit world. It is the act of carving itself, the fact of having made seven rather than two Komo masks, that exerts a transformative power on the artist, gradually changing him into a shadowy and frequently misunderstood entity whose gender hovers ambiguously between the overtly male and the explicitly female. Carving ritual objects progressively demasculinizes the sculptor in much the same way that the sexual act, repeated over a short period of time (according to several informants, this is the Bamana ideal of male sexuality), leaves a man empty and depleted.

Kojugu's conviction, that it is the process of carving ritual sculpture which gradually and inexorably pushes the artist into the acquisition of a ‘female’ gender identity, has important ramifications for our understanding of the artistic process among the Bamana. The fact that the sculptor is a man, but a man whose unification with his female djinn through the act of carving voids him of masculinity, suggests that making sculpture is perceived as equivalent to, or in Bamana terms “the same as,” the sexual act. For whether the artist wishes or not, the results of carving are “the same” as the consequences, however temporary, of having sex; the sculptor is left depleted, empty, and in some cases, impotent. We may remember that Kojugu describes the transformation that results from carving in exactly these terms.

KOJUGU: You have become a woman. Ee! You, you cannot perform the work of men in the house of women. Therefore, you have become a woman, you are not equal to any man.[4]

Like the dominating woman she is said to be, the sculptor's djinn eviscerates her client and ‘lover,’ effectively transforming him into a ‘woman.’ In carving, the artist appears to be performing an act in the real world that is directly comparable to having sex, albeit with a spirit.

If this hypothesis is correct, then we would expect to find some direct acknowledgment of the conceptual equation:

sex with a human woman = process of carving ritual sculpture

Needless to say, my informants were well aware that, on an exclusively material level, having sexual intercourse is not identical to making sculpture, for, in Kojugu's words, “the thoughts are different.”[5] Yet, they remain “the same,” both because the effects of the actions on the man who performs them are similar – a loss of physical potency and the adoption of a passive position – and because the tanaw or interdictions that are observed in sexual intercourse and carving are either identical or strikingly similar.

Let us begin to examine these similarities by first looking at the aura of secrecy that surrounds the creation of important sculpture. How do the Bamana and Malinke handle sculpture and sexuality verbally? Are there similarities, and what are they? In the preceding chapters we found that the Bamana shroud the negotiations for a commission, the search for an appropriate tree, the ritual tools, and finally, the actual carving of the object, in silence. Even ritual experts avoid direct verbal references to important commissions, and it is forbidden to watch the blacksmith as he carves an important “thing that fulfills needs.”

A similar aura envelopes sexuality. The Bamana system of code words, circumlocutions, and silence regarding sex is particularly difficult for Westerners to interpret correctly, burdened as we are by Judeo-Christian guilt and an endemic sense of sin. On the one hand, traditionally reared Bamana men and women can broach problems of sexual dysfunction and marital discord with a clarity and perception worthy of the best psychiatrists. An elderly midwife who frankly names the different parts of the female genitalia, an elder who calls his great-nephew into his consulting room and wants to know why the young man has not had sex for more than a year, or a grandmother who jokingly reproaches her favorite grandson for preferring his second wife to her, may suggest that we are dealing with a no-holds-barred approach to human sexuality; indeed, this was a point of view adopted, very wrongly, by many colonial authors who were shocked at the ritualized sexual insults certain categories of people are permitted to exchange. In fact, the reader familiar with the Bamana may object that sex is not shrouded in mystery, citing the fact that sexual jokes are common, the source of much amusement, and often glaringly explicit. However, one needs to remember that many explicit sexual insults, exchanged amid the quick repartee of Bamako life, would never be permitted in a small village, and are frequently condemned by listening elders as evidence of today's widespread lack of shame (malobaliya). For instance, a common Bamako expression, a wolola don min, or “he was born on the day that,” is considered indelicate in the countryside. In many villages, the verb ka wolo is a technical term used by midwives to refer explicitly to the physical process of giving birth. A young man who says of a respected elder, “A wolola” (“He was born”), embarrasses all his listeners, and, if the village is well run, the brash youth receives a severe reprimand and an injunction to employ the polite phrase, a bankena, “he was created.” Since ka wolo has become commonplace in Bamako, many respectable people do employ it with little awareness of its original and rather gross meaning. In fact, several informants objected to questions that inadvertently used this verb, and politely but firmly corrected the interviewer.

Elders of both sexes uniformly insisted that such “shameless” words, and some even more explicit insults that are now commonplace, would never have been permitted in a traditional, precolonial context unless the participants in the exchange were parties to historically established joking relationships. A blacksmith can exchange sexual insults with a Fulani because blacksmiths and Fulani have been joking partners (senankunw) for as long as anyone can remember.[6] Likewise, a grandmother is allowed to joke with her grandson, because the young man is frequently given his grandfather's name and is considered to replace the old man when he dies, offering emotional support, a listening ear, and physical assistance to his so-called wife. In this case, any overt sexual feeling is so completely out of the question that the entire family watches and enjoys the ritualized banter. Indeed, a grandmother whose favorite grandson does not joke with her feels rejected and badly taken care of, for the sexual content of the customary jokes reassures the postmenopausal woman that she is still a cherished and sought-after female. The old lady's pride and social standing is reinforced by the flattering attentions of her considerate grandson, who undertakes to make her feel that she is just as important as the younger, sexually active women in her compound.

Once one sees beyond the ritualized joking relationships and the “shameless” vulgarity of modern, city talk, two modes of sexual speech emerge, each with its distinct function.[7] Neither treats human sexuality as an easy or vulgar subject. The old man who summons his nephew to inquire searchingly into his sex life is motivated by deep concern. Perhaps his nephew has contracted a venereal disease and needs to see a traditional medical specialist; perhaps a neighbor, envious of the young man's wife, has worked sorcery to render him impotent; or perhaps the young man's wife needs sexual counseling or medicines from one of the family's old women. Such an elder considers the ability to procreate essential to being human. He fears that his nephew may be suffering physically, that he may have been bewitched, that his marriage is not working. All these problems require advice and intervention if the young man is to function sexually and produce healthy children who will expand the extended family. Sexual dysfunction is not simply a problem for the individual concerned; it menaces the continuity of the whole family and ultimately of the community itself. It is one of the most serious problems in life, and the elder treats it as such, secluding himself with the young man so that they can speak frankly, using traditional medical terminology, asking specific questions as to physical dysfunction, and leading his great-nephew to air his fears and uncertainties with a compassion and skill honed by many years. Here, the elder's careful use of explicit medical terminology is appropriate, and is motivated not by any prurient interest but by the desire to heal. Furthermore, such an investigation is not undertaken lightly. The old man has thought through his great-nephew's problem over many months, he has observed the daily relationship between husband and wife, and he takes great care that no one else within the compound knows of the discussion unless there is a need for further medical expertise.

Medical and psychological counseling on a one-to-one basis requires the use of explicit sexual terms, but these are also used in another context. Sexual language is an important feature of many exclusively male and some female rituals. Kojugu reported that Komo initiates are taught an important ritual song whose main theme is, “The vagina is large.”[8] The song uses the critical word biyè, “vagina,” which no Bamana man or woman will ever willingly pronounce, much less explain to the uninformed listener, and its text conveys a profound message about the consuming nature of female sexuality.[9] The young men may chant, “The vagina is deep, the vagina is large,” repetitively, but it is important to note that they do not employ the explicit term biyè lightly, or for humor's sake. Judging from the extreme difficulty with which Kojugu was persuaded to divulge this text, Komo members pronounce these words with deep emotion and a sense of sacred awe. Sex is neither sinful nor a pastime; it is an essential life-giving and life-assuring process to be enjoyed within measure and celebrated with profound respect. Above all, it is not to be taken lightly or used, as so many Westerners seem to do, for exclusively individual ends.

The same aura of sacred respect that surrounds this ritual chant produces the unwritten rules that govern most peoples’ daily handling of sexual issues. It is one thing to summon a great-nephew for a medical consultation, and quite another to insult a husband and wife by making a public comment about their intimate relationship. Everyone may observe a man as he quietly gets up from the fire burning in the center of the courtyard and makes his way into his wife's room, but it is quite another thing to utter a public comment that this woman must be the favorite wife. The next day, when this wife follows her husband into the outhouse to scrub his back in broad daylight (outhouses lack roofs), the entire courtyard pretends that they have seen nothing and are completely absorbed in a discussion of yesterday's market. Nevertheless, everyone is well aware of the exact day when this woman falls from favor and the second wife takes her place. Thus, although it is almost impossible to conceal sexual activity, it is also unthinkable (at least for horonw or “nobles,” and often for blacksmiths when in the context of their own families)[10] to make direct and personal references to sexual behavior in public. In the past this code of discretion was facilitated by compound architecture: every room or “house” within a large and well-built compound had its own outhouse attached to it so that husband and wife could wash after intercourse without being observed.

Although elders instruct young men concerning proper sexual behavior, for the most part avoidance, polite euphemisms, and discretion are learned experientially and in childhood. The six-year-old boy who still plays around his mother's bed and one day decides to investigate its contents will never forget his mother's expression when he brings to light her first menstrual cloth hidden deep in the mattress. However, the mother's calm instructions never to unearth it again do not inspire either a prurient interest or a Western sense of guilt, so much as a deep knowledge that such cloths are basiw or “medicines” par excellence, sacred vehicles of fertility whose theft and misuse in sorcery by a co-wife can prevent the child's mother from ever conceiving again. The boy acquires a profound respect, fear, and awe for the creative powers materialized in the blood-soaked rag, and a deep sense that objects have the power to kill and maim; but this is a far cry from the disgust, disdain, and shame that surrounds similar mementos in the West. The child has inadvertently brushed against one of life's most sacred and powerful objects, and he needs to be given the appropriate information that will enable him to handle such confrontations correctly. However, unlike the Western child, he has not committed a sin, nor are such objects ‘bad.’ They are charged with power, not evil.

These learned behaviors of avoidance, personal discretion, and correct, euphemistic speech in public, mask an enviable ability to discuss and resolve difficult sexual issues in private, and a deep acceptance of sexuality as an essential and positive force. One may object that the Bamana invariably prefer silence and oblique references to open speech (Brett-Smith 1984, 135–40; Zahan 1960a), and that there is nothing new in applying these rules to sex. However, the circumlocutions employed to deal with inflammatory topics, such as the length of time a guest can continue to be fed during a famine, and the aura of deliberate discretion that draws charmed circles around both sexual activity and ritual sculpture, are different. Depending on the moment, it may or may not be difficult to discuss a particular family issue, but open recognition of and verbal responses to sex or ritual sculpture are always avoided. Just as everyone observes the man who gets up and leaves the fire to visit his wife, but no one dreams of making a direct comment, so no villager in his right mind would ever dream of commenting aloud that a famous Kòmòtigi's (Komo leader's) visit must involve the commission of a new mask. Like sex, the Komo is far too serious a matter to be discussed in public, and any initiate is well aware of the life-and-death consequences attached to taking it lightly. An intelligent young man may quietly visit his grandfather alone in his room at 3:00 A.M. to discuss the commission of which both are well aware, but neither will ever reveal that the new initiate has been party to a matter that ought to concern only the senior experts of the association. When questioned in public by a peer or a visitor, the young man will simply reply that he knows nothing, and that such matters are the province of the elders. Like menstrual cloths, Komo masks can render men impotent and infertile, and indeed can even kill, so it is best to say nothing, keeping one's inner knowledge cloaked in silence.

In the Bamana and Malinke world sex and ritual carving are the two operations that are too serious to be discussed in public. They both involve a sacred and highly ritualized kind of work, or baara, and because of the danger inherent in such enterprises are only glancingly mentioned in lengthy circumlocutions, if at all. In fact, the generalized attitude of deliberate concealment that is maintained toward sex – of knowing what is going on, but maintaining an ignorant façade toward it – corresponds exactly to the public demeanor of the expert sculptor who responds to a question as to why he is departing for the bush with, “I am going to wander about nearby” “Ne be munu munu dafelala,”[11] when he really intends to search out a lènkè in order to carve a ritual object. The observer may know very well that an important artist never wanders aimlessly in the bush, and he may suspect that the blacksmith intends to seek a tree for the object commissioned some weeks ago by a neighboring village, but he will say nothing to anyone, drawing his own conclusions in a silence that is rich with meaning. In both types of “work,” the signals that indicate activity – that a man and a woman are having sex or that sculpture is being carved – are observed from a distance and correctly evaluated, but they are never reflected in the observer's public conversation or actions.

The community's agreement to avoid any direct mention of either the sexual or ritual activities of which it is well aware, sets the stage for the concealment that enshrouds these endeavors. We have seen that the Bamana sculptor carefully secludes himself in a small clearing deep in the bush, or else seeks out a place that is normally avoided – the lonely tomb of a woman who has died in childbirth – in order to carve. Kojugu himself equates the rules of secrecy that surround carving with the etiquette that orchestrates sexual encounters. He openly states the equation with which we began this chapter:

KOJUGU: Making human figures in wood, if they are made to be jow [ritual objects used by secret associations], this is the same thing as the steps that one takes to make love. The way in which you hide yourself to have sex, you hide yourself like that to make sculpture. You hide yourself in order to sculpt right up until you have finished; no one will come and stop in front of you asking, “What is that going to be?” It is for this reason that it is the same thing as having sex with a woman. You hide yourself away from people to have sex; it's the same thing, you hide yourself from people in order to carve until it [the object carved] is finished.[12]

Kojugu's declaration may appear bizarre until we understand the significance of “hiding” or being alone. In the Bamana world, traditional wisdom holds that being alone is antisocial. Informants commonly remarked that “we know white people are crazy because they are always alone.” Although exceptional individuals may long for a few minutes of quiet contemplation, these people are likely to be diviners, blacksmiths, or healers besieged with clients from morning to night. Most people fear isolation, and associate the presence of other human bodies with comfort rather than hardship. It is better to lie in bed next to a quietly breathing body of the same sex than to occupy the extra space when one's roommate leaves to visit his girlfriend, for who knows what spirits may visit one at 3:00 in the morning, and who knows what thoughts may depress one without a peer to joke with. Women usually sleep in the same bed with three or four of their smaller children, and the barren wife is often allotted her own ‘child’ from her co-wife's brood as much for human warmth and comfort as to save face. To be alone is to be deprived, for other human bodies are the primary source of comfort, power, and interest in life.

Furthermore, the Bamana regard the desire to be alone, or as Kojugu phrases it, “to hide,” as sinister. When alone, or at most with one other person, one must be up to something, for this state is, by definition, abnormal. The woman who prefers to look for karite nuts alone rather than with her co-wife may be using her isolation to collect harmful medicines. The hunter who leaves for the bush without a partner must be seeking the protection of a powerful spirit who will give him game and take it away from others. The woman who does not want to sleep in the same bed with her children must be planning to commit adultery. Such suspicions are endemic, for the paranoia generated by living in an extended family cannot be easily evaded. In the past, and even now, in remote villages, women and men regularly asked their best friend of the same sex to accompany them into the bush to defecate, so that they could not be accused of using the opportunity to work sorcery. In fact, such an invitation was a high compliment, and a testimony of supreme trust.

In a world where one takes care to defecate in the presence of a witness, and where an old slave woman (magnan muso) was formerly assigned to watch a newly married couple's first sexual intercourse, so that she might ward off any harmful spirits attracted by the woman's bloodshed and report on the pair's sexual progress to the family's elders, there are only two activities for which one is allowed and, indeed, enjoined to isolate oneself: ritual “work”, and the everyday sex that follows a newly married couple's weeklong period of seclusion with the magnan muso. Once safely married, a man can leave the group for a short time to have sex with his wife, but he must first take care to linger around the evening fire, lest he be accused of neglecting the family for the sake of an individual relationship. However, if a man participates willingly in the evening's conversation and shows no impatience to leave the fireside, his eventual departure will be understood, and his younger brother will even intervene so that the six-year-old who has awakened and wants to accompany his father will remain outside. Similarly, an acknowledged ritual expert who is seen leaving for the bush at 5:00 A.M., adze in hand, will be left entirely alone, for everyone knows that M'Fa Kali has spirits. If the old man wants a companion he will ask an apprentice to accompany him; so, if he walks alone, he had better be left strictly to himself, for the consequences of interrupting such an expedition are imponderable.

Such isolation is both the necessary precondition for the creation of ritual sculpture, and the price that renowned blacksmiths pay for their power. Kojugu may have been besieged by clients who requested his divinatory skills day and night, but he remained profoundly isolated in spirit. He rose and slept haunted by the memories of the children he had so willingly “given” to his djinns, and although he prescribed solutions for the problems of others, he himself had no human confidant. Like Kojugu, exceptional sculptors are generally left to eat and sleep alone, for they have few real peers, and no one wishes to run the risk of accidentally ingesting the poisons and antidotes they consume so readily. Few normal people dare to broach the desert strip that surrounds famed carvers, and, whether, like Basi, they sit alone under their compound's mango tree, or wander in the bush, they are abandoned to a deep solitude in which the voices of spirits overwhelm those of men. Similarly, no one dares to disturb a man who has entered his wife's room. A mere curtain of flimsy cloth may separate the couple from the outside world, but what occurs there is a totally private ritual, a “work” that, like the creation of ritual objects, is best shrouded in a dark silence.

The isolation that envelops both the creation of sculpture and sex is similar in another respect. Kojugu can tell us, “Making human figures in wood, if they are made to be jow, this is the same thing as the steps that one takes to make love,”[13] because both operations can easily end in disaster if the wrong person sees the wrong thing at the wrong time. Kojugu also says, “The way in which you hide yourself to have sex, you hide yourself like that to make sculpture,”[14] because both making sculpture and having sex must be concealed in order to avoid the potentially dangerous gaze of inappropriate viewers. In the case of sculpture, important artists, ritual experts, and initiated men fear the gaze of women; for although the culprit who dares to view a Komo mask pays with her life,[15] she can also empty a mask or ritual object of its power if she is menstruating.

Men's fear of the destructive female gaze that will render their magical objects impotent parallels their fear of the female sex. Sex and sculpture are “the same,” because in sex far more is hidden than a couple embracing; both literally and figuratively, the man himself is kept in the dark. Just as women cannot see the Komo, so men are forbidden to gaze at the female sex they embrace so avidly. Traditionally, elders advised a young man never to look directly at his wife's sex, an act that is still considered to bring on blindness or untreatable tuberculosis. In Kojugu's words:

INTERVIEWER: Good, why do people say that one will lose one's sight if one continues to look at women nude [i.e., at a woman's sex], why do they say that?

KOJUGU: The reason for saying that, a woman standing there like that, looking at her standing there – it is a precious, secret thing [higabu]. Its meaning is profound, and to say that you can look at that simply like that – this isn't good.

INTERVIEWER: It's not good?

KOJUGU: Yes [in agreement with the interviewer's statement].

INTERVIEWER: But is it that there are hot vapors that come out from it [the woman's sex], or what is it [that is bad]?

KOJUGU: It's the heat that comes out of there.

INTERVIEWER: For you, the masters of ritual knowledge?

KOJUGU: It is the gas that comes out of there; that will rise into your eyes. If it doesn't rise up into your eyes, if it goes into your belly it will transform itself into tuberculosis. This [the tuberculosis, sògòsògòninjè] will not leave you until you are in your tomb. The European cannot heal this, and the traditional medicinal expert [somaden] cannot heal it either.[16]

If women cannot view the Komo mask without paying for this vision with their lives, then men whose eyes rest on their partner's sex or inhale her hot vapors will quickly find their way into the tomb.

To some extent, ritual objects and the female genitalia are both sacred and filled with nyama, whether the viewer is male or female. The Komo is not feared by women alone; Bamana and Malinke men also stand in awe of Komo masks. Likewise, the fear of and reverence for the female genitalia is not limited to men. Despite their inevitable familiarity with their own bodies, women also regard the female sexual organs as filled with nyama. Although the blacksmith woman who excises young girls is born with her own quotient of nyama, she must still wash her eyes with special medicines to escape the harmful nyama of the genitalia she operates on.[17] However, women do not expect to lose the ability to have children, to contract tuberculosis, or to end in the tomb, if they see other women's sexual parts. Analogously, the young man who sees a Komo ritual reserved for elders may need to wash with special medicines, but he will not pay with his life for the experience.

Nevertheless, the precautions taken by the female blacksmith highlight another important parallel between having sex and handling ritual sculpture. A ritual specialist will bathe himself in medicines, and even drink them, before and after handling an important ritual object. Although the medicines used are made from different ingredients, the procedure is exactly the same as that of a man who washes away the nyama attached to his first act of sexual intercourse:

KOJUGU: Before touching a woman [for sex], it is customary that you wash yourself with many plants.

INTERVIEWER: Yes, but the day when you make love for the first time?

KOJUGU: The first time you wash yourself with leaves. You wash yourself with leaves because the woman [and above all her sex] possesses nyama.[18]

A man is cautioned not to look directly at his wife's sex, and he is also provided with special “medicines” that expunge the nyama accruing to him after intercourse. While the first sexual experience is certainly a high-risk situation, cautious men may well choose to repeat the prophylactic bath on a regular basis. As a sacred source of power charged with an extraordinarily high level of nyama, a woman's sex must be approached and touched with the same circumspection and care with which one approaches, and yet protects oneself from, a ritual object and its power. Likewise, the sculptor who sets out to create a basi makes sure to wash before beginning to carve.[19]

Additional parallels exist between having sex with a woman and carving ritual sculpture. Both sex and carving are processes that have been taken out of the normal by being ritualized as well as isolated. In fact, tradition predetermines almost every action in both. While we have already seen the ways in which custom orchestrates the sculptor's actions, only minimal references have been made to the rules that govern sexual intercourse. In the past Bamana elders not only instructed a young man to avoid the sight of his wife's sex and to wash away its powerful nyama; they also told him how to make love. A man was enjoined to use only his left hand to handle his penis during sexual encounters. In Nyamaton's words:

NYAMATON: Nhun, we – we say, my grandfather spoke to us face to face, he said that, “This hand here [the left hand] is the man's hand.” We, we say that the hand that does good is better than the hand with which we eat tot [the right hand]. We say that it is better than this one [showing the interviewer his right hand]. Yes, he [Nyamaton's grandfather] said, “Listen, you who have been born. Here is your penis [Nyamaton uses the word wulu or “dog” for penis][20] in front of you. What hand are you going to grasp it with? Won't you take hold of it with your left hand?” All of us [young men], we were united in saying that this was true. Then he [Nyamaton's grandfather] said, “This then is the hand belonging to men,” and this is the hand of women [Nyamaton indicates his right hand]. Everyone can agree on this. Everyone uses it [the right hand]. But the hand of men is the left hand. Nhun.[21]

In addition to sex, the left hand has one important use that is highly significant for our analysis: this is the hand that must be used when the blacksmith takes up his adze to carve ritual sculpture. Numuw normally hold the adze in their right hands when they carve everyday objects, but when making ritual objects they must acquire the ability to carve with the left hand, the “man's hand,” the hand that is always used for ritual operations, sex, and washing one's private parts. (However, neither Basi nor his apprentice used their left hands when carving our Tyi Warra, presumably because they did not consider it a “true” ritual object.)

Other restrictions observed by an important sculptor also correspond to rules of sexual behavior. Later, we shall see that some objects can be made only if the sculptor is resolutely silent throughout the entire carving process, or avoids uttering certain names. Similarly, a rule of silence governs the sexual act. While men and women flirt verbally, and a man learns how to arouse his partner by flirtatious conversation, in a traditional setting the sexual act occurred in utter silence. Afterwards, each of the two partners disappeared silently into their private outhouse to wash before resuming their conversation or going to sleep. Furthermore, men were trained to begin and end sexual relations abruptly; kissing, lengthy embracing, or touching the woman's sex was considered almost as dangerous as the sight of female genitalia. Many informants referred to actions that we would regard as appropriate foreplay as contemporary perversions of a simpler, healthier, more straightforward, and more traditional sexuality. The abruptness with which a man can utter, “Na yan,” or “Come here,” summoning his wife for sex, parallels the suddenness with which a sculptor suddenly decides to carve a ritual object he has put off making for over a year. In their unpredictability, their abruptness, and their sometimes violent hold, spirit visitations are like sexual desire; the artist cannot predict when he will dream that the right time to carve has come, any more than a man can know when he will decide to end an eighteen-month quarrel with his third wife, and, summoning her home from an extended visit to her family, abruptly resume sexual relations without ever proffering an explanation for his neglect.

Not only do the rules governing sexual behavior provide a reference point for the blacksmith-sculptor's behavior when carving, but sometimes rituals with sexual implications actually structure the artistic process. In one extraordinary case a blacksmith cannot forge the pair of iron flutes essential to Komo society rituals (the Komo saman) (Fig. 57) without the presence of his wife. According to Nyamaton Diarra, the blacksmith sets up a temporary forge under the shade of a lènkè,[22] that mysterious tree filled with spirits. He cuts the twisting lianas of the nyanyaka[23] and burns them to make charcoal, which he places in the forge. Then, in Nyamaton's words:

When it is dawn, if his wife is present [in his family], if she is his first wife and if she has begun to menstruate, [the phrase used indicates clearly that the woman has had her first menses and is ready for marriage, not that she is menstruating at the time the blacksmith calls her], he calls her. He says, “This morning, I will meet you under the lènkè.” She attaches her pagne, and she goes to sit there [under the lènkè). He will go there to arrange the forge and to work the iron; he takes off his pants and puts them aside and his wife unties her pagne too. They both sit down. It is forged thus [with them both sitting naked]. When the iron is red, he works it. When he has finished working the iron and he has brought the two borders together [the flutes are made by shaping a flat oblong of iron into a very thin cone], he takes out dry millet[24] and a black cock. He passes these over it and he speaks, saying,

Figure 57. A pair of Komo association “flutes,” the Komo saman. According to Kojugu, the left-hand flute with the twisted and interlocked ‘horns’ is female, whereas the right-hand flute is male. The central depression in the “female” flute is used to contain poison that kills; the central depression in the “male” flute holds poison that neurologically disables a person (creating a lagalagatò), or inflicts other illnesses on them. Kojugu observed that the flutes are the heart of the Komo and that; no matter how powerful, a Komo mask was simply an empty piece of wood next to them. The flutes are in the author's collection. Photographed by Douglas Chew, 1993.

Kòmòtigi of the red house,

Kòmòtigi of the red eye,

The anvil takes,

The pliers take,

When the forge is good,

May the forge kill you.

When the forge is not good,

May the forge take you.

Our predecessors, the great men of knowledge,

we are your relatives.

One cuts another, we are your relatives.

Here is your dry millet.

Here is your black cock.

When he has said this [and sacrificed the cock], he takes it [the cock] by its two legs so that its feathers can be singed off. Whatever person who walks on two legs, if this person comes close to you, may you say, “I kill people, I kill people, I kill people! [Mafa, Mafa, Mafa or mògòw faa, literally, ‘persons kill’; this is one of the Komo’s ritual cries], may you speak thus. May this person be left to your arrow [i.e., to your poisoning].” When the corpse of the chicken is singed, he takes it up and throws it down so that it falls onto the fire. It stays there, it stays there, it stays there until the cock has become completely black. His wife is with him all this time. He calls to her to attach her pagne. “Whatever person shall gaze on this, if this person is not initiated into the Komo, may you kill him.” That is the Komo saman. This is the foundation of the Komo.[25]

In this passage Nyamaton tells us that the presence of the blacksmith's nude wife is essential to the forging of the Komo saman. This information is so startling, in view of our customary perception of Komo objects as totally off-limits to women, that it seemed important to try to corroborate it. However, later in the year when we asked Kojugu about female participation in the making of Komo objects, he did not mention the flutes of the Komo, but he did report that the creation of the first Komo ever (presumably he meant the mask) required the presence of a small girl of the griot caste.[26] He divulged this information very grudgingly, and it remains unclear whether she was sacrificed in order to create the mask, or whether it was her mere presence during its carving that was so essential.[27]

Despite the differences between the two accounts, it is striking that both Nyamaton and Kojugu insist that the creation of key Komo objects requires the presence of a woman as well as a man. The Komo saman cannot be forged without the presence of both the naked blacksmith and his naked wife, nor, according to Kojugu, could the first Komo have been constructed without a griotte girl. As in intercourse, it is the presence and collaboration of both sexes that is essential to the successful completion of the ritual operation.

If, as we saw in Chapter 4, the Bamana view the bellows and the tondo (the clay barrier that contains the forge's fire and separates it from the bellows) (Fig. 31) as representations of the penis and vagina, then Nyamaton's account leads to a similar interpretation of the beating out of the Komo saman on the anvil as a ritual replacement for the sexual act between the nude couple. Instead of embracing, the blacksmith and his wife direct the nyama of their naked bodies toward the creation of the ritual object. In creating the Komo saman, the ritual of forging replaces and in some sense reenacts the sexual experience that would normally occur between a nude couple. Forging the Komo saman is “the same as” sex because it requires the same participants, in the same state of undress, as intercourse.

Furthermore, the shape of the flutes themselves is sexually charged. Kojugu Cissoko identified the left-hand flute with its twisted and interlocked ‘horns’ as female, whereas he characterized the right-hand flute as male (Fig. 59). One could also interpret the shape of both flutes with their oval openings, their “ears” (the same term that Salimata uses to denote the labia majora), and their cone-shaped bodies, as a conflation of male and female body parts in a single object.[28] According to Kojugu, it is the “female,” not the “male” flute that is the most deadly. Like the female sex, which inflicts tuberculosis on the man who sees it and breathes its “gas,” the female flute kills. Kojugu reported that the central depression in this flute (the section that corresponds visually to the female genitalia) is used to store poison that kills, while the similar depression in the male flute holds poison that neurologically disables or inflicts other illnesses. It is significant that it is the female rather than the male flute that contains the most deadly poison; for, as we shall see later, it is female, not male, sculptors who are charged with creating the most powerful and damaging sacred objects. Similarly, Kojugu reports that the cooperatively produced flutes are the heart of the Komo; next to them a Komo mask is simply an empty piece of wood, no matter how terrifying.

If we go beyond explicit parallels between sex and the creation of ritual objects, and pursue our investigation into the more general realm of the language used to refer to the making and handling of sculpture, we find that language itself implicitly associates every ritual action with sexual intercourse. A ritual act is, by definition, a gundo or “secret,” and carving important sculpture is the “secret” of secrets, for it is the most highly charged of all the vast panoply of ritual acts known to the Bamana. Dumestre's definition of the word for “secret,” gundo, is curiously suggestive. After defining gundo as “secret,” Dumestre (1985, no. 4, 707) cites the proverb, “Ceya ye gundo caman ye,” or “To be a man is to have many secrets.”[29] The proverb equates the ability to have sex with a woman (Kojugu's definition of ceya or “being a man”) with the mastery of many “secrets,” that is, political information, personal confidences, and above all, ritual knowledge. Furthermore, Nyamaton informs us that the sexual act is the paradigm for all ritual secrets, for he states:

NYAMATON: In the evening you get up, you get up to go and sleep with your wife, but when you are on the way do you tell people that you are going to make love to your wife?

INTERVIEWER: Nn. Nn. [No.]

NYAMATON: This, then is the first secret [here, when Nyamaton uses the word folo or “first” he means first in the sense of primordial]. It is this.[30]

Because sex is hidden, and because it creates an unspoken bond of shared experience that links two different and frequently opposed individuals, it is the first, primordial “secret.” Just as no one else knows exactly what occurs when a man and a woman sleep together, so no one but the listener hears his best friend's confidences, and no one but his teacher is aware of exactly what incantations, medicines, and sacred objects a particular ritual specialist can manipulate. A gundo is a gundo because it is hidden, and because, like sex, it changes the external world in a material but ultimately incomprehensible way. Just as an experienced traditional midwife like Salimata acknowledges the limits of her understanding when asked to explain how intercourse results in pregnancy, so even a great ritual expert like Basi cannot really explain why the repetition of one incantation brings rain and another fails. Both are mysterious operations – secrets that shift things around in the real world by methods that are ultimately unfathomable.

In addition to being the first secret, sexual intercourse is also the prototype of a jò, or secret male association, such as the Komo, Nama, or Konon. This arises from the definition of jò, whose original meaning was not “secret association,” but “law.”[31] Originally, a jò or “law” was any norm or rule agreed upon by at least two people. Like any law, such a norm had its own traditions, its own customs, its own offerings, and its own rules, which were jealously guarded by the parties to the agreement. Since the sexual act occurs in secret between two partners who agree to their own private conventions, rituals, and methods of communication, it is the original jò, functioning as the model for all subsequent “laws,” and ultimately for the norms set and maintained by the male secret associations. Men who meet in secret associations for the purpose of agreeing on group rituals and “laws” are imitating the primordial secret agreement generated by sex between a man and a woman. They are taking the forms and structure of the first jò, the sexual act, and extending it to the community at large.[32]

This parallel, which lurks behind ritual specialists’ understanding of the concept and structure of male secret associations, becomes even more evident when we consider the word jè, which Bazin (1906, 155–6) defines as “reunion” or “union.” The Bamana and Malinke refer to meetings of male secret associations as jè, saying for instance, “A kera Komo jè tu konon,” or “It happened in the wood of the Komo assembly.” Men who wish to get together to discuss an important problem, or even a secret association matter, say, “An ka jè ka kò korobo,” or “Let's assemble to discuss the matter.” However, jè has another less polite meaning, for it is the standard verb used to denote sexual intercourse. When Kojugu tells us that a sculptor must not have sexual relations with his wife before carving, he uses the verb ka jè, “to unite with,” “to have intercourse with.”[33] Having intercourse with a woman would seem to be the prototypical act from which varying ideas of union, uniting, and assembling follow. In part, this association is due to the expectation that an assembly or village that is “united” will manifest the same unity of purpose seen in a successful marriage. Just as man and wife are ideally supposed to manifest an impenetrable and united front, having the same purposes and goals, so a public “assembly,” or jè, is supposed to produce complete agreement among all parties. Although a young man who disagrees with his elders’ decision on when to start sowing may express his feelings in private to his father (who will then communicate them to the village elders), he will never voice his divergent opinion publicly for fear that he may be accused of disloyalty, or even worse, treachery. For, in the Bamana world, even small actions, such as arriving late at a village assembly, may be interpreted as evidence of disagreement and therefore disloyalty. While everyone knows and realistically accepts that important decisions will inevitably provoke dissension, the Bamana will go to extraordinary lengths to preserve the public façade of the village's complete and total “union” regarding a divisive issue. In doing this, they pursue an unachievable goal of total union and compliance, a complete subordination of individual interests to those of the group. This public ideal is modeled on the private ideal of the seamless marriage, where man and wife become a single, unified body, cooperating and supporting each other far beyond the physical union of the marriage bed.

The sexual act is the first “secret” (gundo), it is the first “law,” or “association” (jo), and the verb “to have sex with,” or “to unite with,” (ka jè), is the root for the word denoting a public assembly. Yet the verbal associations between sex and men's secret activities run even deeper. One critical verb actually links ritual action to the name for a female body part. The standard expression for performing a ritual operation, ka siri, literally, “to tie something up,” has the same root as the word for uterus, lasiri. Dumestre (1989, no. 7, 1085) defines lasiri as “sex, base, source, pregnancy, to be pregnant, to make pregnant,” and the word can also mean “beginning” or “root.”[34] Although Dumestre does not specify that lasiri denotes the female sex, informants used the word both as a name for the entire female genitalia, and also as a technical, medical term that referred to the uterus. An expression using the past participle of ka siri, a lasirilen bè means “She is pregnant,” or literally, “She is tied up”; but a lasirilen is also a ritual object, a “tied-up thing.” Another related expression that has the same overt meaning, a lasirilen don, indicates that someone has been neutralized through ritual action; the person's ability to act in the real world has been “tied up” through ritual operations.

These phrases suggest that the Bamana think of pregnancy as a “tying up,” a stopping of women's potential for fertility. Not only do women stop menstruating – their monthly flow is arrested (Muso lajolen don, “A woman has been made to stop,” i.e., a woman is pregnant) – but their potential is “tied up,” since they cannot become pregnant twice. Likewise, a man whose goats keep on mysteriously dying is said to be “tied up” (a lasirilen don) through ritual work performed by an enemy. Finally, those great objects, the wrapped boliw,[35] and the important sculptures that “tie up” or neutralize an opposing village, are loosely referred to as siriw or “tying-up things.”[36] These expressions and their associations suggest that having sex with a woman “ties her up” or neutralizes her reproductive potential in much the same way that using a ritual object limits and controls an opponent's opportunities and actions. The Bamana language itself suggests that executing a ritual operation and having sex with a woman are parallel and similar activities whose accomplishment results in a similar “tying up” of possibilities.[37]

The preceding analysis has highlighted a number of parallels between having sex with a woman and carving ritual sculpture. However, the data also demonstrates that the Bamana are extremely concerned to keep the two processes, and anything connected with them, completely separate. The sculptor forgoes the sexual act and hides himself from women so that he can carve successfully, while women are forced on pain of death to hide inside their houses when the most terrifying of the sculptor's products, the Komo mask, appears. Having sex and carving sculpture may be “the same,” but this identification is a deeply hidden gundo or “secret” that threatens the ostensible order of life. It takes a Kòmòtigi like Nyamaton, or a fully confident carver like Kojugu, to reveal this “sameness” in explicit speech, and even then their declarations are phrased in gnomic terms. Let us look at this opposition that the Bamana take such pains to maintain.

As the catalysts of equal and yet opposing forces, sex and carving cancel each other out. However, there is an important difference between the destruction wreaked by women on sculpture and by sacred objects on women. When a sculptor breaks the most important tana (interdiction) and allows female bodily fluids to contaminate his carving, the resulting object is inevitably sterile and, in Kojugu's Dwords, “empty.”[38] Similarly, when a woman sees a Komo mask, the physical contact automatically voids the object of all its power. In both cases the woman does not have to do anything; it is sufficient that she exist, and that either she or her bodily products come into contact with the ritual object. The contamination and the loss of power that results is an inevitable law of the universe. A woman's sex operates mysteriously on any ritual object, irrespective of the individual woman's wishes or desires. However, a woman who sees a Komo mask does not automatically die; the Komo association members cannot rely on a natural process, but must take matters into their own hands, cracking the woman's skull in two or poisoning her.[39] Thus, women carry a natural weapon around with them, since their sexual organs function organically; just as a woman's sex empties the virile man of power when intercourse renders the erect penis flaccid, so the same sex can void every sacred object of its carefully accumulated strength. However, men must resort to artificial weapons – clubs and poison – to maintain the power of their sacred objects and their ability to create them.

In private, ritual experts like Nyamaton and Kojugu readily acknowledge that the natural power of a woman's sex is far stronger than the artificial, social laws instituted by men, and the physical force used to enforce them. Men must exert themselves to kill women who have seen the Komo, but a woman is not required to do anything more than exist in order to destroy the power of even the most feared mask. In and of itself, a woman's sex and its fluids can nullify the entire panoply of men's ritual acts and objects. Thus, while having sex with a woman and carving ritual sculpture are indeed “the same,” the power of the female genitals is inevitably greater than the power of any ritual object. This perceived imbalance, which leaves the female genitalia with supreme power, requires that men keep their ritual activities rigidly separate from women out of self-protection. In Kojugu's words:

KOJUGU: … if you are in the process of executing a work that is ‘red’ [a standard euphemism for a dangerous, secret, male activity, such as a ritual operation or the process of making sculpture], I have already told you that the man must not approach the woman, and the woman must not approach the man. In any case this is our tana [interdiction], and I have told you this.[40]

In a slightly more specific passage Kojugu reiterates the importance of avoiding women while carving sculpture:

KOJUGU: If you are in the process of carving sculpture, sculptures that are ritual objects, women will never see you. Women will never catch sight of you and children as well – except for those who are of the same age as you – men like yourself who know the secrets that are used in the fabrication [of ritual objects, i.e., ritual experts]. Apart from these [people], no one must ever catch a glimpse of you.[41]

The belief in the destructive powers of the female sex is so deeply embedded in the minds of sculptors and ritual experts that it generates a kind of paranoia. The tanaw and ritualized precautions that surround the sculptural process demonstrate a pervasive fear of contamination and loss of power through possible contact with women. For instance, Kojugu justifies the reluctance most sculptors demonstrate to allow another artist to participate in the carving of an important object as follows:

KOJUGU: Even if another person knows how to do the work [how to carve] better than you who have the job, even if another person knows how to do it better than you, if he says that he will take it up [to carve], and you don't sleep in the same room together,[42] then you don't know his habits and you won't accept [that he touch your sculpture]. You don't know whether he is dirty or not [i.e., if he observes the ritual rules that assure an artist of purity and freedom from female contamination – these consist of specific methods of washing the body and the use of various traditional medicines as well as sexual abstinence]. You don't know whether his clothes are dirty or not [whether he has worn the same clothing after sex as before. Men are supposed to wash carefully and put on a new set of clothes after sex to reestablish their purity]. His clothes may be dirty [they may be the ones he was wearing before sexual relations], although he himself is clean [he has washed, but he has not put on new clothes], and if he touches the thing that you are in the process of making, afterwards, when you swear on this object, saying at that time, “If I do this [i.e., if I make such and such an offering], may this [the problem for which the client has come to consult the object] come out well,” what happens if it turns out badly? At that time, you who have created this object, you will doubt yourself [your own judgment in allowing another sculptor to have laid hands on it]. But if you sculpt honestly [while pure yourself and without allowing anyone else to touch the object], the time that you have referred to [when making the vow on the finished object], this moment will not arrive without the thing that you have asked for being arranged according to your wishes.[43]

In this passage Kojugu tells us that even impure garments worn by a second sculptor, who may himself be clean, are enough to contaminate a powerful object and render it “empty” and useless. No male-owned sacred object will work if it comes into the faintest contact with the female sex. Earlier in the same interview, Kojugu elaborates on the precautions that sculptors must take to avoid such a disaster:

KOJUGU: Among us, if you are carving an object for men [a ritual object], the clothing that you must wear for carving the object, if you have had intercourse with a woman, you can't wear this clothing unless it is washed. You yourself, if you are going to begin a difficult work [i.e., the carving of a secret, male object], you will pass two days [abstinently], when you have begun the work, it [the period of abstinence] will go on for one day, for two days, and even for three, until it [the object] is finished, since when you are dirty you cannot touch it. Also, you won't accept that some other person touch it.[44]

When Kojugu tells us that the sculptor must not wear any but newly washed clothes following his own purification, he is actually referring to bleached clothing. It is the sege or traditional bleach put into the wash, rather than the soap, that actually purifies the dirty clothing. The Bamana believe that the sege cuts through the sweat associated with sex, completely eradicating any impurity. This insistence on the use of bleach in addition to soap underscores the extent to which men believe that sexual contact with women physically contaminates them, as if women and their impurities could surreptitiously infiltrate even washed clothing.

Given human nature, it is inevitable that even the most careful blacksmith sometimes breaks the rules, and it is interesting to observe that the culprit must return to the earth itself, invoking the primeval power of a red termite mound to purify himself. It is as if the only force greater than the contamination exuded by a woman's sex is that of the original mother herself, the bright red earth mound whose secret underground stream links it back to the great Niger river and the ambivalent creative power of M'Fa Jigi, who invented both male and female sacred objects.

KOJUGU: Until the moment at which you finish the work [of making sacred sculpture], whether this takes ninety days, forty days, or three months, you won't touch a woman. You will never touch a woman. If you touch a woman – your work – it will nullify your work. If you touch a woman, you must put water into a new calabash and go up onto a red termite mound, and whatever tree you encounter on the red termite mound, you must collect its leaves. You will collect the leaves from each tree [on the mound] and put them in the water in the new calabash, stir it, and wash yourself with it on the termite mound. When you are dry, you put your clothes on and you come back to the village. At this point, even if you have had sex [before this ritual], it won't spoil anything in your work. But if you don't do this, you have created an empty work.[45]

Sex and sculpture are opposed: one cannot take place in the presence of the other, and yet they are equivalent and, in Bamana terms, “the same.” Despite their obvious differences in reality, the fact that the Bamana identify these two operations on a fundamental level gives rise to and explains many of the ‘payments’ required of the famous artist. A great sculptor eventually becomes impotent or loses the power to engender children as the result of his successive creative acts, much as a man's penis loses its ability to become erect after successive acts of intercourse. Similarly, the sculptor's shortened life span as a result of his spirit agreement may be compared to the shortened life of the aging man who self-indulgently takes a third or fourth wife, and wears himself out in satisfying her. Finally, the artist's loss of his wife or children, and the various birth defects that appear one by one in a great sculptor's family, find their parallel in the disasters that result when sexual rules are broken by either husband or wife.

Not only does the breaking of the categorical rule of abstinence when carving result in the mixing of two categories – sex and sculpture – that are “the same,” but such violations engender ritual objects whose “emptiness” and lack of viability parallels the dead, deformed, or maimed children with which sculptors pay for their gifts. Furthermore, even if the sculptor remains resolutely abstinent when carving, any prior breach of the sexual rules that govern daily life, such as adultery or sex with a nonblacksmith woman, will maim his carvings in much the same way that a woman's sexual misbehavior will result in birth defects. In Kojugu's words:

KOJUGU: If you make love with another woman, and she is not your wife, and she isn't a blacksmith woman, then, when you go to make the objects of men [ritual objects], it won't work. You will simply make some thing or another and give it to its owner. Nevertheless, it won't be something that will be of any use to him.

INTERVIEWER: You, who have seen all these things, what will happen to you?

KOJUGU: Nothing will happen to you, but your way of working won't be good; if you make something to serve a specific purpose, it won't serve that purpose.[46]

Likewise, a woman is said to provoke a spontaneous abortion, emptying herself of her child, if she commits adultery. In Salimata's words:

INTERVIEWER: If a pregnant woman abandons her husband and sleeps with another man, what will that do to the child?

SALIMATA: Ah! If it is not today [i.e., if we are talking about past times], my friend, Ah! that would have caused you to abort [ka konon burun burun].[47] If it were not nowadays, if you were pregnant from your husband, if you abandoned him for another man, this stomach [this pregnancy] would abort [of its own accord]. Before, in any case, this happened. I don't know about today [when all sexual rules are broken daily and no one seems to pay for this flaunting of traditional interdictions]. Yes, since today, a pregnant woman can have sex with three men, Ehe! Ehe! Yes, indeed.[48]

If Kojugu is correct, and a famous artist's pact with his djinns transforms him into “a woman,”[49] then it is entirely logical that the sculptor's contravention of sexual rules produces a result that, in its own sphere, is identical to that produced by a woman who commits adultery or breaks other sexual laws. The “empty” sculpture is the exact analogue for the spontaneous abortion that empties a woman's belly of its contents.

At least two other punishments of striking similarity affect both the sculptor and the Bamana or Malinke woman. We have been told repeatedly that an artist who indulges in sexual activity while carving will produce only an “empty” object. Similarly, a woman who gives in to her husband's demands and resumes sexual relations before her child crawls or walks[50] invites the death of the infant from sere (probably the malnutrition that often strikes young children after weaning).[51] In both cases, lack of sexual control makes the product, whether object or child, useless and ‘dead.’ A second, more complex case is that of the man or woman who cannot refrain from intercourse on the nights when there is no moon, and it is very possible that the woman is menstruating. Kojugu reports that if a man contravenes the rule that proscribes sex during this period, the child will be sexually deformed:

KOJUGU: The night of the twenty-ninth day of the month [lunar], that is truly, truly the very last night of the month, you must not have sex with a woman. If you have intercourse, if the child is a girl, she will not be born a virgin, and if it is a boy, when he is more than ten or fifteen years old he will no longer be virile. People will say that this is the result of sorcery, and you will look for the cause of it in vain. It is not sorcery. It is nothing except that he is impotent, but people will refuse to accept it [the reason for the impotence and that nothing can be done about it].[52]

Traditionally, both the lack of a hymen and impotence would have rendered the person so afflicted sexually useless. Men would have been terrified to marry a woman born without her virginity,[53] and an impotent man would have been unacceptable as a marriage partner.[54] We know that contact with women, let alone with menstrual blood, renders the sacred objects of men unable to act in the world. So, sex at the proscribed moment or during menstruation produces only impotent or deformed children. When we remember that one of the primary functions of ritual objects is to cure sterility, we see that their loss of power presumably results in an increasing barrenness throughout the village, a barrenness that parallels the community's loss of a fully functioning person when the rule against sex at the wrong time of the month is broken.

The fact that parallel interdictions affect women and sculptors leads us to the second critical paradigm that underlies the mass of rules surrounding the carving of sacred sculpture. Both explicitly and implicitly, the Bamana compare artistic creation to the natural processes of pregnancy and childbirth. The act of carving does not merely replicate sexual intercourse in another realm; the sculptor is also, whether he understands it or not, modeling his actions on those of a woman who becomes pregnant, carries her child to term, and gives birth. For the Bamana and Malinke, this comparison is more obvious, more far-reaching, and more profound than the parallel between sex and carving. It is also more revealing, and sheds more light on the numerous and apparently meaningless interdictions that surround the sculptor. In an interview that has already been cited, Kojugu let fall a key phrase, saying,

KOJUGU: If you have cut the tree, and you have come with that, and if people see it in your hand, and then it must be carved to become a certain thing, before you have finished the complete sculpture, the people who are sitting [next to you] will heat your belly [will irritate you]. So, certain people think that it [making sculpture] is like a pregnant woman, and when she gives birth, if it is not a boy it will be a girl.[55]

For most artists, the similarities between sculpting and giving birth are so obvious and so basic that they never bother to put them into words. The structural parallel between the two situations is like a building's foundation; one does not notice it, but the entire edifice rests on it.

At a general level, two fundamental similarities link the creation of sculpture with the creation of human beings: unknowability and danger. Among the Bamana, pregnancy still remains an inexplicable process fraught with risk. One man compared pregnancy to a night which is so dark, and so mysterious, that one is unable to find one's way and is completely lost. Furthermore, even female experts like Salimata, are baffled and unable to explain how a child is conceived:

SALIMATA: All this [the formation of a child in its mother] has its origin with Allah, since one obtains a child from a man. When you see that they examine the blood [Salimata refers to the Bamana belief that the father contributes blood to the growing child through repeated intercourse until the fifth month of pregnancy], although you [the child's mother] have blood in you, it is as though the man gives his blood in the dominant position, but as for giving you [the mother] that, the root of this lies with Allah. The person who is not Allah, you cannot understand why this happens [how the child is formed in its mother]. Even if the blood should happen to be that of the mother [she considers the case where the normal Bamana theory might be wrong and the blood might turn out to come from the mother], then it is still the father who first gives vitality [the spark of life] to the child, and afterwards comes that [the energy] of the mother. To decide this, there is only Allah alone – we don't understand this.

INTERVIEWER: You don't calculate this?

SALIMATA: We don't calculate this. Ehe. Ehe. We can't obtain this calculation [this information]. We can't obtain this calculation.[56]

Just as Salimata remains confused by the mystery of conception, so the sculptor who retreats to a clearing in the bush, tools in hand, embarks on a process that even he himself does not completely understand. Kojugu's inability to describe exactly how his spirits communicate with him testifies to his own awareness of the elusive nature of inspiration and the uncontrollability of the creative process. In entering the spirit world and returning with a powerful “medicine,” artists create (ka dan) concrete objects that are incomprehensibly ‘alive,’ just as women nurture and produce children by methods that remain unknowable. Similarly, just as a sculptor cannot predict whether a particular carving will really be male or female, or the success he wishes, so a pregnant woman does not know whether she will produce a boy or a girl, a healthy child, or a monstrously deformed “thing of the bush.”[57]

Both women and sculptors venture into the unknown, an unknown whose incomprehensibility is intimately linked with its danger. For, in Bamana eyes, carving sculpture, like going into battle, leaving the village to hunt, taking a long voyage, or giving birth, is a life-and-death enterprise. Just as even the most experienced midwife cannot tell whether a particular woman will survive childbirth, so the soldier does not know whether he will return from battle, the traveler is ignorant as to whether he will die on his voyage, and the sculptor cannot predict the results of his private sojourn in the spirit world. For the artist never knows when his spirit familiar may decide to extract the final payment, and suddenly claim his life while he is carving. In fact, the Bamana attribute many heart attacks and seizures of other kinds to the overwhelming presence of some otherworldly spirit. They believe that the stricken individual cannot sustain the weight of this experience and collapses in response to it. Thus, in both carving and childbirth, the protagonist enters the spirit world to struggle with unknown forces that may easily kill or maim.

The belief that sculptors and women engage in a similar physical battle with death finds direct expression in Bamana and Malinke speech. The same expression, “the tomb is open,” is used to describe both the blacksmith-sculptor's situation when he forges, and the situation of the woman in labor. When we examine the limits of traditional medical care, it will become clear why the Bamana use this expression for childbirth. However, the sculptor's fragility is less obvious. Although Kojugu never explicitly mentioned the death of a sculptor while carving, he did refer to the possibility that a senior blacksmith might die while smelting, and he certainly described how a spirit familiar can shorten an artist's life or kill him outright as the direct result of particular commissions. Furthermore, Kojugu observed the following about smithing:

KOJUGU: The work of the forge is difficult. Once you enter the forge, we say that your tomb is open – until the moment that you leave the forge. When you come out of the forge, your tomb is closed. After that, each time you enter the forge your tomb is open, up until the moment that you leave the forge. This is what our father told us.[58]

In another passage Kojugu explains his previous, somewhat cryptic statement:

INTERVIEWER: It's not serious [a ritualized response]. Now, why did you say that a blacksmith who enters the forge has his tomb open, although he is a man [i.e., living]? Why did you say that?

KOJUGU: The reason that I said that – if you enter the forge, you work with things of iron: the chisel, the hammer, the pliers, and the anvil. If the pliers don't break, the iron doesn't jump out of your hands, the chisel doesn't jump, and the handle of the hammer doesn't break, then, that day you don't die. But if that occurs [i.e., an accident] – the anvil before which you are sitting – if the handle of the hammer breaks and hits you on the head, this world and the other world [here, Kojugu means the world of the dead] will judge between you [between you and the broken tool]. But if a blacksmith dies in the forge, he has died in the ideal place. If this occurs because of someone's action [an action of another blacksmith], there is no case [legal case] between you, unless he has done this expressly. This is what happens in the forge. Ohòn.[59]

When he confronts the hot metal in the forge, the blacksmith hovers between life and death; his tomb is “open,” in Kojugu's words. Similarly:

KOJUGU: We say that the woman's tomb is open because of the moment of giving birth. The essential reason is that, at the moment when the child is about to come out from its mother, at this moment a living spirit breaks away from another spirit. You don't know if the one that must come out will emerge successfully. You don't know if the mother will survive this situation. It is for this reason that the woman whose pregnancy is at term, if she must give birth, if this day arrives or this night, if the pains of childbirth begin, at this time the pregnant woman is not with the dead, nor with the living. Her tomb is open. If Allah has willed that she is a person with luck, she will survive. But if Allah has willed that she is a person without luck, she will stay there [she will die].[60]

Kojugu never says that a blacksmith in the process of carving a ritual sculpture has his tomb open, for this description seems to be applied exclusively to smithing, but we should remember that he did report the death of a blacksmith who attempted to break the “contract” with his djinns in the following terms:

KOJUGU: His [Manyan's] contract didn't arrive at its term. He tried to do the impossible and stayed there with it.[61]

Kojugu uses exactly the same verb (ka to, “to stay”) to indicate the carver's death, “he stayed there,” as to describe the pregnant woman's loss of life, “she will stay there.” While the recalcitrant carver battles his spirits, who finally win and make him “stay” with them, the woman battles her destiny, which eventually overcomes her so that she “stays” in the other world. Kojugu does not use a verb of leaving or departing to refer to these deaths, for, in his mind, both protagonists have “open tombs”; they already have one foot in the other world, the sculptor through his constant, and inevitably dangerous, communication with his spirit familiars, and the woman by virtue of her physical condition.

We may question whether the act of carving is as inherently dangerous as either smithing or giving birth, but Kojugu also tells us that jealous and arbitrary djinns are liable to split a sculptor's skull in two while he is at work:

INTERVIEWER: Well, in the moment of executing this work [the carving of an important sculpture], if the sculptor is sitting in the middle of the djinns, and if he breaks their interdictions, can they kill him?

KOJUGU: They will split his skull in two.[62]

Although less visibly dangerous than the hot iron, the artist's familiars are no less exacting. The sculptor who undertakes the creation of a ritual object and secludes himself in the bush, or on the tomb of a woman who has died in childbirth, has deliberately entered the world of the spirits. Like the woman in labor, he places himself physically and mentally at the mercy of the unpredictable currents that agitate the other world. His progressive feminization has given him an unusual dariya or “openness” that allows him to receive and transmit messages from the other world, much as a woman in labor is completely possessed and, in a crude and very literal sense, opened by the physical process that takes over her body. Kojugu may not tell us so explicitly, but the artist who undertakes a ritual commission places his life on the line when he carves, just as a woman who is pregnant must inevitably confront a time when life and death hang in the balance.

Yet, once again, just as the nyama of a woman's sex and its menstrual blood is the only force stronger than the secret objects of men, so the nyama released by the death of a woman in labor is greater than that generated by a blacksmith or sculptor at work. Kojugu says that “if a blacksmith dies in the forge, he has died in the ideal place,”[63] and he reminds us that a smith or carver who observes the prescribed rules correctly can survive both forging and carving. However, Salimata observes the following:

SALIMATA: This medicine doesn't exist. Nothing can save you from death [in childbirth], unless it is Allah alone. There are no medicines for death. Nobody possesses the medicine for death. This medicine doesn't exist.[64]

Childbirth, like becoming pregnant, is an inescapable physical process over which there are, finally, no controls. The sculptor can consult his spirits and refuse commissions that may endanger him, and no natural force propels the blacksmith into the forge, but the traditional legal system forbids women to refuse sex or to interfere with conception and pregnancy, and they are unable to arrest the contractions of birth once they begin.[65] Their “war” with the spirit world is inevitable, absolute; there is no easy way out, and there are no answers to the arbitrary decisions of the other world. No one, not even Western doctors, can provide an absolute guarantee that a woman will survive, and, in the ironic game of the fates, it is those compassionate women who are the most loved that so often “stay” in the other world.

In addition to observing that the woman's “tomb is open” during childbirth, the Bamana and Malinke call this process the “women's war” (muso kèlè), and they compare the woman in labor to a warrior going into battle. Salimata Kone describes the horror that surrounds the death of a woman in labor with the practical toughness of the experienced midwife:

SALIMATA: The “war of women” [muso kèlè or process of childbirth] has great nyama. The woman who will die [literally, “stay”] in this war, the nyama of this is too great. If it is not today [in the past], if Allah gives death to a woman before she gives birth, even now, at Dodugu, last year a case of this occurred here. The village leader refused permission to bury her. They take you [the dead woman] to a field of stones, and they make the tomb there. They pile up the stones as if they were a muzzle [i.e., the shape of the finished tomb resembles that of a muzzle], surrounding and surrounding you with stones. They will cut down trees and branches that they will put over you, but they never bury you [they never put you in the ground]. Ho! you know, when one describes the case of the woman that one has treated in this way, the way in which one buries other people, these ones [the women who have died in childbirth] are not buried like that, isn't that so? You know that you will be unfortunate [here Salimata means that the husband and relatives of the women carry the stigma of having been subject to a great misfortune; this may mean, for instance, that other families are unwilling to give their daughters to the husband, lest their own offspring suffer the same fate as his previous wife, etc.].

INTERVIEWER: Nhun.

SALIMATA: Oh! You can say that the nyama attached to this [death] is the greatest [more than a man's death in war or any other situation]. You will pray that Allah not cause your wife to die in the women's war. This is what you will say. Yes.[66]

When asked what the nyama released by a woman who dies in childbirth does, and why such women are not buried normally, Salimata states:

SALIMATA: Our old people say that this brings a lack of water [a drought]. The lack of water in the village. And that we will have other similar cases [other similar deaths] in the village [if the woman is buried normally]. They told us this. The meaning of the fact that we don't bury her normally is these two things. It will bring a drought, and the year in which one buries her will see many other similar cases – there will be many other similar cases in the village. This is, in any event, the meaning of this for us.[67]

Salimata tells us that, if buried in the ground, the body of the pregnant woman will cause a drought. In the Bamana world, a drought does not simply mean lack of water, but lack of food, for in the delicately balanced environment of the savanna, a slight decrease in rain can bring disaster on the millet crop, and famine. Contaminated by the dead mother's body, the earth will not receive its normal sustenance and will not produce. Thus, a single woman's failure to emerge alive from childbirth can generate a dryness and lack of fertility that places the entire community in danger. In a sense, the dead body of a pregnant woman becomes a basi, a sacred object or “medicine” that must be separated from the earth and the community if it is not to sterilize it. Enclosed within its coverlet of rocks and trees, the dead body guards its child, an emblem of reproductive disaster and fertility gone wrong. In a strange parallel, the sculptor who sets out to carve a Komo mask will barricade himself behind a protective screen of trees far in the bush or will even work next to the dead woman's tomb. The artist deliberately seeks out the most extreme example of reproductive failure, incorporating its intensely negative nyama into his man-made creation, and carving an object that will be used both to inflict and to overcome infertility.

Kojugu's statements that “once you enter the forge we say that your tomb is open – until the moment that you leave the forge,”[68] and “if the pains of childbirth begin, at this time the pregnant woman is not with the dead, nor with the living. Her tomb is open,” place the blacksmith-sculptor in the same category as the pregnant woman.[69] We have already seen that the artist pays the price of an increasing feminization in return for sculptural ability. To some extent, he ‘becomes’ a woman in order to create. This transformation highlights the Bamana belief that creative power is necessarily female and is, by definition, fundamentally opposed to the male ability to destroy.[70] However, in the interwoven series of mental equivalences that order the Bamana world, physical gender is not always identical with creative or destructive power. Those few blacksmiths who choose to become famous artists certainly acquire ‘feminine’ characteristics, but, in the past, every blacksmith automatically occupied an intermediate position somewhere in the neutral, gray area where male merges into female. For numuw, who accompanied their “noble” patrons to war as surgeons and arms specialists, did not take up arms and fight.[71] Their purpose was the creation of weapons, not their use. Effectively, and by virtue of their birth, blacksmiths were forbidden the normal destructive pursuits of active men.

Just as the supreme male creators become ‘women’ for the period of their work in the forge or the secluded grove, so women in childbirth acquire certain characteristics of men. Not only do they go to war in the muso kèlè, “the war of women,” but their struggle with death weakens their husbands physically, and precludes the men's participation in hunting or battle. Salimata describes the effect of a woman's labor on her husband:

SALIMATA: He can do nothing [while his wife is in childbirth]. If, in any case, it begins, the husband will not go and work, unless someone tells him, “This thing [an object or medicine required by the midwives] is over there,” and he will go and look for it and bring it. Or he will go and look for a certain leaf [a medicine] and come back. He, too, will remain troubled until his wife has finished giving birth.[72]

In another passage Salimata states:

SALIMATA: But among us Bamana, if your wife is pregnant, the husband is troubled. His luck is tied up [i.e., reduced, here “luck” means luck at hunting, warfare, or any other masculine pursuit].[73]

In fact, a man who pushes his luck, and who breaks the unspoken rule against hunting or going to war while his wife is pregnant or giving birth, will pay a terrible price. Salimata recounts that her husband shot and killed a pregnant porcupine in the bush while she herself was with child. In killing this animal, her husband also put an end to her pregnancy, for the porcupine's husband appeared and addressed Salimata's spouse as follows:

SALIMATA: I, myself, my husband killed a porcupine, and it happened that I was pregnant. When the porcupine [the male porcupine] appeared to him – my husband himself told me the story, but this didn't happen in front of me. The porcupine said, “Uncle Sani [Salimata's husband], you have killed my wife who was pregnant, but it isn't a serious problem [a ritualized denial of evil]. You have killed a pregnant woman. This woman will no longer be of use to me, as well as the child, which is no longer of use to me. But now, since you see nothing [you are stupid but not intentionally malicious], I, I cannot say that I will repay the evil that you have done me. If I repay the evil that you have inflicted on me exactly, your male relatives [fadenw] will mock you, since I have two wives, and you, you have only one wife. But in any case, that child [that Salimata was carrying] will be of no use to you. But although your wife will be of use to you, the child will not be of any use to you.” My husband said that no one should use the meat of this porcupine [the female that he had killed]. No one should use the meat of this porcupine. He came home with this porcupine [the dead female]. The child that I was carrying, the child was stillborn. We calculate like this. These things happen to men [when their wives are pregnant].[74]

Pregnancy is a dangerous enterprise both medically and ritually, and during this period women are at risk, for they are at the mercy of forces that lie beyond human control when they attempt to incorporate a part of the spirit world inside their bodies and make it human. Thus, it would appear that the rules that explicitly forbid a man to hunt or go to war during his wife's childbirth are often extended to the entire period of her pregnancy. In hunting, the man always runs the risk that, like Salimata's husband, he may kill a pregnant animal, thus destroying the fetus his wife is carrying. The husband who chooses to take such risks places his wife and the child she is carrying in jeopardy, for in killing, a man alters the balance of forces in the other world, a balance with which his wife is already battling.

In an abstract sense, both partners cannot ‘kill.’ If the woman is to do battle and capture a piece of the spirit world with impunity, then her husband should forgo the normal male pursuits of hunting and warfare. A woman who is “at war” already is safer with a partner who stays at home. Creating a new human being involves the pursuit, capture, and death through physical birth of some unknown entity in the spirit world,[75] just as the creation of a new ritual object involves the pursuit, localization, and control of an intense and living charge of nyama. For both sculptors and women, the pursuit and capture of living essence in the spirit world precludes these activities in the human world. Sculptors and women may not depart for battle, but they wage a far more deadly battle from which there are no exits, for life itself will not continue without this war.

In addition to anxieties rooted in the physical dangers of the birth process, childbirth also generates pervasive fears, and even paranoia, on the part of Bamana men. To some extent, such fears are the result of men's exclusion from the birth process, an exclusion that exactly parallels the rules that forbid women to see the creation of ritual sculpture. As we have already seen, midwives like Salimata readily acknowledge human limitations in the face of childbirth. Whereas the constant sight of the birth process continually confronts working midwives with the limits of their medical expertise, traditional rules (tanaw) deny this experience to men. Men are not only banned from the chamber where a woman gives birth, but they are also excluded from the accompanying rituals.[76] A Western reader may ask why this exclusion should be important to Bamana men, but to ask such a question is to transfer our own medically influenced, and desacralized view of the birth process, to Bamana society.

Men are, in fact, intensely aware of and interested in childbirth, for they know that the process is fraught with danger, and that small deviations in the appropriate procedures can irrevocably influence their child's destiny. A man knows that he will never find out whether the midwife who attends his wife has actually killed the child whom, he has been told, was born dead. He is well aware that he will never learn if his wife broke the traditional rule of silence and cried out during childbirth, condemning his child to a life of puny weakness.[77] He will always remain ignorant as to whether the midwife has buried his child's placenta in the outhouse correctly or incorrectly (a placenta left protruding from the ground guarantees a child's death).[78] And, when his only son dies mysteriously two weeks after birth, he will never be able to decide whether the midwife did not conspire with the local Kòmòtigi to steal the child's placenta, and hand it over for use as a key ingredient in certain male “medicines.” In a society where the only guarantee of survival is the production of numerous children, such questions torment men. They can arrange women's marriages, and once married, they can beat them into submission, but they cannot control the birth process.[79] Men's exclusion from a process whose success is critical to their security in old age, their prosperity, and their political interests, produces great insecurity.

We should also remember that men's concern with childbirth is economic as well as personal, for Bamana men invest a great part of their surplus wealth in obtaining wives. By paying bridewealth, men obtain the legal right to have sex with their spouse and ownership of all the children she may produce.[80] Women give birth to their children, but according to traditional law, they do not own them, and an unhappy woman may well arrange to abort or neglect her child once it is born, out of anger and bitterness at her marriage. Men are well aware of these possibilities, and this awareness contributes to their frequent and often inaccurate belief that women are able to control their fertility, a belief that contributes substantially to male fears.

We have seen that sculptors and women face comparable battles with the unknown, that the dangers of carving parallel those of childbirth, and that the Bamana compare the creation of sculpture to the birth process. On a fundamental level, these processes are “the same,” because both require a struggle with unknown, dangerous forces beyond human control. Furthermore, the inability to control the outcome of these struggles seems to evoke remarkably similar responses.

As we shall shortly see, a profound similarity links the ritual rules surrounding carving to those for pregnancy and childbirth. Both sculptors and women attempt to control their acts of creation by observing interdictions that place an impermeable envelope around their bodies. In both cases, ritual rules forbid any physical act, including speaking, seeing, urinating, defecating, drinking, or eating, that might violate this boundary. Both sculptors and women attempt to place all other bodily functions on hold, in order to assure the success of either carving or childbirth, and for sculptors as well as women, violations of this basic rule result in a death. Whether consciously or not, Bamana men and women act on the basis that the arrest of any communication with the world outside the human body is the only way to achieve control of what are inherently uncontrollable processes. In the Bamana world, creation, opening oneself and bringing something out of the body, whether sculpted “medicine” or child, requires that one enter a sealed space without entrances or exits. In the Bamana mind, it is the impenetrability of this space that allows successful creation.

The Bamana belief that impermeability guarantees success in these struggles with the other world manifests itself in the rules (tanaw) that structure both carving and childbirth. These restrictions extend even to speaking about the act of creation. We have already observed that commissions are shrouded in secrecy, and that if possible, the sculptor avoids any direct reference to ritual carving by using innumerable circumlocutions. Similarly, we have briefly noted that women who are pregnant do everything in their power to deny this self-evident fact. In five years of field work, I never met any visibly pregnant woman who would acknowledge her state verbally, although the same woman might be taking great pains to visit both traditional and Western midwives. According to Salimata Kone, when a woman first notes that she has missed her period she informs only her husband, and takes care to do so in private:

SALIMATA: Among us, the Bamana, we don't tell that [the fact that one is pregnant] to anybody, unless it is one's own husband. When you tell this to your husband first of all, if you yourself are aware that the time for your period has passed, and you haven't seen anything during the next month – some women are tremendously afraid of their husbands. They will tell this to their husbands, “I, in any case, now, I have let a month pass without seeing my period.” The husband, too, will note this. He will say, “You, yourself, you have told me that you have missed a month. Now that makes two months.” You will answer, “Yes.” If it isn't this circumstance [of informing one's husband], the Bamana woman will never tell this to anyone, except when the pregnancy appears on the outside and people know about it.

INTERVIEWER: How does this information reach the outside [other people]?

SALIMATA: When it [the pregnancy] continues, when you begin to be large, yes, in any case, people will know that you are pregnant. Apart from that, you will tell no one.

INTERVIEWER: Ahan?

SALIMATA: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: But if a woman informs her mother or another person, what will happen? Will she abort or what will happen?

SALIMATA: Nothing, nothing will happen. Traditionally, it was the custom with us to hide it until your belly demonstrated it outwardly. It is better for other people to say that you are pregnant than for you to say it, because there is no end to the ill-intentioned Bamana among people [i.e., there are jealous and ill-intentioned people everywhere]. If you yourself, say it, there are some people who won't like it that you obtain children. This person will construct something that he or she will put in front of you, when you go into the bush, or when you are walking, for instance, if you go out very early in the morning, some people will do work [ritual work] that they will place in front of you. If your foot steps over it, when you abort [spontaneously as a result of stepping over the ritual work set by your enemies], your husband will say that it is your fault [because you broadcast the fact that you were pregnant]. It is for this reason that we hide it [pregnancy] in the Bamana world.[81]

Salimata herself explains the reason for the envelope of fictitious secrecy that surrounds pregnancy; a woman who refers to her condition may be thought to be boasting about her fertility. If she is overheard, the jealousy aroused by this statement may prompt a sterile neighbor to “spoil” (ka tinye) the pregnancy by performing ritual work. If the pregnant woman then miscarries, her husband will blame her because she boasted of her success in life. The traditional rule of silence attempts to ensure the safety of both mother and child, and the success of the creative endeavor, by requiring that the woman minimize her own capacities with the continual assertion, “I am not pregnant.” Her listeners, who are well aware that she is with child, do not take the statement at face value, but interpret it as evidence of the woman's modesty and her willingness to attribute important achievements, such as pregnancy, to other members of the group and not to herself. Such silence is the only guarantee of survival in an environment where others are continually thought to be envying, and therefore taking steps to spoil, one's own good fortune.

The Bamana woman's fear that she will bring disaster upon herself by naming her condition, and thus breaking the seal of silence that ought to surround the creative process, parallels the sculptor's behavior. We have seen that the important artist never refers directly to his commissions, but instead tells the curious bystander, “I am going to wander about nearby” (“N’ bèna n’ munu munu dafèla in na,”)[82] when he really intends to search out a lènkè in order to carve a ritual object. Like a pregnant woman, the sculptor cannot take the risk of revealing his purpose to just anyone, for a single unwise statement may result in news of his commission reaching his chief rival in a neighboring village, and this blacksmith may well be capable of spoiling the carving or attacking the sculptor himself. When beginning an endeavor fraught with manifold dangers, both sculptor and woman keep their mouths shut. Whether or not they are aware of the risks they may run through careless talk, and most Bamana are all too aware of these dangers, tradition prescribes a rule of silence that aims to protect both the sculptor and the newly pregnant woman.

Incautious speech is not the only act that can break the shell that ought to surround creative activity; the most overt restrictions govern vision. The Bamana behave as though the sight of either ritual carving or childbirth contaminates these processes and jeopardizes their successful completion. In Bamana society the dangers of vision, both to the person or object viewed and to the viewer, cannot be overestimated. We have already seen that women are categorically excluded from even secondary contact (via “dirty” clothing) with the carving of ritual sculpture, and that most men are forbidden to witness childbirth. In each case it is the gaze of the other sex that is feared.

Sculptors are aware of the parallel between the “hiding” necessary for creating sculpture, and that practiced by women, for Kojugu compares the sculptor's concern to conceal himself from the dangerous gaze of women, with the behavior of a woman who is about to give birth:

KOJUGU: There! If you know the secrets of sculpture, if you know the secrets of sculpture among black people, if you make sculpture, the way in which a woman will hide herself from men, will hide herself from young women [he means young women who have not had children], will hide herself from young girls – you know that she hides herself from all of these people when she is in the house where she will give birth.

INTERVIEWER: Nhun, Nhun.

KOJUGU: If you are in the process of carving a sculpture, you will hide it from men like that [i.e., from all men but a few very elderly ritual experts], in the same way that a woman who is in the first weeks after giving birth hides herself [traditionally women are completely secluded in the room where they have given birth for one week after the birth, and they do not leave the compound for forty days after the birth]. If a woman is about to give birth, among us black people, the way in which she hides herself, if you must carve ritual objects – I didn't say sculpture that one makes to sell, that is, a commercial object, or an object meant for playing with [a children's toy] – if it isn't any of these things, but it is a case of ritual objects, if you carve [them], you must hide yourself like a new mother hides. Nhun, those who know, the leaders, the leaders who are knowledgeable – the secrets with which one makes them [ritual objects], if they know these secrets, then you can make the objects together.[83]

Just as only experienced midwives can attend a woman in childbirth, so only experts who know “the secrets with which one makes them,” are allowed to see the sculptor while he is carving a ritual object.

In Kojugu's mind, the seclusion required of the sculptor is so similar to that demanded of a woman giving birth that he reiterated the comparison several times:

KOJUGU: When a new mother – a woman who has just given birth – before she takes up her life again, everyone doesn't view her. Among black people, everyone doesn't see her. There are certain sculptures that can be carved – if you are working on them, no one sees you, nobody at all must see you. You are alone, and Allah accompanies you.[84]

In this passage, Kojugu specifically compares the necessity for protecting the carver and his creative activity from the gaze of inappropriate viewers, with the precautions that surround childbirth. However, Kojugu also observes that the blacksmith is in a situation equivalent to that of the new mother, only for as long as he is actually engaged in the creative process. The minute he leaves his seclusion and returns to daily life he ceases to be in this position.

KOJUGU: If he [the sculptor] is in the process of carving a sculpture in the bush, nobody sees him. When he is in the bush he is in a position equal to that of a young mother. When he comes back from the bush, and he abandons carving, when he comes into the village, then he is in the same position as everyone else.[85]

In the preceding passages, Kojugu compares the sculptor, secluded in the bush, to the woman secluded in the tin so or “room of childbirth pains.” In so doing, he highlights the contrast between men who ‘give birth’ to objects in the bush, and women who give birth to children in the village. In fact, when women are judged to be close to childbirth, they are prevented from leaving the compound to work in the fields so that they will not give birth in the bush.[86]

Furthermore, it is important to note that traditional sexual mores proscribed sex as well as childbirth in the bush, and, during the 1983–6 famine, many elders of both sexes attributed the disastrous lack of rain to the fact that young people had not respected this rule, and had indulged themselves by having sex in the bush and “spoiling” the earth. The two critical steps in the production of human beings, sex and childbirth, must occur in the village, whereas the carving of important ritual objects, the artificial ‘children’ of men, must take place in the bush. Strangely enough, this opposition does not identify women with nature,[87] but with the production of humanness and therefore culture, while men are identified with the unmanageable powers of the open wilderness and its spirits, or kungo fenw (“things of the bush”). The nonnatural and artificial creativity of men is pushed out of the village and into the natural landscape, whereas the natural creativity of women must occur in the village.

My informants’ statements that the drought of 1983–6 was the direct result of performing the wrong creative acts in the wrong place, unprotected from the gaze of unexpected passersby, testifies to their belief that creative activity must be concealed behind appropriate barriers if it is not to cause disaster. However, these barriers also have a practical function, since important sculptors often remove their clothes to carve ritual objects, and women remove their wrappers during childbirth.[88] We have seen that the nudity of the male and female blacksmith who work together to forge the sacred flutes for the Komo is a direct reference to the sexual act; but the carver's nudity seems to refer primarily to childbirth. In bringing forth an object out of the raw wood, the nude artist comes close to mimicking a woman who gives birth. Just as the sight of a woman's sex is terrifying and harmful, especially when covered with blood and producing a child, so the creation from nothing of shapes that seem to speak, is too mysterious to be viewed by the uninstructed. There is, finally, something about the creation of visual forms that the Bamana find miraculous, unexplainable, and comparable to the traumatic mystery of childbirth.

“Hiding” is the primary method by which the sculptor shields himself from any visual or physical contact with the outside world, but the fear of contaminating, and thereby jeopardizing, the creative process goes even further. We have already seen that sculptors put on clean clothes before embarking on ritual work, in order to avoid any contact with women, no matter how remote. Likewise, women are concerned to protect the cloths that have absorbed the blood of childbirth from the gaze of men. Salimata describes how women prevent men from seeing any of the cloths used in birthing:

INTERVIEWER: Can men come across it [the cloth that has absorbed the blood of childbirth]?

SALIMATA: No. We dig a hole, and we put water in it. Or, if there is an outhouse. You know that in former times among the Bamana there were outhouses. We dug a hole in the outhouse, and we put it in there. We washed you [the woman who had just given birth] over this hole, washed you cleanly so that men would not see you while you were dirty [men would never encounter either the blood-stained cloth or any taint of blood on the woman]. The clothes, too, are washed. It is like this that we did it.

INTERVIEWER: Is it not good? Does it have a nyama?

SALIMATA: Everyone shouldn't see it. It isn't something that men should see.[89]

In fact, not only are men prevented from seeing the bloody cloths, but a new father cannot see either his wife or his child until the naming ceremony (batem) approximately one week after the birth.[90] When the birth is over, the midwives in charge of the woman will formally announce the successful or unsuccessful result of his wife's labor to the father, but he is forbidden any immediate contact with his wife or child. Similarly, the Bamana client cannot supervise the sculptor as he works, or, in Western fashion, visit his studio unexpectedly. Like a new father, the client is forbidden to see the results of the creative work until the object is finished and is formally presented to him for its acceptance and consecration. In both ritual carving and childbirth, those involved in the creative activity jealously guard the sight of the procedures involved, in an effort to promote the success of these dangerous endeavors, whose fragility renders them vulnerable to the destructive gaze of inappropriate witnesses.

The sight of what should not be seen is not the only form of physical contact that can destroy the creative process. For, when we examine the rules that control the sculptor's behavior while carving, we find that these interdictions parallel those imposed on a woman who is giving birth. In both cases, apparently arbitrary restrictions aim to forestall any interchange with the world beyond the creator's own body. We have already described the intense concentration of an artist like Basi, who fixes his attention exclusively on his carving for as much as two or three days at a time. Similarly, a woman in labor pays no heed to any distractions, since her entire body is taken over by the process of childbirth. However, it is possible to draw an even more specific parallel between the two creative processes. Kojugu observes that the sculptor must take care to breath in a specific rhythm, or risk spoiling his work:

KOJUGU: When you raise the adze in order to bring it down, at the moment of bringing the adze down on the wood – this will find that your breathing has stopped [when the adze is raised and coming down on the wood], but when the adze has come down your breathing will continue.[91]

It is obvious that the process of giving birth affects a woman's breathing pattern, making it more labored and perhaps comparable to the rhythms employed in carving sculpture. Certainly, Kojugu's previous statements comparing the sculptor to the woman who gives birth suggest that the Bamana may view the rhythm of the sculptor's cuts, and his focused expenditure of physical energy, as paralleling the contractions that wrack a woman's body during childbirth.

The sculptor must not only control his breathing, but in at least one case he is not allowed to utter certain words. The artist who carves the “little dog,”[92] must avoid calling anyone by name; if he breaks this rule, the person summoned will die.[93] Similarly, a woman in childbirth is forbidden to cry out in pain (or at least to cry loudly enough that others beside the midwives hear her),[94] and those who break this rule are believed to produce children of feeble character.

In addition to the mouth, the Bamana also try to control all other openings into and out of the human body during both carving and childbirth. Kojugu reports that another sculpture, the N'kòsòn,[95] is even more difficult to produce than the “little dog”:

KOJUGU: The N'kòsòn is difficult. Every sculpture is difficult, but it is the N'kòsòn that is really difficult. The N'kòsòn is difficult. The difficulty of the N'kòsòn is that before you finish carving it completely, no one must see you, you must speak to no one, you must not get up to go and urinate, you must not get up to go and defecate, you must not eat, and you must not drink until you have finished it.

INTERVIEWER: And one makes it in the space of one day?

KOJUGU: One day. One day.[96]

The rule Kojugu cites is designed to prevent any substance from entering or leaving the intestinal tract during carving.

Similarly, the ideal Bamana woman not only remains silent during childbirth, but she also achieves the feat of controlling her defecation at the same time as she gives birth:

SALIMATA: There are certain women who are constipated. Oò, at the time when the child comes, these women have diarrhea. So, if they begin to give birth, and the diarrhea begins, the doctors [here Salimata refers to Western-trained doctors and midwives at the local maternity clinic] place a cloth between the diarrhea and the child. There are many cases like that. If it [the feces] touches the child, the child will not live.[97]

Salimata tells us that contemporary midwives now use Western methods to enable women to observe a traditional rule that forbids them to defecate on their child during the birth (formerly, pregnant women changed their diet in order to observe this rule). As with the sculptor who causes the death of his assistant when he calls his apprentice by name while carving the “little dog,” the woman who crosses the invisible boundary between her own body and the outer world by defecating may pay a terrible price; her child dies. In both cases, a seemingly minor infraction of traditional rules results in an extraordinarily severe punishment.

The tanaw observed in childbirth and in carving suggest that women and sculptors share a fundamental belief, that an extreme degree of control over their bodies is essential for successful creation. How can we interpret their faith in the efficacy of this control? Is there a logical rationale underlying this belief and the behaviors to which it gives rise? Let us look first at childbirth in an effort to understand the more opaque process of sculptural creation.

Once the woman is hidden, and her labor begins, all the rules that Salimata describes pertain to the intestinal tract. The woman must not use her mouth to cry out and she must not defecate, on pain of killing the child she is producing. Why should these critical rules apply only to the intestinal tract? Previous work on boliw has demonstrated that the Bamana believe that any substance that emerges from either end of the intestinal tract is inevitably poisonous (Brett-Smith 1983, 51). Food, speech, urine, and feces are all tainted products that carry an intense charge of nyama. In and of itself, the intestinal tract appears to be endowed with harmful, if not death-bringing, power. In this system of thought, childbirth presents an inevitable problem, for the vagina that produces the child lies next to the anus. If the products of the anus are materials from which one can construct death-bringing poisons (Brett-Smith 1983, 50–1), how can one assure that the child fulfills its promise of new life, and that it is not contaminated by the nyama-carrying feces? Salimata's observations reveal that the Bamana resolve this conceptual problem through arbitrary rules that serve to separate bodily functions whose confusion is believed to bring death. The tana on defecation during childbirth assures that the ‘good’ and life-affirming product of the vagina is kept absolutely distinct from the ‘bad’ and death-bringing product of the anus. The rule reminds everyone that no matter how much nyama may accompany a child from the world of the ancestors, it is still a child and not feces.

Physical proximity explains why Bamana women feel the need to keep defecation and childbirth completely separate, but why should similar tanaw apply to sculptors?[98] We have seen that artists may be required to observe rules that forbid drinking, eating, and urinating, as well as speaking and defecating, during the time that they are carving. The sculptor is very literally ‘walled up’ behind a barrier of rules that close all entries to and exits from his intestinal tract. In analyzing this behavior, we need to remember that, unlike children, carvings do not emerge from a specific area of the human body. Furthermore, Kojugu's discussions suggest that the process of conceptualizing a visual image and creating it in wood remains vague and mysterious, even for sculptors. Djinns may account for inspiration, but despite the various rationalizations presented in this book, they can never completely explain the creative process. Kojugu's list of the tanaw for carving ritual objects suggests that much more general and all-encompassing rules are needed to combat the diffuse and elusive quality of this type of creation, than are required to control childbirth. Since one can never pinpoint the exact moment and place where inspiration occurs, it is best to forestall all possible contamination by closing every entry and exit to the sculptor's body.

Although they are more comprehensive, the sculptor's tanaw do not make sense unless one understands that they parallel those of childbirth. It is the existence of these tanaw, and their conceptual similarity to those controlling the birth process, that is the most fundamental evidence for the comparison between the making of sculpture and the production of a child. The tanaw suggest that the carving of sculpture is simply another kind of birth process, and that, like childbirth, it requires extreme intestinal control for its successful completion.

We have seen that both childbirth and sculpture demand an exaggerated level of control, but what does this control achieve beyond the assurance that ‘good’ and ‘bad’ bodily products will remain clearly separate?[99] Salimata's description implies that it is the woman's control of her intestines which permits her vagina to abandon its normal shape, and through repeated contractions, produce a viable living being. It would appear that for the Bamana, it is the ability to hold back in one area of the body that permits openness (dariya), abandonment, and a successful and creative surrender in another.

Childbirth necessitates an immediate and physical openness, but what about the sculptor? Is his creative act contingent on a similar openness, and how is this achieved? The artist in the process of carving may seem completely cut off from the world around him, but like the woman in childbirth he is not self-sufficient. For, just as a woman opens herself to her husband and to the spirit world, when she conceives by capturing the spirit of a deceased elder in her body, so the sculptor needs to communicate with his spirit familiar if he is to conceive and execute a ritual object successfully. Kojugu's list of tanaw suggests that the sculptor's walling-off behind a set of restrictive rules that control his body's openings, endows him with a ritual “openness” (dariya) that functions as an equivalent for the physical “openness” of women (also called dariya).[100] The Bamana perceive women as naturally “open” because of their physical shape, because they open themselves during sex, and because childbirth opens their bodies and exposes them to death. No man, not even a numu, can achieve this kind of “openness,” but, in the Bamana mind, some kind of dariya is necessary for creation to occur. By observing a ritualized set of restrictions that require extreme intestinal control and cut off any entry into or exit from his body, the sculptor becomes a more accessible vehicle for his spirit familiar. Like a woman, he is able to exhibit the “openness” that will draw his djinn toward him and enable him to create.

We have seen that the interdictions surrounding ritual carving aim to create a sculptor who is “open” to the spirit world, and that the artist's “openness” parallels that of the woman who gives birth. Throughout this book we have also seen that numuw are frequently treated in a manner similar to women, and that they may even ‘feminize’ themselves through the consumption of special medicines. Although this adoption of a female stance is most marked during the moments when the artist is carving, the ceremonies that conclude the making of a ritual object also reveal significant parallels between ritual carvers and women.

As the sculpture progresses, the client makes a ritual gesture toward the blacksmith, a gesture that is strikingly similar to that which a man must make to a wife who has just given birth. The client must furnish a domestic animal (either a sheep or a goat) to be killed for the artist.[101] The client takes the head, the hooves, and the neck of the animal, and orders that they be specially prepared in their own sauce and offered to the sculptor.[102]

KOJUGU: If you carve sculpture, if you are in the process of carving, you are in the process of making ritual objects – for the secret things of black people one must kill a domestic animal and give the head, the hooves, and the neck; they will offer these to you. Nobody else will have a single morsel of the head, nor of the neck, nor of the hooves. This is the laada [customary offering] among us black people, and here is the clear meaning of this laada.[103]

Given the high carbohydrate content of the Bamana diet, a dish prepared exclusively from meat is an extraordinary luxury. Such a dish, which is usually made with thin and very peppery tomato sauce swimming with meat fat, honors the recipient, and is thought to provide the stamina necessary to undertake or to recuperate from an extreme physical effort. Women who have just given birth are provided with a similar offering of meat cooked in a watery, hotly peppered tomato sauce.[104] However, a new mother receives a cooked sheep or goat stomach and a freshly killed chicken, rather than the back, neck, and hooves consumed by a sculptor.[105]

Although it is unclear whether the sculptor has actually finished work when he receives this meal, and he certainly consumes different portions of the sheep or goat than are offered to the new mother, the same principle underlies both offerings. Both sculptor and woman are undergoing, or have undergone, an enormous depletion of energy and strength. Both have been engaged in a life-and-death battle with the spirit world, and both emerge with depleted resources. Just as the husband, who is the legal owner of a woman's child, must provide her with the customary meal, so the “owner” of the ritual object, whose creation is exhausting the artist, must provide him with a similar ritual dish. In both cases, no one else may touch the food.

The blacksmith does not merely eat a meal similar to that given to a new mother; like a woman who has just given birth, he separates himself from the process of creation by ritual washing. When he has finished carving, the artist washes with leaves that remove the nyama he has absorbed during his work on the commission. These medicines enable the artist to return home, to sleep with his wife without endangering her, and to pick up the threads of his life, returning to forge iron at the anvil and gossip with his clients. Similarly, after the birth is over, the midwife carefully washes the new mother in the outhouse to remove any trace of blood. In addition, throughout the week of complete seclusion that follows the child's arrival, the new mother washes repeatedly in different medicines that fortify her, increase her milk supply, and remove the nyama attached to the birth.[106] The sculptor uses different leaves than those used by the woman, but both the new mother and the sculptor wash in order to remove the intensified nyama they have absorbed from their creative processes.[107] In each case, the transition back into normal life can be accomplished only through washing with “medicines.”

Ritual washing may end the sculptor's seclusion and enable him to return to a normal routine, but the Bamana and Malinke do not stop thinking of carving as a peculiar type of childbirth simply because the process of carving has come to an end. For, when we examine how Bamana men handle and talk about finished ritual objects, we discover some striking similarities to the ways in which women treat a newborn child. We have analyzed Basi's comment that the sculptor's spit is the most important factor in endowing a sculpture with power, and we have seen how Basi ‘consecrated’ the author's Tyi Warra mask with a ritual bath in water charged with his own saliva.[108] This bath can be compared with a procedure in which an elderly woman sucks and massages the remaining nyama out of a newborn infant on the day it is named (one week after its birth). Immediately after a male elder has shaved the child's head and named it, dissipating some of the nyama that the baby brings with it from the other world, the infant is handed over to an experienced older woman. She takes the child and mutters an incantation over it, before she begins her massage by slowly stroking the baby's bald head from the forehead down to the neck. If the child is a girl, the elder repeats her gesture four times, and if the child is a boy, three times. She then places her mouth on each of the ears, blowing into them, before she sucks at the child's mouth and navel, spitting her own saliva out onto the ground afterwards. Then, very slowly, she bends each arm closed, holds it shut for a moment, and opens it. After she has molded the arms, she holds the child out in front of her, and, taking both feet together, she bends them upward so that they touch the baby's forehead. Finally, she takes the razor used by the male elder and imitates his actions in shaving off the child's first hair.

Although the bath given to a newly finished object clearly parallels the bathing of the newborn child, the sculptor and the female elder perform similar actions for somewhat different purposes. The sculptor aims to breathe and spit his own nyama, and indeed ‘life’ itself, into the newly created ritual object, whereas the female elder tries to blow and suck the last vestiges of otherworldly power out of the child, so that it can be launched into everyday life without damaging those who see and handle it. The sculptor wishes to assemble nyama in order to infuse his creations with it, whereas the new mother and her attendants want to diffuse the all-too-powerful nyama with which the newborn has arrived in the world. Sculptors and women use exactly parallel techniques – washing, muttering incantations, blowing, and spitting – to achieve directly opposite ends. In reversing the physical process that channels nyama – women suck this energy out of children, whereas sculptors blow and spit it into ritual objects – artists parody and in some sense pervert the natural process through which the Bamana create a socialized human being. The procedures themselves suggest that it is the reversal of the ‘normal,’ a reversal inherent in the idea that men might be able to create living entities without the help of women, that endows ritual objects with their uncanny power. The sculptor's creation may be a facsimile of a child, but it is a bizarre and nonnatural child.

We have already seen that spirit “contracts” imply a parallel between ritual objects and children. When he describes his sarati, Kojugu equates the loss of his children with access to creative power.[109] In this exchange, a living human being balances or ‘equals’ the production of a series of ritual objects. However, Kojugu makes the comparison between children and ritual objects even more explicit, when discussing the differences between Komo masks of varying quality:

KOJUGU: But the one that I saw that pleased me and the one that I loved in my heart, these are the same thing – but, even among your own children there are some that you prefer more than others, and the one that I saw [and preferred], I saw at Sagadugu.[110]

Kojugu expresses his tenderness, his pleasure in, and his affection toward the Sagadugu Komo mask by comparing his feelings with those of a parent for a favorite child. This parental attitude is not limited to Kojugu. As the group of elderly men who guard the Dabà observed, both sculptors and owners of basiw talk repeatedly to their objects, confiding their deepest problems to these endlessly patient listeners, and endowing them with the accumulated nyama of their verbal confidences. The ritual object is the child who hears all, miraculously understands it, and extends an unwavering support to its “owner.” When watched, the tenderness and delicacy of an elderly ritual expert who carefully brings out an important object for inspection, anoints it with oil or sacrificial blood, gently directs its movements (in the case of a mask that is being performed), speaks caressingly to it, and then, finally, removes it to its hiding place, is striking. Such men are often more tender with their objects than with their living children, and they appear to cossett the artificial creation much as one would calm a fractious infant. Such delicacy and careful attention is necessary, for these ‘children’ of men are not merely good listeners; they can be dogmatic, arbitrary, and malevolent in their decisions and advice. Like real children, basiw or “medicines” deal in extremes, and, once pronounced, their counsel admits no compromises.

Ritual experts’ tenderness toward their basiw suggests that the Bamana and Malinke may consciously think of their sacred objects as “children,” but Kojugu provides even stronger evidence for this comparison. We already know that the creation of basiw is fraught with dangers, but Kojugu tells us that these risks become more acute in proportion to an increasing visual correspondence between the object and a real child:

KOJUGU: Apart from that [the creation of Komo masks – Kojugu refers to this in the preceding sentences], the things whose production is very, very, very dangerous – indeed, the fact of forcing yourself to make these things is bad in the sight of Allah, these are the human figures in wood. This is because it is imitating Allah. It is because of this that their production is dangerous.[111]

Kojugu's fear of carving human figures may have been caused by knowledge of the Islamic prohibition against depicting the human form, but we should remember that the sculptor never prayed, and consciously rejected any semblance of Islamic belief. Whatever his understanding of Muslim law, it seems equally likely that Kojugu fused a vague knowledge of the Islamic prohibition with a traditional Malinke belief, that the creation of “human figures in wood” might jeopardize his ‘real’ children's lives. In fact, Kojugu's statements suggest that sculptors equate the creation of yirimògòniw with the growth of a human child inside its mother (Fig. 3):

KOJUGU: If you persist in making sculpture [he means yirimògòniw specifically] all the time, the height that you give to the figure, most of the time, if you can't banish the nyama, when you have a child, when the child is at the same height as the figure, the child will die. This [the child's death] becomes the payment [for the figure].[112]

In Kojugu's mind, child and figure are equivalent, living entities, and the sculptor cannot have both. If he chooses to carve, his real child will die, and if he abandons carving, his son or daughter will live.

The belief that wooden figures are equivalent to children is powerful enough that a sculptor can redeem a potential child by “paying” for it with an “empty” figure. If a sculptor who is carving a yirimògòni breaks the rules by sleeping with his wife, he can choose to save the child conceived at this time by producing an “empty figure”:

KOJUGU: If you carve it at this time [the time when your wife is menstruating], it's as though you are creating a person for yourself alone [i.e., an object that is only for individual use and therefore has no value]. When a woman is menstruating – it is after this that she has her propitious moment [for conception]. At this time, if you carve a human figure in wood, the following will happen. The person that you are destined to have, the child that you should have – when your wife is menstruating, if you have sex with her, if this is destined to become a child, the figure that you have been carving will be the payment for that [i.e., the sculpture will be “empty” so that you will be able to have the child]. Nhun, it's for this reason that we refuse to do it [to make human figures in wood – Kojugu reports that it is much harder to get sculptors to make these than to make masks].[113]

In the case of human figures, the equivalence between finished object and human child is explicit, but Kojugu also suggests that the creation of any sacred carving may take the place of an artist's potential child. When their wives are pregnant, sculptors usually refuse to carve, since they fear that their creation of an artificial entity will harm the infant. Nevertheless, some intrepid artists do execute these commissions in exceptional circumstances, but they invariably take special precautions to protect the pregnancy:

KOJUGU: You will wash yourself with certain leaves [medicines]. You will wash yourself with important leaves [powerful medicines]. Whether it is a chicken, or a goat, if you have the means, you will make a sacrifice for your child, so that nothing happens to the child. You will make it as though it were a sacrifice for the child's spirit [ni], but, in any case, you won't tell anyone.[114]

In this passage Kojugu implies that the creation of a powerful basi does not merely deform or maim the artist's infant; it takes away life itself (the ni). The child's ability to live, its ni or breath, is equivalent to the living, if nonhuman, essence of the finished ritual object.

This rough balance of child against object, spirit against spirit, and life against life, operates for every ritual carving, but it becomes extraordinarily specific in the case of human figures. If we look more closely at the production of yirimògòniw, we find that carvers choose the day of the week on which to carve specific images in accordance with the destiny of a child born on that day. The sculpture must be brought forth on the same day as the child, if the object is to possess the qualities and personality associated with that day:

KOJUGU: The reason for which it is difficult to carve a female human figure, to carve the wood as a woman, to carve the wood as a woman; you must make it so that it serves your needs, that it becomes something that everyone seeks, that it becomes a true, true object that fulfills needs. If you don't make it on a Thursday, then you will carve it on a Monday. The child who is born on Thursdays is a leader of men [mògòtigi]. The child who is born on Mondays is a master of knowledge [secret knowledge]. The child who is born on Fridays is a ruler of men [fangatigi]. If you want to carve it [the figure] for a ruler, you will carve it on a Friday, eè! That is very good! If you make it on a Friday, you are making it for a ruler. This person will see his power increase. His power will multiply itself. That which I have said concerning this matter, these are my words.[115]

A few minutes later Kojugu continues with a description that we have already seen in Chapter 5:

KOJUGU: I, I told you that we make it on Thursdays. This is for the popularity [sankan, normally a characteristic of women rather than men] of women. We also make them on Mondays; this one is made for [to obtain] knowledge. We make them on Fridays; this one is for power. Whether you wish it, yes or no, this occurs like this. Nhun. When one asks, considering the false and the true [considering whether finished figures are active or empty], “What is the most numerous?” “The good ones [the effective ones] are not numerous.” Each thing does its own work. During the seven days of the week, the day that you should choose to carve and the object that you should choose for that day, if you work on it on that day so that it can be used for a certain purpose, it will never fail [literally, “fall”]. If you work on it at that precise time so that it has a certain purpose in its use, it will be a success. Each thing [each object] has its day [for being carved].[116]

Just as every child is born with a certain destiny and certain abilities, depending on the day of its birth, so each object must be carved on a particular day in order that it acquire the associated qualities. The same rules that govern the birth and destiny of a child also control the creation and future of a ritual object.

Furthermore, the laadaw or customary offerings brought out on behalf of yirimògòniw are strikingly similar to those offered on behalf of a newborn infant, and Kojugu himself makes this connection:

KOJUGU: The laadaw for human figures in wood; if you carve this for another person, you tell him that he must come with ten kola nuts and then, when he has given the ten kola nuts, you will ask him for an old chicken, an old cock, and an old goat, and he will offer these. These are the customary offerings for a human figure in wood.

INTERVIEWER: After that, will he give nothing more? He doesn't give millet or anything else to the blacksmith, does he?

KOJUGU: These are the laadaw. After that, after that, his payment – this isn't a payment, these are the laadaw. If your wife gives birth, the person who comes and tells you of this, the old woman who comes and tells you that your wife has given birth, don't you put your hand in your pocket and say, “Hon, take this kola nut here!”? And then, when you go home, good, if you enter the house, that [what you. hāve already given the old woman] isn't the laada [doesn't constitute the laada] for a new mother. In any case, if you are among us, the Bamana, if the child is a girl, you will kill a chicken at the entrance [to the courtyard]. If it is a boy, you will kill an old cock at the entrance. You know well – isn't this how it is?

INTERVIEWER: Nhun.

KOJUGU: Good, and if the day for shaving the head of the infant arrives [the day of the batem]? If you have the means, won't you kill a domestic animal [a goat or sheep]?

INTERVIEWER: Nhun.

KOJUGU: Good, all these calculations are linked in a chain and they follow one another until the end [i.e., all the sacrifices follow each other one by one from the birth until the end of the mother's retreat period].

INTERVIEWER: Are these the same calculations that follow each other when you carve an object?

KOJUGU: Nhun [in assent].[117]

At his child's birth, a man normally sacrifices a hen or a cock (depending on the sex of the child) at the entrance to his compound. Things are no different with the creation of a human figure in wood; the nyama attached to its arrival is banished with the same sacrifice. However, the living essence animating a yirimògòni may lack a distinct sex, even if the figure itself is clearly male or female, so, to protect himself, the object's “owner” kills both a male and a female bird.[118] A week later, when his child is named, a man makes a further offering of ten kola nuts and, if he has the means, a ram or sheep. The kola nuts are offered to the most important men attending the naming ceremony, while the animal is slaughtered and its meat cooked and eaten. The “owner” of a yirimògòni does not wait a week to make this sacrifice, but adds it onto the male and female chickens so that his object receives all the laadaw at once. He well knows that the object he has commissioned may possess an arbitrary and demanding personality, and so the “owner” takes no chances in dealing with the nyama attendant on its creation.

Yirimògòniw explicitly demonstrate that the Bamana and Malinke identify carved wooden figures with living children. Moreover, the preceding data concerning the sculptor's concealment and nudity while carving, his enforced control over speaking, breathing, eating, urinating, and defecating, and the fact that, as in the forge, he runs the risk of death when creating a ritual object, suggests that the Bamana identify the artist who carves ritual objects with the woman who becomes pregnant, gives birth, and nurses. The sculptor “has become a woman” in more respects than the loss of the ability to “perform the work of men in the house of women.”[119] In creating objects, the Bamana artist re-creates and re-forms himself, transforming his drive for power and his aggression into an almost feminine emptiness and receptivity (dariya), and an unexpected vulnerability that lurks just below his tough façade. Basi may seem harsh and immovable to his daughter, when he explains the conditions imposed by the oracle on which she has so lightly sworn, but the old man's resolute adherence to the rules imposed by the unseen world cloaks a deep awareness of human fragility. The sculptor is well aware that the other world imposes its demands and enforces its rules without mercy. He knows that those who try to temper the djinns‘ demands will pay the price, and that his daily communication with the spirit world places him continually at risk. In some sense, the door to Basi's tomb is always ajar, if not open.

Famous artists, those men whose physical presence alone engenders an atmosphere of awe and fear, and who, whether alone in the bush or sitting amidst onlookers at the anvil, are always isolated, one foot in the other world and one foot in this, these men who are ‘women,’ whose conscious moments are perpetually dogged by remorseful thoughts of the children they have ‘lost,’ these men do not make normal children. The objects they create, the basiw and boliw on which the Komo, Nama, and Konon depend, possess a bizarre appearance, an exceptional power, and intense nyama. Their products are strange and twisted, the bizarre creations of an artificially acquired femininity. Like the misshapen infants abandoned on ant heaps, these fabrications of men testify to a fertility that has gone astray and been distorted. The creations of men may destroy the living, or they may render the sterile fertile, but they leave behind them an empty shell, the carcass of a person. The great artist can provide his community with the power to control reproduction, but in the process the sculptor consumes himself, entering a neutral zone in which his own sexuality is absorbed and cannibalized by his spirit familiar. Like those aged women who wield the masculine power of life and death with chilling objectivity, deciding which children are to live and which to die, famous sculptors are divorced from gender and sex. They too inhabit that dry, gray zone where masculinity and feminity interweave and fuse, confusing the unwary spectator. It does not matter whether the sculptor can “do the work of men in the house of women”; it matters only that he can reach the real, if invisible, sources of power, open himself to them as a channel, and produce objects that enable others to manipulate the invisible forces that rule the universe. At the last, the sculptor is neither man nor woman; he is a means to an end.

CHAPTER 7

“The Foundation of the World Is with Women”

If the analysis presented in the previous chapter is correct, intercourse and childbirth are the crucial paradigms that lie behind the lengthy process through which men create ritual sculpture. The making of objects is analogous to, or in Bamana terms the “same” as, the making of children. Thus, biological creativity is the most fundamental kind of making, functioning as a model for both carving and smithing. Yet, ostensibly at least, the Bamana and Malinke restrict these arts to adult men, while women, the primary creators, make textiles, artificial skins that wrap the human body.

However, this division by gender already seems suspect, for we have seen that the men who create ritual objects acquire a ‘female’ identity as they progressively succumb to the enticements of their spirit familiars. In Kojugu's words, the great sculptor has “become a woman, you are not equal to any man.”[1] He cannot engender children who will survive, he has committed himself to long periods of sexual abstinence, and at the end he allows his djinn to render him impotent. Clearly, normal male sexuality is perceived as inimical to successful artistry, and indeed, the information presented in Chapter 2 suggests that sexual abstinence and progressive feminization increase the sculptor's ability to create powerful objects.

We shall now see that this analysis of artistic creation is reinforced by further data that documents the existence of two categories of unorthodox sculptors. The first category lies at a critical midpoint between the extremes of masculinity and feminity. Kojugu reports that young uncircumcized boys who have never experienced sex are selected as the carvers of choice for certain powerful objects.[2] This choice is made for two reasons. First, the young carver's innocence protects him from the nyama that would attack an adult who attempted to produce an object of this type. Second, the same lack of sexual experience confers an additional, supremely potent charge of negative power on the object the young boy creates. Innocence would appear to convey a fierce and otherworldly force to the object in question.

Although requiring confirmation through further research, Kojugu's statements are remarkably specific. Kojugu reported that his great-grandfather's older brother, Farakurun Cissoko, a man of considerable ritual expertise, had carved an extraordinarily powerful object before his circumcision. Kojugu refused to provide us with the name of the object or its use, but he did comment that the object was still preserved in his family:

KOJUGU: I have the habit of hearing about them [objects carved by uncircumcized boys]. If you see that I have told you of this, among us, the black people, anything that you don't see or that you don't hear about, you can't talk about it. Such an object exists among us ourselves, there [in his own village]. In any case, our great-grandfather, Sine Cissoko, his son, Kojugu Cissoko, and his son, who is Jigi Cissoko, and the first son of Jigi Cissoko is I, Kojugu Cissoko. That exists right up to the present in our village.

INTERVIEWER: But who made it?

KOJUGU: The person who made it?

INTERVIEWER: Nhun.

KOJUGU: It is our older brother of our great-grandfather, who was called by the name of Farakurun before he was circumcized [it was formerly common for boys to take a new name when circumcized]. It was he who made it. His name was Farakurun.

INTERVIEWER: And the family name of Farakurun?

KOJUGU: Cissoko.

INTERVIEWER: Cissoko?

KOJUGU: Nhun. Farakurun Cissoko. His younger brother was Sega Cissoko and the younger brother of Sega Cissoko was Sine Cissoko. The first son of Sine was Kojugu Cissoko. The son of Kojugu was Jigi Cissoko. Jigi Cissoko had me, Kojugu Cissoko, as his first son.[3]

The Bamana and Malinke place uncircumcized boys like Farakurun in the category of ‘women;’ they are forbidden to see, much less to use the sacred objects of men. However, Kojugu informs us that it was precisely the uncircumcized youths’ lack of both sexual experience and ritual knowledge that qualified them to carve important basiw:

KOJUGU: These carvings existed. They were carved only by uncircumcized young men. Nobody made them except for uncircumcized young men.

INTERVIEWER: Why could no one else make them, except for uncircumcized young men?

KOJUGU: The reason behind giving the making of these things to uncircumcized young men; they say that the nyama of these things doesn't attack uncircumcized men.[4]

Why should uncircumcized youths escape the nyama that inevitably attacks the adult sculptor? The answer lies in beliefs about childhood and sexual innocence.

We have already seen in Chapter 1 that the Bamana believe that children possess an intensely high charge of nyama. Their very fearlessness, and their indiscriminate willingness to eat food that would make an adult vomit, demonstrate their power and their ties to the world of the dead. Indeed, the Bamana believe that the greatest sorcerers are really children, since only a child dares to eat with the most renowned elders, leaving these feared experts to fall sick and die, while the child continues effortlessly with his life untouched (Brett-Smith 1982b, 16–19). As children age, their powers become increasingly unmanageable; excision and circumcision are necessary to remove the nyama of childhood and sever the link to the other world. A young man who has not yet been circumcized, who has not yet acquired an overtly ‘male’ identity, automatically wields an extraordinary valence of nyama, a level that both protects him from the force of the object he creates and endows it with supremely destructive powers. Kojugu tells us:

KOJUGU: The reason for which one makes these [objects] like this – there are certain [objects] that you make to kill people. There are others that are made for use against any enemy at all. If you aren't an uncircumcized young man, you will not be able to vanquish [the enemy]. If an uncircumcized young man enters into ritual operations against you, he can break you. It is for this reason that we make these things like this.[5]

The fact that an uncircumcized boy is still intimately linked to the world of the ancestors, that he remains asexual, innocent, and indeed ‘feminine,’ endows his creations with exceptional powers. Kojugu observes that adult blacksmiths self-consciously put this innocence to use when they instruct a bilakòrò to execute a ritual carving. Furthermore, the older carvers try to preserve this lethal ignorance, for Kojugu tells us that the uncircumcized boy does not fully comprehend the meaning or function of the objects that he alone is able to create:

KOJUGU: There are some uncircumcized young men – if they see something with their eyes, if they are true blacksmiths, if they see it with their eyes, they will carve it. But the real use – one doesn't tell him that, but he [the uncircumcized young man] will carve it in the form of a certain mask, although no one will tell him its use.[6]

Kojugu's description suggests that the boy's lack of knowledge, his total obliviousness of – and indeed indifference to – the consequences of his carving, makes a critical contribution to the power of the objects he creates. Relieved of any emotional response to the ultimate use of the “medicine,” the bilakòrò can easily create objects that even the most famous sculptors hesitate to attempt.

For the Bamana, an uncircumcized boy's exclusion from any knowledge of “the things of men,” and his lack of a differentiated sexual identity, place him in the category of ‘women.’ Although he may have a man's body, the traditional rule that forbids a youth to experience sex before circumcision brings him, like the adult sculptor, closer to the feminine, rather than the masculine, side of existence. Kojugu reports that it is precisely the bilakòrò‘s sexual innocence, his undifferentiated and ambiguous sexual identity, that qualifies him to carve important ritual objects. Yet, if a ‘feminine’ youth is deliberately selected in order to create a more lethal “medicine” than the most famous adult sculptor, shouldn't women, too, be able to carve, and shouldn't their creations be even more powerful than those produced by an uncircumcized man? If smelting, smithing, and carving ritual objects are all implicitly or explicitly modeled on the biological creativity of women, and if all male creators possess or acquire a ‘feminine’ identity, we should expect to find that women, too, are able to carve ritual sculpture.

Throughout the literature on African art one finds statement after statement to the effect that women cannot handle, much less carve, sacred objects. Scholars have seldom been able to document cases of women carving even mundane objects. Similarly, the use of sculpture by women is extremely rare. Notable exceptions are examples like the dancing of bundu masks by important Mende women in Sierra Leone (Boone 1986), and the Tyekpa association's use of carved female figures among the Senufo (Glaze 1981, 85–8). However, in both cases, these compelling images of feminine power are still created by men. So far, scholars have not observed women carving sacred objects among either the Bamana or Malinke, and Mande specialists have agreed that men reserve the production, sight, and use of these “things that remedy needs” for themselves. Clearly, the male sculptor remains the observable norm throughout West Africa.

In 1984, convinced that we would receive only negative answers, we asked Kojugu whether blacksmith women ever carved ritual sculpture, and if, like their husbands, such women had offered their children to spirits in return for artistic prowess. We wished to satisfy ourselves that we had investigated every possible issue relating to the production of ritual objects and gender. Kojugu's calm response overturned our preconceptions:

KOJUGU: That occurred [that women carved sculpture] since before we [i.e., his generation of sculptors] were born. But recently, recently, since people have begun to speak too easily, and these people [the women who carved sculpture] were always found, one here and one there – one would say that a certain woman lived in a certain place, and that another one was located in another place – but this kind of person is no longer around. Before [Kojugu probably means before traditional values were corrupted by colonization and its ensuing modernization, perhaps up to about 1910] there were many people like this. But now, at the time that we are now living, these things have cooled down little by little, and the reason for this [this “cooling down” or loss of women who make sculpture] is that people talk too easily, that is, among black people. It is this and only this that has caused the matter of things of the bush [“things of the bush” is the traditional term for djinn or spirit] to come very, very, very rarely.[7]

Kojugu implies that the “things of the bush” now have difficulty emerging for men, let alone women. According to Kojugu, women sculptors were rare in the past, but not unknown; every important blacksmith would have been aware of one or two women who carved sculpture. However, such women did not operate in public; both they and the man responsible for them (the eldest male of their natal extended family, or their husband) hid their gifts and the fact that these women often executed commissions officially entrusted to some other member of the family. Kojugu described this process of concealment as follows:

KOJUGU: Among us black people, we don't speak about this [the fact that some women can carve ritual sculpture]. If a woman can execute this kind of work, the person in the family for whom she carves ritual objects – apart from this person and the woman herself – the other members of the family don't know about it, with the exception of the man who is next in line to the head of the extended family. So, it is even more so with the other members of the village. In the village no one at all will know, but whatever the thing is [whatever the commission is] the woman will accept it in agreement with the head of the extended family. Apart from him, no one will know about it in the family, and even more so in the village. At that time people were educated [in proper traditional behavior]. People didn't talk easily. Now, everything is spoiled.[8]

In this passage Kojugu neither contests nor remarks on women's ability to carve ritual sculpture; rather, he views this ability as a given, an unarguable fact.

For Kojugu, the problem is not whether or not women are able to carve, but how to control, use, and above all conceal this power. It is the admission of creativity, not the creativity itself, that is problematic. Thus, Kojugu emphasizes that even within the extended family, only one member is actually aware of the sculptress's abilities: the man for whom she carves ritual objects. A woman may possess a channel of communication to the spirit world that enables her to carve important sculpture, but whether or not she uses this ability depends on a man. When asked why some gifted women never actually carved, Kojugu responded that a woman's use of her gift depends on her husband, or on the elderly male who is the head of the extended family.

KOJUGU: These ones [women] are there, of course.

INTERVIEWER: Why doesn't this happen [that they carve sculpture]?

KOJUGU: Their husbands aren't in agreement with this.

INTERVIEWER: Well, do they talk too much or their tere isn't good, or, well, what is it a matter of?[9]

KOJUGU: They talk, they talk too much.[10]

Kojugu does not tell us that women are unable to carve, for he is only too well aware of women's multifarious powers and their innate ability to communicate with the spirit world. Rather, he and other men worry that such women will “talk too much,” revealing the fragile base on which men's power is constructed. To Kojugu, what is dangerous is not the fact that a woman may carve a ritual object, but the public acknowledgment that she can enter the most arcane sphere of male activity and emerge unscathed; for, like a young man's public protest over the date chosen to sow the millet, such a demonstration threatens the hierarchy that gives form to daily life and the appearance of power to men. Like other intelligent men who have penetrated the depths of ritual knowledge, entering the inner circle of the powerful, Kojugu is well aware that ability is not always distributed according to gender and age. He knows that, in their own interests, he and his colleagues will do well to maintain a flexibility that allows them to pass on ‘their’ commission to an eleven-year-old boy or a thirty-five-year-old woman, provided that this supple bending of the established rules remains shrouded in impenetrable silence.

Who are these women who are allowed, and even advised, to enter the arena where only a few men dare to venture? In contrast to the blacksmith men who must frequently spend years seeking out a familiar spirit, searching for their djinn during long retreats in the bush, dosing themselves with medicines that will open their consciousness to her visits, and abstaining from sex so that they may encounter her in dreams, some blacksmith women are simply born with a spirit. In Kojugu's words:

KOJUGU: She comes [into the world] with her spirit.

INTERVIEWER: Will that [the djinn] tell her that she must carve wood?

KOJUGU: Nhun [yes]. She can carve sculpture if her own djinn sets her to that. If it is the case that her djinn is male, he will set her to that [to making sculpture]. But if her own djinn is a woman like herself, she [the djinn] will allow her to perform other extraordinary feats of blacksmithing; she can … bad things … [here the recording is not clear enough to translate]. Since, if she is a female blacksmith, her character will become hard [here the word Kojugu uses means “hard” in a literal sense, but it also implies that the woman is ambitious, dynamic, and tough]. She will be able to walk where there are glowing coals to pick up pottery that is still red [from the fire] in her hands and come back and put it down, and she will show this talent to the blacksmith women; it is like this if her own djinn is female. But if her own djinn is male, any work belonging to blacksmith men, if men do it, if her husband is in agreement with her, she will be able to do it. But if her husband isn't in agreement with her, she will not do it. That is the business of her husband [making the decision as to whether the woman will sculpt or not].[11]

Kojugu does not tell us that women spend years searching out a spirit familiar, for are not women naturally in close contact with the spirit world through their ability to create new life? Whether they like it or not, when they give birth, their “tomb is open.” With one foot in this world and one foot in the other, women inevitably hover in the crack that separates the visible from the invisible, for who knows when they will conceive by capturing the spirit of an ancestor and clothing it in human flesh, and who understands why some survive the “women's war” while others “stay behind?” Kojugu never tells us that the most gifted male sculptors are born possessing a spirit, for even prodigies like KoMakan must acquire a djinn. But women can come into the world with a djinn. Their creative power, whether it produces people or objects, is entirely natural. It is men who must strive to obtain a spirit artificially, abandoning their masculinity and appropriating the ability to create, an ability that is normally women's.

A woman is born with a specific type of djinn, either male or female, and neither the woman nor her husband or family can change the spirit's nature. Whereas the djinns that men so painfully seek are usually female, sculptresses arrive in the world endowed with male spirits. Just as one seldom encounters a man with a male djinn (only one man who possessed a male spirit was encountered during five years of fieldwork), so it is rare to find a blacksmith woman with a female spirit. Nevertheless, despite this stereotypical paradigm, female spirits are still more frequently attached to women than male djinns are to men.

How do the Bamana and Malinke know that their daughter has brought a spirit with her? Whereas exceptional visual gifts distinguish the boy who is capable of obtaining a djinn, a girl's familiar manifests itself through distinctive physical marks. The body and behavior of a girl endowed with a spirit are naturally abnormal:

KOJUGU: We know [whether a girl possesses a spirit who will enable her to carve sculpture]. Even today, if we [knowledgeable blacksmith men] see a woman, we know. We know because of the way in which the globes of her eyes are situated [in the woman's head]. It manifests itself by her way of gazing. It also manifests itself when she is asleep. If she is a child, when she sleeps, you will know that [that she has a spirit] by her way of sleeping. We know about this by these three signs.[12]

Later, Kojugu elaborates on the physical signs that mark a girl who possesses a djinn:

KOJUGU: We know that [that a woman has a spirit] by a woman's eye sockets, together with the hair of the eyebrows. Also, if the woman is sleeping, if you watch her, it is the words that she utters. The words that she utters, the way in which she brings them out, one will observe her with regard to these matters. This is not the work of a single day [observing these characteristics].[13]

Communication with the spirit world is absolutely essential to the survival of the community, and it is rare enough that ritual experts like Kojugu are loathe to leave a talented individual of either sex unused. Thus, a blacksmith who has observed the distinctively sunken eye sockets, the eyebrows, and the mutterings of his daughter or granddaughter, will begin to train and “protect” the young girl, separating her from the other children, keeping her next to him, instructing her in secrets, and, as we shall see, dosing her with the same traditional medicines that he would bestow on a young boy destined to become a famous carver. Kojugu describes the process of protection and training as follows:

KOJUGU: If you are aware that she follows the other children in everything [that they do] and that they do silly things [here silly things means both pranks and normal, childish games], you will watch her so as to bring her away from this path and really protect her, keeping her under your own eyes. Really keeping her under your own eyes until she reaches the age when she can learn the traditions of black people. Then, you will teach her about sacrifices. You will teach her your own secrets so as to protect her.[14]

Kojugu's description reveals that the young girl's sex is less important than the fact that the family has identified a child with the ability to communicate with the spirit world, and the talent to add to its fame and reputation. As long as the matter can remain secret, it would be foolish to neglect such an opportunity, so a girl born with a spirit is given the training usually reserved for young men.

As we saw in Chapter 2, such training incorporates extended treatments with traditional drugs. Kojugu explains the purpose of these medicines as follows:

KOJUGU: They open [increase] her intelligence. They arrange her work [i.e., guarantee that her carvings succeed]. And also, if another person rises up against her to give her harmful poisons, he will not be able to touch her.[15]

Because her powers threaten the apparent structure of society, the young girl is especially vulnerable to pharmacological attack. She must be protected not only against the age-old enemies who detest her family, but also against the male rivals who may divine her gifts and, no matter how much she abases herself, may attempt to stamp out this unusual challenge to their power.

If the girl survives childhood and begins to carve ritual objects, she will also receive medicines that ward off the nyama of the wood, despite the fact that women are more resistant to this danger than men.[16] Like her possession of a djinn, the girl's innate resistance to the nyama of the wood that she cuts suggests that women's creativity is a natural consequence of their existence. Unlike men, women do not require especially high doses of drugs to protect themselves, although they do not give up washing in traditional medicines:

KOJUGU: Of course, she will wash herself with leaves againstthe nyama of the wood. Ba! Ba! Ba! She will wash herself with leaves against the nyama of the wood.

INTERVIEWER: Well, if she didn't wash herself in these things and if she suffered the effects of the nyama, what would happen to her? Would she die? Would one of her children die? Or well, what would happen to her?

KOJUGU: If she didn't die, she would become useless. [Kojugu uses the term nagasilen to denote the effects of the nyama. A mògò nagasilen is someone who is alive, and who lives at home, but someone who can do nothing useful, who has lost all their intelligence and strength of personality, and who can no longer work.][17]

This passage suggests that, unlike the sculptor whose head is split in two when he contravenes the interdictions of his djinn, or who becomes blind or paralyzed when he fails to offer the appropriate sacrifices before cutting a tree, a woman who does not protect herself against the nyama of the wood simply becomes useless. The nyama cannot destroy the sculptress's physical body, but it can affect her intelligence and personality, transforming her into the hollow shell of a human being.

It is impossible to grasp the impact of Kojugu's statement, “Of course, she will wash herself with leaves against the nyama of the wood,” unless one is aware that Bamana men and women almost never use or consume the same “medicines.” Earlier, we saw that any ritual expert, whether he is a famous carver, a traditional healer, the head of a Komo society, or a well-known diviner, is continually imbibing an endless series of drugs that increase his powers and protect him from poisoning. Normally, the specialist himself pounds and boils the most potent of these medicines, and he alone washes in them and drinks them. Occasionally, sculptors and other experts hand over the preparation of less powerful leaves to their most trusted wife, who sometimes shares in their use, but Kojugu warns that the stronger drugs must never be entrusted to a woman because:

KOJUGU: Those [“medicines”] that are made by men and that one never entrusts to a woman – if you give these to a woman, if she is angry with you and she wishes that you suffer the effects of her anger, but you have prepared the drug as if for yourself alone, you will stay with this anger [you will experience the long-term effects of the woman's anger], and it will never leave you.[18]

According to Kojugu, a ritual expert allows his wife to share his “medicines” only when the couple have lived together for many years, and the husband knows his spouse inside out. However, even in such exceptional cases, a woman must ask her husband's permission before she ventures to take some of the leaves for herself:

KOJUGU: If your wife is old and you love her, because she is old, if you wish, when you go to cut your leaves [for making traditional drugs] you will give them to your wife, telling her to pound them in her mortar. If this woman isn't angry with you and you aren't angry with her, if she asks you, “Aah, what kind of medicine is this? Tell me before I put it into the mortar used for food,” then the husband can reply, “Nn, these are medicines with which one washes oneself [i.e., powerful, secret drugs].” When the woman pounds them, she will take a little of them. Then she will wash herself in them.

INTERVIEWER: But does she take her portion with your permission or without your permission?

KOJUGU: She asks your permission. If she has pounded the leaves and she takes them out of the mortar to give them to you, she will say, “Aa, my husband, I forgot, I have taken a little of this.” If he says that it is all right, that's the end of it. But if he says that this is not good – “That is my own medicine” – she will return with the rest, saying, “Here.”[19]

While even a Kòmòtigi's wife must ask permission to use her husband's drugs, such “medicines” are automatically bestowed on the blacksmith woman who is born with a djinn. Her spirit familiar is male, she is destined to carve “the objects of men,” and there is therefore no reason to deny her the drugs that will protect her.

A sculptress may be reared on the traditional drugs usually reserved for men, but like all powerful women, she must take exceptional care to abase herself in the face of male authority. This public acknowledgment of male superiority and power is even more important for those rare women whose force of character, ability to keep secrets, and intelligence actually propel them into the domain of men, than it is for the giddy young thing who threatens no one. For, while everyone knows that a thoughtless seventeen-year-old is easily manipulated, it is a rare expert who will take on an aged and intelligent midwife like Salimata. Such a woman has not spent her life mastering a pharmacopeia of traditional drugs for nothing, and she may have memorized more traditions and manipulate more fearsome ritual objects than the most powerful sculptor. Like old and trusted slaves who know more of a noble family's history than the family head himself, such women conquer and dominate through their willingness to accept an inferior position and to abase themselves before men in public. A powerful old woman who tells her clients that “she is afraid of men” and that she has little power and less knowledge, terrifies her visitors, for has she not been willing to take on the intense nyama that accompanies sub- mission? Does she not display an extraordinary toughness and ability to survive by her willingness to undergo the extremes of self-denial and self-denigration? In this paradoxical world where ostensible power is often empty and the most oppressed acquire the greatest nyama, the sculptress may be filled with a greater power than the sculptor, and the Kòmòtigi‘s wife may be a far more terrifying authority than the Kòmòtigi himself. Kojugu describes this kind of woman:

KOJUGU: If she becomes a person, a person who has completely succeeded [here Kojugu uses the phrase mògò min sabatilen, meaning “a person whose personality has reached its fulfillment,” i.e., a person who has complete control of herself, whose projects, whether mud-cloths or fields of rice, always succeed, and whose abilities are fully realized in her life], you will tell her your secrets, and she won't reveal them to her female friends; she will tell them to no one. If you go into the places of men [the sacred grove of the Komo, or the secret meeting places of other ritual experts], the products [here Kojugu means “medicines”] with which you wash yourself, you will wash her with these products, and you both can go into certain places. Then, even if the men say that they will bring her down, she will humble herself even though she possesses secrets. She can execute harmful operations [poisonings, etc.] against men, but she humbles herself. If a man says that he doesn't accept this humility [i.e., calls the woman's stance of humility a fraud], she will stand up publicly and tell him, “Whatever you wish – do it to me.” At this moment, if a woman has realized herself completely, if she is honest [both sexually pure and straightforward in her interpersonal dealings] and has accepted her husband [she has always done what he has told her to do], if the woman has worked only good for her husband and she has accepted everything about her husband, and she has been honestwith him, the things with which her husband washes himself, you will wash your wife with these things. The things that the husband drinks, the wife will also drink. The leaves that the husband cuts down to spread out on his mat underneath himself, you will also cut them for your wife; but if you are aware that one time she has been unable to keep a secret, and if you have learned a second time that she has spoken too easily – I am not talking about the woman herself [this phrase is obscure], then you will say nothing to her, but you won't tell her to assist you [in preparing your medicines].[20]

The woman who is confident enough to stand up in public and tell her opponents, “Whatever you wish – do it to me,” has acknowledged male authority, but she has also warned the men of the community that she possesses her own powers and that one does not thoughtlessly trifle with such a woman. The men may choose to kill her, but the nyama of this death will rebound on them and on their wives and children. So, for as long as a powerful woman maintains the fiction of her inferiority, the men are better off giving her a wide berth and allowing her to continue on her way unchecked.

Given the importance of silence to a powerful woman's survival, it is clear that a blacksmith woman born with a male djinn will be trained to keep her mouth shut, just like any male apprentice. In fact, her anomalous position will probably provoke a more severe training than that received by any boy, for “easy” talk will not only endanger her, but will place her male tutor and the village hierarchy itself in question. A sculptor may be persuaded to talk, but not a sculptress, for while the Bamana believe that a man can always be provoked into speech by asking him if he is a slave, it is said that when a woman wishes to be silent, it is completely impossible to persuade her to speak. Knowledgeable men assert that the stereotype of the garrulous woman is simply a superficial façade that hides an unbreakable determination not to reveal the most profound secrets. Whereas men can sometimes be convinced to talk about the Komo, trying to get women to discuss the Nyaguan association or other feminine mysteries is a lost cause right from the start. A woman born with a male spirit not only will be given special “medicines” to open her intelligence and protect her from enemies, but also will receive an exceptionally tough training in silence and self-control, a training that makes her in Kojugu's words, “hard.” Not only can she carve, but she will possess the absolute discretion so characteristic of powerful women. She will follow the code of silence so faithfully that she will never reveal her abilities to public view or jeopardize the men of her family.

In addition to her profound silence and her “hard” character, what other attributes characterize the exceptional woman who arrives in the world with a male djinn? Like the male blacksmith who chooses fame over wealth or numerous progeny, the female sculptor is prepared to sacrifice her own children to her artistic abilities. When asked if women also agreed to “contracts” with their spirits, and if they too handed over their children to their spirit familiars, Kojugu replied:

KOJUGU: That exists there [in this case]. That exists there. These lineages of blacksmiths are there. These people themselves [i.e., women who have ‘given’ their children to the spirit world] are there.

INTERVIEWER: Well, if you are going to give your child, how will you do it? Will you go to the blacksmith men who are there, or, well, how will you do it?

KOJUGU: You won't go to a blacksmith man, of course. The thing [the djinn] which is with you, the secret will be between you and that thing. Except for it [the djinn], no other person will know about it. No other person will know of it, except you alone and Allah and the thing [the spirit] alone. No other person will know about it, of course.[21]

In reading this passage, we should remember Kojugu's words to his wife, Dusu, at the birth of their second child, Filatenen. Kojugu tells his wife that “this child here, you can make use of it yourself to resolve your problem [i.e., to acquire ritual knowledge].”[22] Having exchanged his first child for sculptural ability, Kojugu allots the disposition of the second infant to his wife. However, he implies that she would have used Filatenen to obtain ritual secrets rather than sculptural powers. In fact, Dusu allowed their daughter to live, preferring a living child to power. Nevertheless, had Kojugu's wife chosen to conclude a sarati or “contract,” the terms of this pact would have been a secret between her and her spirit. Similarly, a woman sculptor makes her contract with the spirit world in silence; she tells neither her husband, her father, nor the head of her extended family. The fact that women, who naturally possess the ability to create life, should choose to destroy that life in exchange for artistic ability, endows women sculptors with a categorical “hardness” that goes far beyond that of the men we have discussed. An important male sculptor may be terrifying, but he usually possesses at least one weakness to which a client can appeal. However, a woman with the courage to exchange her own flesh and blood for artistic skill is perceived as completely unapproachable, and cannot be stopped once she decides on a course of action. It is hardly surprising that even personalities like Basi can be terrorized by a knowledgeable and resolute woman, or that men may feel themselves to be permanently on the defensive.

A woman sculptor's “hardness” and the ‘naturalness’ of her abilities are also demonstrated by her sexual behavior. Once again, men adhere to the accepted rules with difficulty, while female sculptors are believed to be born with a natural sense of restraint. We have seen that male sculptors can break the code that requires abstinence and sexual fidelity, and that limits the range of permissible partners to women of the blacksmith caste; men like Kojugu can stumble, and yet they are able to recoup their position by washing in special “medicines.” However, the Bamana and Malinke believe that women who carve observe sexual interdictions absolutely. According to Kojugu, a woman with a male spirit would be unable even to contemplate infidelity, let alone infidelity with a nonblacksmith. She would not be required to resist such an impulse, for it simply would never occur:

KOJUGU: If she is married, if she is married and she goes to sleep with another man who is not a blacksmith, she cannot do it. Indeed she, she cannot do it. Certainly, she cannot. Certainly, she cannot. The thing that has been with her since her childhood [i.e., her spirit], this causes her to be unable to unite with another man if he is not a blacksmith. She cannot. She herself, she will never be willing to do that with any other man. People do that [break caste barriers on sex] now because we, we have entered a new period of time, but if it was really the old time, really, you took an adolescent girl as your fiancée, and up until you celebrated the marriage and you knew her [sexually], you knew her as a woman, and up until she died too, she didn't know [sexually] any other man except her husband. But we are no longer in that epoch today. The custom of today is to be with [i.e., have sex with] whomever seems good to you – everything is acceptable.[23]

In another passage, where he discusses a blacksmith woman who possessed the ability to walk on hot coals and handle red-hot pottery without being burned, Kojugu implied that such abilities would vanish instantaneously if the woman broke the traditional sexual rules. A woman who was born with a male djinn and was carefully educated to become a sculptor would never even think of committing adultery. Furthermore, the fiancé of a female carver would be informed of her djinn, and he would be asked to agree to leaving his future wife alone to sleep with her spirit two nights a week. In fact, both families would pay great attention to the selection of a young man who would be able to live with such a wife, and many promising youths would be rejected on the grounds that they lacked the requisite psychological strength or sexual self-control to support a wife endowed with such gifts.

A woman sculptor not only revealed the presence of her male spirit by adopting the ostensibly masculine attributes of silence, sexual self-control, and the ability to destroy or ‘take’ life; but her shift in gender identity was so powerful that she even assumed male dress when carving:

KOJUGU: Our great-great-grandmother, who had the habit of carving sculpture, all the rules that a man had to respect, she, too, she respected them. All the things that a man should not do, she, too, she respected these rules. Even if a man put on [traditional] trousers to carve a ritual object, she put on trousers in the bush to sit down and carve. When she finished [carving] and she returned home, she took off the trousers to wear a wrapper and she arrived home like that.[24]

Wearing trousers might be the most striking outward sign of a woman carver's terrifying ability to master male as well as female skills, but even the artistic process followed the established pattern. Like a male sculptor, a woman's inspiration and the number of objects she actually carved depended on her spirit familiar. A woman's djinn might speak to her, telling her the type and form of the object she should carve, or he might appear to her in a dream:

KOJUGU: The thing with which she is [i.e., the djinn], this thing will put her onto it, and she will carve the object. Or else, if she dreams, and it says to her, “Tomorrow, make this, tomorrow, carve like that,” when the dawn arrives she will say, “My leader [matigikè, literally, “the man who leads people,” a formal term for a man who is your superior. The term implies that the woman accentuates her inferiority to and dependence on her husband, although few men in their right minds would dare to contravene the instructions of a spirit], some information was told to me during the night. I was told that I should cut down this tree here [i.e., a specific tree of a specific species] and that I should make this object, and that I should make this [a specific object] with this [the tree]; should I make it, or, well, should I not make it?” If her husband says, “You must make it,” she will make it. But no other person will know about it. It is for you alone and your husband to know of it.[25]

Kojugu is careful to let us know and to reassure himself that, despite her ‘natural’ access to her spirit familiar, the female sculptor not only tells her husband of her djinn‘s instructions, but she also requires his permission to undertake the enterprise, and his help throughout the process of carving. A woman may possess the ability to carve, but she cannot use it without her husband's consent.

We know that women who give birth seclude themselves away from men in a tin so or “birthing room,” and that men who carve retreat to a remote clearing in the bush or to the tomb of a woman who has died in childbirth. But where do the impressive personalities who arrive in the world with a masculine alter ego, as well as the ability to give birth, carve? In the exceptional cases when the sculptor is a woman, the workplace shifts from a secluded clearing in the bush to two locations notable for their destructive potential: the ant heaps where stillbirths and deformed children are abandoned (ntinkinyèso), and an empty crossroads in the center of town (dankènè):

KOJUGU: The places in which a woman can carve wood; these are two places: the ant heap that we call ntinkinyèso. She carves on the ant heap.

INTERVIEWER: With which other place?

KOJUGU: The chief of the places where a woman can carve wood is the ntinkinyèso. The ant heap. They will go to carve sculpture on the ntinkinyèso.

INTERVIEWER: Nhun. And the second place?

KOJUGU: Perhaps she can go to sculpt …

INTERVIEWER: Tell me!

Figure 58. Fugan feere mud cloth painted by Salimata Kone on a cloth commissioned by the author. Fugan is the name for a flat, rocky space in the bush where there is no vegetation, and feere is the ample open space in the center of a village. Fugan can also mean “tied up” or “bound.” The Fugan feere pattern of endlessly repeated L shapes seems to be a metaphor for emptiness; it is possible that the pattern refers to the problem of female sterility, in contrast to the Banankoro bolon pattern, which appears to represent fertility. Photographed by Diane Cook, 1981.

KOJUGU: She carves … She can go to sculpt in the place called dankènè at 12:00 midnight.

INTERVIEWER: The place called dankènè, what place is that?

KOJUGU: At the center of town, like the place where our village performed celebrations, they said, people called that dankènè. In the middle of the night, at the time which is the middle of the night, you, you call it “midnight” of the night, but we, we say the middle of the night, her husband will take it [the sculpture], and with him at her side she will carve it. They don't speak to each other, they don't address any speech to each other. If she is tired, she will get up to go and put her hand on her husband to indicate that they should get up and leave. It's like that.[26]

As we shall shortly see, blacksmiths usually employ a woman sculptor to create anomalous ritual objects that are intensely destructive. By creating these “medicines” on the ant hills where the spirit world reclaims deformed children, female sculptors incorporate the twisted and bizarre powers of the other world into their sculptures.

The choice of the ntinkinyèso is relatively easy to understand, but what about the dankènè? Another more common word for the flat, open space in the center of a village is fèerè. The Bamana also use fèerè to designate places in the bush where the underlying laterite rock breaks through the soil, creating a hard, flat platform. While nothing can grow on the flat rock, the earth surrounding the fèerè supports grasses, shrubs, and even trees. Frequently, fèerèw are large enough that they give the impression of being naturally created performance spaces. The Bamana seem to associate the idea of a flat, open space, surrounded by growing vegetation or houses, with the image of a barren woman surrounded by her fertile peers. This is particularly evident in mud-cloth patterns; for instance, the composition called Fugan fèerè (literally, “the bound up,” or “constrained open space”) (Fig. 58) is balanced against a pattern called Banankoro bolon (“the vestibule of Banankoro”) (Fig. 59). The Fugan fèerè pattern of L shapes repeated endlessly across the body of the cloth would appear to be an image of emptiness, in contrast to the mazelike zigzags of Banankoro bolon, whose name indicates that it represents “the vestibule,” or metaphorically speaking, the architecture of a well-known Bèlèdugu town called Banankoro. Not only is the Banankoro bolon pattern activated by the busy zigzags of the town's ‘architecture;’ but within each vestibule a maltese cross (the suraka muso kongoro ta la or “Moorish woman's head pillow” design) encodes the presence of a human being.[27] No such crosses break the emptiness between the branches of the L shapes on the Fugan fèerè pattern. Thus, while Fugan fèerè depicts empty space, Banankoro bolon represents populated space. Since both cloths are worn by women on a daily basis, they take ideas of emptiness and fullness and, very literally, apply them to the woman's body as they wrap around it. Thus, this pair of designs seem to constitute an unwritten discourse concerning the fertile and the barren woman.

Figure 59. Banankoro bolon mud cloth painted by Oumou Coulibaly in a small Beledugu village. The mazelike zigzags of the design and its name, “the vestibule of Banankoro (a village name),” suggest that it represents the architecture of a well-populated town. Within each ‘vestibule,’ a maltese cross (the suraka muso kongoro ta la or “Moorish woman's head pillow” design) encodes the presence of a human being. Banankoro bolon seems to refer to the fertility necessary for successful village life, and contrasts with the emptiness represented by the Fugan feere pattern. This cloth is in the author's collection. Photographed by Wojtek Naczas, 1993.

If we take the interpretation of fèerè as encoding ideas of emptiness, and apply it to its correlate, dankènè, we find that the choice of an open area in the middle of the village as the site where a woman carves makes perfect sense. A woman who is not engaged in her ‘natural’ activity of bearing a child, but rather is carving its deformed analogue in wood, does so at a site that represents barrenness. The emptiness of the site itself will transfer a barrenness, a violently negative potential, to the non-natural object that is produced there. Later, we shall see that female sculptors are often barren or nearly so, making the choice of the empty or ‘barren’ dankènè as the site for the sculptress's work especially appropriate. Whether on the anthill or the open plaza, women appear to carve at sites that represent reproductive failure, a fertility gone wrong.

Although the sculptress needs her husband's presence and protection to carve, the blacksmith generally leaves the details of the carving to his wife, for it is she, not he, who is in constant communication with the djinn. The sculptress's husband makes sure that they are entirely alone and that his wife does not exhaust herself:

KOJUGU: Of course, she can carve it [the ritual object]. If no other man is there except her own husband, she can carve it.

INTERVIEWER: Well, if a woman is in the process of carving a ritual object, an old woman, she is in the process of carving a ritual object, does her husband teach her, saying, “You must put the adze here, you will place it here, you will place it there,” or does he leave this matter to the direction of his wife's hand like that?

KOJUGU: He will leave this thing [the carving] to the woman herself. If the woman's hand, if the woman has indeed seen the thing [i.e., the sculptress has seen the object in a dream or has received precise instructions about the shape of the object from her spirit], the method of making the thing, he will leave this to her like that.

INTERVIEWER: But the thing that she is in the process of making, does she know the name of this thing at the moment she is making it?

KOJUGU: Of course she knows its name.[28]

Kojugu explains that the woman's husband deliberately avoids giving her explicit directions about the carving, that might interfere with the djinn's instructions. Nevertheless, the final shape of the ritual object appears to synthesize the image received from the spirit with nonverbal advice from the carver's husband. When asked if a woman's husband could touch her carving while she worked, Kojugu replied:

KOJUGU: Of course, the husband puts his hand on it. That's not a harmful thing. The husband puts his hand on it. The husband doesn't say, “Do this, do that,” but he gestures with his hand to show her the line [i.e., the shape] to follow. But to say, “This is made like this and like that, this is not made like this – cut it this way, make this like this and like this. You must cut it like this. You must cut it like that.” The husband shows the line to follow, but he must say nothing. Since, if he speaks, when the object is finished, the critical place, the place that they have disagreed about, the sculpture will show that as well. It is for this reason that they don't speak to each other. He makes gestures with his hand to show the line that should be followed – to say that one makes it like that. But there is no interdiction against his touching it [the sculpture].[29]

By speaking, the carver's husband would break the harmony existing between his wife and the djinn, causing her to lose sight of her inner image of the object. However, the success of the finished sculpture depends on a high level of communication between the sculptress and her husband, who can assist her by making gestures that delineate the outlines of the piece, although the final shape of the carving depends on the woman's decisions. A woman who possesses a male djinn will almost certainly carve objects that conform to familiar Bamana and Malinke types, for beginning at birth she has received a traditional training from a blacksmith father, uncle, or grandfather. Kojugu did not state whether this training would have included lessons in carving, but a young girl would probably have had some kind of visual apprenticeship, whether this consisted of mastering the signs used in divination (Fig. 15), learning to make complicated mud cloths (Figs. 12, 32–34), or simply watching her father, uncle, or grandfather as he forged and carved. Such a woman might not possess all the skills of a male master carver, but she would not place a mask's horns on its nose or carve an object in a style totally foreign to that of her milieu. In fact, Kojugu's statement that a female carver knows the name of the object her djinn has instructed her to produce, suggests that she may well be aware of the sculpture's meaning and use as well as its form, although neither she nor anyone else would admit this in public.

Like male carvers, female sculptors frequently took approximately three days to complete a carving,[30] but unlike men they did not work according to a fixed scale of payment. A commission would be given to the sculptress's husband, who would become the recognized author of the work. He would negotiate the fees prescribed by tradition and then pass the actual carving to his wife in secret. When finished, the female blacksmith would hand the object back to her husband, and in return she would receive whatever her husband thought appropriate:

INTERVIEWER: After that [the carving is finished] how much does her husband give her? What does her husband give her? A bull, a goat, a sheep?

KOJUGU: Whatever your own intuition tells you, you give her this and she will take it.[31]

In evaluating this payment as well as the husband's decision whether or not his wife should carve, we need to remember that a female blacksmith born with a djinn is anything but a negligible figure. Whether male or female, any Bamana who arrives in the world possessing the ability to communicate with a spirit familiar inspires others with fear, awe, and a desire to make use of this special gift. A young girl who has been elaborately trained to serve the community by receiving messages from her djinn, and realizing them in sculptural form, will not be married to a man whose insecurities prevent him from handling this phenomenon. Rather, the sculptress's husband will view her special abilities as a source of prestige and wealth for his entire family, and will arrange his daily life in a way that allows her time for her spirit. He may well be prepared to marry a second wife in order to avoid placing excessive sexual demands on her, and also to alleviate the sculptress's workload. He will watch over her physical health with special care, and make sure that she is content with the recompense she receives for her work.

Given the fear and secrecy that surrounds female sculptors, one may well ask how Kojugu can draw this profile, and whether in fact he speaks from any direct experience of women who carve. When asked to document women whom he had known who had carved important ritual objects, Kojugu cited his great-great-grandmother, NumuNiene, his mother, SiHawa, and a great-aunt called BaSaran. He spoke of the fact that his great-great-grandmother bore only one child:

KOJUGU: Nn! Nn! That happened for our great-great-grandfather's first wife [that she had only one child and carved sculpture], and he didn't marry another wife. Eè, safurulayi [exclamation taken from the Arabic]! He married his wife and she had a child, a male child. His second wife – she went and left the other there. His second wife died and left the first there. Her only child – he didn't stay in the family. As for him, he left for another country [i.e., he emigrated somewhere]. That is to say, it wasn't a matter of luck, it wasn't a matter of sorcery, it wasn't a problem of divination.[32]

In this passage Kojugu's statement that his great-great-grandfather didn't marry another wife probably refers to the fact that the second wife died, and that her only son disappeared and was lost to the family. Kojugu wished to let us know that, for all practical purposes, the second marriage might just as well not have existed, and that his great-great-grandfather had refrained from taking a third wife, who might really have produced a satisfying number of children. In essence, he states that his great-great-grandfather resigned himself to having only one useful child as the payment necessary for his first wife's sculptural gifts. Later in the same interview Kojugu told us that this great-great-grandmother's name was NumuNiene:

KOJUGU: She [NumuNiene] was not an orphan. She was not a slave. She was not an only daughter. Her mother had … they were two daughters; their mother stopped at that [i.e., had only these two children]. The one who was our great-great-grandmother was the first daughter. She [NumuNiene] had a son who was our great-grandfather and he had three sons. Three sons. The child of the first of these [three sons] gave life to me.[33]

As an apprentice, Kojugu had not only been taught his genealogy, but also the highly confidential information that his great-great-grandmother had carved ritual objects.

In addition to his great-great-grandmother, Kojugu's mother had also sculpted, and he even volunteered the name of the ritual object she had created. When asked if he had ever seen a woman who had carved ritual sculpture, Kojugu replied:

KOJUGU: I saw one. But the reason for which she made the sculpture, no one told me this reason. My own mother, who was called SiHawa, our own father asked her to carve, to carve a Fara. But the reason for which she made this thing, no one told us this.

INTERVIEWER: What was the reason they carved this? Do you know the profound reason for that, or, well, you aren't aware of it right up till now? Why did she carve it?

KOJUGU: The reason for which she carved it, I know that reason. They carved it to work the Dibi. If a war is going to happen in the region, if a war is going to happen in the village, if you are there, you take it and you work with it [i.e., you perform ritual operations with the object that is called Dibi]. You take it and you carry it, and then you stand still. The place by which the warriors will come; night will fall on this side. The side where you are; there will be light there. It causes the warriors [the enemy] never to arrive at the place of battle. One says,

“tile dibi,

su tile,

tile ye dibi ye,

su ye tile ye,” or

“The darkness of the sun,

The light of the night,

The light is the darkness,

The night is the light.”

That is there [i.e., the object called a Fara, which is used with this verse to produce the effect described above, was carved by Kojugu's mother and exists in his village].

INTERVIEWER: It exists?

KOJUGU: It exists.[34]

In daily life, a Fara is the carved wooden baton with which women beat the millet flour batter that is boiled to make tot (Fig. 60), but Kojugu gives no hint as to whether the ritual Fara carved by his mother possesses a similar form or not. If the ritual Fara is similar in form to the cooking utensil, it would be quite easy to carve from a technical point of view.

Kojugu's explanation as to why it is easier for a woman to carve a Fara than a man, highlights the need for female carvers:

KOJUGU: It [a Fara carved by a man] can be a success. If a man says that he will carve one, if he doesn't give his first son [presumably to the spirit world], he will give his first wife. At that time [i.e., after doing this], if he carves it, it will succeed.

INTERVIEWER: But why can a woman carve it without giving her child – her first son or her first husband? Why?

KOJUGU: A woman can carve it without giving her first son or her first husband. The meaning of this is that a woman is a “thing that is behind” [kofè fen]. A woman is a thing of the ground [Muso ye duguma fen de ye; this is a proverbial statement that Kojugu quotes in support of his first declaration that a woman is a “thing that is behind”]. A woman is a thing that is on the ground. An object whose nyama doesn't attack the ground – this nyama cannot attack this person [i.e., the woman]. A woman can carve this [the Fara] for this reason.[35]

Figure 60. Two faraw, or batons, used for beating tot as it is cooking. The topmost one has been used; the lower one was carved for the author. Kojugu gives no hint as to whether the ritual fara carved by his mother has a similar form. If the ritual fara is similar to the cooking utensil, it would be quite easy to carve from a technical point of view. The faraw are in the author's collection. Photographed by Douglas Chew, 1993.

Kojugu tells us that the Fara‘s nyama is unable to attack the ground; it operates in the air, the domain of men, to darken the sky and confuse the enemy, but it has no power over the earth. Whereas men are associated with the air, women are linked to the ground, for their bodies are in direct contact with the earth in sexual intercourse, and the earth itself is female. During sex a man rests on his wife, who cushions him and protects him from the soil.[36] Thus, women are “things of the earth,” and can carve objects “of the air” without being affected by their power. However, a man who wishes to create a Fara must sacrifice either his first son or his first wife. Given the extent of this loss, it is understandable why a male blacksmith might be relieved when a girl is born with a djinn, and why he might choose to train her to carve.

Given that Kojugu's great-great-grandmother bore only one child, and the fact that female carvers operate in locations that represent either an excessive and therefore deformed fertility (the ant heap) or sterility (the public square), one might suppose that Kojugu's mother was also relatively infertile. However, Kojugu told us that, although SiHawa had passed the age of menopause when she carved the Fara, she had borne four children:

KOJUGU: At that time [the time of carving the Fara] she had ceased to be able to have children. Aside from that, I am her first son. Her first daughter is called Fanta. My younger brother is Dofolo. The one who comes after Dofolo is Abdou. There are four of us.[37]

Kojugu added that a woman did not have to be sterile or postmenopausal to carve (although this was clearly common), but that she was required to have been completely faithful to her husband throughout her life. According to Kojugu, such a woman's fidelity was the guarantee of her extraordinary powers, which would depart if she ever betrayed her husband:

KOJUGU: I haven't seen many women like that [who possess djinns]. But I have surely seen one in a certain place. She did that [possessed a djinn].

INTERVIEWER: Who was it? Who was it?

KOJUGU: It was – her name was BaSaran.

INTERVIEWER: And her family name?

KOJUGU: BaSaran Fane.

INTERVIEWER: And her village?

KOJUGU: She is at Banankoro. She is married to someone at Banankoro. She comes from their extended family there. Now she is blind. But even today she traverses the whole village without anyone taking her hand; no one tells her to pass here or to pass there. Yes, if she places pots in the fire, she will walk on the hot coals to go and pick up the pots while they are still red. She puts her hand under that [the pot] to demonstrate her ability to the other blacksmith women, and she walks, carrying it with her. In the place where one should see the pots, she goes and finds them there [i.e., even though she is blind]. Then she swears an oath. She shows them [the pots] to the blacksmith women, and she swears that since Allah made her, she has never made love to any other man [except her husband]; that the thing of her head [her djinn] is not in agreement with that. That since Allah created her, she has not made love with any other man except her husband. The places where men go, she also, she goes there. She bore one daughter. Her name is Marnine. Marnine Danba. She is our own aunt [BaSaran's daughter]. A single daughter. She [BaSaran] stopped with her.[38]

In another passage Kojugu took care to let us know that the miraculous ability to carry red-hot pots was at least the equivalent of carving sculpture:

KOJUGU: When the pots are red, she walks straight ahead [over the coals] to take them in her hand and place them outside. Even more so with another type of work [i.e., if BaSaran can handle the red-hot pottery, she is also endowed with the ability to carve and do other things that are normally reserved to men]. But since she is afraid of the secrets of men, since she fears them [Kojugu implies that her fear is the reason she does not carve] – even today she is there.[39]

BaSaran's abilities do not depend on sterility, but on her djinn and her faithfulness to her husband, a fidelity that is both absolute and natural. Furthermore, Kojugu specifies that BaSaran has limited her activities out of fear of the “men's secrets,” and not from a lack of visual or technical ability. Like Kojugu's own mother, BaSaran possesses a power that could easily encompass the carving of ritual objects, had her spirit not been female and her fear of reprisals less strong. In interpreting Kojugu's words, we need to recall his earlier declarations that forging is more difficult than carving, and fire a much tougher master than wood. To Kojugu, walking on hot coals and carrying red-hot pottery is a much more significant test of otherworldly power than wielding the adze, and there is no question in his mind that some women are able to do both.

Kojugu's description of his great-great-grandmother, NumuNiene, his mother, SiHawa, and his great-Aunt, BaSaran, raises several questions. Why would a blacksmith wish to marry a girl endowed with a spirit? Why, like Kojugu's father, would the numu then entrust certain commissions to his wife? Kojugu explained the complete reversal of the ostensible rules for making ritual sculpture:

KOJUGU: Why does one ask this of women [to carve ritual objects]? The reason that the woman makes them – it is because you haven't told her the purpose for which they are used. You put the woman onto it only for the actual making. One carves these things for reasons of which the woman is ignorant.

INTERVIEWER: Yes, I have understood it now, I have understood. But I am still asking you why the men ask them to make these things. If the women make them, even though the men themselves can carve them – why do you request that the women make them, even though the men themselves can carve them? Why do you put women onto this [this work]?

KOJUGU: Why do we put women onto it?

INTERVIEWER: Nhun.

KOJUGU: The woman comes from the last side of man. The woman comes from the last side of man [this is probably a reference to the story of Eve being created from Adam's rib, a story that Kojugu would have encountered through his Islamic clients and conversations with other ritual experts, who are familiar with transformed versions of the tale]. You can catch men with certain ritual operations and knowledge. If a man can never make something – only a woman – it is because the ritual object made by a woman can catch a man. This ritual object, you will select a woman to make it. You will tell the woman to make this carving. You will work this ritual object [i.e., you will tell the woman in question to carve it], and then you will give it to another man.[40]

Kojugu's response portrays the female carver, like the uncircumcized boy, as an unwitting trap for a male enemy who cannot be reached by normal methods. The belief that certain men can be conquered only through women is widespread among both the Bamana and Malinke, and is a familiar trope in traditional epics and folk tales. For instance, in the Sunjata epic, Sunjata finally conquers the blacksmith Soumaoro when his sister, Sugulun Kulunkan, seduces the sorceror and discovers the secret of Soumaoro's power. She returns home, tells her brother of her discovery, and enables him to vanquish the tyrant.[41] Similarly, many folk tales recount how an animal disguises itself as a beautiful woman in order to defeat an invincible hunter, who is saved only through his mother's intervention at the last possible moment.[42] Both Kojugu and other informants reported that many protective devices (amulets, magical whistles, and personal ritual objects) are created to be completely foolproof against other men. Since the incantations that endow these objects with power specify only that these basiw will work against other men, an object carved by a woman can easily circumvent such defenses. Once again, men have recourse to women's power when they find themselves in extreme circumstances, facing an enemy that they, alone, cannot conquer. Such a situation can be retrieved only by manipulating the most fundamental power in existence, that stemming from the female sex. Thus, a blacksmith who suspects that a rival has performed ritual actions that will destroy him if he carves a particular object, will often ask his wife to execute the commission. Since the rival's incantations specify the male blacksmith by name, they will be useless if the numu‘s wife performs the actual carving.

Despite Kojugu's assertion that the sculptor's wife knows nothing concerning the meaning or use of the objects she carves, it would be odd if a woman who knows the name of a ritual object did not have some idea as to its use. Kojugu seems to vacillate between the standard, and one might even say, ‘official’ point of view – that women know nothing of sculpture even if they carve it – and a very real appreciation of certain women such as his great-aunt BaSaran, who goes with impunity to “the places where men go.”[43] This vacillation reflects the ongoing conflict in men's minds between the sense that women should not be mastering hidden, ‘male’ knowledge, and the realistic awareness that some women not only have the capacity to make sculpture and manipulate ‘male’ “secrets,” but are actually trained to do so.

Adult men are willing to concede that the nonsexual, uncircumcized boys who are classed with women, and women, the original and primary creators, can undertake the task of physically producing ritual objects. They also acknowledge that such objects are frequently more powerful than their own more public creations. However, men clearly feel that they cannot afford to let either women or uncircumcized boys obtain the information that would enable them to use the objects in question. Ignorance, even if feigned, not only endows these objects with lethal powers, but it also keeps control of the most destructive ritual tools in the hands of adult men.

Like other men, Bamana sculptors fear the creative power of women, but they are also well aware that they need to respect and appropriate this power if they and their communities are to survive. This conflict between fear and respect, ostensible rules and exceptional behavior, becomes explicit when Kojugu discusses whether the most frightening woman of all, a menstruating woman, can carve. At first the sculptor tells us:

KOJUGU: That couldn't happen [that a menstruating woman carve sculpture]. If a woman is menstruating, if a woman is menstruating, anything that is secret, any object that arranges problems [i.e., any ritual object], she won't touch that. Indeed, she won't even look at it.[44]

However, later in the same interview he identifies the time of the month during which a woman usually carves:

KOJUGU: Some spend three days on it [carving]. Some even spend three months on it. For certain women it is the empty night of the month [Kojugu is referring to the lunar month], the empty night of the month, the twenty-ninth day of the month – many of their secret objects are made in this period. Yes, the twenty-ninth day of the month. They make them [the ritual objects] then. Some women carve at this time. These things [the things that are carved at this time], these are the things that work harm.[45]

The Malinke believe that women should menstruate during the three “empty” days of the lunar month when the moon is invisible (depending on the length of the month, these would be the twenty-seventh, twenty-eighth, twenty-ninth, and thirtieth days). In fact, if a woman menstruates at any other time, she will be given traditional medicines in an attempt to bring her cycle back into synchrony with this period.[46] Thus, when Kojugu tells us that women carve on the twenty-ninth day of the lunar month, he may be covertly informing us that a woman carves the “things that work harm” when she is menstruating.[47]

Kojugu's identification of the time at which a woman carves and his statement that “these are the things that work harm,” suggests the possibility that the Malinke and Bamana may deliberately select menstruating women to carve objects with an enormous destructive potential. Both the disappearance of the moon, and menstruation, are regular but infinitely mysterious events; although both can be observed visually, they depend on unknown factors. By carving at a time when these two observable, but incalculable, processes are in operation, the sculptress transfers the infinitely vast potential of the unknown to the object she creates.[48] This immeasurable energy includes extraordinary destructive energy, an energy inherent in the monthly flow of blood, that can denude a Komo mask of all its powers in just a few moments of contact.

Kojugu's first statement reflects the general rule that the ritual objects created by men must remain off-limits to women, lest they be rendered null and void by menstrual blood. However, his second statement suggests the simultaneous existence of a realm charged with even more intense powers, a realm in which objects created by menstruating women funnel the intense energies of the unknown into human hands. Although they themselves seem unable to enter this domain of superlatively powerful energies, male sculptors apparently put their wives’ menstruation to work for them by requesting the women to break the normal rules, and not only carve, but carve while they are bleeding. This daring transgression creates a few prized objects that possess even more intense powers than those belonging to the familiar creations of men. In a reversal of the normal, menstruation, the identifying characteristic that prevents most women from seeing or using ritual objects, becomes the very reason that some women are selected to create particular, intensely charged basiw. The blood that excludes women from the “secrets of men” may simultaneously be the source of their hidden and limitless creative power, a power that enables them to carve objects like the Fara with impunity.

The preceding data documents that in certain circumstances women can, and indeed are asked to, carve ritual sculpture. It highlights the fact that even the strictest ritual rules can be broken for particular reasons and particular goals. It would appear that the Bamana manipulate their conceptual system with suppleness and logic in order to achieve precise ends, for what is more logical than to commission a supremely powerful object from a person who is acknowledged to be the summa of unknown powers, a woman? Kojugu's interviews suggest that traditional thought is nothing if not sophisticated and flexible, allowing gender boundaries to be permeable, not impenetrable barriers.

Kojugu's description of the female sculptor states that the female artist is the exception, not the rule, but he also informs us that women make the most devastating ritual weapons, objects whose potential for destruction surpasses the powers of an adult blacksmith's creations. If the Bamana universe is peopled by competing sets of ritual objects manipulated by rival “men of importance,” then women's creations constitute the select group that crowns these arsenals. No village wishes to possess too many of these objects, lest their destructive capabilities overwhelm their owners, but each settlement needs one or two of these “medicines” with which to protect itself. Thus, the small number of female sculptors exactly matches the perceived need for a few ultimately powerful weapons of defense.

The use of female sculptors to create the most potent basiw suggests that there is a pyramidal structuring of ritual power among the Bamana. Mastery of the ability to create objects that act in the world would appear to progress from a base of feminized blacksmith sculptors, to uncircumcized boys, and finally, to women, at the pinnacle of the pyramid. Furthermore, destructive ritual powers seem to vary inversely in relation to access to overt political power. For, in the unseen world of spirits, visible earthly losses – whether of much-loved children or direct political control – are balanced by gifts of artistic inspiration, ritual expertise, and the ability to destroy. Women may appear to be excluded from the inner councils that ostensibly control the Bamana village, but the data presented here suggests that men's overt power rests on a deep conviction that women are both the ultimate creators and the ultimate destroyers. Fear and jealousy, not disdain, would appear to motivate the exclusiveness of male secret associations.

If we move from the specifics of women carvers to survey the inner landscape of powerful male creators, blacksmith carvers like Kojugu or Basi, we find a pervasive terror of female abilities and a deep need to appropriate and control them. When interviewed in private, “important leaders” like Kojugu, Basi, and Nyamaton revealed deep-seated fears of female power and female domination. To these men, the ‘real’ contenders for the mastery of the invisible world are women. Men are inevitably handicapped because they cannot make children, and they must run hard and fast to catch up. An eighty-year-old ritual expert and sculptor like Basi may appear to dominate an entire region, but his power can vanish in a single moment of contact with menstrual blood. Furthermore, it is experts like Basi who are most profoundly aware of their own vulnerability, and who most clearly acknowledge the terrifying depths of female ability. It is only the young, the inexperienced, or the stupid man who believes that he dominates his world. Those wise masters of ritual expertise, like Kojugu and Basi, know full well the limits of their own artificially obtained powers, and the extent of their dependence on women. No wonder they fear female power, and no wonder that they say, “The foundation of the world is with women” (“Dinyé ju ye muso ye”). For, whether they wish it or not, women possess the ability to deny men the thing they most desire: viable descendants.

One would not go too far wrong in saying that Bamana and Malinke men live in a female world. The earth itself, with its termite mounds and its alternately fruitful and parsimonious soil, is female. Furthermore, a man is dependent on his mother in childhood not only for sustenance and survival, but also for his character and personality, which are said to be formed almost exclusively by his mother's behavior. A rebellious son can survive his father's curse, but not his mother's, and the emotional cord between mother and son is rarely, if ever, broken. Adult men still regard the moments when they can return home and sleep on the floor in their mother's room, talking quietly with her late into the night, as the ultimate in human bliss.

When a man marries, he depends on his wife to provide food and children, and he has little recourse if she refuses to cook or remains barren. When a man takes a second or third wife, the smooth working of his family and the security of his children depends on the relationships his various wives establish with each other. If even one wife is stupid or vicious, the disruption caused by her jealousy and competitiveness can destroy the entire family, pitting wife against wife, child against child, brother against brother, and sister against sister. Inevitably, a man is aware of such behavior, but there is little chance that he will be able to stop it at the source or control its effects. The polygamous man who flees his compound at 5:30 in the morning to escape a permanent state of pitched battle, and returns only at 11:00 or 12:00 at night, is far from rare. This wealthy elder may discipline his children and counsel his wives, but as soon as his back is turned or he falls victim to illness, his wives will set his children against each other and his carefully husbanded estate will dissipate, while his inheritors indulge in endless squabbles. Egged on by their mothers, his children will continue the endless battles over precedence and power. Even a powerful expert like Basi still fears his half brother, for was not the half brother's mother the despised wife? Basi is well aware that the old lady has not forgotten her treatment at the hands of his own mother and will lose no opportunity to wreak havoc in the extended family. Basi may dominate his half brother, but he cannot escape or control the effects of his mother's co-wife's hatred.

In this world peopled with individualistic women whose vengeance is rarely restrained by compassion or generosity, men feel themselves at a permanent disadvantage. For, despite the most severe rules, they find themselves in the unenviable position of being unable to control either women's capacity to reproduce or even their social behavior. Men know that a sculpture is not a child and that, unlike women, they cannot produce living human beings; yet, if they are to maintain the upper hand, they must somehow wrest control of the reproductive process away from women. We must remember that among the Bamana power is, by definition, power over other human beings, not money or land. To obtain any sense of security, any independence of action, and indeed any defense at all, against these overwhelming ‘mothers’ whose domain includes even the earth itself, men must assert control over the reproductive process. They must convince themselves that it is they, not women, who make the decisions as to who will bear children, how many, and of what sex. Men must never allow themselves to admit that their carved objects might be mere facsimiles, that their sacrifices might not be critical instruments for inflicting sterility or bestowing fertility, and that their ability to fashion ritual objects might be shared by the other sex. Men's belief in their control of the uncontrollable, in their capacity to manipulate female fertility, must not run the risk of collapse. In a world that begins and ends with femaleness, men cannot afford direct confrontation with women or their abilities. They must continue to kill women who see the Komo, they must segregate themselves in closed, all-male associations, and they must maintain the fiction that women are incapable of making sculpture.

Yet, there will always be intelligent men who understand their own weaknesses and see through these stratagems. A sculptor who knows that he is entirely dependent on his female djinn for inspiration, a Kòmòtigi who requires the help of the village's most respected midwife to obtain the placenta necessary for constructing a boli, and an elder who knows that his family's “person in wood” has been rendered useless through accidental contact with a menstrual cloth, are fully aware of female power. At some point in the quest for ritual knowledge, the aspirant's view of the world shifts. A recent Komo initiate may believe that the association's mask is the summa of power, but the Kòmòtigi himself knows better. He is well aware that a woman's mere presence automatically renders a Komo mask useless, whereas the Komo initiates must take action, and crack a woman's skull open, if they wish to destroy her. With increasing knowledge, a young man begins to recognize his profound dependence on women. For, at the highest levels, ritual experts know that they must cooperate with female elders, that problems of fertility require both male and female expertise, and that neither sex can survive alone.

As a student moves beyond superficial explanations of the Komo, of spirit familiars, and of carving, he learns that nothing is what it appears. The boliw (Fig. 1), those erstwhile cows, balls, and humanoids, are really placentas, stomachs, and fetuses. That imposing sculptor who terrifies an entire region with his dictatorial demands and extraordinary products is really impotent, his powers bestowed by a spirit woman in return for the loss of sexual prowess. The village leader, whose stern insistence on maintaining the traditional date for sowing millet has irritated everyone, is only executing the advice given him by the aged and blind crone who is his mother. This recognition of and capitulation to the power of the female sex allows experts like Basi, Kojugu, and Nyamaton a flexibility that extends far beyond the apparent limits of established rules. Women must certainly be contained if their power is not to overwhelm men, but their abilities can also be approached, used, and indeed appropriated for the ends of men. It is simply a question of when, where, and how to channel their devastating creativity.

In this fundamentally female universe, a universe in which the ultimate power is the power to bear a child, it makes sense that those special men who bring forth facsimiles of children should live out lonely and discordant destinies. Like other artists, Kojugu and Basi silently endure great and inevitable losses in the search for creativity. Visited by spirit familiars, these ambiguous ‘creators’ must impassively view their wives, their children, their nephews, and their grandchildren as passing shadows, created only to be snatched away at inopportune moments by the exigent requirements of their djinns. In this Faustian chess game, no human is ever secure; even the most powerful artist merely awaits the day when “his time will come”[49] and his rapacious spirit will claim his sexuality. Yet, just as initiates shroud the Komo’s meaning in deep silence, so the famous sculptor sits and waits under his mango tree in a contained and terrifying stillness. His “contract” has long since been signed, he knows what commissions will come and sometimes even when, he quietly watches the grandchildren he knows he will lose, and, like the maimed but living individuals offered to his spirit familiar, he lives out a living death. Basi survives, but for what? The grandsons he loved are dead, his favorite daughter-in-law too is gone, his nephew is mad, and only his least-loved wife remains. In this barren desert, this minefield of human offerings that surrounds him, how does he manage to go on, to continue to receive clients with the humor, generosity, and intelligence expected of a famous carver? His own life has become an inhospitable territory, and yet he willingly makes the extraordinary objects that bestow life on others. Perhaps the answer can be found in the following reproach:[50]

You think that the individual is important and you make judgments about our system, but if I were selected to be killed as a sacrifice, I would gladly offer myself. To us life without the group is nothing; the individual is not as important as you think.

Kojugu and Basi are not just fighting for an individual “name;” these masters of power are surrendering to the “needs” of the group and the necessity to control human fertility. These imposing artists may be the victims of their female spirits, but so long as they can create the “medicines” on which survival itself appears to depend, their sacrifices are worthwhile. Like the women whose creativity they emulate, their own lives are not important, for these apparently powerful experts are only a means to an end; like the objects they create, they too are “things that fulfill needs.” Despite their stature, sculptors live out their destiny with no power to change it. In the end, the earth still waits patiently to receive them, and “The foundation of the world is with women.”

Notes

Introduction

1. As described in the section, “Methodology: The Geographic and Historical Time Frame,” the data for this book is drawn primarily from the western Bamana and northern Malinke. However, the corroborative data cited throughout my text strongly suggests that the conceptual system presented here is valid for both the Bamana and Malinke, and represents an understanding of artistic creativity that may well be shared by other Mande societies. Thus, wherever I use the term Bamana one should also understand that the statement in question is true for the Malinke and vice versa. In the rare cases in which I believe the data is confined to only one or the other, I will state it in the text.

2. The following references are only some of the most striking works concerned with the function of sculpture among the Bamana: Arnoldi 1977, 1983, 1994; Dieterlen and Cissé 1972; Ezra 1983, 1986; Goldwater 1960; Henry 1910; Imperato 1970, 1972, 1975, 1980, 1983; McNaughton 1975, 1979a, 1979b, 1988; Pâques, 1964; Zahan 1960b, 1980.

3. Fifth interview with Nyamaton Diarra, 4/20/84. This interview is in press (Brett-Smith, 1994).

4. Now abandoned, the jango was a dance performed by all the young, unmarried women of the Bamana community. It was preceded by a sacrifice to the tree dedicated to the jango association and was followed by a communal meal.

5. I hope that I will eventually be able to publish this material in a critical edition.

6. For instance, the celebrated Dabà mask (Fig. 4) appears only once a year in early June for approximately fifteen minutes. It is impossible to see it at any other time.

7. This is noted by numerous scholars. The following citations are only two of those available: Griaule, 1952; Stoller and Oakes 1987, 13. Stoller and Oakes discuss the Songhay belief that different levels of knowledge must be learned at different ages due to the student's differing ability to absorb and use the information wisely. Stoller and Oake's informants reported that a man is not really ready to learn until he reaches the age of sixty. My own informants reported a similar time scale of ages at which a man is regarded as possessing enough self-control to be given access to secret knowledge.

Jamin (1977, 90–106) examines whether the progressive and always partial acquisition of ‘deep’ knowledge among the Senufo occurs in the context of initiation. He suggests that initiation merely endows the young man or woman with the political and social acceptance that permits him or her to acquire such knowledge in an informal manner over an entire life span. He even goes so far as to doubt the existence of the deep meditation on myth and ritual noted by Zahan, particularly in the context of initiation (Jamin 1977, 106).

Nevertheless, Jamin's entire book does acknowledge the existence of more and less detailed information – medicinal recipes, understanding of divinatory signs, and even the sexual terms that are the ‘secret’ names for a woman's cooking tools (1977, 105) – although he suggests that much of it is of a meaningless or ridiculous nature and becomes impressive only due to the political power it represents (1977, 104).

In contrast to Jamin, Glaze (1981) provides a descriptive overview of Senufo initiation. She views the lifetime process of acquiring secrets as a serious religious enterprise and does not focus on its sociological, political, or kinship aspects. Glaze discusses the different levels of initiation (1981, 11) and the names of specific levels of initiation and their order, costumes, and art objects (1981, 90, 93–7, 100–48); finally, she provides an appendix that lists the type of masquerades performed, the age and initiation level of the performers, and their membership in specific ethnologically distinct subgroups (1981, 199–222).

8. For a definition of nyama see Chapter 1 text.

9. Like griots, blacksmith–sculptors (numuw) and leather workers (garankew) act as social intermediaries, negotiating marriages and political alliances, announcing ritual events, and diplomatically resolving disputes. Although griots are certainly the preeminent masters of the mouth, both blacksmiths and leatherworkers also possess highly ritualized speech patterns distinctive to their ‘castes.’

10. For the complete text of the passage in question from the interview with Kojugu Cissoko on 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, pp. 52–3 of transcribed tapes, see note 81, Chapter 3.

11. Bazin identifies the balanzan as Acacia albida (1906, 48); Dumestre identifies it as Acacia albida or Faidherbia albida (Dumestre 1981, no. 1, 45). Thoyer-Rozat identifies it as Acacia albida (Thoyer-Rozat 1981, 52–3). Garnier identifies it as Acacia albida and lists Faidherbia albida as a synonym (Garnier 1976, 14, 18).

12. See note 7, Chapter 4 for the botanical identification of this tree.

13. For the complete text of the passage in question from the interview with Kojugu Cissoko on 6/20/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, p. 22 of transcribed tapes, see note 25, Chapter 4.

14. The first statement, “A jelen don, de!,” must be distinguished from the very similar, “A jelen don,” “He is clear,” without the particle de, which translates as “indeed,” added. The second sentence does translate as “He is honest.”

15. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, Djinns/Ciw, 8/11/84, Book 14, p. 75 of transcribed tapes.

16. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, Djinns/Ciw, 8/11/84, Book 14, p. 81 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: O kuma be yen.

INTERVIEWER: O ye jumèn ye?

KOJUGU: An fè, n'o gundo ko bè na, an b'a fò, “Karisa, ni n’ ko i ma Ion o Ion, i k'i janto i yèrè lò.” Jantoyèrèla, o kòrò ko ka nyi. N'i ko, “Aa, n’ ma n’ janbò n’ yèrè la.” O kun ye nin kun ye. N'i ko, “Karisa, aa, san dò finnen dè.” Hakilima bè kulu kuncè dòn fuga ye. Nin bè fò k'a da kun min kan, i b'o kuntagafan dòn. An na farafinna gundo kuma, a yèlèma yèlèmayòrò, a ka ca. Ne bè se ka na karisa ma, “Karisa, ne tun b'a fè nin ko in tan, a sen surunyana.” O ye kòmi [from the French, comme] a ko surunyana. O ye kòmi a ko surunyana. Awa, foyi, foyi tè bala i la. Ou [from the French], ne tun b'a fè nin ko in ka kè tan, nk'a ko kamina. A ko kamina, o ye kòmi a ko gèlèyara. A kuma fò sen ka ca. I bè se k'a kuma fò a ka ca danya bakelen ye. A kuma sen ka ca.

17. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, Djinns/Ciw, 8/11/84, Book 14, p. 77 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: I will say, “So-and-so, you must prepare yourself before such and such a day. I have learned something new; it shouldn't be a surprise to you.” You will find that we have already spoken of this [the circumcision] ten years ago. In the tenth year, if I come to see you and give you this message [that the circumcision in question is about to occur] saying, “You must prepare yourself before such and such a date. I have learned something and it shouldn't come as a surprise to you,” you – you know that in reality this concerns the circumcision. This will find that we have already spoken of this [the circumcision] ten years ago. No matter what way I say this, you will know by this manner [of speaking about the information] that it concerns the circumcision, and you will answer me, saying, “Good, what you have just said, is it the long part or the short part?” I, I will answer, “It is the bamangoloko [unknown word].”

INTERVIEWER: The long part? The long part?

KOJUGU: The long part.

INTERVIEWER: The long part?

KOJUGU: Nhun. It is as though it were a faraway place. I, I [here, Kojugu refers to the recipient of the information] will say, “Is it a faraway place or a place close by?” Then I [the blacksmith] will reply, “This isn't a faraway place,” or “This isn't an old piece of information, it is a new piece of information, it is an information that is on your feet; we are close to it.” This is to inform you that it [the circumcision] concerns one of your close kinsmen, one of your close kinsmen. At that time, if you are in a public place, you will converse like this.”

18. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, Questions-1, 8/9/84, Book 13, pp. 82–3 of transcribed tapes.

19. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, Questions-3, 8/9/84, Book 15, p. 83 of transcribed tapes.

20. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, Questions-3, 8/9/84, Book 15, p. 85 of transcribed tapes.

21. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, Questions-3, 8/9/84, Book 15, p. 82 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Eè, n'i dun kèra dankatò ye, i ye min ye su siko rò, i b'a lakali, i b'a lakali, jinè tè bò i ye dé.

22. Interview with Salimata Kone, Emfantement, 4/6/84, Book 10, p. 99 of transcribed tapes.

23. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, Questions-3, 8/9/84, Book 15, pp. 67–8 of transcribed interviews.

KOJUGU: Oui. Aa. N’ bè sòn ka kuma caman fò bi. Nka, n’ bè silan dé.

INTERVIEWER: I dun bè silan, mun de bè kè? Mun bè k'i la?

KOJUGU: N’ bè silan. N’ té silan n’ yèrè nyè. N’ bè silan n’ denw kòsòn. “Aw fa de ye nin gundo fò, aw fa de ye nin gundo waraka.” N’ bè silan o de nyè.

24. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, Cissoko 6–14, 6/14/84, Book 8, p. 15 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: I kan'a nyèfò mògò ye dè.

INTERVIEWER: Ee! An,an!

25. Ngolo Diarra, professor of Botany at the Ecole normale supérieure, Bamako, identifies the sensa as zenzan, zinzan, zeleza, zezou, or Pseudocebrela kotschyi (Schweinf.) Harms, (personal communication, 1/3/93). Neither Bazin (1906), Dumestre (1981–9), Garnier (1976), nor Thoyer-Rozat (1981) identify the sensa or silensa.

26. Dr. Diarra, identifies the nyamacenin as Piliostigma reticulatum (D.C.) Hochst (personal communication, 1/3/93). Bazin (1906, 447–8) identifies the nyama as Bauhinia reticulata, but does not mention the nyamacenin. Thoyer-Rozat (1981, 140) also identifies the nyama as Bauhinia reticulata but does not mention the nyamacenin. Dumestre (1981–9) does not identify this plant.

The nyamacenin is almost certainly the same plant as the nyama-tye, which Garnier (1976, 32) also identifies as Piliostigma reticulatum. Garnier (1976, 32) observes that Bauhinia reticulata and Bauhinia thonningii are synonyms for this plant, and comments that it should be distinguished from the nyama-muso, which he identifies as Piliostigma thonningii.

27. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, Cissoko 6–14, 6/14/84, Book 8, p. 15 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: An ko yiri dò ma, ko sensa. A tògò ye silensa. O kòròn n'a tilebin, o ye Kòmò barika yiri dò ye. An ko dò ma, ko, nyamacenin. O kòròn n'a tilebin, o ye Kòmò barika yiri dò ye.

28. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, Outils-1, 6/23/84, Book 12, pp. 71–2 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: O bè dilan ko garisi garisi nyògòn nun na. O bée tun bè dilan jon muso n'a kò rò den. Jonkè ni jònmuso, jòn sungurun. O bèe tun bè dilan olu de la. An tè jòn ko tile la. Mògò tan'a fò an bè jòn ko kuma yèrè fò a rò.

INTERVIEWER: I b'a fò kè. Fèn min tèmènna. N'i m'a nyafò ne ye, anw b'o dòn cogo jumen? A tè tunun wa?

KOJUGU: A bè tunun. A bè tunun.

29. Interview with Salimata Kone, Enfantement, 4/6/84, Book 11, pp. 13–14 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: Bon, est-ce que muso kònòma bè se ka dori mugu caman dun?

30. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, Cissoko 6–14, 6/14/84, Book 7, p. 97 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: Bon, aw fè a bòcogo, a bè cogoya jumèn de yira?

KOJUGU: An, an, a bòcogo muso la kè.

INTERVIEWER: Hun?

KOJUGU: A bòcogo muso la kè.

INTERVIEWER: Est-ce que o kòrò de ye kafò, ko muso fòlò, k'o ka laada, o de yèlèmana ka kè boli ye wa? Aw ka cèkòròbaw ka kuma la, o de don wa?

KOJUGU: Nhun.

INTERVIEWER: O de don, wa?

KOJUGU: Nhun.

INTERVIEWER: Mun, “Nhun?”

KOJUGU: N’ k'o de kèr'o ye.

INTERVIEWER: Nhunn?

KOJUGU: Nhun.

31. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, Questions-3, 8/9/84, Book 15, p. 75 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: N’ ko, jina, i bèna yiri min dèsè, est-ce que, a b'a yir'i la cogo jumèn? A b'a yir'i la sunògò de la wa? Wala, a bè na kuma i kèrè fè, kòmi an bè kuma la cogo min na, wala i b'a ye cogoya wèrè de la?

KOJUGU: Mògòw la jinèw tè kelen ye. I ye n’ nyininkan dè?

INTERVIEWER: Nhun.

KOJUGU: Ne ta, aa …

32. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, Questions-2, 8/9/84, Book 14, pp. 30–1 of transcribed tapes.

33. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, Questions-2, 8/9/84, Book 14, p. 31 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Ne la fòli ma se o yòrò ma.

34. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, Questions-2, 8/9/84, Book 14, p. 31 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Nko, ne la fòli ma se o yòrò ma.

35. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, Questions-2, 8/9/84, Book 14, p. 31 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Anw ye denmisènninw ye. An t'o fò.

36. A case in point was Salimata's declaration that only Allah could understand the exact process of conception, and what portion of the fetus came from the mother and what from the father.

37. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, Questions-2, 8/9/84, Book 14, pp. 34–5 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: Bon, sisan, fòlò la, i delila ka yirimògònin joli dilan? I y'a dilan jòn ye?

KOJUGU: Ne ye yirimògòninw minw dilan, a ka ca ni kònòntòn ye. Ni n’ ko n’ sigino in nò, ko, n’ b'u tigiw bèe dòn, n’ t'u bèe dòn. Bon, dunan dò bè na, ka n'i balan n’ ma, kafò, “Kojugu, i bè cogo in na, i bè se in na, n’ y'i tògò mèn, n’ mako bè nin yiri in na,” n’ t'i nyininkan i bò yòrò la. N’ t'i nyininkan i jamu la, n’ t'i nyininkan i tògò la. I yèrè ye kungo fèn ye, n’ tè kè Allah ye k'a dòn. I ye kungo fèn ye, n’ tè kè Allah ye k'a dòn. N’ koni b'a f'i ye, i bè nin wari hakè in bò. N’ y'a dilan a ka ca hali sigiyòrò ma kònòntòn ye. Nhun, oò, min y'a dilan n’ fè, o b'a dilan, a bè kè basi ye wa, a bè cogo wèrè ye wa, n’ tè kè Allah ye k'a dòn.

38. See Chapter 3 for a fuller discussion of this passage.

39. Interview with Nyamaton Diarra, 4/15/84, Book 17, pp. 31–3 of transcribed tapes. Nyamaton describes how a blacksmith and his wife take off their clothes while he is forging the iron flutes of the Komo association. This passage is cited and discussed in Chapter 6.

McNaughton cites the case of amulets that cost more when the blacksmith who creates them is required to work nude (McNaughton 1988, 61).

40. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, Outils-2, 6/24/84, Book 13, p. 22 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Ayi, an nankolon tè t'o la dè.

41. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, Outils-2, 6/24/84, Book 13, p. 47 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: U bè mun de dilan? Komo suruku fitinin wa, Komo jenfa …?

42. Interview with Nyamaton Diarra, 4/15/84, Book 17, pp. 13–14 of transcribed tapes.

43. Interview with Nyamaton Diarra, 4/15/84, Book 17, pp. 14–15 of transcribed tapes.

44. Interview with Nyamaton Diarra, 4/15/84, Book 17, pp. 15–22 of transcribed tapes.

45. Interview with Nyamaton Diarra, 4/15/84, Book 17, pp. 22–7 of transcribed tapes.

46. Interview with Nyamaton Diarra, 4/15/84, Book 17, p. 26 of transcribed tapes.

47. Interview with Nyamaton Diarra, 4/15/84, Book 17, pp. 27–30 of transcribed tapes.

48. Interview with Nyamaton Diarra, 4/15/84, Book 17, p. 30 of transcribed tapes.

49. Interview with Nyamaton Diarra, 4/15/84, Book 17, pp. 30–3 of transcribed tapes.

50. “Le rôle du limier du fait social est souvent dans ce cas comparable à celui du détective et du juge d'instruction. Le crime est le fait, le coupable est l'interlocuteur, les complices sont tous les hommes de la société” (Griaule 1957, 59). This passage is cited in Clifford (1988, 73).

51. The most recent instance occurred at a presentation (“Bamana Sculptors: The Theft of Feminity and the Creation of Art”) for the African History Seminar at SOAS, London University on October 31, 1991 when Judy Sterner, from the University of Calgary, observed that her own data concerning the feminized identity of blacksmiths in the Mandara Highlands of northeastern Nigeria and northern Cameroon was strikingly similar to that discussed in my talk (Sterner and David 1991, 355–69). This data is found in Chapter 2. Comparable data on sculptors and their spirit familiars is cited by D'Azevedo (1973, 126–50).

52. Data was collected primarily in the Buguni and Jitumu regions of the southwestern Bamana area, the Beledugu area of the northwestern Bamana region, and the traditional Birgo region near Kita.

53. See Kojugu's discussion of the meaning of ka nyo lan, “to plant millet,” as opposed to that of ka nyo dan, “to invent a new species of millet.” The distinction between ka nyo lan (Malinke), “to plant millet,” and ka nyo dan (Malinke), “to invent a new species of millet,” i.e., “to create” millet, is typically Malinke. The Bamana use ka nyo dan in both senses and expect the listener to distinguish them according to context. I am indebted to Mr. Mara for explaining this linguistic distinction. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, Questions-2, 8/9/84, Book 14, p. 26 of transcribed tapes.

54. Most authors (see the remainder of this note) would tend to identify their language as a mixture of Fulani and Bamana. I suggest the Soninke hypothesis on the basis of interviews (conducted in Bamana) with Kakolo informants in the western Beledugu (11/16/85) and in Bamako (12/6/86). These interviews were focused on the meaning of traditional Kakolo textiles.

The Kakolo are probably the same as the group identified as the Kagoro by most authors. Delafosse (1929, 18) identifies the Kagoro as an ethnic group whose origins lie among the Fulani of the Futa Toro or the Futa Djallon, and who now speak only Bamana.

Westermann and Bryan (1952, 34) identify the Kagoro dialect as resulting from a mixture of Fulah and Bamana “in the neighborhood of Kolokani, also Mourdiah and Nioro.”

Dalby identifies the Kagoro of the Kaarta region (which melts into the western Beledugu) as “associated linguistically with the Bambara,” but he does not specify whether the Kagoro simply speak a dialect of Bamana or whether they have developed a separate language (Dalby 1971, 4). My own field experience suggests that they are well on the way to speaking a distinct language.

55. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, Questions-1, 8/9/84, Book 13, p. 58 of transcribed tapes, and commentary by my African research associate concerning the interview, Outils-1, 6/23/84, Book 12, p. 40 of transcribed tapes.

56. Despite this probability, 1880 or 1890 seems a reasonable starting point for the conceptual system described here. This time frame has been selected on the basis of my informants’ ages, an average generation of thirty years, and the typical age at which advanced apprenticeship in ritual matters traditionally began. In 1984 Basi was eighty, Kojugu fifty-seven, Nyamaton fifty-two, and Salimata seventy-three. Granting that these ages are approximate (births were seldom correctly recorded in Mali at the beginning of this century), one can calculate that Basi and Salimata were in their early thirties in the 1930s (thirty would be the minimum age for acquiring any in-depth ritual knowledge), and Nyamaton and Kojugu reached the same age in the 1950s. Thus, if, as we know, Salimata was taught by both her grandfather and father, and if one takes the thirty-year generation as a standard, her father must have been in his early thirties in approximately 1900 and her grandfather in 1870. Basi's father would have been approximately thirty in 1874, and Nyamaton's and Kojugu's fathers would have been in their thirties in 1924 and 1927 respectively. Due to the fact that grandparents rather than parents are most often the children's tutors in Mande culture, it is probable that all my informants acquired much of their expertise from those who were two generations removed from them. If, as seems likely given their excellent memories, Basi, Kojugu, Nyamaton, and Salimata have preserved a substantial portion of the traditions handed on to them, the belief system they described to us would date at least as far back as the 1880s or 1890s, and perhaps even farther.

Deciding what is the closest approximation to a reasonable length for an average generation in any nonliterate society is a thorny issue. In his classic book, Oral Tradition as History, Vansina notes that historians have used figures varying between about twenty-five to forty-five years as approximations for the length of an average generation (1985, pp. 117, 183–4, and 175–9 are particularly relevant for my discussion). He also notes that these calculations are based on biological intervals, usually the time between the birth of a person and his or her first child. Among the Bamana and Malinke, men traditionally married for the first time between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five, and it was desirable to have one's first child as soon as possible. The age of marriage was also the age at which a man could begin to acquire most types of ritual knowledge. Thus, it makes sense to take an average of thirty years, both as the approximate length of the father-to-son generational gap and the approximate length of the transmission gap for ritual information (for the use of a twenty-five year generation for the ‘chiefs’ of Kolokani the reader should consult Brett-Smith 1982a, Chapter 4, note 5). It is possible to use this approximation for two reasons. First, all my informants for this book (including Salimata, who was treated as her father's first son by both her father and grandfather) obtained their information via male-to-male lines of transmission. Second, all these informants and their fathers and grandfathers were married when thirty was still the approximate age of first marriage for men.

However, in respect to information obtained via a woman-to-woman chain of transmission (such as the information cited in Chapter 6 concerning childbirth practices) one needs to shorten the generational length to twenty years, given that women were traditionally excised at about eighteen, married shortly thereafter, and bore their first child as soon as possible. In evaluating the data on childbirth, it is also important to remember that traditional practices have changed much less in the women's sphere than in the men's due both to women's lack of access to Western education and to a profound conservatism of outlook that is difficult to explain.

Both men and women learned varying types of information and skills at different ages. For instance, legends and stories might very well be memorized at an early age, and certain exceptionally gifted individuals might begin their ritual training during childhood. In general, technical skills such as carving or painting mud cloth were learned in childhood (from the ages of five or six on), whereas the esoteric meanings attached to particular rituals involving sculpture or the meaning of complex mud-cloth patterns were revealed only to adult students. Although Salimata learned how to paint complex mud-cloth patterns as a child, it took her years to master the complex set of meanings associated with each one. This pattern of apprenticeship is very common, for technical mastery usually precedes the long-term study that produces an ever-deepening knowledge of progressively more complicated and arcane interpretations of an artistic tradition.

57. I am indebted to Gülru Necipoglu-Kafadar, John L. Loeb associate professor of the humanities in the Department of Art History, Harvard University, for drawing my attention to the need to include a section discussing the relationship of my data to Islam in the Introduction.

58. Levtzion (1973, 183) states that “Muslim traders from the Maghrib frequented the trading centres of the Sahel from the eighth century.” Thus, the earliest contact between the Sahel regions of Mali and the Islamic world would date from this period, although it apparently took several centuries for real communities of Muslims to develop in what is now Mali (Levtzion 1973, 183).

Levtzion describes the development of Islam during and after the eleventh century as follows. He quotes (1979, 208) al-Bakri's statement that already in the eleventh century the king of Gao was Muslim, but that his people were animist; he also notes (1979, 208) that in mid-eleventh-century Ghana, Muslims lived in a separate quarter under the protection of an animist king. He cites al-Bakri's comment that the king's interpreters, ministers, and the official in charge of his treasury were all Muslims.

Levtzion (1973, 190–1; 1979, 211) suggests that Malinke leaders were under the influence of Islam well before Sunjata, and that Sunjata came from a lineage that had already accepted Islam, at least in principle. He notes (1973, 191–2; 1979, 211–12) that as Sunjata's small Malinke principality turned into a multiethnic empire, its contacts with the Islamic empire increased, and that fourteenth-century Mali under the leadership of Mansa Musa was accepted as an Islamic state in the Muslim world. When the kingdom contracted in the fifteenth century and lost its trans-Saharan contacts, much of Mali's population returned to traditional religion; Ibn Battuta's account of his visit to Mali in 1352–3 describes masked dancing and non-Muslim practices at the court of the nominally Muslim king (Levtzion 1973, 193–5; 1979, 212).

Levtzion (1979, 215) makes the point that, prior to the jihad movements of the nineteenth century, Islam was really the religion of traders and traditional political leaders, whereas the majority of the population remained steadfastly animist. He suggests (1979, 215) that the nineteenth-century jihads brought Islam from the periphery of most people's lives into the center by identifying the political system itself with Islamic belief.

The blending of traditional beliefs and practices with Islam has continued into the twentieth century, although Islam, with its glittering new mosques funded by a number of Arab states including Saudi Arabia, is now overwhelming traditional religious practices in many of the areas in which I worked.

For a more detailed discussion of the early history of Islam in Mali see Levtzion (1973).

59. Levtzion (1979, 215–16) implies that the nineteenth-century jihads extended the reach of Islam toward the common man. However, Robinson (1985, 359) suggests that the late-nineteenth-century jihad of El Hadj Umar actually strengthened traditional opposition to the new religion in certain areas.

Robinson observes that El Hadj Umar's jihad affected the religious beliefs of the different areas conquered very differently. In Tamba and parts of Karta, the large numbers of Islamized Futanke warriors who settled down to farm alongside the indigenous inhabitants did increase the spread of the new religion (Robinson 1985, 359). However, he suggests that to the east, in eastern Karta, Segu, and Masina the jihad may have been more effective in reinforcing a recalcitrant opposition to Islam than in promoting new faith.

Robinson characterizes the Futanke regime of the Middle Niger as a small garrison state manned by a limited number of arrogant warriors. He observes that these soldiers’ small numbers and their exploitative attitude toward the local population probably increased traditional resistance to Islam (1985, 281). Robinson comments (1985, 359) that conversion seems to have spread among the Bamana and Malinke populations of Segu and eastern Karta only in the early twentieth century, when it was promoted by indigenous clerics and came to be regarded as a positive political alternative to cooperation with the French.

According to Robinson, neither El Hadj Umar Tal nor his son, Amadu, encouraged widespread conversion of the Bamana in the conquered Segu state, largely for economic reasons. Robinson remarks (1985, 359), “As in the Crusader kingdoms of Palestine and Syria, conversion could reduce the tax base and cloud the distinction between ruler and subject.” As long as their Bamana and Malinke subjects remained ‘pagan,’ both Umar and Amadu were able to tax them much more heavily than they could Muslims (Robinson 1985, 357); Futanke taxation was one of several reasons that the Segu area lost its former prosperity in the late nineteenth century (Robinson 1985, 360–1).

Details of the additional taxes that could be levied on ‘pagans’ in a nineteenth-century Islamic African state are given in Johnson's description of Sheku Ahmadu's pre-Umarian taxation system in the theocracy he established at Masina in 1818 (Johnson 1976, 486–8). Conquered ‘pagans’ paid a tax equivalent to 5 percent of all their grain crops in either cowries or kind, whereas those who had supported Sheku Ahmadu's jihad from the first were exempt from this assessment (Johnson 1976, 487). It is reasonable to assume that El Hadj Umar's administration treated Bamana and Malinke ‘pagans’ in a similarly punitive fashion.

60. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, Outils-1, 6/23/84, Book 12, p. 70 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: An bè Kuranatigiw fò, Kuranatigiw bè an fò. Kòw bee nyaganbilen don nyògòn na.

The Bamana Universe

1. First interview with Nyamaton Diarra, 4/15/84, pp. 51–2.

NYAMATON: A mana taa o baara kè k'o ban, su mana ko, a b'a fò bolinin kumala ye, “I ni su.” Ni muso don, a b'a fò, “Nsè! Karamògò, i yèrè ni su.” Kosèbè! Bon, a b'o baara, k'o don foroko kònòn. Ni foroko dulonnen bè kèrè la, n'a nana ka na maaw fo, ko, “Aw ni sogoma.” U b'a fò, “Nba, i ni sogoma.” Ko, “Hèrè sira?” U b'a fò, ko, “Hèrè sira.” A b'a fò, “Aw ni sògòma! Aw ni sògòma! Cèkòròbaw, aw ni sògòma! Aw sira hèrè la? Allah k'an kisi saba ma.” A bè foroko kònòn, a bè kuma. E maa na, an sigiko min ye nin ye, n'e nana foli kè da la, a ko, awa, “Aw ni sògòma.” A b'a fo, “Nse! i yèrè ni sògòma. Hèrè sira wa? Allah k'an tilen hèrè rò. I nana mun na de?” Denmisènnin da duman bè kuma cogo min, o bè ten de… . O ye basinin kumala ye. O gundo ka gèlèn. Kow bèe ye gundo.

2. For an in-depth discussion of the meaning of boliw see Brett-Smith 1983. The use of human placentas to make boliw is confirmed by Youssouf Tata Cissé (1985, 14).

3. See pp. 254–6 of William Rubin's article, “Picasso,” (1984, 241–343) for the most coherent summary of the conflicting evidence surrounding this ‘discovery.’

4. Ezra's work on the guandusu figure series seems to be the only exception to this rule. Further research may reveal that these large figures of men and women had a more important ritual role than she suggests. If this is so, the secret, ritual functions of the figures might well balance her informants’ focus on the figures’ aesthetic merits as a raison d'etre (Ezra 1983, 1986).

5. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 14, p. 38 of transcribed tapes.

Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, p. 79 of transcribed tapes.

6. Among the Bamana and Malinke, the Komo is a male initiation association. Throughout the Mande area, jow or initiation associations have religious, political, judicial, and philosophical functions. Traditionally, jow served to mold the men and women of each small community into a tightly disciplined, coherent whole, while intervillage connections were also fostered by mutual membership in the same overarching association. Some jow, such as the feared Nyaguan, were exclusively female, while others such as the Komo, Ntomo, and Nama were limited to men. Each association was hierarchically organized and was controlled by leaders or “owners.” These were men or women (in the case of the Nyaguan) selected from the small group of elderly ritual experts who normally direct a Bamana or Malinke community. Each association possessed its own panoply of ritual objects that might include portable altars (boliw), costumes, masks (literally “heads” or kunw) and carvings of human figures (yirimògòniw). Jow were therefore major patrons of the blacksmith-sculptors who are the subject of this book.

Among all the male jow known to the Bamana, the Komo was and is the most feared. Whereas most associations focused on solving one particular human problem (for instance, the Nama is focused on the eradication of witchcraft), the Komo seems to have assumed general responsibility for policing all aspects of human behavior. In many villages the Komo controlled agriculture (the Komo “owner” might set the date when sowing the fields could begin), sexual behavior, economic success (Komo associations have been known to kill women who were too successful at trading), decisions to make war or peace with neighbors, and human fertility. Its leaders were politicians, diplomats, ritual experts, and great healers, and they manipulated the police powers of the society with a sureness of hand worthy of Machiavelli himself. The Komo was the most explicitly masculine of all the Bamana jow. Traditionally, men were forcibly inducted into the Komo immediately after circumcision in their late twenties, and they were forbidden to have sexual relations before both circumcision and entrance into the Komo. Thus, membership in the Komo was equated with obtaining the group's permission to have sex and marry (men were normally given their first wife immediately following their induction into the Komo) and with being a man. Throughout much of the Mande world a man who was not a Komo member could neither marry nor have any voice in political decision making. For a man, Komo membership was the sine qua non of social existence. Although the Komo association is not the principal focus of this book, it will appear frequently since informants talked about sculpture with continual reference to Komo objects.

7. Informants were ambivalent concerning the exact nature of a carved object's powers. On the one hand they asserted that a Komo mask or a carved human figure (yirimògòni) could both kill and render fertile when properly made. For instance, Kojugu repeatedly asserted that every Komo mask had special powers, and that these were intrinsic to the carving and resulted naturally from the ritual precautions observed by the blacksmith who had carved it, and in particular from his sexual purity. Kojugu also revealed that the Komo masquerader's power to kill an initiate who broke Komo rules, or to kill an uninitiated man or a woman, did not lie in the mask itself, but in the poisons “thrown” at an offender by Komo officials. Metal objects such as the Komo flutes are often said to be much more dangerous than the mask itself. It may be that experts like Kojugu know that effective poisons are kept in metal objects, such as the flutes, and that when dealing with specific cases that contravene the society's rules, the mask's capacity to kill actually results from the “owner's” pharmacological knowledge, not from the vague and amorphous powers attributed to it. However, this practical awareness of the role of poisons in maintaining the mask's reputation does not seem to affect informants’ deep belief that the wooden headdress, in and of itself, possesses special abilities that make it an exceptional basi or “medicine.” Even experts like Basi and Kojugu simultaneously maintain their belief in the amorphous powers of the mask; a practical realization that these abilities are often based on pharmacological knowledge coexists without any sense of conflict. Furthermore, they also assert that a mask is “the same as” any other kind of basi or “medicine” whether pharmacological or ritual, and that, at the same time it is categorically different and special. It is possible that the sense of specialness that surrounds carved objects relates to fears concerning sculptors’ abilities to imitate reality and the sense that making an image of something in wood is an intrinsically unfathomable process. As the data presented in the last section of Chapter 5 suggests, sculptors themselves feel that they do not understand the process of artistic creation, and that there is something otherworldly and extraordinarily powerful about it.

The Dabà is believed to be able to kill the unwary spectator who stands directly in front of its gaping jaw. Interview with the elders who possess the Dabà, village of Warrabugu, 9/16/79, p. 64 of transcribed tapes.

8. McNaughton (1979b, 2–11) gives an excellent overview of all the Bamana secret associations and the literature on them. The main Bamana men's associations are the Komo, Konon, Nama, Tyi Warra, Koré, Ntomo, and the Jo.

9. Bazin (1906, 59) defines the word basi first as “arbrisseau donnant une teinture brune,” and then as “couleur brune.” Bazin adds a second definition of basi as “sang,” adding that it is less commonly used than the standard word for blood or a wound, joli. His 1906 definition interprets basi as “grisgris, remède superstitieux.”

Gerard Dumestre (1989, no. 1, 84–5) defines basi first as “remède, médicament, fetiche,” second as “plante tinctoriale, couleur brune, couleur rouge,” third as “âpre, amèr,” and finally as “sang, sang des couches.”

10. In 1984 and 1985 many Beledugu informants compared the severity of the current famine to that of 1913. Brink (1980, 131) mentions a previous drought between 1970 and 1974. Roberts (1987, 93 and also 21–2, 42) describes food shortages as being endemic in Segu in the mid-1860s and 1880s.

Arab documents suggest that famine has long been a recurrent feature of the northern Bamana and Malinke areas. In his revealing article on famines and epidemics in the Timbuctoo area, Sèkéné-Mody Cissoko stresses the ecological fragility of the area extending from Jenne and the Niger delta up through Timbuctoo in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He notes the recurrent famines that struck every seven to ten years in the seventeenth century and every five in the eighteenth (Cissoko 1968, 814). He also reports that some famines, such as that of 1738 to 1756, affected the entire western Sudan, including the Hausa and Wolof ethnic groups (Cissoko 1968, 814). A famine that extended as far as the Wolof in Senegal and the Hausa to the east of Timbuctoo would certainly have touched both the northern Bamana and Malinke areas. Interestingly enough, some of the survival techniques he describes, such as eating wild grains and roots, are exactly the same as those observed in 1984–5. Cissoko's work provides a long-term historical perspective on famine in the Sahel region of Mali, suggesting that the situation we observed in 1984, 1985, and 1986 was nothing new.

11. Kurian gives the Central Intelligence Agency World Factbook 1990 as the source for these figures.

12. This figure is given for the period 1985–90. Dr. Imperato (personal communication, 9/30/91) commented that the U.N. demographic figures are often misleading, especially when dealing with a country like Mali in which government statistics and census reports are usually inaccurate. However, the Office of Population Research Library at Princeton University recommended the U.N. data as the best currently available. I also consulted the Annuaire statistique (1987) published by the Malian government, but this did not provide any adult or infant crude death rates.

13. In 1984 we lived across the street in Bamako from a thirty-year-old woman who had already borne six children. Her youngest child was two years old at the time. Both the woman herself and her neighbors considered that she was already old.

14. Basi's son had just returned from an outlying hamlet where the able-bodied members of the family had threshed its millet (a job that takes at least a month if the harvest is good). Immediately, Basi ordered him to begin walking to the nearest large town to buy sacks to bag the harvest. The young man, feeling a right to some rest, refused.

15. Basi told me that he wished the French had never set foot in Mali, much less conquered it. Basi never allowed me to interview him formally, although we lived in his compound for five weeks. He openly stated that he had no use for tubabuw or “Europeans,” and ran his extended family as though it were still 1900. In fact, the only concession he made to western life was the grudging admission that early morning coffee was a benefit, especially when I made it and sent it to him via a grandchild at 6:30. Basi refused to allow anyone within his extended family to pray (signifying conversion to Islam), stating that once he was buried they could do as they wished. Basi's intransigence had its tragic aspects: his favorite grandchildren, twin boys four years old, had died of measles in 1983, since he refused to allow anyone within his family to be vaccinated. At the age of eighty Basi possessed all his faculties, an incredible memory, a piercing intelligence, and a formidable mastery of ritual and artistic knowledge. He was also renowned for his undeniable skill as a dermatologist with a clientèle who came to consult him from as far away as Dakar. In addition to his professional skills, Basi's fame rested on his unswerving allegiance to traditional practice and law even when it hurt his own personal interests. He was viewed, and viewed himself, as an exemplary adherent of traditional, premodern rules of behavior, winning respect and fear from everyone around him.

16. In a proverb with universal application, the Bamana state, “E faden fòlò y'i fa ye,” or “Your first competitor (faden) is your father.

17. Johnson (1986, 9–12) provides a good discussion of Mande family structure, badenya, and fadenya. Also see McNaughton (1988, 14–15) and Bird (1974, vii).

18. I witnessed such a visit to Salimata Kone in 1978.

19. “Dibi yere ye tile ye.”

20. No important decision, such as paying taxes, can occur without the presence of the titular family head.

21. It is common for parents to seek Islamic and traditional basiw or “medicines” to protect an especially clever child against the envy of other parents. A mother may begin to give her son special drugs to increase his intelligence and protect him from poisoning by her co-wives the minute he shows signs of reaping better grades than his half-brothers. This transposition of fadenya into the modern realm of grade school is entirely traditional, and we shall see how the gifted apprentice sculptor receives a similar protection from an early age.

22. For Salimata's unique upbringing and her many gifts see the section discussing my informants in the Introduction (“Methodology: The Main Sources”). It is clear that her uncle's refusal to countenance a prosperous marriage limited Salimata's future scope of action and her social power, placing narrow limits on the exemplary training she had received.

23. In the traditional Bamana world it was a shortage of manpower rather than of land that placed brakes on population and economic surplus. Land to farm was always available; it was the farmers who were lacking.

24. I am not suggesting that particular basiw, such as the masks for the Nama society that specialize in detecting and eradicating sorcery, do not have particular functions, merely that the universal function of all basiw is promoting human fertility. This function may be eclipsed by others with regard to a specific object (for objects, like people, have individual personalities); but it never entirely disappears.

25. Traditionally, the Bamana and Malinke farmed in large, extended families; dates for sowing, weeding and harvesting were set by the eldest male member of the extended family. Men, women, and children all worked together on a single large field called the foroba, and the harvest from this field constituted the communal store of grain from which every family member received his or her share of food. Grain from the foroba was stored in locked, family-owned granaries. Only the sotigi or head of the extended family could unlock these granaries, remove grain, and dole it out to the various women who cooked the communal meals. In addition to the foroba, each adult man and woman was permitted to cultivate a small field for personal use; men usually sowed millet or corn, whereas women were allotted small parcels of land near ponds where they grew rice and vegetables. In the past, excessive devotion to one's own personal field (jonforo, literally, “slave” or “individual field”) was frowned on, since this labor had a negative impact on collective grain production.

The 1983–5 famine had a catastrophic effect on extended-family farming. Throughout entire regions the forobaw or family-owned fields produced nothing; without the food to feed their extended families, many sotigiw lost their power over their dependents and were forced to allow both men and women to farm individually. Once these adults had tasted independence, it was rare for them to return to collective farming. In effect, they refused to place the needs of the collective unit above their own personal desires.

A number of informants reported that the sotigi‘s power over his dependents’ labor was formerly absolute. A young blacksmith might be ordered to work in the forge from nightfall till 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning and then to wake up at 5:00 or 5:30 A.M. to farm the family's field. In the past such orders were obeyed instantly, for refusal was tantamount to a declaration of social and political rebellion.

In addition to the lengthy hours characteristic of collective farming and the backbreaking labor necessary to prepare the soil, the subsequent work is almost equally laborious. After the sotigi sets the date for sowing, the young plants must be repeatedly weeded if they are to survive, a task that mobilizes every member of the extended family including small children. Finally, in late September or early October the millet must be cut and then manually threshed with flails by the adult men before it can be stored. Bamana farming is not only labor intensive, but also frustrating. It is not uncommon for a farmer to sow four or five times and then see his fields destroyed by irregular rains or infestations of insects, such as locusts. In the northern Bamana area the farmer is always one step away from famine: in 1984 entire families in the Beledugu survived on one unripe mango per day divided between two people. In the past, collective farming by the extended family provided some defense against periodic droughts and famines, for the foroba was usually constituted from several different-sized fields carefully placed in distinct areas and planted with different varieties of millet or corn. If one foroba failed, the others might well succeed, preserving the extended family from hardship. However, the 1983–5 famine was so extreme that such strategies became irrelevant, and individual adult men were forced to emigrate south to look for work with which to support their wives and children. Those who remained at home survived on wild grasses, unripe fruits such as mangoes, and some famine relief. Many elderly people died of malnutrition and starvation, and in many regions the famine completely destroyed the collective farming system.

26. For the basic types of Mande hoe see McNaughton (1988, 32–4). McNaughton cites an interesting line regarding farming from a Mande epic poem as follows:

The world would begin with farming

And it will end with farming.

(Diyen fòlòta ci lè ma. A la bana ye ci ye.)

This is taken from a manuscript of the Kele Monson Jiabate version of the Sundiata epic, lines 97–8 in the possession of Professor Charles Bird.

27. The dage is Hippotragus equinus.

28. For a full description of the Tyi Warra headdresses and their meanings see Zahan (1980) and Brink (1981). Also see note 16, Chapter 3.

29. For a good discussion of whether the term ‘caste’ can be accurately used in describing Mande and Bamana social structure see McNaughton (1988, 3–10, 156–61), and Johnson (1986, 22–3).

30. The ethnographic literature on the Mande has paid great attention to blacksmith-sculptors or numuw; there is hardly a work that does not mention them, and McNaughton has devoted an entire book to defining the blacksmith persona (McNaughton 1988).

31. Also see Johnson (1986, 22–7) for a good summary of the literature on ‘castes’ in Mali and an excellent description of the jeliw or bardic “caste.”

32. Interview with Kanfoliba Fane, 3/17/79, Book 9, page 12 of transcribed tapes from 1979.

KANFOLIBA: N'u yèrè sònna k'a bèe don bògò la sennya kelen. O tagafè tun bè kè numumusow la, o kulusi tun bè kè numu cèw la. Pourquoi? Parce que, mògò bè k'u a la, numu finin don, ko sanunyalen tè. O tun ye u ka finin dontaw wati. O tun b'u ni mògò tòw cè. Effectivenient, u ka baara fana ni mògò tòw ka baara, inafò n’ y'o fò aw nyina cogo min, olu tè kelen ye.

33. Comment made in the course of interviewing Kanfoliba Fane, March, 1979.

The rule forbidding marriages or sexual contact between “nobles” and ‘casted’ artisan groups was, and often still is, meticulously observed. Intermarriage between different ‘casted’ groups was also forbidden, since the partner of higher status automatically lost it when marrying someone of a ‘lower’ rank. However, my impression is that intercaste marriages were and are more common than the rules might suggest.

Despite this appearance of flexibility, some blacksmiths, like Kanfoliba, not only insist on marrying numuw, but also require that these numuw come from families that worked the same metal as their own. For instance, a blacksmith from a bula family that possesses the traditional right to smelt iron might refuse to marry a blacksmith from a gold-working family.

34. McNaughton notes that blacksmiths frequently congregate together, forming a separate quarter in a large town. He also states that numuw may form their own hamlets and towns in close proximity to the villages and towns of farmers (horonw) (1988, 22–3). Blacksmiths’ forges are found either in their own compounds on the edge of town or at public meeting places, such as the intersections of streets or in village squares. In these public spaces, non-nyamakala (casted) farmers are less threatened by the nyama inevitably released by the blacksmith as he forges.

35. The blacksmiths are the surgeons and frequently the all-purpose doctors of Bamana communities.

36. Cashion defines kala as “bow, handle, shaft, penis,” and comments that it is also used to mean “sexual power, trigger finger, cause of death or misfortune, a type of divination, or simply those who wield power.”

37. This “glow” is limited to numuw and is not a characteristic of any other ‘caste.’

38. Interview with Kanfoliba Fane, 3/17/79, p. 4 of transcribed tapes from 1979. For corroboration of Fane's statement see Jonckers 1979, 112–13.

39. The text reads, “If you have a new child you will notify it also [the anvil] with [the sacrifice of] a kola nut.” Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Outils-2, Book 13, pp. 20–1 of transcribed tapes.

40. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Outils-2, Book 13, p. 33 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: An yèrè bè siran min yè, o ye kulan ko ye. An bè siran kulan ko nyè dè.

INTERVIEWER: Farce que o ye nègè ye?

KOJUGU: O ye nègè ye.

41. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Outils-2, Book 13, p. 18 of transcribed tapes.

42. Among the Bamana, Malinke, and Minianka it is relatively common to find extended families with several members who possess copper-colored hair. Such men or women are considered to bring extraordinary good fortune on their families and those who marry them, but they were also favorite sacrifices (Dieterlen 1951, 94–7). I found no indication that blacksmith families possess a higher proportion of “redheads” or kunw bilenw than nonblacksmiths.

43. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-1, Book 13, p. 77 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: I sigilen kulan min kun na, ni marteau [from the French] kala karila, ka n'i ci i kun nò, dinyè ni lahara bèe kiri t'a rò.

44. My experience is that bulls and slaves are interchangeable payments and sacrifices. I suspect that in the precolonial economy the worth of slaves was probably measured in terms of cattle, and vice versa.

45. This information is found in the interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Outils-2, Book 13, p. 20 of transcribed tapes.

Kojugu also describes the making of a miniature anvil, hammer, pincers, and burin for a nonblacksmith who would “use them according to his needs.” This probably means that the nonblacksmith client would use the miniature set of forging tools for some unspecified ritual purpose. Kojugu specified that a blacksmith had to “really love” the client for whom he would forge such items. In specifying the price, it was not clear whether he referred only to the miniature emblems or to actual forging equipment as well, and I suspect that the same price was attached both to the magical emblems and to the actual equipment. For these details see the interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, p. 70 of transcribed tapes.

46. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, p. 74 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Ni ne bè so sisan, ne tè nyò lan fòlòn ni n’ ma kulan sòn kè – shè kòrò, dununkòrò, worobilen fila. Ni ne ye nyòlan kè kasòrò n’ m'o sòn, ni ko o ko ye n’ sòrò fan da la, n’ yèrè nò don.

47. Among both the Bamana and the Minianka, prehistoric celts and iron meteorites are often used as ritual anvils. Such kulan do not seem to be used for forging but receive the extended family's major sacrifices (at the beginning of the rainy season and at harvest time) and are consulted on important family matters as if they were the living head of the family. Sacrifices to ritual anvils do not preclude regular offerings to working anvils. The ritual anvils are so sacred that it proved impossible to obtain very much information regarding their use.

48. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Outils-2, Book 13, p. 29 of transcribed tapes.

49. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 13, p. 92 of transcribed tapes.

As the next quotation from the interviews with Kojugu will suggest, the bula are a siya or “race” that is extremely difficult to define. A common definition found among both scholars and traditionalists asserts that they are blacksmith families descended from Fakoli, the famous nephew of Sunjata's enemy, Soumaoro Kante (for a brief summary of the Sunjata story see note 50). Conrad reports that Fakoli is frequently identified as the ancestor of the Cissoko, Bagayoko, Sineyoko, Kamissoko, Koroma, and Doumbia clans (1992, 175, 177, 196, note 130).

Today, these family names usually denote blacksmith status, but these clans are also consistently identified both as “noble captives” and as bulaw (blaw, boulaw, bilaw). Conrad suggests that the designation as noble captives may indicate that the bulaw were not originally blacksmiths, but warrior captives who achieved status and power in the Sunjata era through force of arms, like the eighteenth-century ton jonw in the Segu state (1992, 175). He also raises the possibility that this designation may indicate a much earlier episode of servitude, perhaps connected to the Soninke dispersion during and after the fall of ancient Ghana (Wagadu) (1993, 175). Finally, he suggests that the term “noble captives” may be metaphorical, and may simply designate the noble families who ruled the Mande prior to the arrival of more recent groups, such as Sunjata's Keita clan (1992, 176).

Thus, Conrad suggests that the term bulaw may denote either those first rulers and inhabitants of the Mande who controlled slave populations and were overcome by Sunjata and his wave of “latecomers,” or the slave populations themselves who were absorbed into the increasingly hierarchical Mande society as ironworkers or numuw.

Despite their strong connections to ironworking, it is still debatable whether the original bulaw were inevitably smiths. Whereas all the bulaw appear to acknowledge Fakoli as their primary ancestor, it remains unclear whether Fakoli himself possessed blacksmith status like his ‘uncle,’ Soumaoro Kante, or whether he was simply a great sorcerer and a ruler of smith populations (Conrad 1992, 181).

Conrad (personal communication, 2/8/93) corroborates Kojugu's view (expressed in conversations as well as the recorded interviews) that the Doumbia, Kuruma, and Cissoko clans are “true” bulaw; he reports encountering very similar oral traditions in Guinea. In the interviews Kojugu acknowledges that the Fane, Kante, Danyo, Sinayogo, and Bagayogo clans are currently of blacksmith status, but he implies that these clans are not “true” numuw and bulaw. He suggests that they obtained the status of numuw through slavery and intermarriage rather than by descent from both Fakoli and M'Fa Jigi. My research associate observed that other Bamana blacksmiths and griots might well differ from Kojugu in their categorization of which clans are true numuw and bulaw; Kojugu may be using a classic Malinke categorization of blacksmiths rather than a Bamana one.

In addition, Kojugu states that the Komo does not “belong” to the Fane, but to the Cissoko, Camara, Sinayogo, and Bagayogo clans (see interview with Kojugu Cissoko, Outils-2, Book 13, pp. 37–8), although it remains unclear how this ‘ownership’ relates to bula status.

Whereas Kojugu identifies the bulaw as a core group of true blacksmiths, the bulk of the evidence points toward a more fluid identity that is well expressed in the various historical alternatives discussed by Conrad:

1. The bulaw may have been among the earliest inhabitants of the Manden.

2. They may have ruled over slave populations who specialized in the working of iron and were not necessarily smiths themselves.

3. They may, themselves, have suffered a period of slavery.

4. The term denotes an early pre–Sunjata population who controlled assocations like the Komo, and who specialized in the mastery of ritual and esoteric knowledge.

Zahan subscribes to the last definition and asserts that the bulaw constitute a separate category of ritual experts that includes certain griot, blacksmith, and noble families (1963, 126). Both Nyamaton Diarra in the Beledugu and M'Fa Moussa Sakho of Solon (5/24/84) in the Jitumu asserted that the bulaw were not necessarily blacksmiths, but could be “noble” as well. They also acknowledged that the bulaw’s descendance from Fakoli gave them unusual powers of the type cited by Zahan. Furthermore, both Nyamaton and several Jitumu informants suggested that the first diviners, Naburaman, Jitumu Bala, and Nonkon Foroko, were contemporaneous with M'Fa Jigi, the first artist and another prototypical bula ancestor, and might also be considered bulaw. Thus, the majority of my informants seem to agree that the term bula designates a category of person descended from Fakoli and M'Fa Jigi. Members of this category may or may not be blacksmiths, but they are born with a higher potential for access to types of secret knowledge (such as divination) that appear to predate the thirteenthcentury Sunjata era, and the division of Mande society into clear-cut castes. Some bulaw may well have possessed the esoteric knowledge necessary for smelting and ironworking, and perhaps it was these families who became identified as numuw or blacksmiths in the post–Sunjata era.

50. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 13, p. 93 of transcribed interviews.

KOJUGU: Danyò, u b'a fò, ko, bula don, komi ni e ye muso furu yan, ni lu kònòn, ni lutigi bè nin lu la, e ye muso furu k'i t'o fè yan, Allah ka an kisi e nyètununna, e denw ni o den burubèrèninw mòna nyògòn fè. U tè fa wèrè dòn, u tè foyi wèrè dòn, ni lutigi ko o ma, kafò, ko, “Den jamu ye nin ye,” lutigi bè baara min na, n'a ye den bil'o la, a b'a ké en cas [from the French dans le cas], la ten. A b'a kè peut-être [from the French] nk'a siya tè. O ye bulaw cayakun ye, kasòrò a bèe tè bula ye. N'a gbara, k'a gba, Fakoli si tè fila ye. Kelen don. Nka n'an diyara, Fakoli si ka ca.

One could not find a better illustration of the uncertainties surrounding the bula category than this passage. For a detailed discussion of these ambiguities see note 49.

In the Sunjata epic, Fakoli is the nephew of the great blacksmith sorcerer Sumamuru who enslaves the Mande. The Sunjata epic dates from the thirteenth century and recounts the birth, growth, and adulthood of the noble hero Sunjata and his victory over Sumamuru. Today, professional bards still recite the epic in Bamana, Soninke, Khasonke, Mandinka, Mandenka, and Malinke, and many versions of the tale have been recorded, transcribed, and translated by Western scholars.

The epic tells how Sunjata united the Mande in resistance to Sumamuru and, after many defeats, finally overcame the powerful blacksmith and magician. He is then said to have founded the kingdom of Old Mali and instituted the laws and caste system that are considered to be at the base of current Malinke and Bamana traditions. In the epic, Sumamuru makes the mistake of stealing his nephew Fakoli's wife (she is a powerful sorceress), and in revenge Fakoli changes sides and joins Sunjata bringing with him all his technical expertise and knowledge of sorcery. True bula are said to be able to trace their ancestry directly to Fakoli.

For an excellent English version of the Sunjata epic see Johnson (1986, ix–xii, 173–6, 218).

51. One can possess the right to smelt without being a bula, and some bulaw do not smelt.

52. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/11/84, Djinns/Ciw, Book 14, p. 90 of transcribed tapes.

See also interview with Kanfoliba Fane, 3/17/79, Book 9, pp. 10–12 of transcribed tapes from 1979.

53. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/11/84, Djinns/Ciw, Book 14, p. 73 of transcribed tapes.

54. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/11/84, Djinns/Ciw, Book 14, p. 72 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Yòròw dòw la, o ye komi n'i ye min kalan ye, n'i ye bolokoli kalan, i b'o ké, n'i ye yirilèsè kalan, i b'o ké, n'i ye cili yèrè kalan, i b'o kè. Minw b'a bèe kè, o de mògòw man ca; ka bolokoli kè, ka yiri lèsè kè, ka numuya baara k'o kan, ka Kòmò kun bò, i bè duguw saaba, duguw naani, wala duguw duuru, k'o bèe lapelu n'i m'o mògò jòn, jòn, jòn ye.

55. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/11/84, Djinns/Ciw, Book 14, p. 89 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N'i dun kèra yiribòla ye, o tè kè jangonlako ye, o ye fèn dogon.

56. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, p. 69 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: O kò numuya minanw fèn o fèn, n'a fora, ko, k'a dilan, ko k'a san, aa, i ni mògò tè bèn a san da dò, parce que [from the French], a fòlò, fòlò ye sènè kè daba de ye. Kuranatigiw n'u y'a fasadi bò i nyè na, a bè fò, ko, sènè kè daba, ko, dugutigi fila de ka kan ka jè ka cikè daba kelen san. Nka, ni numu min ko ten k'i b'i nata l'o kan, i ni mògò tè bèn. I bè baara kè, ka i lasègèn sara de nyini a rò. I sara tò, n'i ma kè mògò ni tinyèla ye, i sara tò bè nyè ka alikiyamè makònòn.

57. In the interview, Outils-2 (6/24/84, Book 13, p. 31 of transcribed tapes) Kojugu reiterates that the most expensive tool produced by the smith is the daba or hoe. He estimates the actual price at ten mude (a measure of between 3 and 5 kg.) of grain, but adds that the smith may choose to forge hoes for a favored customer without demanding any fee at all.

Bazin defines the mude as “grande mesure des solides (de 3 à 5 kilogrammes), muid, boisseau, moule” (1906, 412).

58. The supreme power of the earth is shown by the multiple sacrifices made to and on it, and its importance as an ingredient in boliw (magical assemblages).

59. Interview with a group of women elders at a Beledugu village, 5/21/78, p. 2. “Hali ni min balola, n'ka fò bilakoro mana kònòn ta, o den bè taga wolo fo kunjè tu rò, ka na k'o to yen, kunjè tu rò yen. Bilakoro den tè don so kònòn.”

The translation is as follows: “Even if the child should live, if it is conceived by an uncircumcised boy or an unexcised girl, the mother will travel into the bush, to a clump of kunjè bushes, to give birth and leave the infant there, in the midst of the kunjè bushes. The child of an uncircumcised boy or an unexcised girl does not enter the house.”

60. One informant told me that he wished to circumcise and excise his future children as late in life as possible so that they would respect his authority as their father and conform to the power structure of society at large.

61. Interview with Salimata Kone, 4/20/84, Grossesse-3, Book 2, p. 50 of transcribed tapes.

SALIMATA: N'u m'i koron, u bi cèmisènninw dòw bil'i la. Olu mana se k'i minè, hali n'u taara u cè rò, a b'a sigi kènè na de, k'a kòsin u ma, k'a nyèsin kungo kolo fan. U b'a baara, k'a ban. N'u tilala, u b'a fò, “Wili, kan'i kò filè dè, i nyè sinnen bè fan min, i b'o sira mine ka taa ten,” ka taa se …

62. Although Islamicized informants living in Bamako or other large towns commonly respond to questions about excision with the comment that it reduces both a woman's sexual desire and her response, thereby guaranteeing her fidelity, informants from more traditional areas provided the interpretation relating to nyama and respect. One should be aware that city informants have almost always been exposed to the Western view that excision reduces a woman's sexual response, and this idea is also found in the version of Islam to which most educated Bamana subscribe. Both interpretations of excision are Bamana and both are in some sense traditional, but some traditions seem to be less affected by Islamic and Western ideas. It is with these that I am concerned here. For the relationship between a woman's excision, her moral character, and her children see Brett-Smith (1982b, 20–2).

63. Interview with Sokona Danba, 8/28/79, p. 100 of transcribed tapes from 1979.

64. Interview with Sokona Danba, 8/28/79, p. 116 of transcribed tapes from 1979.

SOKONA: A sanunya kòrò de ye o ye, u t'a fò sisan nin ye nògò de ye wa? Nin ye nògò ye, n'o nògò bòra yen kaban, a sunyara nhun.

65. Interview with Salimata Kone, 4/20/84, Grossesse-4, Book 2, pp. 85–8 of transcribed tapes.

66. An Islamicized informant would use the expression a be saliji ta or “he/she will take the water of prayer.” Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/11/84, Djinns/Ciw, Book 14, p. 74 of transcribed tapes.

67. Such visual images seem to be common in medical terms for the female genitalia. Salimata Kone told me that the labia-majora were called the “ears,” a term that has a clear visual origin. I am indebted to Stephen Adler for this insight.

68. See my analysis of the meaning of the Basiae and N'Gale cloths worn after excision is performed (Brett-Smith 1982b, 15–30). Although I do not state it explicitly in my article, there is a clear parallel between the treatment of children (who are exchanged between co-wives so that each wife becomes the ‘mother’ to children that are not her own) and the treatment of the Basiae cloths. Like children, the Basiae are not kept by their creators (the recently excised young women), but handed over to the sponsors, who have provided the girls with moral support throughout the operation and the retreat that follows it. This transfer, and the belief that obtaining even a shred of a used Basiae can be used in ritual work to make a woman sterile, suggests that the cloths function symbolically as the first ‘children’ of the excised women, and that the Bamana equate the blood of excision with the blood of childbirth. I am indebted to Gillian Gillison for the insight into the parallel between the child exchange and the presentation of the cloths to the girls’ sponsors.

69. Sokona Danba, a female blacksmith, reported that both the foreskin and the clitoris will grow back if the young people's parents cannot decide who is to perform the circumcision or excision. This lack of unity among the adults creates a situation in which several male or female blacksmiths arrive one by one to perform the operation. The first person to arrive will operate, but as soon as the other blacksmiths appear, the genital area will become as it was before the operation; “Aa, bolokoli in a bi segin a kan, a bi segin a nò la,” or “Aa, this operation will go back on itself, it will go back in its own path.” A few minutes later Sokona repeats this statement even more explicitly, “A bèe bè segin a nò na, a cogo la, a bè kè komi u ma boloko few,” “Everything goes back on its traces to its old way, it becomes as though it had never been circumcised or excised at all.” Sokona attributed this disaster to the jealousy that exists among the men who circumcise and the women who excise, and their knowledge of suya or “sorcery.”

Although women's clitorises can in principle grow back as a result of “sorcery,” it is more frequent that the competition between two different female blacksmiths causes the young girls to bleed without stopping. The bleeding will continue, and presumably lead to the girls’ death, until one blacksmith woman begs the other's pardon. Both the continued bleeding and the mysterious growing back of the foreskin and clitoris are regarded as extremely serious problems, and both are attributed to a lack of unity among the girls’ parents and to competition between the blacksmiths themselves. The fact that the Bamana consider the reappearance of the foreskin and clitoris to be a disaster strongly suggests that smoothing the sexual organ and making it flat and uniform is the visual goal of both circumcision and excision.

For the lines cited please see the interview with Sokona Danba, 8/28/79, Book 6, pp. 124–5 of transcribed tapes from 1979. The discussion presented here is based on material found in pp. 123–6 of the same interview.

70. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/11/84, Djinns/Ciw, Book 14, pp. 70–1 of transcribed tapes. The only restriction on a male performing excision was that the man had to be able to remain unmoved sexually. If the blacksmith did become excited he would spoil his surgery, but there was no ritual punishment for such an eventuality.

The Sculptor Speaks with Spirits: The Other World

1. The Bamana refer to fame or renown as tògò, literally “a name.” As we shall see, acquiring a name or a reputation is a self-conscious decision that both men and women make after considerable reflection. Traditionally, ultimate proof of having acquired a name consisted of having a new rhythm invented and named after one by a famous griot. On a more practical level, a blacksmith-sculptor or ritual specialist had acquired a name when many clients voyaged long distances to consult him and commission works of art. Salimata Kone had acquired a name by winning a national competition for mudcloth manufacture and by receiving commissions from clients in Bamako, before I began to work with her. As she herself told me, her name has now been enhanced by my publications. Visual designs could also be given one's name and sometimes served as commemorative devices. Today, one can acquire a name in print as well as orally.

2. In this case the Malinke say that the child has been born “wearing a hat” (“Den be na ni fugula ye,” “The child comes with a hat”) and the Beledugu Bamana say, “You are in a burnoose” (“K'i bè burumusi de la”). See the interview with Salimata Kone, 4/16/84, Book 2, pp. 6–7 of transcribed tapes.

3. Such divination is usually performed using the cenda or sand divination technique (Fig. 15). A description of this technique will be provided later in this chapter. The throwing and interpretation of cowrie shells is frequently a woman's technique (Fig. 14), whereas sand divining is an exclusively male activity. However, the most startlingly accurate cowrie shell diviner we encountered was a young man who had apparently been born with the gift. Other methods include the duga or “vulture,” and the interpretation of omens and dreams. The latter is particularly important in assessing the nature of a newborn child and in determining which ancestor he or she reincarnates. The duga consists of a pair of small bamboo screens attached to a single hinge. The diviner holds the duga by the ridge and lets the screens swing slowly to and fro. Depending on the opening and closing of these “wings,” he obtains yes or no answers to the questions posed before the duga.

4. This is a status that most achieved only after circumcision at the age of eighteen or nineteen, or even, in traditional times, in their early twenties. Today most boys are circumcised at the age of six or seven so that they can attend local schools. The circumcision is a protection against the schoolchildren breaking traditional sexual rules once they are placed within the ‘Western’ environment of the school yard. After puberty this possibility is often realized, since Western ideals of romantic love are reinterpreted in an “anything is possible” fashion. Premarital teenage sex is the rule rather than the exception for Malian high-school students.

Nyamaton Diarra had been born during the annual Komo celebrations at planting time in early June and was immediately dedicated to the Komo by his father. Nyamaton asserted that his birth destined him to become the leader of his local Komo association at the age of twenty-seven. Interview with Nyamaton Diarra, 4/15/84, Book 17, pp. 23–7 of transcribed tapes.

5. Interview with Salimata Kone, 4/6/84, Enfantement, Book 11, p. 27 of transcribed tapes.

SALIMATA: O bè bò kabii i bogò ta don Allah fè, o bè bò yen. Sisan, sisan, ne fa ma cèman sòrò. Safè [from the French ça fait], ne koni n’ kèr'a den ye. Awa, sisan, ko o ko n'a sera, Allah b'a kuntigiya de ta k'a di ma. N'o tè, ne ma fura bò a la. Ne ma se kolonnin yerila mò. N’ ma se foyi mò. Nka ni ko o ko, ni n’ bilar'o nyè, Allah barika rò, o bè kè. O wilila Allah yòrò dè. A bè n’ kunkolo la wa, a bè n’ fan min fè, maa si t'o dòn. Maa si de t'o dòn. O dilalen do Allah fè.

6. For instance, Basi Fane said that he had learned a great part of what he knew from his maternal uncles. One of these uncles was still alive in 1984, and Basi observed that he was considered to be one of the greatest living blacksmiths.

7. For instance, Bakary, the grandchild whom Salimata selected as the recipient of her vast store of traditional learning, picked up her spatulas for drawing mud-cloth designs when he was only two or three and tried to use them. Although the fact that Bakary was a boy prevented his grandmother from teaching him how to make bògòlanfini, his gesture accentuated Salimata's belief that he possessed an exceptional intelligence and a great interest in traditional matters, confirming her decision to entrust him with her knowledge.

8. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, pp. 53–4 of transcribed tapes. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Outils-2, Book 13, p. 27 of transcribed tapes. McNaughton 1988, 22–4.

9. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Outils-2, Book 13, pp. 26–7 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Kabii i banke san wòrò fo ka taa a se san wolonfila ma, i b'a daminè. I b'a damine dòoni dòoni.

INTERVIEWER: Fo ka taa a se san joli hakè la? K'a daminè san wòrò, san wolonfila, fo ka taa a se i san joli?

KOJUGU: N'i hakili ka di, i bè se san tan ma yòrò o yòrò, i bè bila baara sira lò. N'i hakili man di, e koni b'a kan kadawu. Awa, a tè kè k'a nya e fè, a tana nya. N'i dun hakili da ki, i man'a daminè i dògòmannin, i bè kunbaya tuma o tuma, fo k'a se san tan ni duuru ma, i bè bil'a sila dò. I bè se san mugan ma yòrò o yòrò i bè “kale” [probably from the French qualifié] a fan bèe la.

10. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, Outils-2, Book 13, p. 46 of transcribed tapes, “If you are a person with quick eyes, an intelligent person… .” That is, “N'i kèra mògò nyèlatelin ye, mògò nyalakeku ye, …”

11. I am indebted to Mr. Adama Mara for this insight. General, but not necessarily visual or mechanical intelligence, is described by another term, hakilima.

12. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/15/84, Création, Book 8, p. 25 of transcribed tapes.

13. McNaughton 1988, 23. The information concerning the sònbè is found in an interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, p. 40.

14. Faraniw are tiny spatulas carved in imitation of the large flat spatulas (sonkalan) used to beat the batter for the daily meal of millet tot. Millet tot is made by mixing flour with water and potassium and beating the boiling mixture hard over a hot flame. The cooked mixture is spooned into bowls, where it solidifies into a glutenous mass somewhat similar to a polenta. When served, each diner uses his or her right hand to pick up a single lump or “child” and dip it into the vegetable sauce that accompanies the dish before swallowing it. Good tot is hard to make since the boiling mixture acquires lumps if it is not beaten hard enough. A good cook will beat her tot untiringly to produce a marvelously even texture. A standard question with which to tease a new bride is to ask whether her tot is full of lumps.

15. For an excellent description of the way in which working the bellows trains the apprentice blacksmith see McNaughton 1988, 23–6.

16. Sonkalanninw are the large spatulas actually used to beat tot, whereas faraniw are the tiny spatulas which have no real use except as a preliminary exercise in carving.

17. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, p. 43 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Numuya baara, n'i b'a daminè i denmisèn ma, i bè fòlò yiri la. I bè sokalanninw bò, i b'i t'o la, i b'a bèe daminè nyògòn fè parce que n'i ye sonkalan bò, i na faranin bò, awa ni mògòba de donna fan na, o b'a fò ko na fan fè n’ ma. I b'i t'o fan fè sen na, u b'a fò ko bandigi dò dila. I koni b'a bèe, a bèe kalan nyògòn fè.

18. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/15/84, Création, Book 8, p. 23 of transcribed tapes. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, p. 40 of transcribed tapes. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/15/84, Création, Book 8, p. 25 of transcribed tapes. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Outils-2, Book 13, p. 46 of transcribed tapes.

19. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, pp. 40–1 of transcribed tapes.

20. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, p. 41 of transcribed tapes.

21. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, p. 53 of transcribed tapes.

22. Like many other Sudanic ethnic groups, the Bamana and Malinke associate the number four with women and the number three with men. Four-legged stools are for women, whereas men use three-legged stools. These numbers are explained by referring to men's and women's obvious sexual equipment. A woman has two breasts, a vagina and a clitoris, whereas men are endowed with two testes and a penis.

23. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, p. 41 of transcribed tapes.

24. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/15/84, Création, Book 8, p. 25 of transcribed tapes.

25. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Outils-2, Book 13, p. 26 of transcribed tapes.

26. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Outils-2, Book 13, p. 28 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Komi o ye fèn dògòmannin ye o dila ka telin a bolo. N'a “kalel'o” [probably from the French qualifié] la, a bè jele dila. N'a kalel'o [probably from the French qualifié] la, o koni ye sa, baara min man'a gun a yèrè miiri la, n'o ye numuya baara ye, o nyèyiral'a la, o nyè ma yir'a la, a bè se k'o dila.

27. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/15/84, Création, Book 8, pp. 24–5 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N'i bè numuya baara kè, yiri lèsè kalan, i bè fòlò bandigi la. N'i y'o dilan, i bè sonkala bò. N'i ye sonkalannin bò, i bè kurunnin bò. N'i ye kurunnin bò, i bè muru dilan. Ka daba dilan. Ka jele dilan. Ka b'olu la i bè kon dilan. Ko kolon dilan. O tò koni yèrè sa, n'i yèrè ni dara baara min kan, n'i hakili ka nyi, i b'o dilan. An'i siyòrò, ni baara cogo ye min nana i nyè kòrò, i siyòrò, i b'o dilan. K'a bila Kòmò ko ninnu ni Warra ko ninnu ni Gongonin kun ninnu, ani Namakòrònin kun, i bè minnuw bèe dilan.

28. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, p. 42 of transcribed tapes.

29. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-2, Book 12, pp. 84–5 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: Bon, sisan, ni kalandenw bè e bòlo, e bè se k'a dòn cogo jumèn kafò, aa, nin kalanden in, nin nyè ka keku nin dò in ye. E bè se k'o dòn cogo jumèn?

KOJUGU: N’ b'a dòn cogo min na, ni n’ bè taa yòrò la, n’ b'a fò, “Karisa, i ni karisa kè aw jija, aw kè nin baara in kè yani n’ kè na.” N’ bè n’ sigi k'a dessin [from the French dessin] kè dugukolo ma, nk'a baara kè sen bè tan. N'ka kòròlen min tun ye yan nk'o tinyèna. N’ bè n’ kòdon ka taa. Ni n’ nana, n'u y'a baara, ka n'a yira n’ na kafò, “I ye min fò, a filè, a filè.” Ni n’ y'a minè k'a lojè, min ka kan ka se joona joona, i b'a sòrò o bilalen a sira rò. Nka n'e y'a kòròlen ta k'a yir'u la, n'u y'a dila, i tè nyè-la-kekubagatigi lòn o lò dè. I b'a dessin [from the French dessin] ta i kunfè, k'a fò i hakili la dòròn, k'a yir'u la; ni min y'a dila i y'a fò cogo min na, hali n'a ma nya k'a kè ten, nk'a bilal'o sira fè, o tigi bè se. I bè se k'o karan, i bè tògò duman sòrò o rò joona.

30. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, pp. 41–2 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Ka n’ t'o la, ka na ni, ni dalen ni baara min nana ka na, ni mògòw ye baara min baro bò n’ nyè na, hali ni n’ m'a ye n’ nyè la, sufè ni n’ ye n’ da ni n’ ye a baara sina “kalikile” [from the French calculer] n’ kònò rò, dugu maa jè n’ bè n’ kè a kan. Ni n’ ye tile fila, saba kè, n’ bè se o baara sina la. Hali kasòrò hali n’ m'a ye n’ nyè la; n'i ko nin baara fen ye nin ye, a bè tan, a bè tan, a bè tan, a bè tan, i k'a fò fò fò ten, n’ b'a jate ta n’ kònòbara rò. N’ bè tile saba k'a kan, n’ b'a dila. Ne koni ye numuya kalan ten. Nka min ye ne kalan, o tògò ko Kali Cissoko.

31. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/15/84, Création, Book 8, pp. 21–41 of transcribed tapes. At Kojugu's request, I omit the name of his village.

32. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/20/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, pp. 34–5 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Ne faw, olu tun tè, olu la sila tun tè Bamanana laada kòrò la. N’ koni y'a ye mògò min fè, n’ y'a ye numu cèkòròba dò fè, ko Bourama.

INTERVIEWER: Bourama?

KOJUGU: Nhun, Mansaduguka do.

33. Bourama Soumaoro does not seem to have been genetically related to our informant.

34. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-1, Book 13, p. 74 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N’ delila ka taa wayasi [from the French voyage] la. N’ delila ka taa wayasi la an na buguda ni kòròn cè. Ne taara wayasi la yen. N’ ye Kòmòkun nin kibaru mèn; n’ taara ka taa a ye. O sinyana fè, sinyana bannen, n’ mara an na dugu rò, n’ y'a baara. N’ y'a baara k'a feere mògòw ma. U y'a kè Kòmòkun ye. N’ y'a dila tugun, fo sennya kelen, fila.

35. The older traditional terms for djinn are kungo fèn, “thing of the bush,” or kunnò fèn, “thing of the head.” Today these terms have been almost completely replaced by the Arabic word djinn. I use djinn throughout this book because all the Bamana and Malinke interviewed preferred it to the older words. The shift from kungo fèn and kunnò fèn to djinn may reflect an increasingly Islamic view of a familiar spirit, although Kojugu's concept of a djinn appears to be entirely traditional, and he uses the word as an exact parallel for kungo fèn or kunnò fèn. The more traditional terms suggest that the Bamana perceive spirits as being located both in the head of the individual who has them, and in the vast, empty stretches of savanna that surround every village.

36. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, p. 75 of transcribed tapes.

37. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/14/84, Book 7, p. 99b of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Bawo n'i solila ka bò, o b'a sòrò a dò taatò tilen-kè-yòrò, u n'u tilen yòrò sòrò, i n'o pressebagato [from the French pressé] ye bèn, o bè kèlètigè i la, kasòrò a m'a lawili a ma.

38. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/14/84, Book 7, p. 99b of transcribed tapes.

39. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, pp. 71–2 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Cèman b'a la, musoman b'a la. Cèman b'a la, musoman b'a la. Ne yèrè ta musoman, n'i taara nin kò, Dusu tògò f'i ye. Min b'a tògò f'i ye, olu ye anw ka dunan ye.

INTERVIEWER: Eè, mun na? A fò n’ ye kè. Basi tè. Bon, jumèn de ka telin ka se di mògò ma? Muso wa cè? Jina ninnu na?

KOJUGU: Jina muso. N'i n'a diyara, ale ka telin ka se di mògò ma joona joona. Cebakòrò fila, aw bè mèn nyògòn fè, aw ka di nyògòn ye, aw bè nyògòn nahinè. N'ka muso min ka di e ye, e ka di muso min ye, gundo min b'a fè, a b'a f'i ye; i b'i gundo fò a ye.

The sexual nature of ritual secrets is analyzed in Chapter 6.

40. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 13, p. 89 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Dòw ta baara fèn bè, a ni kulu-la-jinaw bè nyògòn fè. Dòw yèrè ta baara fèn bè, a ni ji-rò-jinaw bè nyògòn fè. Dòw yèrè ta fèn bè, a ni dugu-rò-jinaw bè nyògòn fè, ni an ko, u ma ko dankun-rò-jinaw.

41. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, p. 80 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Kun kelen t'a la. Dòw b'a nyini, u ka nafolo sòrò fo k'a caya. Dòw b'a nyini i yèrè ka gundow sòrò, farafinna gundow, ka kè cèkun ye. Awa, o b'o nyini. N'i yèrè b'a nyini ka kè dentigi ye, den camantigi ye, i b'a nyini. N'i yèrè b'a nyini n’ ka kè baganw camantigi ye, i b'a nyini. Bèe n'i la jinè bòcogo do.

Kojugu assumes that the listener is already aware that there are multiple ways of obtaining a djinn. This will be discussed in detail later in this chapter.

42. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, pp. 78–9 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: Bon, an tun bè numuw, est-ce que numuw dòw bè yen, u ye tògò sòrò, nka jina t'u bolo? Ou bien, dòw bè yen, u yèrè b'a fè ka jina nyini, walasa u ka tògò sòrò, est-ce que o bè yen wa?

KOJUGU: O mògòw bè yen. Dòw bè a nyini u ka tògò sòrò, nka jina t'u fè, u bè saraka bò, ka fènw bò, ka dèsè.

43. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, pp. 68–9 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: Bon, est-ce que dòw bè yen, jina t'u fè?

KOJUGU: Dòw bè yen, jina t'u fè. U bè yiri baara sennya tan, a tè se ka mako nya.

44. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 13, p. 94 of transcribed tapes.

45. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, pp. 85–6 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Jina bè min fè, e k'a fò karisa, “Ne yèrè tun b'a fè i ka nin baara kè, mais a baara kè cogo kelen yèrè a bòra n’ hakili la dòonin, nka jumina bè tan tan, awa, a cèmancè bè tan tan, mais kelen a laban bè tan tan, a cèmancè bòra n’ kònò.” A b'a tigè tigè tigè ten k'a f'a tigi ye, i ka taa i taayòrò la. N'e nan'a sòrò a y'a dila, i y'a fò cogo min ka tèmèn o sila fè, k'a dantigè cogo min a dun y'a dila ka s'o bèe ma; o mènna cogo o cogo o ni jinaw bè jè ka baara kè. O jina-bò-nye fana, o bèe bè bò i karamògò rò dè; n'a y'i kònònajèya i ye, a bè se ka i ni jinaw bò nyògòn fè. N'a ye kònònajuguya kè, i b'i si kè baara karan na, i t'a nyalòn.

46. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/20/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, pp. 35–6 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: Bourama?

KOJUGU: Nhun. Mansaduguka do. A fana ye kòmi jinè rò mògò. N'a dalen sufè, a maa baara min ye, ni dugu jèra a b'o baara. Kòmi ne fènè a y'o fè. N y'a ye lon min, n’ fana y'a jate ta n’ kònò rò, ka yiri tigè, k'a baara, k'a ban, ka n'a yir'a la. Nko “I tun ye fèn min bò,” nko “N’ y'a nyògòn bò.” A ko “Jeni y'a nyèyira n’ na?” N’ ko, “Ayi. Mògò m'a nyèyira n’ na.” Kabii o kèra, o ye ne gèr'a la. N'a bè baara min kè, an b'a kè nyògòn fè. N'a bèna fili yòrò min nò, ne b'a fò, nko, “karamògò ne hakili la nko a f’ … nko yan, yan ka kan, ka kè yan ye.” A b'i jò ko, “Aa,” ko “Tinyè do.” An b'a jate yira yira nyògòn na.

47. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-1, Book 13, pp. 59–60 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Bilakoro, ne yèrè tènènmuso denkè do tun bè yen, ko Komakan, Komakan Fane, n'a ye fèn o fèn ye a nyè la, numuya baara kè fèn do, a b'a dila, o kèra kasòrò a ma san segin sòrò. Nka fòlò fòlò an na mògòbaw b'i dogon a la. U b'i bila baara-kè-fèn na, i b'a dila. A bè dila nin kama u t'o f'i ye, f'i ka don fini rò. N'i donna fini nò, i bè don a gundo rò, o kò, u t'a f'i ye dè. I koni bè se ka fèn jugu dila, i bè fèn nyuman dila. I bè fèn jugu dila, i bè fèn nyuman dila, nk'u t'a f'i ye f'i ka don fini nò.

This passage brings up a number of interesting issues regarding the power of the boy sculptor's lack of knowledge, or “innocence.” The choice of uninitiated boy sculptors for the carving of important ritual objects is discussed further in Chapter 7.

48. For a discussion of the bula see note 49, Chapter 1.

49. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-1, Book 13, pp. 61–2 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: Est-ce que a tògò bòlen ba don sisan wa? Est-ce que a ye fènw caman sòrò yirilèsè la?

KOJUGU: A tògò bòlen tè. A bè se a ka baara de la, parce que [from the French] a nyè bè se ka baara ye k'a dila, nka n’ ka kan ka bò nin bòda fè sufè, a t'o ye. A t'o ye numuya laada la. Nka a bè se a ka baara de la.

INTERVIEWER: O tuma na, ni mògò tè, kòmi i y'a fò cogo min na, mògò tè yeli kè ka bò sufè, n’ m'a dòn, i y'a fò cogo min na, done, i tè se ka yirilèsè kè wa?

KOJUGU: N'i y ‘a dòn, i bè se k'a kè. N'i y'a kè ni janfa siril'e kòfè, e t'i bòcogo dòn, i bè to a rò. O kosòn bula den na, ni i bè baara kè, n'i ye baara dòn su sibo rò, i b'a to i kònò fo ka kalo kelen, kalow fila, kalow saaba, i b'a baara kè. I yèrè ka kan ka bò da o da fè, n'i ye nin kè, fèn tè k'i la. N'i ye nin kè fèn tè k'i la, farafinna yan. N'i y'o dòn, o tuma i b'i la baara kè, foyi tè s'i ma.

50. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, pp. 86–7 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Ni i kèra baarakèla, e dun ye baara kalan i kankolo rò, cogoya dò rò, kelen i ni kungo fènw bè nyògòn fè, awa mògò sabatilen ba t'i kòfè, i jigi sèmèlen tè mògò sabatilen ba la, n'i y'i balan o dakabananbaara kè ma, farafinna u b'i bon k'i faga.

51. Men often feel far closer to their mother's brothers than to their father, and an ambitious blacksmith might well choose to apprentice himself to a maternal uncle rather than to his own father or even to his father's brothers. Whereas a man's father and paternal uncles are often rather distant authoritarian figures, relationships with maternal uncles are frequently affectionate and even playful.

52. For a discussion of the bula see note 49, Chapter 1.

53. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, p. 68 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Jinèw t'a beè bolow. Jinèw t'a bèe bolow. Jinètigiya, bonda-la-ko don, buruju don. Ou [from the French] ni mògò min kèra cèfarin ye, i sibo gèlèyara, min bè fò i ye i siyòrò lò, i y'a kòròbò, k'a kòròbò, k'a kòròbò. Min bè fò i ye, i ma fèn fò mògò ye, a bè fò i ye cogo min i y'a sila tògòma ten, i bè kè jinètigi ye.

54. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 13, p. 92.

For a discussion of Kojugu's view of who the bulaw are see Chapter 1, note 49.

KOJUGU: Ni mògò ka ca du kònò, ne ye bula ye, ne yèrè ye bula ye, ne fa ye bula ye, ne ba ye bula ye, o n'a dan-ma-jina bè yen. Awa dò ye Sinayòkò ye, u dò ye Bagayòkò ye, kelen fa ye bula ye, ba ye Bagayòkò ye, kelen ba ye Fanè ye, kelen ba ye Kantè ye, fa dun ye bula ye, bèe n'i ka bonda-la-jina don. N'ka n'a fora ko a nana suya yèrè yèrè la, min fa ye bula ye, a ba ye bula ye, o de ta ka telin. N'a kèra min fa ye Kantè ye, a ba ye Kantè ye, o fana ta jina o y'a dan ma.

Min fa ye Fanè ye, a ba ye Fanè ye, o bèe n'i ta kabila jinè bè a dan ma. Mais, min bè min nyè suya rò, jinèw bè nyògòn nyè, mògòw bè nyògòn nyè. A bè ten de. Si tè si gundo fò si ye. An ni Sinayòkòw ni Bagayòkòw ni Fanèw ni Kantèw, ani Danyòkòw, bèe n'i ka bonda la jina don. Si tè fèn fò si ye.

55. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, p. 79 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Jinètigiya, bonda bonda don, ani teriya. I ni mògò min mana kè teri ye, ni aw diyara nyògòn ye, i b'a fò, “Karisa, awa o b'a sòrò e b'a k'ow bèe kalama,” i b'a fò “N’ bè i ni jina dò nyèyira nyògòn na.” N'a tigi ja farinyara, i b'a kè. O fana bè se k'a yir'a den na, awa o bè kè u fila jigi ye. Ni fa sara, den bè baara kè. Ni den ni jina bè jè ka baara kè.

56. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/14/84, Boliw-2, Book 16, p. 80 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: U dò ni jina ka kè nyògòn fè, nka a ni birisi tè nyògòn fè, ani gòtè tè nyògòn fè, o bèe sugu bèe farafaralen nyògòn kan, minnu ye cèkun cèkun cèkun ye, n'i y'a mèn ko farafinna cèkun, mògò saaba, a bèe dafalen nyògòn kan, a si ni si ta jina tè kelen ye, aw dun t'a fè ka nyògòn kòròbò, e b'i ta di ne ma. Ne fana ni jinaw bè nyògòn fè, ne bè n'ta di e ma. Dò nin fana b'a ta dò di ne ma. An b'a di di di nyògòn ma ten de. Bèe bè kè i ta cèkun ye. Nka n'aw tè jamana kelen ye, aw t'a kè de. I ni mògò min bè bò jamana kelen, i n'o de b'o kè.

57. A master sculptor renowned for his djinns may become the most important, although unofficial, political decision maker in an entire region. His status as a blacksmith or numu will preclude his holding political office, but all the village leaders (dugutigiw), and even the village group leaders (kafo tigiw), will take care to consult him before making any important political decision, since his spirits are believed to give him the power to make or break politically prominent nobles (horonw).

58. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, p. 81 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: Mais, est-ce que mògòw dòw bè yen, fo k'u sa, numu dòw bè yen, ou bien bonda dòw bè yen, fo k'u sa, u tè se ka jina sòrò, u tè se ka jina mara dinyè na?

KOJUGU: O bè kè. I b'a sòrò, o numu bonda rò, i b'a sòrò u kèlen bè ka jina faga kè. Farafinna basi dò bè yen, ko Soro, n'o b'i bolo, n'i ye jina nò ròtèmèn, jina bè sa. Ni jina y'i nò ròtigè, jina bè sa. N'i ye kuru la jina dò kè tan, jinaw b'i to yen. Awa n'o b'i bolo, f'i ka se yèlèma ko wolonfila ma, jinè bò man d'i ye, i la mògò ye; o bè kè.

59. In this book I use the terms ‘divine’ and ‘divination’ to refer to the various methods by which ritual experts seek information about both present problems and future events. Other authors (Blier 1987, 253) have used the term geomancy for essentially the same process.

60. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 13, p. 90 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: Mais, est-ce que mògò bè se ka kè yiridèsèlaba ye, k'i tògò bò numuw cè la, bulaw cè la, kasòrò i yèrè tè se filèlikè la yèrè de. Est-ce que o bè se ka kè wa?

KOJUGU: O ka gèlèn dè. K'i kè numu tògòbòlen ye, i tè filèli kè? I ni jina tè nyògòn fè?

INTERVIEWER: Nhun?

KOJUGU: Ayi, i tè mèn.

INTERVIEWER: U b'i faga wa?

KOJUGU: U b'i faga. U b'i faga.

61. The description of cenda that follows is based on my own field experiences. Dieterlen provides a far more detailed analysis of several divining methods including the interpretation of omens, animal movements, the fall of kola nuts or cowries, possession trances, and the use of a ritual harp by a specialist she calls a soma on pp. 210–25 of her Essai sur la religion Bambara (1951). She suggests that ultimately all forms of Bamana divination are based on traditional numerology. I was unable to familiarize myself deeply enough with any one form of divination to know whether this analysis is accurate, but what I did see of cenda supports it.

Gerald Cashion cites throwing sandals and rubbing a ram's horn across a flat board as additional methods of Malinke divination (1984, 299).

62. This space may be located in a special consulting chamber if divination is the expert's primary skill, or it may be located in a corner of the sculptor's chamber. No one in their right mind, male or female, would enter a famous artist's room without him, and they would certainly recognize the different-quality sand lying on the floor and step around it.

63. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 13, p. 94 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: Bon, est-ce que numu o numu, n'i bè yiridèsè kè, est-ce que diyagoya don i kè filèli kè, i yèrè ka se filèli kè la?

KOJUGU: N'i bè yirilèsè kè, n'i ser'a la, i yèrè ka se filèli la dè; o kò i bè se dò ma don dò, i la ko man d'a ye, a b'i musalaka, k'i bila. Wali kelen a bè fèn dò kè, k'i ròtinyè. I tògò bè tunun. N'i yèrè b'a dòn, i b'a dòn tinyè rò, i b'a dòn i siyòrò dò, i k'a dòn i siyòrò, kelen i k'a dòn buguri lò, o de ka nyi. Nka n'i m'a Iòn o si rò, i bè fungun yiri lèsè la.

64. Most great ritual experts choose to express their antagonisms by poisoning each other's wives or children rather than by a direct attack. This pattern of using a third person to hurt another rather than attacking your enemy or rival directly seems to reflect the overall premise that you always need a third person as a witness. This is certainly true in business dealings and almost invariably true in social situations. Whereas two people alone are inevitably supposed to be involved either in sex (in the case of a man and woman) or a nefarious, magical enterprise (two men or two women), the presence of three people is thought to ensure safety.

65. The victim was not the former Kòmòtigi who was actually Nyamaton's father, but another village notable. In this case, Nyamaton was not required to kill his own father, but he did have to demonstrate his power to poison by eliminating a well-known village figure. When the direction of the Komo society is not passed from father to son, the aspirant to power may very well be required to kill the previous incumbent of the office. Interview with Nyamaton Diarra, 4/15/84, Book 17, p. 26 of transcribed tapes.

66. Some informants reported that a soma is a traditional healer and/or ritual expert who inherits his status from his father. According to these informants, one is first born a soma, and only later develops the medical or ritual skills characteristic of these experts. Thus, one could in principle be a soma without acquiring the knowledge associated with the name.

Nyamaton Diarra contrasted a soma with a doma. He defined a doma as an expert whose competence is limited to the prescription of leaf and root medicines for standard physical ailments (for instance, diarrhea). No one is afraid of a doma. However, a soma can inflict blindness, madness, and death on anyone at will. Everyone is afraid of a soma and leaps to do his bidding, since he kills for his own pleasure and in response to the most minimal offenses.

Interview with Nyamaton Diarra, 4/15/84, second interview, Book 18, pp. 15–21 of transcribed tapes.

67. The Bamana expression is ka korote bò or ka korote bon, literally, “to let loose korote,” “to let korote fly,” or “to lance korote.” The expression reflects the widespread belief that ritual experts apply their poisons to the wings or stingers of bees and other insects. They then send these insects to their chosen victim who dies from the poison injected when he or she is stung. Experts are also thought to “let loose” poison on air currents that carry the korote under the nostrils of the victim who inhales it, dying mysteriously a short time afterward.

68. My data is anthropological and art historical, not pharmacological; a detailed analysis of Bamana and Malinke drugs can be undertaken only by a qualified ethnopharmacologist.

69. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, p. 66 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: Basi tè. Nka est-ce que, numuw b'i ko yiri minu na, olu de bè numukè yèlèma, wa ou bien, a ka jinaw de b'a yèlèma, kòmi numu minnu tògò bòlen don?

KOJUGU: I ko yiri b'i yèlèma, i ko yiri. I yèrè ka kan ka ko yiri min na, n'i y'i ko a bèe la, i bè yèlèma o kosòn mògò bè taa sa, i tè farinya k'i ko i ko yiriw bèe la.

INTERVIEWER: Nhun?

KOJUGU: Nhun. Aaa! Ba! Ba! Ba! Ba!

70. Interview with Salimata Kone, 4/6/84, Enfantement, Book 10, p. 89 of transcribed tapes. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, p. 68 of transcribed tapes. Kojugu uses the phrase i sibo gèlèyara, “your dream has become hard.”

71. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, p. 78 of transcribed tapes. Among the Bamana and Malinke each day begins at sundown. Thus, Kojugu refers to Wednesday night as “Thursday” night, Thursday night as “Friday” night, and Sunday night as “Monday” night.

72. The Bamana belief is one example of the nearly universal conviction in traditional, ritually oriented cultures, that celibacy and ascetic discipline are necessary prerequisites for spiritual activity. What is unusual about the Bamana is their conviction that spirits are personally jealous of their human followers.

As Richard Rathbone pointed out, the material presented here only begins to explore the sexuality of the sculptor–djinn relationship. One longs to know whether djinn encounters are explicitly sexual, and if so, how this sexuality is expressed. I hope that further research will answer some of the questions concerning the sculptor's sexuality posed by Kojugu's statements.

73. Kojugu had moved temporarily to Bamako from his village. In precolonial times Kojugu would have been unable to contemplate breaking the strict rules against adultery, and he certainly would not have attempted to sleep with a woman on a night devoted to his spirit. Although most traditionalists continue to observe the strict interdictions on sexual conduct both within and outside marriage, Kojugu felt a new sense of freedom in Bamako and chose to break both the rule against adultery and that against sleeping with a woman on a ‘spirit night.’ In his own village it would have been much more difficult for him to break the sexual rules.

74. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, p. 51 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: … n'i sikora fèn min na, o bè kè. N'i sikora kafò sinin nin bè kè, n'o kèra, sennya kelen, sennya fila, k'a se saba, fo k'a se naani, i b'o t'i kònò. N'i bè baara o baara kè, n'i bè min kè, nin bè kè tan.

75. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, p. 82 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: … Eè n'i dun kèra dankatò ye, i ye min ye su siko ró, i b'a lakali, i b'a lakali, jinè tè bò i ye dè.

76. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, pp. 90–1 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N'i bèna yirilèsè daminè, n'i dun y'a ko kalan ka dèsè i ma tacogo sòrò a rò, aa! N'i ni kungo fèn … ni kungo fèn nana ka na bò i ye, n'a ko, ko, “N’ sara ye mògò ye, i bè kè numu ye, bèe b'a fò!” N'a dinyè kunn'i fè, i b'a fò, “Mògò sugu jumèn?” N'a ko k'i muso fòlò, n'a dinyè kunn'i fè, i b'o di. N'a ko k'i den fòlò, n'o dinyè kunn'i fè, i b'o di. Nhun. Kafò an na Filadugu yèrè mumè mumè ko mògo bè ne nyè nègèfin baara rò, a ju fòlò wilila fo san na.

INTERVIEWER: O tuma e y'i den jumèn de di?

KOJUGU: Ne ye fòlò di. Cèman.

INTERVIEWER: K'a kè mun ye? I y'a di mun de kòsòn?

KOJUGU: Numuya baara ani suya.

77. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/11/84, Djinns, Book 14, pp. 58–9 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Depuis, n karamògòkè Bourama, a delila k'o fò n’ ye. A k'o, “N’ kalanden, n nyè b'a la, den caman bè e garisèkè la. Awa, i ka kè den camantigi ye, ani i ka kofò, numuya ta nasira la, fèn o fèn ta nasira la, i ka ko fò, ko e dun miri bè jumèn na?” A ko, “I bè cèman wolonfila sigi nyògòn kan, a bèe b'i nafa.” N’ ko, “N’ yèrè tè muso yèrè fè yanko den.” Ne y'o f'a ye. A y'a essayé [from the French essayer], ka fèerè dò tigè, awa ko, “O ma nyi.” Ni mògò bangenna te, ka i kòrò fo ka taa i sa, i ma hali den kelen sòrò, a kèra cè ye, a kèra muso ye, i y'o kè tògò min nòfè, ko n'i sara, k'o kèra tògò tununnen ye. K'o ma nyi. Ne yèrè, denko sarati min bè an ni nyògòn cè, ale koni sara bi, nka Allah le b'a lòn, o koni, n'o sera o jatè la, o bè dan yen.

Kojugu's use of the term “Allah” may seem perplexing, but, as we saw in the Introduction, Islamic terminology and ideas are frequently grafted onto the indigenous belief system.

78. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/11/84, Djınns/Ciw, Book 14, pp. 61–2 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Ka na denko yira, ne ko, n'a sera o jatè la, n’ tè denko rò. A ko, “I la ko be daminè, kasòrò i si ma se san binaani nò,” a ko, “N’ i si tèmènna san binaani na, k'i si jè konw! K'o tuma hal'i ka wili ka don nyègèn na, ka don nyègèn na, k'i t'a sòrò mògòw fè.” Ko, “Nka, i b'i munyu de kòmi dugukolo.” A ye kuma min fò, a bèe nun jora kelen, kelen, kelen, kelen, fo ka n'a bila n’ sigiyòrò in na. Ni min filè nin ye, n'an bè nin baara la, a ye nin sigaròkuma fò n'ye. Mais, ne yèrè koni tun hakili la, kafò a bè kè jina yèrè, yèrè, yèrè de ye, ni n’ n'a bè jè ka baara kè. Nka n’ bèka baara min kè nin ye, n’ hakili la a ye nin kuma fò. A ka kumaw bèe kunbòra kelen kelen. Denko ta fan ye min ye, awa dinyè ròtigè yèrè fan o fan, a ye min fò n’ ye denko rò, n’ yèrè tè tèmèn min kan o layidu lò denko kan, o ye cèman saba de ye. Kelen sara. Kelen bè yen, kelen ma wolo fòlòn. A y'o fò. Ne ko, ne be sòn o ma. A ko, “I ka cèman wolonfila,” ko, “A bèe bè sa k'a tò to cèman saba o ma.” O ko dilala nya min ma, o y'o nyèfò n’ ye, k'o kè. Oò n’ yèrè fana ka o ko fò mògò ye, k'a kè a kècogo la.

79. In the same interview (interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/11/84, Djinns/Ciw, Book 14, p. 67 of transcribed tapes) Kojugu explains the meaning of sarati, saying “when you establish a contract (sarati) – we, we say layidu, and you accept that contract… .” “n'aw ye sarati … anw ko layidu, n'aw ye layidu minè.” Bazin defines layidu as, “promise,” “vow,” or “engagement.” However, with this one exception, Kojugu always used the word sarati to refer to spirit “contracts,” and I have therefore chosen to focus on the meaning of sarati.

For a definition of sarati see Bazin (1906, 514–15) and for a definition of layidu, p. 358.

80. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, pp. 73–4 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Sagajigi bò kòrò y'o ye. I kè ntura jè saraka bò, o ye, karisa … aw tubabuw ko, ko sarati. I ni mògò ye sarati ta; nin kè tan, n’ bè nin kè tan. N'a tigi y'a kè tan, e k'i ban k'a ta kè, aw bè kiri wa, aw tè kiri?

INTERVIEWER: Aw bè kiri.

KOJUGU: I ye ntura saraka bò jina ye, ou i ye mògò k'a sara ye, n'i ko min, a b'o de kè diyagoya. Diyagoya! A bè kè ten. Ka sarati don, k'a yir'i la k'i ka saga kè saraka ye, nka ne ta ma kè ten. Ne ta m'o fò n’ ye. Ale de bè tògò kè n’ na, ale de bè jamu kè n’ na.

81. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, pp. 74–5 of transcribed tapes. Kojugu states:

KOJUGU: That can occur. If you [the sculptor and the djinn] understand each other well, and if she says to you, “You will give this one,” and you answer, “Nhun,” and if she also tells you that you must give that one, and if you answer, “Nhun,” if she tells you that the payment is a person, you will ask her, “What kind of person?” If she names your first son, or your first wife, or your mother, and if you say that you accept, then you have concluded the contract (sarati).

The djinn requests the sculptor's first wife because she is usually considered to be the levelheaded decision maker among the various wives. She is in charge of administering the household when her husband is away and there are no other suitable men present. She also organizes her co-wives’ work load and apportions responsibilities among them. A man tends to view his first wife as a trusted adviser, and this role often takes priority over a regular sexual relationship. A man goes to his second or third wives for sexual satisfaction, but uses his first wife as an administrator and deputy. Thus, the loss of a trusted first wife is a serious threat to family order.

82. This is particularly true if the first wife has died suddenly or mysteriously.

83. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, pp. 88–9 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: Bon depuis k'i bila, i delila k'a mèn don kelen kafò numu dò tun bè nin yòrò in na, nk'a tun bè fèn o fèn dila, a si ma man di, a bèe cè ka jugu, bon, a ka foyi tè sanka la? Bon, a y'a den don saraka la, ou bien, a y'a denw dòw di saraka la; o kèlen kò, a sera ka da-kabanan-fènw dila, a sera ka fènw caman camanw kè. A tògò bòra. A ye jama caman sòrò.

KOJUGU: N’ y'o mògò ye. Nka n’ y'a mògò min ye, ni a bè baara kè, a la baara kè fèn ma man di mògòw bolo, a ma nyi mògòw nyè kòrò, a b'an kèrèfè bugudanin dò la yen.

INTERVIEWER: A tògò?

KOJUGU: A tògò ko Numufiyn.

INTERVIEWER: A bè buguda min na, o tògò?

KOJUGU: A bè Sakoro. Numufiyn Danyogo. U la dugu, u wolola dugu min nò, Komo dugu min nò, o dugu tògò ko, Gabakoro. O numuw fana b'an kèrèfè yen. A ye baara o baara kè, i t'a fò ko nin baara ka nyi. O baara t'a bolo numuya baara lò. O ta denmuso, ne y'o de furu k'o di n’ ta denkè ma.

INTERVIEWER: Nka, est-ce que a delila k'a den dò di saraka la, walisa a ka baaraw kè, se ka kè lakika baara ye? O kèra wa?

KOJUGU: N, n. A tè se.

84. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 14, pp. 39–40 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: I n'u bè sarati de. Ne yèrè ta min filè nin ye, ne ye n’ den fòlò di. A wolola, a wolola don min, sani a ka wolo, n'k'a ba ye Dusu kelen in ye, n’ ko i den in, ne y'a kè n’ mako ye; a ko ne ta don. N’ y'a di. Ka den filanan sòrò. O wololen o la, k'o tògòda ko Filatènèn. N’ ko, “Dusu,” n’ ko, “Nin den in,” n ko, “Nin bè se ka k'i mako ye.” N’ ko nka ne ta sarati dafalen don. N’ y'a kè mògò ye, n’ m'a k'a ye… . [noise interrupts interview] n’ si o si, n’ si o si, numuya fan o fan, suya rò ko fan o fan nana, u b'u seko kè. N’ ko n’ y'a kè o de kama. Donc, n'i bè yiribaara yèrè yèrè kè, k'i b'a kè mako-nyè-yiri ye, foyi t'a nya f'i k'i den dò di, ou f'i k'i muso fòlò di, ou f'i k'i ba di. Nhun.

85. See Brett-Smith, 1987, 8 for a case in which a blacksmith woman accepted the sacrifice of her child, saying, “On the day when I left my father's compound I was told that whatever was pleasing to you I should accept and whatever was displeasing to you I should not do. Thus, if you yourself have placed your own child on this route [to be a sacrifice] at this particular age, and if, having accomplished the deed you have come to tell me where my child went, then I am left alone with my sense of honor.”

86. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, pp. 52–3 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: … Ka tògò sòrò yiribaara lò, mako-nya-yiri baarabaga, ka kè a tògò sòròbaga ye, ka kè dentigi den tògò sòròbaga ye, o bèe tè kè dè. I bè i jèn kelen de la. I bè kelen de ta, ka bò nè kelen na. “N’ tògò ka to n’ na, den in kè to n’ bolo, o ka dan kelen ma, n’ tògò ka to n’ na.” I bè tèmèn i la baara fè, i tògò bè to i la, nka o den kelen, o de bè kè i kò ye; kòmi ne yèrè ta in bè cogo min na tan. E ma ne denw ye?

INTERVIEWER: Nhun.

KOJUGU: Musoman kelen, cèman kelen. O kòrò tè n’ tè den sòrò dè. N’ ye sarati min ta, n’ tè tèmèn o de kan. Nhun. Nka mògò t'a dòn dè.

87. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/11/84, Djinns, Book 14, pp. 52–3 of transcribed tapes.

88. A good case of this is Salimata's uncle's wife, Dugo, at Manianbugu. Dugo was paralyzed by polio shortly after birth and was unable to bear children. Her family interpreted her extraordinary ability to paint impressive mud cloths as the gift bestowed by the spirit world in exchange for both her disability and her sterility.

89. Another frequent explanation is that madness results from sorcery worked by a rival or a jealous relative. One madman I encountered had been a brilliant student, and it was thought that his mother's co-wife had worked sorcery on him because of her jealousy of the young man's mother. There are Bamana and Malinke experts who cure madness pharmacologically, although they apparently pay for success with their clientele by being unable to cure a family member whose derangement is said to be inevitable.

Among the Minianka, men and women who refuse to obey the rulings of their village are forced to drink traditional drugs that drive them mad. In 1979 I saw a young woman who had been punished in this manner because she refused to give up the sorcery objects she had brought into her husband's village. The elders gave her a drug that transformed her into a living dead person. She could understand instructions, work, have sex, and give birth to children, but she could not speak and apparently could not feel. Her face was completely dead of emotion and her personality appeared to have vanished. The Minianka comment that the large number of mad people found in their markets (the traditional refuge for the mad) is due to the use of induced madness as a sanction in traditional law. I was unable to assess the truth of these assertions.

90. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, pp. 91–2 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N’ y'a kè numuya baara ye. A kèra ka Kòmò to n’ bolo. N’ maa sigi baara o baara kun na, ni n’ ma se k'a dila, k'a ban tile kelen, tile fila n’ m'a ban, a sabannan n’ b'a dila k'a ban. Mògòw b'a fò ko a dilalen kòrò do n’ fè, kasòrò n’ y'a karan de. A dira mògò min ma, ne ye n’ ta di mògò min ma, o murukulen don. Waati dòw la, a bè n’ baara lasòrò. Waati dòw la, a tè n’ baara lasòrò. N'a ma na n’ baara lon min, n’ tè sòn ka don fan.na. Mògòw bè na kafò n’ mako bè nin na, n’ mako bè nin na. N’ b'a fò, “Ne man kènè bi, n’ tè don fan na,” kasòrò foyi tè n’ na. Nka n'a nana n’ fè Ion o lon, hali ni fan-na-don nege tè n’ na, n’ bè don fan na, n’ bè n’ na baaraw kè. Nhun.

91. I am indebted to Francesco Pellizzi for the ideas presented in the last two paragraphs.

92. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/11/84, Djinns, Book 14, pp. 54–5 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N’ hakili b'o kelen na.

INTERVIEWER: O bè min?

KOJUGU: O bè Kòlen. N’ yèrè terikè don.

INTERVIEWER: A tògò?

KOJUGU: Sòkòna Majid.

INTERVIEWER: A jamu?

KOJUGU: Fanè.

INTERVIEWER: N’ b'a denw de ma. N’ b'a denw ma.

KOJUGU: A denkè fòlò, kelen ye nabara ye;

INTERVIEWER: Filanan?

KOJUGU: Filan, o kèra bagitò ye. Nka bagi masòrò k'a tigè fòlòn. O yèrè tanga daminè don. Sabanan, o bolo kelen tigèra. O binna yiri la k'a bolo kari, cogo si la, bolo ma se ka tugun, fo k'a bolo kelen tigè. O sara. Denkè fòlò, ni an yèrè filan do, ko Nukulumba, a bè so kònòn yen, a sigilen dò ten, a kèra nabara ye. A bè tògòma ni bere de ye. A tè se ka baara kè.

93. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/11/84, Djinns, Book 14, p. 56 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: O ye, n'i kèra dònkotigi ye, n'i kèra juguman-kèla ye, k'a bè sara i ko la. An fè farafinna, n'an ye o tigilamògòw denw ye, awa fiyentòw ni bagitòw ni nabaraw ye, an b'a fò k'a fa la wale juguw de saral'a denw na. An b'o yira. O ye caman ka kalikili [from the French calculer] ye. Nka an yèrè fè, minnu bè ko dòn, minnu bè ko dòn, minnu bè ko dòn, olu koni b'a jira de, sarati bè a ni kungofènw cè, an b'a jatè ten. N'i kèra donso ye, i kèra sogofagala ba ye, diyagoya sogonyama bè bò i denw na. N'a m'a kè nabara ye, a b'a kè bagitò ye. O koni ye diyagoya ye.

94. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, p. 94 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: A tè se. I la musow cayalen, musow fila. I tè musow saba ta, i tè naani ta. I la muso cayalen ye fila ye, bawo i la baara ka ca sufè ka tèmèn tile fè la kan.

O kosòn i tè se ka musow caman ta.

95. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, p. 96 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N'i ye musow caman ta, e dun na su fè baara, i la kelen-na-sili ka ca, i ni muso tè jè, i ni muso tè lan lafèn kelen nò, ni musow cayara, dò bè dimi i kòrò. Dò ta lon ma, n'i y'i ban ka taa si o bara, k'i bè mako la, o na dim'i kòrò. Awa, fana sariya, sariya yèrè la, i hakili kudayi i ka kan ka tèmèn ka se yòrò min, i tè yen sòrò. Bawo n'i y'a dòn i tè se ka l'a fè, a furukun tè, k'a silafana lakanabali to, e tè s'a fè, e tè s'a ma.

The “stranger's meal” here refers to the untasted and delicious meal kept aside for an honored guest. Clearly a meal put on one side for too long, like the sculptor's additional wives, becomes a temptation impossible to refuse. Kojugu is saying that one's wife is not a “stranger's meal” and if she is treated as such and left untasted, the sculptor is looking for trouble.

96. Here I am discussing an extended family or a village in which traditional sexual rules are still in force. Needless to say, this formal regulation of sexual behavior has ceased to take place in large towns or in families in which young people of both sexes have adopted post–1960s sexual norms and do exactly as they please. The loss of this ‘complaint’ system has imposed permanent abstinence on many middle-aged women; their husbands abandon them sexually for younger wives or girlfriends, but still divorce them if they take lovers. In general the adoption of Western sexual norms has increased the economic, emotional, and sexual difficulties of Bamana women.

97. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, Questions-3, 8/9/84, Book 15, p. 97 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Dépenses tè dè. I kunnòfèn yèrè, a tè bèn a ma. N'i ye muso ta, ka musow caman ta, i ni kunnòfèn yèrè tè bèn, aw tè bèn yèrè bugu bugu.

In another passage Kojugu states:

KOJUGU: In the country of black people, except for Muslim holy men, in the case of true leaders of tonw [here Kojugu uses ton to mean all male secret associations such as the Komo], their problem of women is very limited and their manner of acting with women is very different than that of the others [other men], because the act of sleeping alone at night in order to obtain knowledge, if it is the case that at this moment you are sleeping with a woman in the same room or that you are sleeping with a woman in the same bed, many things [secret information] will come, but you will not perceive them clearly (i.e., you will be distracted by your wife's presence). Even if you sleep with your wife in the same room you should not sleep in the same bed with her. Thus, all the things that you will think of [he probably means the commissions given to the sculptor], if you sleep with them and you see it [the work you must do] in a dream, the next day you will execute the task.

(Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, p. 95 of transcribed tapes.) This passage implies that sleeping with a woman distracts the sculptor and breaks his concentration on the important “night work” that must be done in order to acquire knowledge.

98. Dariya can be translated as “openness, acceptance, and adaptibility.” Because their bodies are hollow containers that open to receive men, women naturally possess more dariya than men. However, some exceptional men are also endowed with the psychological and physiological receptivity or dariya that attracts other people. Such men often become diviners, ritual experts, or healers because their “openness” allows them to communicate with the spirit world (Brett-Smith 1987, 9).

99. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, p. 90 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: O kò n'i bè koro ka taa a fè, n'i ni fèn bè nyògòn fè, n'o ye kunnòfèn gèlèn ye, i la ko bè barika ka taa a fè de.

100. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, pp. 63–5 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N'i bè dinyè tògò nò fè, k'a dinyè mògò bèe wili k'i sègèrè, di la baara ka kan ka kè su waati dò la, ni o ni musoko miri nan'i la, i b'o tigi la baara to yen, ka taa musoko in na. O tuma, o tigi, o bòra yòrò jan na ka na i sègèrè, o tigi, o tè mafa. O miri maa n'i la, ou [from the French] i ni kungo fèn min bè nyògòn fè musoko man d'a ye, n'i den kelen, denw fila sòrò ka ban, a bè cogo min, n'a y'a f'i ye kafò i ka to ten, n'i sonn'o ma, i tè kòròbò fo ka taa i sa. Ne yèrè min ye nin ye, a bè kè ne yèrè la.

INTERVIEWER: Mun y'o ye?

KOJUGU: Ka n’ bò cèya rò, n’ yèrè mako tè den wèrè la. Ka bò cèya rò few. Nka fo ka taa n’ sa, faden tè n’ nyèkòròtigè. Ne yèrè.

INTERVIEWER: K'i bò cèya rò cogo jumèn?

KOJUGU: Ka n’ bò cèya rò, ka n’ kè kòmi muso.

INTERVIEWER: O bè k'e la?

KOJUGU: O bè kè ne yèrè la.

INTERVIEWER: I dun bè muso nyini?

KOJUGU: Ne ta waati ma se dòoni. A ma se dòoni. A waati ma se dòoni.

INTERVIEWER: N'o sera i bè bò a la?

KOJUGU: Pew! Ne yèrè y'o sarati ta.

INTERVIEWER: Ahan?

KOJUGU: Nhun.

INTERVIEWER: Donc, saratita de don?

KOJUGU: Sarati don. N'a ka d'i ye sarati don.

101. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, Djinns, 8/11/84, Book 14, pp. 44–5 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Dow ta kun y'o ye. Nka dòw ta ye i n'i banke lon ye. N'i y'o kòlòshi k'o lòn, o n'i la baara, o tè sila kelen na. Kalo sanma kolon, n'i ye cèmannin sòrò ka bèn n'a ye, a b'a la kamalenya fa la tuma min, n'a bèna garisègè ma, a bè mògòya de to yen. Lakari t'a la, minè cogo si t'a la. Ni i bènna, n'o tigi bènna, awa, ni o cogoya ye, awa, i dun bè yiri baara la, mògòw b'a jate, ko a ye yiri baara kè, a ma son ka mògò di, a ye a yèrè bò cèya la, a y'o sarati ta an'i kungo fènw cè, ko o de nò don. Nk'a kun ye min ye, mògò wèrè t'o dòn dè. O ye gundo ye i yèrè ni Allah cè la, an'i bangebagaw cè.

102. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, pp. 62–3 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N'a ka d'i yèrè ni ye, baaraw bè baara rò farafinna, n'i ni dar'o kan, i bè bò cèya rò pew! I mako tè muso la, muso mako t'i la. I bè continué [from the French continuer] i ka baara fè kadawu. I tè kòròbò foyi la cèya ko fan o fan na fo ka taa i sa. N'a y'a sòrò i ye den kelen, denw fila sòrò, i b'i bò cèya rò.

INTERVIEWER: Nka, est-ce que o t'i kèlen ye muso ye?

KOJUGU: O y'i kèlen ye muso ye kè.

INTERVIEWER: O y'i kèlen ye muso ye?

KOJUGU: O y'i kèlen ye muso ye. Eè, ni cè tè mako nya muso bon na ka ban, i kèra muso ye. I ni cè foyi man kan.

INTERVIEWER: O tuma na, ne b'i nyininka sisan, ni cè yèlèmana, k'i yèrè bò cèya la pew, i y'a mèn, est-ce que mògòw, farafiyn sariya la, aw yèrè b'a miri, n’ kan tè tubabu sariya ma dè, farafiyn sariya la, est-ce que aw yèrè ka miri la, aw yèrè ka miri la, aw b'a fò kafò ko, “Eè, muso de don!” Est-ce que aw b'o fò wa?

KOJUGU: An b'a fò muso de don, nka a b'i kè muso ye, a b'i yèrè kè muso ye, k'a da daliluya min kan, bèe b'o dòn. An b'o dòn.

INTERVIEWER: Mais, est-ce que aw b'o fò wa?

KOJUGU: A tè fò dè. O ye kirisi de ye kònòn lò. N'i y'o ta mògò min nèn kan, i bè cogo min, i b'o kè ten ten.

103. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, p. 61 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Jinèw dòw b'a rò, i bè tile tan ni fila de kè, i ni muso tè jè. Jinèw dòw b'a rò, i bè tile saaba kè, i ni muso tè jè. Jinèw dòw yèrè b'a rò, i bè kalo saaba kè, i ni muso tè jè. N'i n'o jina bè nyògòn fè, o dun ka ko ka suman, e dun kòròtòlen, ka muso ko kè, a b'i naasi, k'i bila mògòw fè. Tògò b'i la, nka ni mògòw y'i ye, u bè nyuku i la. Jinèw b'o kè.

104. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, p. 90 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N'i tè cèya la, i b'a lèsè. N'i bè cèya la, i b'a lèsè. I bè i yèrè yèlèmabolo de bolo dòròn. N'i ni fèn kelen bè nyògòn fè, kelen ni dalilu gèlèn b'i bolo, i b'a bò hali n'i tè cèya rò. A tè foyi tinyè.

105. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, p. 86 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N'i sera san biduuru, san binaani, wala san biwòrò, k'i ni jinaw to nyògòn fè, i b'a kè, i b'a kè. N'aw saratira waati min ma n'a bila tuma sera, i b'a bila.

106. Interview with Kojugu Cissòko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, pp. 82–3 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: O bè kè. N'aw saratira ko o ko ma, hal'i si, i ka kan ka sa nin waati ma, jina bè nin f'i ye. N'a ka waati sera, hali n'i bè taa tògòmayòrò jan nò, a b'a fò i kana taa, sarati sera. I tè fèn fò i muso ye. I tè fèn fò i den ye. I tè fèn fò mògò si ye. I koni b'a fò i terikè ye dòròn, kelen i muso fòlò, ka fò, “Aa,” kelen i den fòlò, “Aa, ne ka waati surunyana. Awa, ni bana ye n’ minè, aw kan'aw yèrè sègèn furabò la, aw kana foyi wèrè kè. Aw k'a to ten ten. Ne ka waati dafara.” I b'o fò i somògòw ye. Ni min yèrè kèra mògò jawililenye, ni waati sera, i b'a fò, fò, fò, o tuma o ye jina bonda labin waati ye i la mògòw ka so kònòn. U b'a fò, i da ka fiyèn.

107. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, p. 54–6 of transcribed interviews.

INTERVIEWER: Sisan, ne b'i nyininkan. I y'a mèn? Mun na, aw b'a dòn, ko nyama bè yirimògònin lèsè la kosèbè, kosèbè, kosèbè, aw dun b'o kè? Mun na? Aw yèrè b'a dòn, kafò nyama b'a la, kafò, a ka jugu, aw b'a kè? Mun na?

KOJUGU: An b'a kè k'a da dalilu min kan, dugu saaba, dugu naani, fo dugu wolonfila, a bèe kelen nyògòn na, dugu dò b'a rò, cèkun dò bè yen, an fè farafinna ko cèkun, komi nyèmògò, n'a ye ko min dilan, mògò tè se k'a bò a ta la. N'a ye ko min fò, o bè kè. I bè taa a tigi sòrò den jònjòn t'a kò. A y'a den ko, a korila den ko kò, a tògò ka to a la, fadenw kana se k'a tògò tinyè. Awa, n'i dun yèrè y'a dòn tigi, tigi, tigi, i la ko t'o si rò, i b'i senbò suya rò ko, yiribaara, i b'i senbò o rò. An b'a baara, k'o lòn tigi, tigi, ko nyama b'a la, nka an b'a baara. Cè kelen, kelen, kelen, minnu bè ko dòn, kodònna ka ca. Min bè ko dòn, sinin nin bè na, komi an bè nin baara in na. Ne y'a dòn tigi, tigi, kafò nin baara in bè na kè. Nka ne ka kan ka denw nyèsigi cogo min, ne ka kan k'o feèrè tigè, o fèerè o ye nin ye. N'e mògò min t'o lòn, e b'i k'a la ten, k'i b'a dilan, i bè dèsè yiri baara lon min, i tè kè ni den ye, i tè kè n'i yèrè ye, i tè kè ni tògò ye. O mògò ka ca anw fè farafinna. N'o kònònganna, o bè wili ka an sèkèrè. Awa, an bè latèmèn yòrò dò f'i ye ten, musalaha la, o kò, a ka kan ka min yèrè, yèrè kè, n'i ni kungo fèn yèrè, yèrè tè nyògòn fè tigi, tigi, tigi la, i lònni cogoya i m'a k'i teri yèrè, yèrè ye, k'a diyanyè ko kè, k'a goyanjè ko to yen, a t'i lajèya i ye ten. O b'a kè mògò caman bè to lanògò rò farafinna. O kisa ye nin ye.

108. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, pp. 56–7 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Yòrò fila de don. I fa ye cèkun ye. I bangena jamana min kan, i fa ye cèkun ye yen. Bon, o y'e bange, e kèra denw nyèmògò ye, n'e fa sara, i fa la gundo a bè nyininkan e de la. A ye gundo baara min na, n'e m'o baara kè, a bè fò k'i kèra fa kòlafili den ye. O kòsòn, o de b'a to cèkun, cèkunw denw, o caman b'i lò, awa, fa lòyòrò la, ka burun den nò, ka burun dinyè nata la, ka tògò ni jamu makaran.

109. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 14, p. 53 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: Basi tè. Sisan, ni mògò min denw bè sa o cogo la, est-ce que a bè sarakaw bò wa, ou bien a bè, komi i yèrè y'a fò cogo min na, n'a ma sòn ani kungo fènw ka bèn, est-ce que kungo fènw b'a denw faga wa?

KOJUGU: U b'u faga. Kungo fèn b'a denw faga.

110. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, pp. 83–4 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: A t'i muso faga, a t'i den faga. N'a m'i yèrè faga, a b'i kè naloma ye. I tè foyi nyè. A bè bana jugu bil'i la, mògòw bè nyugu i la bana min na. A b'o kè.

111. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, pp. 83–4 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: A bè min fò e k'o k'a kècogo la, hali n'i sara, awa, i denw ka kan k'a bò cogoya min, e b'o bèe kumakan latèlen i ni jina cè, k'o bèe dakun natèlen i ni jina cè. Ni saraka don, i b'o bò. Ni sònni don, i b'o kè. O tuma hali n'i sara, a bè kè i la bonda la.

112. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, p. 88 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: Ou bien, est-ce que n'a ye nin baara tuma min, n'a sigilen bè jinaw cèla, n'a ye jinaw tana tinyè, est-ce que u bè se k'a faga wa?

KOJUGU: U b'a kun ci.

113. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/11/84, Djinns/Ciw, Book 14, pp. 63–5 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Dònnikèlaba ye fèn o fèn ye, bèe n'i ka jina de don. I kun nò fèn tana ye min ye, a m'a dogon i la, a y'a f'i ye, hali n'a ko, juma o juma i ka saga kè saraka ye, n'i y'o sarati laminè, juma o juma, hali n'i b'i yèrè tònòmasigi, i b'o saga kè saraka ye. Awa, ni o sarati tèmènna aw ni nyògòn cè, e m'a tana tinyè, hali n'a y'a sòrò ko aw dònnikèla mògò ba kelen de bè kènè kelen kan, min b'a ta tènè tiimè, k'a la sarati kan tiimè, i bè yèlèn de, i tè jigin dè. Min n'a ta saratira, yòrònin kelen, i b'i nègèn ka n'i kè nafolobatigi ye, kelen, a nyè na i ka nafolo cayara, i b'a fò hali sisan koni ni ne nin nin kungo fèn mana fara, nin nafolo tè ban. A b'i nègèn ka i fènkè de. Sarati min b'a n'e cè, n'e m'o fèn, sarati min b'aw ni nyògòn cè, n'e m'o kè, awa, e la lònni bè kè komi i ye fèn bila bara kònòn, k'a datugun. Fèn koni bè bara kònòn, nka fèn min don, a ma bila mògò o mògò nyè na, o t'a lòn. I la lònni bè kè ten de. Lònni b'i kònòn, a tana mako nya, mògò t'a lòn. Mògò tè na i yòrò. O lònnikèlaw b'a la. A bè sòrò i m'i la fèn ka sarati tiimè. A bè sòrò aw jèra kan min kan, i m'o kan tiimè. I b'i la dinyèròtigè kè, i tè nkalon tigè, i tè lebu.

114. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/11/84, Djinns/Ciw, Book 14, pp. 48–9 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Manyan, o kòn na, o kòn na t'a ma. O fere kèra, sarati ma se, o y'i kè ko kènyè dò kan, awa, o tor'a lò.

The Human World

1. It is important to note that the sculptor also acts as an intermediary between the client and the djinns who provide the secret association objects. There is considerable evidence to suggest that most of these objects are viewed as having a female gender; certainly the acquisition of a new secret association, together with its ritual objects, is compared to the acquisition of a new wife throughout the Mande world. Despite the fact that participation in association activities is restricted to men, the Bamana, Malinke, and Minianka refer to the societies themselves as though they were female, and “mother” branches give rise to “daughter” chapters of the same association (Colleyn 1985, 229). Among the Minianka, the elder who takes the responsibility for introducing the Komo society into his village (for the Minianka, the Komo is usually a relatively recent acquisition, and is often purchased from a Bamana village) is said to “marry the Komo,” (ka Komo furu), and, as we shall see in this chapter, the payments made to acquire the ritual objects necessary for enacting secret association rituals are viewed as expenses comparable to the traditional payments required when marrying a woman. Whether obtaining a woman or a ritual object, the ‘purchaser’ exchanges material goods for reproductive possibilities; and in both cases, the ‘purchasers’ become permanently indebted to the ‘fathers-in-law’ who have provided the new reproductive potential (Colleyn 1985, 249).

This comparison is extended even further, for, like a new wife, newly acquired association objects are provided with their own “house,” a fire to keep warm, and their every wish is catered to. The Bamana and Malinke believe that, like a well-omened woman who brings economic and spiritual benefits to her husband, association objects also provide such advantages for their “owners.”

I am indebted to Mr. Adama Mara for confirmation and elaboration of the ideas discussed in this note (personal communication, 7/27/93). The Minianka Information is based on interviews carried out on 5/8/79 and 5/16/79 with a Kòmòtigi living not far from Koutiala, Bakari Traore.

2. Chapters 5 and 6 treat the interdictions that control a sculptor's sexual life when he is carving a ritual object.

3. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Outils-2, Book 13, p. 25 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N'a y'a sòrò i so kow tinyèlen don, a baara tè nya. So ko tinyè ye mun wèrè ye? I yèrè, i nògòlen, i ma sanunya. Awa, i koni bè taa baara lòkolon de la, awa, i tè baara nyuman kè. Hali, n'i ye baara kè, a bè jelimangoya mògòw bolo. Aw b'o le bil'i la.

4. Both the Bamana and Malinke believe that diviners and other aged experts can assess a woman's tere, or the luck and the destiny that she brings with her, through the evaluation of her physiology and from the signs that are consistently associated with her during repeated divinations. According to Dieterlen, the tere is located in the blood and the head of an infant or adult, and is composed from the terew of one's parents and that of the grandfather, grandmother, or the more remote ancestor whom each person reincarnates. Like one's height or hair color, the tere is an objective entity and its power is such that it dominates the individual, determining a large part of his or her actions, attitudes, and even thoughts. Together with the ni (breath of life) and the ja (the individual's shadow or double, see note 60 in this chapter), the tere is one of the three principles that constitute the human personality and determine its fate.

A bad tere can be only slightly improved by repeated sacrifices, and thus remains largely beyond the control of the individual. Both men and women may possess either a positive or negative tere, and men take great care to avoid marrying a woman who bears a harmful one. Ritual experts normally interpret certain physiological characteristics as signs of particular terew: Dieterlen (1951) reports that the Bamana believe that a man with an ample and deep skull is destined to become a chief; my informants told me that one should never marry a woman whose jawbone appears to jut forward from the neck, forming an angle of approximately 90 degrees, or whose eye sockets are constantly surrounded by dark shadows. Such a woman will continue to live while husband after husband succumbs to the power of her tere, which operates independently of her own volition to kill her sexual partners. In such a case, sacrifices can only mitigate the situation; they cannot really change it, and the woman usually remains unmarried until she dies. Many ritual experts build entire reputations on the accurate predictions of female terew, and no man will ever think of presenting the kola nuts that indicate his intention to marry a girl, without having a knowledgeable elder evaluate her tere.

The information presented in this note is drawn from my own field experience, from Dieterlen 1951, 61–4, and from Dieterlen and Cissé 1972, 23–5. Dieterlen states that the human personality is constituted from four elements, the ni, the ja, the tere, and the wanzo (inherited impurity common to all men), but my informants never mentioned the wanzo.

5. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/22/84, Modèles-2, Book 13, pp. 1–2 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N'i ye kura bò ten, ka taa a bila yen ten, i y'a bò bolomandiya de la, i y'a bò baara tè na. N'i y'a mèn, ko a tè kow nya, karisala Kòmò kun tè ko nyè, o de bè sòrò Kòmò kun n'a bò cogo fè. E y'a bò, mògò ma a nyini e fè, fo k'a bò ten, k'a bila yen ten, ko ni mògò nana, ko n’ b'a di o ma, mògò dun m'a ko f'i ye, i y'a tigè i kunfè ten de, o tè se ka farinya. Fo mògò de ka wili ka n'a f'i ye kafò n’ mako bè Kòmò kun na. Aw b'a fò ka bèn. I b'a tigè. O kò k'a tigè i kunfè ten, i k'a dila ka n'a bila yen, o ye kòmi jago fèn de. O tè foyi nya. I y'o di mògò o mògò ma, fèn kulukutu de b'o bolo, fèn masirilen de b'o bolo, n'o tè o tè foyi nya.

6. Formerly the verb ka falen, “to exchange,” was used to indicate a purely commercial transaction, as in the phrase, “Bozo bè jege falen malo là,” or “The Bozo exchange fish for rice.” Ka falen is really equivalent to barter, whereas ka san, “to buy,” entered the Bamana vocabulary more recently with the introduction of Western currency. Interview with Salimata Kone, 4/6/84, Enfantement, Book 11, pp. 28–9 of transcribed tapes; see translator's note.

7. Ka bò has many different meanings depending on what is “made to go out,” and I have only listed the most pertinent ones here. Dumestre (1989, no. 1, 154–6) gives twenty-nine possible meanings for ka bò. Among these are “to exit,” “to remove,” “to calm,” “to come from,” “to appear,” “to visit,” “to equal,” “to ressemble,” and “to effectuate.”

8. For a discussion of the “noble” Bamana ethos of conspicuous consumption and avoidance of both trade and wealth see Brett-Smith 1983, 55–6.

9. I watched this incident on 1/27/84.

10. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Modèles-2, Book 12, p. 100 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Ni kòròlen bè dugu dò rò, o kòròlen ka farin, a b'a baara kè, awa, ni mògò min lal'a la – a farinya ni a farinya baliya – o bèe bè sòrò a baarabaga fè. Yiri min ka kan ka k'a ye, n'e m'o k'a ye, a ka kan ka bò lon min ma, n'e m'a bò o lon ma, a ka kan ka sòn cogo min, e m'a son ten, aa, a tè farinya dè.

11. Interview with Salimata Kone, 4/15/84, Grossesse-1, Book 1, p. 8 of transcriptions.

12. Both of these sculptures remain unidentified, although Kojugu states that “the little dog” is used by the Komo association.

13. These restrictions are discussed in Chapter 6.

14. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, p. 52 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: Est-ce que wuluni fana bè kè ten?

KOJUGU: Wuluni, i b'a bò, fò k'i til'a la, i t'i to a bòli la, ka mògò wele, k'a fò, ko, “karisa, na yan.” I tè mògò wele. O kò, i bè ale bò k'i to baro la. I bè dumuni kè. Nka, k'i to a bòli la k'a fò mògò ma, ko, karisa, k'a tògò fò, i t'o kè.

INTERVIEWER: I t'o kè mun na?

KOJUGU: A tigi bè sa.

INTERVIEWER: Tò ninnu fò kè!

KOJUGU: Sorule, i b'o bò k'o ban, eè, i b'a bò k'a ban, i t'a ta i numankurun na k'a d'a tigi ma.

INTERVIEWER: N'i b'a kè denjuguya la?

KOJUGU: N'i b'a kè denjuguya la, n'a bòra k'a ban, i b'a ta i numankurun na k'a d'a ma. O ye n'i y'a kè denjuguya ye. Aaa, I b'a ta i kinin na, i dumuni bolo la, ka a fò, ko, “Karisa, i la yiri banna.”

15. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 13, pp. 89–90 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: I bòra dugu fan o fan, n'i ye baara kè, bèe b'a fò, karisa bolo-nò ka nyi, dugu fan o fan. Nka, n'i bolo nò bòra kòfè, mògòw bè sòsòli k'a la. O ye bèe n'i ka baara kalancogo ye.

16. The preceding generalizations are valid only when one considers relatively large regions such as the Segu and the Kaarta areas. As Arnoldi has noted (1983, 68, 169–70), sculptors in the Segu area can work for widely separated villages. Here, clients often accept and appreciate puppets carved in styles belonging to other areas, and sculptors usually carve particular characters in the style considered appropriate for that personality. Thus, a so-called Bozo-style marionette may have been carved for and used by a Bamana, Maraka, Bozo, or Somono village. My impression is the Kaarta and Beledugu clients do not share the cosmopolitan attitude Arnoldi describes in the Segu region, perhaps because these northern areas are much more homogeneous in ethnic composition. Furthermore, one must remember that the Segu puppets appear to be an entirely secular art form, and much less latitude is probably allowed, even to Segu sculptors, when they tackle a ritual commission.

There are four major types of Tyi Warra mask. The Kita region type (Fig. 10) consists of a flat, vertical mask with a roughly human face, bearing three or four vertically placed antelope horns that sprout from the top of the head. The forehead, sides, and nose of the mask, form a raised plane, whereas the chin and the small rectangular eyes are set within a recessed plane that forms the hollow of the face. Although this mask appears completely different in visual terms than the better known Tyi Warraw of the Segu and Buguni regions, it serves the same function and is performed by young men's age-grade associations during group farming activities. This information was provided by Basi Fane, but similar information was collected in 1931 by the Mission Dakar-Djibouti for the mask (M.H.31.74.635) now in the Musée de l'homme.

The Segu–Koutiala-style Tyi Warra is the most famous (Fig. 8). It represents the head of the dage antelope (Hippotragus equinus) set on a curved neck with a flowing mane. The antelope's horns spring up and back from its head, and the pierced forms of the mane and the animal's tail angle down and out in an energetic counterpoint. Segu–Koutiala style Tyi Warraw were carved and performed in pairs, and many female carvings bear their offspring on their backs.

The southern or Buguni-style Tyi Warra is a composite created from several different animals: part anteater (Bamana: Timba, Orycteropus afer), part pangolin (Bamana: N'Koson, Mariis gigantea or Manis tricuspis) and part dage (Hippotragus equinus), and these carvings are often known as ngosonw kunw. This type of headdress is composed from a set of abstract curves that surmount each other to create a vertical, openwork structure surmounted by a pair of curving horns. These horns are almost the only recognizable visual element that evokes the dage antelope, whereas the openwork curves are reminiscent of both the pangolin and the anteater. This southern-style Tyi Warra is usually smaller than that of the Segu area and often rests on bent legs, an innovation that one informant reported dates from the 1920s.

The Beledugu-style Tyi Warra represents an animal that is recognizable as an antelope, but its four pillarlike legs and truncated body support a head that is placed horizontally rather than vertically, as in the Segu style (Fig. 9). In the Beledugu style the pair of curving horns extends directly back from the relatively small head, and the entire headdress is oriented horizontally.

For a comprehensive discussion of Tyi Warra mask types see Zahan (1980), and Brink (1981).

17. These will be discussed in greater detail in the final part of Chapter 5.

18. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/20/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, p. 38 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Ni Kòmò kun tè dugu min mògòw bolo, ni u ni jòra Kòmò kun ko kan, u bè taa a fò … Mògòw bakòròw dama bè bèn a rò, kafò, “An ka kan ka Kòmò kun nyini.” O tuma, bèe b'i hakilinanta numuw fò. Min ye bèe lajèlen nyèmògò ye, o b'a fò, “Aa, ne hakili la, an k'a fò nin numu masina ye.” A bè fò, ko, “Oòò,” ko, “An k'a to e ta la.” Ko, “E ka taa a da yir'o la.”

19. Elders normally avoid slender women, for lack of weight is a standard index of early death, or of the production of children destined to die young.

20. One can translate the term fòròba literally as “field-large.” Its original use is to designate the large family field or fields worked by all members of an extended family. In contrast, the jonfòrò is the “slave field” or “individual field.” This is the area farmed by each adult man or woman for his or her own benefit. Whereas the fòròba’s harvest is stored in granaries managed by the eldest living male on behalf of the entire extended family, the vegetables, rice, or millet that result from work on one's individually worked plot can be sold or eaten at the discretion of the producer. In addition to their uses as farming terms, the Bamana also use the two words in the sense of “communal” or “group-owned” as opposed to “individual” or “personally owned.” Thus, a fòròba yiri would be a sculpture belonging to the extended family, village quarter, or village, whereas a jonfòrò yiri is a sculpture that belongs to a single individual. Fòròba yiriw are used to solve communal problems, whereas jonfòrò yiriw are manipulated by their owners for their own individualistic ends, or for the benefit of their nuclear family.

21. Tonw, or age-grade associations, were traditionally composed of all young men from the age of circumcision (mid to late twenties in the past) to approximately thirty-five years of age. Young women's tonw were composed of young unmarried women. Salimata Kone reported that her ton had held group celebrations even before its members were excised. However, girls’ tonw are often thought to include only unmarried women who have been excised. In the Beledugu, where excision is often performed between sixteen and eighteen years of age and girls are married several months after their surgery, this would unduly restrict membership in the young women's ton, which seems to have included both excised and nonexcised women who had not borne children.

For a detailed examination of the relationship between groups of young men and women circumcized or excised together (kari), and the composition of tonw, see Leynaud 1966.

Age-grade associations traditionally had two functions: they organized communal meals and entertainment such as the koteba theatrical performances or the dancing of a village's Tyi Warra mask, and they performed collective labor, much of it for charitable purposes. This collective work might include planting and harvesting the fòròbaw or communally held fields administered by each extended family's titular head or sotigi, and the maintenance and repair of village property, such as the village square, the lounging platforms that are the resting place for male elders (baraw), and roads.

My informants explained the difference between tonw and jow by the comment that tonw were merely same-sex groups that met to eat festive meals together, whereas jow were secret associations with arcane rules, a formal initiation, and supernatural powers. A rule promulgated by a ton was a man-made social edict, whereas a rule issed by a jo was a natural law endorsed by more than human powers. For an earlier discussion of this relationship see Leynaud 1966.

Some of the previous description is based on Johnson 1986, 15. For additional material on tonw see Arnoldi 1983; Hopkins 1971, 99–128; and Meillassoux 1968.

22. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/22/84, Modèles-2, Book 13, pp. 6–7 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Kòmòko koni, dugu kònòn, ni mògòw ye partie [from the French une partie] fila ye, aw dun sigalen bè nyògòn ma. Nin ko, “N’ bè kè n’ ta cèkun ye.” Nin fana ko, “N’ bè kè n’ ta cèkun ye.” O bèe n'a ta Kòmò. Bèe b'i ta dilali kè i dan na. Ni min ta labatoli, ni o y'a ta labato ka tèmèn, o de ta bi barika. Bawo jo ye labatoli fèn de ye. O kò, Kòmò bèe ye kelen de ye. N'aw bènn'a rò, hali dugu saaba bè jè Kòmòko la, ka Kòmò bèe kè kelen ye. Awa, n'aw ma bèn a rò, dugu yèrè bè tila partie saaba ye, bèe n'i ta Kòmòko.

23. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 14, pp. 13–14 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Anw fè, farafinna yan, numu bonda, dugu maa bonya, dugu bè jè yiri min na, o yiri b'a dan na. Kabila, kabila bè jè yiri min na, o yiri b'a dan na. Lu yèrè kuru bè jè yiri min na, o yiri b'a dan na. Bon, lu denkè fòlò ni lutigi yèrè, ani lu ton, komi lu mògò cayara, a kèra cè naani cè duuru ye, bèe dun b'a fè i ka kè cèkun ye, ani aw bolomalalen foroba yiri min ma, o tè kelen ye dè. Bèe b'i dundumata nyini. N'i ye baara kè forobata la, i bè tla ka n'i ka baara kè dundumata la. I bè tògò sòrò.

24. For example, Basi described accepting one commission in secret, leaving his compound by night to cut the tree for it, and carving it in secret by stages (written notes, 2/10/84). He refused to say what this piece was, but it appeared to be a human figure for personal use.

In contrast, Basi treated our own commission as though the Tyi Warra mask was to be a publicly owned object. While Mr. Mara negotiated some aspects of the commission alone with Basi in his consulting chamber, the sculptor made absolutely sure that many witnesses observed the payments he received and the sacrifices carried out before cutting the tree.

25. McNaughton suggests that the Dyula leader, Samory Toure, may have had between three and four hundred smiths working full time to produce both guns and ammunition during his unsuccessful attempts to defeat the French. For further references see Bouys 1943, 11–12; and Legassick 1966, 95–115.

26. This information was provided in May 1979 by a Minianka blacksmith village close to Koutiala. In the late nineteenth century this town had been able to depend with absolute certainity on shipments of grain from the fama (“warlord,” “tyrant,” or traditional ruler) of Sikasso in exchange for agreed-upon taxes paid in iron tools and weapons. At this time the Koutiala area was a taxpaying province of Bamemba's Kenedugu kingdom whose capital was Sikasso.

McNaughton (1988, 4) also reports that prior to the colonial conquest many blacksmiths never farmed.

27. The Komo suruku or “hyena of the Komo” and the Komo saman or “elephant of the Komo,” appear to be code words that Komo initiates use to refer to several different things. Dieterlen and Cissé (1972, 46) refer to the cranium of the Komo mask as the nama koro kunkòlò ka gelen or “the hard head of the old hyena,” its crest as suruku tulu or the “tuft of the hyena,” and two forked tree trunks with which initiates pound the ground in a musical rhythm as sama senw or “the elephant's feet” (Dieterlen and Cissé 1972, 52–3), but they neither use nor explain Kojugu's terms, “hyena of the Komo” and “elephant of the Komo.”

Moussa Travélé calls the medium who wears the Komo mask the Komo suruku or “hyena of the Komo” (1929, 132). He identifies the Komo saman as a trumpet carved from wood or forged from iron (Travélé 1929, 134, Plate 1). He adds that each Komo association possesses at least one Komo saman, and may possess several different-sized trumpets. Similarly, he uses the same term, Komo suruku, that he previously identified with the medium, to refer to a musical instrument that is made from a stick of bamboo. One end of this stick is closed with a spider web, and the other end is left open with a hole in its center, where the user places his mouth when he wishes to speak through the instrument. According to Travélé, this instrument acquires its name, Komo suruku, from the medium who distorts his voice by speaking through it, although the medium's true name is not Komo suruku, but Komo guéguéna or the “conductor of the Komo.”

Perhaps deliberately, Kojugu himself provided confusing information as to the identity of both the Komo suruku and the Komo saman. In the interview Modèles-2, 6/22/84, Book 12, pp. 94–6, Kojugu asserts that there is no difference in the types of mask made for the Komo suruku or the Komo saman, but that both terms designate musical instruments that are played together, and that form part of the standard paraphernalia of every Komo association. In the interview Cissoko 6–14, 6/14/84, Book 8, pp. 11–12, Kojugu identifies the Komo suruku as a small metal flute and the Komo saman as a larger metal flute or horn. Every Komo association also uses larger trumpets that are made from antelope horns. Kojugu adds that the voice of the Komo medium, whom he, like Travélé, calls the Komo suruku, is produced by using a piece of bamboo or a section of a millet stalk. In yet another interview, Outils-2, 6/24/84, Book 13, p. 46, Kojugu identifies the Komo suruku as a pair of iron flutes, of which the one is the Komo suruku and the other the Komo saman (Fig. 57). Nyamaton Diarra (4/15/84, Book 17, pp. 31–3 of transcribed tapes) identified the pair of flutes as the Komo saman, and this is the identification used here. Mr. Adama Mara confirmed the identification of the pair of flutes as the Komo saman, and the mask as the Komo suruku, on the basis of his own further research in Guinea. He also confirmed what both Kojugu and Nyamaton indicated, that the flutes are far more important and powerful than the mask, and that one cannot commission or use the mask without previously obtaining the flutes (personal communication, 7/27/93).

28. See previous note.

29. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/20/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, pp. 38–9 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Ko e ka taa a da yir'o la. O bè wili ka taa i wele, ou soit [from the French ou sia soit] n'a taar'i fè yen, n'i ni mògò wèrè tè nyògòn kan, a bè i sigi, kafò n’ nalen mako la. I b'a fò ko, awa, ko, i dantigè. A b'a fò, ko, n’ nalen cè-tòn nòfè. I bè i jija ka dò makaran n'ye. Awa a tògò tè fò kènè kan ten dè. I b'a fò, ko, n’ nalen cè-tòn nòfè. I b'a fò ko, a bèe wa? A kurukèrèlen bèe wa, fo dò b'a la le? Awa, n'a kurukèrèlen bèe le, i b'a fò, k'a kuru bèe o ye k'a minè Kòmò suruku la, k'a bila Kòmò buru la, k'a bila Kòmò saman na, k'a bila Kòmòkun na, o y'a … n'i y'a mèn k'a kuru bèe, o ye … a kuru bèe bè fò k'a la o yòrò kan. Ni Kòmò suruku b'i bolo, Kòmò saman b'i bolo, fo Kòmòkun, i b'a fò ko, Kòmòkun; awa, aw b'o fò ka bèn o la, i b'o bò ka o lase u ma. U bèna n'i la laadaw ye. Nhun.

30. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko on 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 14, p. 38 of transcribed tapes. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, p. 79 of transcribed tapes.

31. For a full explanation of tonw see note 21, this chapter.

32. According to Basi Fane (written notes, 2/4/84), the original meaning of the term jo was “reason,” and the expression, ka jo don, “to enter the jo,” “to become part of the jo” really meant “to come to one's senses,” “to act with reason.” Thus, a jo is the reasonableness, the rationale, or the rules that apply to any given thing. The appropriate methods of handling or behaving with regard to something constitute the jo of that thing. A cup possesses its “reasonableness” or appropriate method of using it, just as do a ritual object, or a secret association. Thus, the rules, regulations, or laws of a secret association are its jo. It is this usage that gives rise to the categorization of secret associations possessing a body or rules or laws as jow.

33. Ngolo Diarra, professor of botany at the Eôle normale supérieure, Bamako, was unable to identify the dyafereke; he is still working on this identification (personal communication, 10/22/93).

Neither Bazin (1906), Dumestre (1981–9), Thoyer-Rozat (1981), nor Gamier (1976) identifies the dyafereke.

34. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 13, pp. 90–1 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N'i ni jinè bè nyògòn fè, su maa se waati dò la, awa, ni n’ ma fili, ni su sera jate dò la, n'a nan'i ma, i ja bè tigè. I bè sin ka miri a la. A b'i lakunun. Nin waati ma sina, nin baara bèna f'i ye, i k'a kè tan. Nin waati ma sina, nin baara bèna f'i ye, i k'i ban. Nin waati ma sina, nin baara bè fò i ye, awa, a tigi b'i nègèn, awa, “I kana sòn,” ou bien [from the French], “I ka sòn.” I dusu bè kasi n'i sònna, awa, a kòfè, i bèna dimi bò. Awa, ni dugu jèra, i b'o kalikili [from the French calculer], n'o lònni sera ka munu ka n'i ma, o kò a bè f'i ye su min fè, o su kelen a bè b'i kònòn. Ni dugu jèra, n'i y'i sigi k'i miri, n'a nar'i kun na, a fòr'i ye cogo min, n'a sira tògòmara ka n'i ma ten, i b'a baara kè. Nhun.

35. For the significance of the lènkè see Chapter 4. For its identification, see note 7 of the same chapter.

36. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 14, p. 35 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Ne ye yirimògòniw minw dilan, a ka ca ni kònòntòn ye. Ni n’ ko n’ sigi nò in nò, ko n’ b'a tigiw bèe dòn, n’ t'a bèe dòn. Bon, dunan dò bè na, ka n'i balan n’ ma, kafò, “Kojugu, i bè cogo in na, i bè se in na, n’ y'i tògò mèn, n’ mako bè nin yiri in na,” n’ t'i nyininkan i bòyòrò la. N’ t'i nyininkan i jamu la, n’ t'i nyininkan i tògò la; i yèrè ye kungo fèn ye, n’ tè kè Allah ye k'a dòn. I ye kungo fèn ye, n’ tè kè Allah ye k'a dòn. N’ koni b'a f'i ye, i bè nin wari hakè in bò. N’ y'a dilan a ka ca hali sigiyòròma kònòntòn ye. Nhun. Oò, min y'a dilan n’ fè, o b'a dilan, a bè kè basi ye wa, a bè cogo wèrè ye wa, n’ tè kè Allah ye k'a dòn.

37. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Modèles-2, Book 12, pp. 93–4 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N'i mògò taar'o f'i ye, ni u ko, nin défaut [from the French] in b'a la, ni i bè se k'a baara, i b'a fò a’ ye, “Na n'a ye”; n'u n'a nara, n'i sera k'o bò a la, o ka nyi. N'u nana n'a ye, n'i dun yèrè y'a dòn i tè se k'o bò a la, i b'a fò ko, “Ni i ko ten ko ka nin défaut in bò nin na, a tò kuru bèe tinyè.” U b'a fò, “Wa! o tuma i ka kura bò an ye.” A bè kura ko fò ten, i bè kura bò. Ni u nar'a yir'i la, n'a dun ma nyi yèrè bugu bugu, i b'a fò, “Eèe! Aw tè nin bila i ka dòwèrè makaran, aw tè dòwèrè nyini o kò nin tè sòn. Nin défaut b'a la; nin défaut b'a la.” U b'i sigi k'a lajè. U b'a fò ko, “Aa!” ko “Tinyè do.” U b'a fò, “Ayiwa,” ko, “E ka kura bò an ye,” ko, “An b'o laada fènw sara.” I bè kura bò, u b'a laada fènw sara.

38. This is the case partly because ritual expertise in any area depends on acute powers of visual observation. One cannot heal the sick or divine the future without learning to pay attention to the smallest details of appearances.

39. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/22/84, Modèles-2, Book 13, pp. 1–2 of transcribed tapes.

40. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 14, pp. 14–16 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: Bon, fòlò, i y'a dòn, numu bonda bèe, u bèe n'u jatigi de tun don. Bon, est-ce que fòlò, i tun tè se ka yiri bò mògò wèrè ye, n'i jatigi dòròn tè wa? I tun bè se k'a bò mògò wèrè ye, kasòrò i jatigi tè min ye wa?

KOJUGU: I b'a bò. I b'a bò k'a da dalilu min kan, ni mògò nan'a nyini i fè, i b'a fò i jatigi kè ye, a tè bò ka girin fan bèe dè, a ba tò nyèna ye. I b'a fò i jatigi ye, “Karisalakaw nana ka na yiri nyini, ne dun b'a fè k'a bò u ye.” “I kan'a bò n'u ma jòn kamalen ni jònmuso d'i ma.” Ka jòn bilakoro ni, eè, jòn mpogotigi d'i ma. Eè, n'i matigikè, i jatigi kè y'o f'i ye, i b'a bò a tigiw ye. Mais, ni a kèra dènkènèyabaga, a kèra nyògòn ladibagaya, i b'a bò k'a d'a ma. Jòn kamalen kelen ou [from the French] jòn mpogotigi kelen. Foyi tè tèmèn o kan. I jatigi kè n'o ko k'a tè kè few, few, few, i b'a fò, “Aw bèe ka kan ne bolo. Aw si ma ne minè mugu da rò. Aw si ka jòn tè ne ye. Ne tè se ka marteau [from the French] finfan n’ kunna fu ten. Ni min nana ne ma ni majigi ye, n’ b'o kunko kè.” O tuma sira dò b'a rò, nka n'a diyar'i ye dun, i b'i jatigin kè nègèn, kafò, “Basi tè,” awa, n'a ye min fò, i bè sòn o ma. Nka n'i y'a dòn sònkò t'a ma few, few, few, a t'a fè i ka mako nya a fadenw ma, e min ye numu ye, a ma ko jugu f'i ma, a ma ko jugu k'i la, i b'i lò kènèkisè jè la carrément [from the French] k'a fò a ye, k'a fò, “I jatigi kè ye, n’ bè nin dilan k'a di karisa ma, jòn t'a la bi, jòn t'a la sinin. E min ye nin ye, ne ma san i ma, i ma ne minè muguda rò. I la jòn tè ne ye. Nin la jòn tè ne ye. A ma ne minè muguda rò. Aw bèe ka kan ne bolo. Awa, n’ bè nin feere a ma. I b'a feere a ma.” An b'a kè ten, ten.

41. My informants reported that no one could lay hands on any casted person without paying a heavy forfeit.

Jonckers (1979, 107, 119) explicitly states that Minianka blacksmiths could not bear arms, and that in time of war they formed a special corps of surgeons who followed the fighters and attended to the wounded.

According to Bokar N'Diaye (1970, 49) no nyamakala could ever become a slave. He adds that in some cases this protected status caused some griots and blacksmiths to push their “hosts” into armed conflicts. If their host won, these advisers had rights to a large share of the booty, and if the host lost, they could not be transformed into slaves, but merely placed their technical skills at the disposition of the victor.

Bazin (1975, 178) observes, “Les gens de caste (nyamakala), par definition toujour dependants d'un maître ou d'un lignage hôte (jatigi) – mais d'une dépendance très distincte de la jònya – ne sont jamais à proprement parler captifs, c'est-à-dire que leur capture se réduit à un simple changement de maître. Ils ne sont jamais non plus remplacés, dans leur activité professionnelle, par des captifs.”

42. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/15/84, Création, Book 8, p. 29 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: A bòli koni, n'a fòr'i ye k'i to sawura o sawura rò, mais, ni mògò kunba b'i nyè, i b'a yiri tigè k'a d'o ma kafò nin baara bilalen n’ kan, nka ne tana a masòrò. A baara misèkè misèkè ka ca. “Ne t'a masòrò. Karisa e min ye mògò kunba sigilen ye i nò rò, e k'a dilan. N’ b'i ladiya.” Oò, ni mògò kunba t'i bolo, i b'i sigi k'a dilan. Nhun.

43. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/10/84, Questions-3, Book 15, p. 98 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: I b'a dèsè, nka mògò wèrè tè mènèn a rò dè, n'i muso lasirilen don, i bè se k'a lèsè i kelen, i kelen wula kònòn, i b'a lèsè, k'a ban. N'a sòrò mògò min b'a nyini – i b'a lèsè, k'a ban, k'a d'o ma, mògò si t'a lòn fo i yèrè kelen ni Allah kelen n'o tigi kelen. Nka n'i y'a kè mògòw k'a lòn, u b'a fò, ko, aa, karisa, e t'a dòn ko nin tè kè, e muso kònòma don, e bè nin baara suguya kè? Nin tè kè. Nin ma nyi dè. Nin ma nyi, nin ma nyi, o bè na i mako sa.

44. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, pp. 59–60 of transcribed tapes.

45. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, pp. 87–8 of transcribed tapes. For similar reports see Arnoldi 1983, 170.

The Owo Yoruba in Nigeria have institutionalized the practice of killing a weaver when her work is finished; a woman who accepts a commission to weave the yegbe ritual cloth knows that she will be put to death immediately on finishing it, and she puts all of her artistic power into the object. Among the Owo Yoruba, the uniqueness of each yegbe cloth and the death of the artist who produces it attest to the stature of the high chief for whom it is woven. Rowland Abiodun, personal communication, 9/24/91.

46. For instance, when Basi agreed to carve a Tyi Warra mask for us, he said that it had been thirty years since he had last accepted a commission.

47. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Modèles-2, Book 12, p. 99 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Ni kòròlen nana yir'i la k'i ko nyògòn bò, a nyinw wo, a gerenw wo, i b'a bèe jateminè i kònòn rò. I b'a bèe jate ta i kònònbara lò. N'i dun m'o kè, n'i y'a bò ten, k'a kè sanko n’ ye dò bò, awa, kòròlen gerenw, a gerenw ma kòròlen gerenw bò caya rò, ou [from the French] nyinw sigi cogo ni kòròlen nyinw sigi cogo ma kè kelen ye, n'i y'a yir'a tigi la, o b'i ban a rò. U tè laada fènw sara, awa u tan'a minè. Bon, u yèrè le ye défaut [from the French] ye i la baara la.

48. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Modèles-2, Book 12, pp. 99–100 of transcribed tapes.

49. Given the focus of this book, my discussion of the economic factors that affect commissions is inevitably simplified.

50. Marriages are frequently dogged by similar delays.

51. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, pp. 26–7 of transcribed tapes.

52. This term serves as the all-purpose word in French, English, Bamana, and the other African languages spoken in Bamako for a domestic servant, usually a housekeeper. Most Europeans and Americans employ both a buoy and a cook, although some buoys will cook as well as clean house. Foreigners who wish to do their own housekeeping or cooking are frequently regarded with ill will, since they are judged to be unwilling to contribute to the African community by providing much-needed jobs.

53. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, p. 23 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: The owner [client] will offer the chicken that one gives when one cuts a tree, together with ten kola nuts, ten red kola nuts. We, we say, dan worow tan bilen.

INTERVIEWER: Together with?

KOJUGU: The large kola nuts, ten, large red kola nuts.

The large red kola nuts – ten of them – with a red cock. But if you are going to cut it [the tree] for yourself, you will simply kill a red cock, and afterward you will complete the laada [i.e., you will offer the kola nuts later], and you begin work.

54. See Chapter 4 for an extensive discussion of different trees and their nyama. This is true, irrespective of whether the object to be carved is secular or ritual.

55. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 14, pp. 42–3 of transcribed tapes. This citation is quoted in full and analyzed in more detail in Chapter 6. The Malinke text is found in note 103, Chapter 6. The dish is made from the head, the neck, and the feet of the slaughtered animal. Unfortunately, Kojugu does not say at exactly what point in the creation of the sculpture the artist receives this meal.

In another interview Kojugu repeats the same information, adding, “If you want to do evil work [make a negatively charged object] they give you the heart of the animal.” The phrase he uses for “evil work” is den juguya baara, literally “child, evil, work.” Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, p. 47 of transcribed tapes.

56. For the identification of these flutes see note 27 of this chapter.

57. Kojugu did not specify how this occurred. Cf. Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Outils-2, Book 13, p. 47 of transcribed tapes.

58. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Outils-2, Book 13, p. 47 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: A bè shèw fila bò. Ka bakòrò bò ani worow bilenw tan, a bè olu bò.

59. Both the Bamana and Malinke consider the birth of twins auspicious. From childhood on the twins will wear the same clothes and eat the same food (Dieterlen 1951, 85–7).

60. Most informants used the term ni to mean the breath of life, whereas the ja is the “shadow” or “double” of the person. Dieterlen observes that every individual inherits both their ni and their ja from a recently deceased family member (usually a grandmother or grandfather). However, twins are endowed with a single, totally new ni and ja that they apparently share. According to Dieterlen, neither the ni nor the ja are indissolubly linked to the body; both are able to leave the body during sleep to wander abroad. However, the ja seems more prone to these nightly excursions than the ni.

See Dieterlen (1951), 57–60 on the ni and ja, and 85–7 on twins. For another view of the ja, see Abbé Henry (1910, 41–3). For information about the third part of the the human personality, the tere, see note 4 of this chapter.

61. Dieterlen (1951, 87) reports that these figures are called flanitokelen.

62. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Outils-2, Book 13, pp. 31–2 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N'i nana, n'i ye filaninw wolo, kelen sara, kelen balola, i bè taa ko ka filanin yiri bò i ye. I bè shè kòrò ni dununkòrò bò, ka ba bò, k'a di a bòbaga ma. Ani dugu mumè maa i bila, numu bila baaraba la, i b'a fò, “An sara ye ntura ye.” I bè ntura bò k'a d'a ma. An sara ye ntura ye ani bakòrò. An bè bakòrò ke naji ye. O bè bò k'a daw ma.

63. The bull constitutes what we would call the sculptor's payment; it is not killed, but becomes part of the artist's livestock. The ram is part of the client's ongoing expenses; it is slaughtered, cooked in a sauce, and presented to the carver before he begins work.

64. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/20/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, p. 28 of transcribed tapes. Also see the interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Outils-2, Book 13, pp. 31–2 of transcribed tapes.

65. He might be informed of this by his spirit in a dream, for instance.

66. See the interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 14, p. 34. Kojugu does not make it absolutely clear whether these offerings are made over the sculpture or whether they are part of the sculptor's payment. The complete text strongly suggests that the items cited here are offerings made to the half-completed figure. I have interpreted Kojugu's words in this sense, but it is possible that future research will determine that the red and white kola nuts and the black and white chickens are given to the sculptor, not the figure.

67. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/20/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, pp. 27–8 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: Bon, est-ce que ni mògò min bè yiri mògònin bò, a ni mògò min bè Kòmòkun bò, est-ce que u sarakaw ni o fènw ye kelen ye wa? A laadaw ye kelen ye wa? A yiriw ye kelen ye wa?

KOJUGU: A yiriw ye kelen ye. B'aa, i m'a fò, ko yirimògònin? Yiriya de ma a ni mògòw bò nyògòn ma? Nk'a bè fò de ko, yirimògònin. O ye i komi mògò, nka yiri don. A laadaw ye kelen ye. Ni i yèrè bè yirimògònin bò a nyè yèrè yèrè ma, ko k'a kè mako ta yèrè yèrè de ye, o laada de ka gèlèn ni Kòmòkun yèrè ta ye. Kòmòkun ta ye sònni de ye. Nka yirimògònin ta, o bè bila mògò de piasi [from the French place] la. N'i b'o bò mògò min ye, i bè, min ka d'i yèrè ye, i b'a fò i bè nin bò. N’ b'a bò, parce que [from the French] a bòli ma nyi. O b'a to ni i n'a tigi bènna yòrò min, i b'a bò yen. N'a yèrè ka d'i ye, i komi ne n'e bè nyògòn fè tan cogo min, n'e ko ne k'a bò i ye, ni e dun ka di ne ye, n’ b'a bò fu. N’ b'a fò cè, “Woro kelen sar'a kun na.”

68. Kojugu never specifies the exact payment made to the sculptor by the individual or village who commissions a Komo mask. In regard to the ongoing expenses of the commission, he does say that the artist must offer either two, or ten, large red kola nuts (danworo bilen fila or danworo bilen tan), and a red cock (manadunun), to the tree growing out of a termite mound that is cut to make the mask (interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/14/84, Book 8, pp. 3–4 of transcribed tapes). If the sculptor is carving the mask for himself, he provides these items; otherwise the client must provide them.

When the artist has returned home with the wood, he offers one large red kola nut and a chicken before beginning work, and he repeats the same sacrifice after finishing the mask (interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/20/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, p. 16 of transcribed tapes). It is unclear whether the second offering is provided by the “owner” or by the sculptor of the mask.

Once the mask has been handed over to its “owner,” it is consecrated either with a chicken sacrifice (if it has been commissioned by an individual), or by offering both a chicken (eaten only by the Kòmòtigi) and a red billy goat (if the mask has been commissioned by a village) (interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/20/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, p. 19 of transcribed tapes). The consecration sacrifices are certainly the “owner's” responsibility rather than the sculptor's. The normal yearly sacrifice for the Komo consists of two large red kola nuts, a red cock, and a red billy goat. When the sacrifice is made with the intention of causing harm, a red dog is offered in the place of the goat (interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/14/84, Cissoko 6–14, Book 8, p. 13 of transcribed tapes).

69. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 14, p. 15 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: … jòn kamalen ni jònmuso d'i ma. Ka jòn bilakoro ni, eè, jòn mpogotigi d'i ma.

70. This is a continuation of the passage concerning the reasons for the creation of both group-owned and personally owned sculptures. This text was cited earlier in this chapter and begins, “Here, among us black people, the lineage of blacksmiths, even if the village is large, the wood [i.e., the ritual object] belonging to the village as a whole is on its own.”

Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 14, p. 14 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Yiri ko, i b'a kè ni sawura ye. Mògòw bè wili ka na s'i ma. Hali ni kabila b'a fè, an bè nin yiri nyini, u bèn'a bò i fè. I b'a dilan, k'a d'u ma: jòn muso an'a kò-rò den, sokè n'a kilike. I b'a dilan, ko kabila.

71. Today the traditional payment in slaves is usually replaced by livestock. The passage just cited suggests that a nursing mother is equivalent in value to a stallion with saddle and accoutrements. Some sculptors will also accept a bull in the place of a particular type of human being.

72. See note 69 for citation.

73. For citation see note 99, Chapter 2.

74. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, pp. 71–2 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Ani jòn nègè. O bè dilan ko garisi garisi nyògòn nun na. O bèe tun bè dilan jòn muso n'a kò rò den, jonkè ni jònmuso, jòn sunkuru. O bèe tun bè dilan olu de la. An tè jòn ko tile la. Mògò tan'a fò an bè jòn ko kuma yèrè fò a rò.

INTERVIEWER: I b'a fò kè. Fèn min tèmènna. N'i m'a nyafò ne ye, anw b'o dòn cogo jumèn? A tè tunun wa?

KOJUGU: A bè tunun. A bè tunun.

INTERVIEWER: Bon, mun na, i tun bè jòn di olu la? Parce que, a baaraw de tun ka gèlèn wa? A jinaw de tun ka gèlèn wa? Laada de don wa? Ou bien, mun?

KOJUGU: Jinè ko t'a rò. Mèlèkè ko t'a rò. N'i ma jòn di, n'a dilala bolo jugu la k'a d'i ma, a tè mako nya i ma.

75. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, p. 69 of transcribed tapes.

76. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, pp. 76–7 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: A bè a yir'i la. A bè a yir'i la, kafò, karisa, nin mògò masina bè bò nin yòrò in na, nin baara in nò fè, a bò tan tan. A fò tan tan. N'a nada, a fò a ka nin bò. A bè na mako min na, a ka nin kè sarakati ye, e yèrè, e ka nin kè sarakati ye. Min nalen, o mako bè nya, e bè tògò sòrò. Mògò wèrè bè na. Jina b'a f'i ye ten. Awa, n'o tigi nat'e ma, e ka … saraka min fòlen ye nin ye, e k'o doni bi, mògò min nalen ka n'e sègèrè, e k'o doni bi o kan, o k'o saraka fila bò, awa, i la konya barika bè taa o tigi le fè dòoni dòoni ka i bò. E k'o karan, o y'a sòrò o y'e la barika min'i la. O bè sòrò o denjuguya fè. Ni se t'i ye, saraka fòr'i ye, mògò min bèn'i ma, o la saraka fòr'i ye, n'o nana, o tigi la saraka fò a ye. N'i bè juru ta, min fòr'i ye, i k'o bò. N'i m'o kè, fo fèntigi nalen, e y'a dòn fèn y'a bolo, awa, fèn y'a bolo, n'i ye min fò a ye, a t'i sòsò, a bè silan i nè, a bèi malora i ma, a b'i bona, e a'a dò a ye o ansila la, ni a'a beò a'a de ma, a bèi mago nya o ye, a tè mako nya e yèrè ma tugun dè.

77. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 14, p. 17 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N'u nana kelen ye, min ye fama ye, i bè donimba bin o kun, o ye fama de ye. A nana famaya fèn nyini i fè. Min nana fantan fèn ye, a yèrè ni kisi nò fè, i bè fantanya fèn d'a kun. Nka, ni e ye donimba ta k'a da fantan kun, k'o ye fantan ye, ko nin dò nin ye fama ye, k'i bè siran o nyè, min baaralen, a tè mako nyè fama ma. I bè bèe ta dilan i ye. Bèe ta bè mako nyè i ye.

78. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, pp. 52–3 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: A bò tuma, ni a ma fò k'i la, “Sariya ye joli ye?” E ko n'a fò, ko a sara ye nin ye. N'a bòra ka ban, n'i y'a d'a ma, n'a ko k,’ “A sara ye joli ye?” I b'a fò, “Aaa,” ko, “An m'o fò a daminè tuma dè.” O tuma, n'i yèrè ye min sòrò, i k'o soki a kun na. Nyama tè e la. Min y'i bil'a bòli la, nyama t'o la.

INTERVIEWER: Nka, n'i m'o kè dun?

KOJUGU: N'i m'o kè, n'i m'o kè, a nyama bè i yèrè de tinyè. A b'i la lu kè kòfè fèn ye, k'i la lu tinyè, k'a nakasi. Lu cilen tè, lu lòlen tè.

79. The gift is disquieting partly because it is untouched and perfect – and therefore bears great nyama – and partly because it implies that the giver is requesting a major concession. For instance, an important sculptor might receive such a gift as the opening gesture in negotiations to persuade him to accept a particularly difficult commission. Such gifts thus strike terror into the hearts of the recipients, for they know that they will be asked for something they do not wish to give later on, but they are unaware of what this might be.

80. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/22/84, Modèles-2, Book 13, p. 2 of transcribed tapes. For the full citation see note 5 of this chapter.

81. Sculptors can and do store ritual objects for more or less lengthy time periods while a client assembles the requisite laadaw.

82. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/22/84, Modèles-2, Book 13, p. 1 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: K'a bò ten en cas [from the French] la. Peut-être [from the French], ni kòròlen in nana ka na tinyè, ka kura in to yen, i b'o bil'a o piaci [from the French place] la. Nin kura in yèrè be, ni mògò wèrè nana nyabò a fè k'a to yen, i bè a di o tigi ma.

Trees and Tools

1. These may have been obtained previously in dreams. In this case, the period of wandering may be very short or even nonexistent. Artists vary in this respect.

2. Chernoff (1979, 16–18) cites an example of receiving specific instructions regarding what type of grass he should find in the bush and pick as one of the ingredients for a ritual object (the “cat's hand”) that would aid him in learning to drum according to the correct Dagomba style. In Chernoff's case, the instructions did not result from a spirit message, but were provided by a great Dagomba drummer, Alhaji Adama Alhassan. The command to look for and pick a single stem of a particular type of grass that would be taller than all the others of its variety was an inherited part of the “cat's hand” recipe. However, Chernoff's instructions are an excellent example of the type of counsel that would be provided to a Bamana sculptor by his spirit; and although Chernoff does not mention this, Alhaji's instructions may have originated in an ancient master-drummer-spirit relationship.

3. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/20/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, p. 21 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Yiriw bèe tè k'a ye. Yiriw bèe tè k'a ye. Kafò, n’ bòra ka don kungo kònòn, n’ ye yiri ye ka o tigè, yiriw bèe tè k'a ye. O de b'a yiri nyini gèlèya.

4. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/20/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, p. 20 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Min ka gèlèn, a yiri yeli de ka gèlèn. Yiri yeli de ka gèlèn. N'i ye yiri ye, k'o ye a yecogo la, o de ka gèlèn.

5. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, p. 83 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Min ka gèlèn, yiri nyinin tògòma b'o rò, i bè tògòma!

6. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 14, pp. 37–8 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: Est-ce que, numuw minw bèe bè se ka Kòmòkunw bò, est-ce que, a bèe bè se ka yirimògòninw dilan wa? Numu o numu, n'a bè se ka Kòmòkun dèsè, est-ce que a bèe bè se ka yirimògònin bò wa?

KOJUGU: A bèe bè se ka yirimògòninw dilan. Nka, a dilan cogow de tè kelen ye. K'a dilan ten, k'a dilan ten k'a di denmisènninw ma u k'a kè nyenajèlan ye, ani min b'a dilan k'a kè makonyalan ye, o tè kelen ye. Min b'a dilan, kafò a bè dilan k'a kè makonyalan ye, o mògò de man ca.

INTERVIEWER: Bon, difaransi [from the French différence] jumèn de bè numuw cè? Mun na a mògòw man ca? Difaransi jumèn de bè u ni nyògòn cè?

KOJUGU: Difaransi min bè u ni nyògòn cè, dò b'a ye, a dilalen ye, o bè se k'a dilan, o ye k'a kè tilonkèlan ye. Nka, nin yiri, ni n’ ye nin tigè, nin ka kan ka kè, n’ bè nin kè yirimògònin ye, nin bè kè ka nin mako dilan, ni min t'o yiri dòn, o yiri b'a rò a dan ma. A ka kan ka tigè, sufè, o yiri b'a dan ma. Nin ka kan ka tigè ji da la, ji min tè ja, o yiri b'a dan na. Nin ka kan ka tigè kulu kuncè rò, o yiri b'a dan na. Nin yèrè ka kan ka tigè kaburulo rò, o yiri b'a dan na. Donc, ni mògò min t'o difaransi lòn ko fo n’ bè s'a dilali la ten, awa, ni n’ ko a dilanbaga man ca, a fò kòrò de ye nin ye.

7. Bazin (1906, 368) identifies the lènkè as Afzelia africana and gives danga as a synonym. Salimata Kone preferred the latter term as did some other informants. Dumestre (1983, no. 2, 242) lists only danga and identifies it as Afzelia africana or Annona senegalensis. Thoyer-Rozat (1981, 137) lists only linge and identifies it as Afzelia africana. Garnier (1976, 18, 20) lists the danga and the linké as synonyms and identifies the tree as Afzelia africana.

8. M'Fa Jigi functions as the paradigm of the gifted artist and inventor for the Bamana and Malinke. For a detailed discussion of the first artist's character and his possible historical dimensions see Brett-Smith 1995. For M'Fa Jigi's role as the progenitor of the bulaw see Chapter 1, note 49, and Brett-Smith 1995.

9. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, p. 79 of transcribed tapes. Bazin (1906, 150) identifies the jala as the “cailcédra.” Dumestre (1984, no. 3, 377) identifies the jala as Khaya senegalensis, as do Thoyer-Rozat (1981, 65) and Garnier (1976, 24).

10. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, p. 79 of transcribed tapes. Bazin (1906, 142) lists the dugura as “a fruit tree, one of the Terebinthacée,” and notes that it is used to make canoes. He also notes that there is another species that grows in the bush and does not bear fruit. Dumestre (1983, no. 2, 342) identifies the dugura as Cordyla pinnata, as does Thoyer-Rozat (1981, 62). Garnier (1976) does not identify the dugura.

11. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/20/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, p. 22 of transcribed tapes. Neither Bazin (1906) nor Dumestre (1981–9) provide a botanical identification for the sanan. Thoyer-Rozat (1981, 142, 144–5) identifies the sanan as Daniella oliveri, as does Garnier (1976, 22).

12. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/20/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, p. 21 of transcribed tapes. Bazin (1906) does not identify the benbe. Dumestre (1981, no. 1, 93) identifies the benbe as Lannea acida or Odina acida. He notes that most authorities identify the benbe with the mpeku, Lannea acida. However, some of Dumestre's informants state that the two trees are not the same; the benbe is said to resemble the mpeku, but to possess smaller leaves and lighter colored bark.

Thoyer-Rozat (1981) does not identify the benbe. Garnier (1976, 18) identifies the benbe with Lannea acida.

13. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/20/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, p. 21 of transcribed tapes. Bazin (1906) does not identify the balenbo. Dumestre (1981, no. 1, 46) identifies the balenbo as Crossopterix febrifuga, as does Garnier (1976, 16). Thoyer-Rozat (1981) does not list the balenbo.

14. Ngolo Diarra, professor of botany at the Ecole normale supérieure, Bamako, identifies the fonfonfogolon as Calotropis procera (Ait.) Ait. F. He observes that fogofogo, nponponpogolo, npolon-polo, and sugunonjibara are all synonyms for the fonfonfogolon (personal communication, 1/3/93).

Bazin (1906) does not list or identify any of these names. Dumestre (1985, no. 4, 580–1) identifies the fógonfogon as Calotropis procera. Thoyer-Rozat (1981, 127, 163) identifies the furofugo as Calotropis procera. Garnier (1976, 8) identifies the mfonfonfogolon or mfogonmfogon as Calotropis procera. He also identifies jabidafura as Calotropis procera (1976, 27).

15. Bazin (1906, 90) identifies the bumu as Bombax cornui. Dumestre (1981, no. 1, 183) identifies the bumu as Bombax costatum. Thoyer-Rozat (1981, 162) identifies the bumu as Bombax buonopozense. Garnier (1976, 18) identifies the bumu as Bombax costatum (kapok). He notes that it was formerly – and wrongly – identified as Bombax buonopozense.

16. Bazin (1906, 139) identifies the dubalen as Artocarpée ulmacée and gives dugalen as a synonym. Dumestre (1983, no. 2, 335) identifies the dubalen as Ficus thonningii, and notes that a parasite of the dubalen is used to wage war on sorcerers. Thoyer-Rozat (1981, 162) also identifies the dubalen as Ficus thon- ningii, as does Garnier (1976, 18).

17. Dr. Diarra tentatively identifies the kobo as Ficus ploztypbylla Del. He comments that it can also be called gaba, nkaba, nkobo, or kalabana, (personal communication, 1/3/93).

Bazin (1906, 297) does not list the kobo, but it is possible that his kobi (Caropa touloucouna) is the same tree. Neither Dumestre (1981–9) nor Thoyer-Rozat (1981) lists the kobo. Garnier does not list it either, but does identify the kobi as Carapa procera (1976, 19).

18. Bazin (1906) does not list the mangoro or mango. Dumestre (1989, no. 7, 1143) identifies the mangoro simply as “mangue.” Thoyer-Rozat (1981, 137, 139, 164) identifies the mangoro as Mangifera indica, as does Garnier (1976, 24).

19. I do not attempt to give a full list of the trees that are used and those that are avoided. I would hope that other students of the Bamana would extend these brief notes, and bring a far greater botanical knowledge than my own to fieldwork with sculptors.

Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Outils-2, Book 13, p. 17 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: Mun na, i t'a kè fonfonfogolon?

KOJUGU: Yiri barikama tè. N'i y'a k'a ye, i tè hall lèri [from the French l'heure] tilancè sòrò baara la, n'a ma tinyè. Bumu tè k'a ye, yiri sima tè. Dubalen tè k'a ye, yiri sima tè. Nkòbò tè k'a ye, yiri sima tè. Mangoro tè k'a ye, yiri sima tè. An tè olu k'a ye.

INTERVIEWER: Nka, jina ko tè, foyi tè?

KOJUGU: Jina ko tè, foyi tè. Yiriw simaw le tè.

20. Basi Fane also observed that both the bumu and the dyafereke are trees commonly used for ritual objects. Written notes on interview with Basi Fane, 1/25/84.

Neither Bazin (1906), Dumestre (1981–9), Thoyer-Rozat (1981), nor Garnier (1976) identifies the dyafereke. For the time being, this tree remains unidentified.

Dr. Diarra confirmed that the dyafereke is almost certainly a different tree than the lènkè (Afzelia africana). However, he was unable to identify more precisely, although he is still working on the problem (personal communication, 10/22/93).

Dese Cissoko reported that the ntomi and the jala also possess great nyama, but he did not say whether they were used to make ritual or nonritual objects, or both.

Written notes on interview with Dese Cissoko, blacksmith from the Jitumu region, 1/12/84. Besides forging knives, circumcising, and digging wells, Dese is also an expert in both cowrie and sand divination.

21. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/20/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, p. 21 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: M'Fa Jigi nalen ka bò Makan, a la ton dènna yiri fòlò, fòlò, fòlò min na, o ye balenbo ye. O kosòn, balenbo, o sen bè an la do baara nin caman, balenbo sen y'a rò.

22. See the interview with Nyamaton Diarra, 4/20/84, Book 19, pp. 59–60 of the transcribed tapes for M'Fa Jigi's invention of the bicycle, and pp. 61–3 for the attribution of the outhouse, first to white people, and then to M'Fa Jigi. M'Fa Jigi is supposed to have bestowed these inventions on white people in mythic times, for many Bamana assume that these inventions have existed since time immemorial. Nyamaton reports that Jigi has a white or Arab ‘brother’ who plays an important role in the tale cited above. Other sources also suggest that Jigi has a special relationship with whites, who are thought to have “cooperated” with him and therefore to have gained priviledged access to his inventions.

For an English translation of the above-cited interview with Nyamaton and a detailed discussion of M'Fa Jigi's character and his possible historical dimensions see Brett-Smith 1995. For M'Fa Jigi's role as the progenitor of the bulaw see both the text just cited and Chapter 1, note 49.

23. Today, ritual objects are commonly transported in a leather sack. A wife never touches her husband's leather sack, for not only is it an intensely personal piece of equipment, but it usually contains a man's sacred objects and medicines. During consultations it is common for a ritual specialist to reach into his sack and fish around for the appropriate object, which he then withdraws with great ceremony before consulting it on behalf of his client.

Nyamaton Diarra described a blood-encrusted leather sack suspended on a wall as the boli kumala or “the boli that speaks.” According to Nyamaton, this boli was known far and wide for its accurate predictions of the future uttered in a high, thin, falsetto voice. First interview with Nyamaton Diarra, 4/15/84, pp. 51–2. This passage is cited at the beginning of Chapter 1.

24. Dieterlen and Cissé (1972, 48) report that Komo masks are made from the bumu or kapok tree. According to my informants, this would definitely be a second or third choice of tree.

25. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/20/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, p. 22 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Lènkè bè k'a ye. N'i ma balenbo sòrò, i ma benbe sòrò, n'i ye lènkè sòrò, i bè lènkè k'a ye. Lènkè yèrè de ka nyi. Parce que, o jina yiri ye. O caman n'i ye o kè a ye, o caman de laban cogo tè nya. O de bè mògòw siran ka lènkè k'a ye.

INTERVIEWER: Mògòw caman?

KOJUGU: O Kòmòtigiw. caman laban cogo tè nya.

INTERVIEWER: A bè sa wa, fa bè don a la?

KOJUGU: Fa tè don a la. A kumakan bè kè, n'a ma se k'a laada bèe laden, a kumakan bè kè, kumakan lòkolonfòla ye. Eè, f'i k'a jina laadaw kè.

26. Dieterlen and Cissé (1972, 294) report that a Kòmòtigi whose first seven years in power are marked by various disasters such as wars, famines, epidemics, numerous spontaneous abortions, and social dissension, must hang himself. If the Kòmòtigi refused to commit suicide, the oldest and most powerful members of the society forced him to ingest a poison based on the gall bladder and intestines of a crocodile. This poison was called dunkonon lakalibali, or “the poison without an antidote.” The body of such a Kòmòtigi was not embalmed like that of a successful Komo leader, but was allowed to rot and swell for seven days in the sacred wood of the society. At the end of this time it was pounded with mortars by society members at night, and then hidden in the hollow trunk of a baobab.

27. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/14/84, Book 8, p. 15 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: The true Kòmòtigi, when he swears an oath and he speaks he doesn't go back on his word, he doesn't get upset [in speaking], and he doesn't lie. The work takes place on a termite mound constructed by the bagabaga [for identification see note 34], the kernels of grain that are there – the wild grains that the termites cut and bring into their house, together with a tree that has been struck by lightning – one must put these together for the work, and then you rinse your mouth out with that. Then, when you say that, “I have said the following …,” you cannot go back on your word.

28. Komo leaders are frequently blacksmiths and important sculptors, in which case this death would become the final payment in the artist's “contract” with his djinn. The belief in the lènkè‘s ability to destroy the Kòmòtigi–sculptor who carves it also suggests, if only implicitly, that the most effective Komo masks are those whose creation causes the death of the artist; in this case it is his life blood, drawn out of him by the treacherous lènkè, that endows his finished creation with authority.

29. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, pp. 48–9 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Ni ne ye yiri ye, ni yiri nyuman don, ni yiri nyamatò don – yiriw dòw bè, a juw turulen dugu rò. I tè lili kelen si ye kènèma. An k'o, ma ko, dugu tunun, o ma nyi. Dugu tunun, n'i y'a tigè, o ma nyi.

INTERVIEWER: O bè mun kè?

KOJUGU: Dugu tunun tigèli, a ka telin ka i denmisèntannya de. A b'i woloden-ntannya joona. Bon, n'o bòra yen, yiri min, n'a lòlen, k'a baroncè kè tan, kòròn ni tilebi, tile bè bò a rò kòròn fè, tile bè bin a rò tilebi fè, n'i b'o tigè, o ma nyi. Yiri dò bè yen, n'i y'a lòlen ye, a ka nyi i nyè na, nka ka bò dugu ma, ka taa tèmèn fo mògò kundama na, fo k'a tèmèn mògò kundama na, bolo wèrè t'a la, fo k'a yèlèn san fè, ka a bolo bòyòrò k'o kè baron saaba ye, o to yen. O ma nyi. Yiri min bè, i nana ka n'a lajè, k'i b'a tigè, a lili tè kènè ma, bagabaga sira t'a la ka yèlèn, o to yen. N'i y'a tigè, a ma nyi. N’ koni bè min dòn jiriw ko rò, min bè yira n’ na n’ ka mògòbaw fè, o ye ninnu ye.

Basi Fane also reported that the most dangerous tree of all is one with all its roots hidden below ground (i.e., the dugutunun). He observed that it is more powerful than a man. Written notes on conversation with Basi Fane, 1/23/84.

30. For the time being, the meaning of the tree whose branches capture the rising and setting sun remains obscure.

31. For identifications of the balenbo and the lènkè see notes 13 and 7 in this chapter. For the nyamacenin see the Introduction, note 26.

32. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/14/84, Book 7, p. 100 and Book 8, p. 1 of transcribed tapes. Written notes on conversation with Basi Fane, 1/25/84.

33. See note 5 for the Malinke text of Kojugu's statement.

David Gamble reports that he was walking in the bush with a Mandinka sculptor who spotted a tree with a configuration he considered appropriate for a certain type of hoe handle. The sculptor noted the spot for future reference (personal communication, 1/3/94).

34. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/14/84, Book 7, p. 97 and Book 8, p. 1 of transcribed tapes.

Issa Koné, professor of zoology at the Ecole normale supérieure, Bamako, identified the baga baga kisèw as worker insects of Trinervitermes geminatus (personal communication, 1/24/93).

35. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/14/84, Book 7, p. 100 of transcribed tapes.

36. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/14/84, Book 7, p. 99 of transcribed tapes.

Professor Koné identified these termites – which Kojugu calls bagabaga daba, “termites with the big mouth” – as Macrotermes bellicosus. Mr. Adama Mara added that the term daba is generally used to refer to soldier insects, which do, in fact possess large jaws (personal communication, 6/30/93). Professor Koné characterized Macrotermes bellicosus as building dome-shaped mounds, in contrast to the related species, Macrotermes natalensis, which constructs similar but larger and even more elongated cathedralshaped structures (personal communication, 1/24/93). It is unclear exactly which species Kojugu refers to, or if his terms actually include both species. I am indebted to Professor Gotwald for providing the most recent name for these termites (personal communication, 8/30/93).

37. Kojugu calls these insects “the termites that are eaten by chickens” (sbè-don-baga-bagaw). Professor Koné identified these insects as the larvae and nymphs of Trinervitermes geminatus (personal communication, 1/24/93). When in the field, it appeared as though this was the only species used for feeding chickens, but this should be confirmed through further research.

Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/14/84, Book 7, pp. 98–9 of transcribed tapes.

38. Professor William H. Gotwald commented that both Macrotermes bellicosus and Macrotermes natalensis cultivate fungus gardens inside their mounds. The fungus breaks down the wood brought into the mound by the termites and transforms it into digestible cellulose. These termites would not collect grains or store their husks, since they are exclusively wood eaters (personal communication, 8/30/93). It is possible that the identifications provided here are incorrect, and that we are dealing with a different species of termite that does eat grain; it is also possible that the Bamana belief does not correspond to scientific reality. I suspect that many Bamana sift termite dirt, cook it, and eat it, simply to fill their stomachs with a substance that reminds the body of food, even if it is indigestible.

39. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/14/84, Book 8, p. 1 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Bagabaganin dò bè yen, ni min t'a gundo nyèdòn – o t'a famuya dè. O kò, i nò betere so min kofò bagabaganin dò bè yen – a bè ko ba nyè, a bè ko ba tinyè. Mais, a gundo de sòrò man di mògòw la. A bè ko ba nyè, a bè ko ba tinyè.

40. I am indebted to Mr. Adama Mara for this information (personal communication, 6/30/93).

41. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/14/84, Book 7, pp. 99a and 99b of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Ntonda, jinè-ma-yòrò don. N'i tè nya, i bè se ntonda walawala kòròlen ma, n'i bèna s'a ma, i b'a fò, ko, “Aw ye hakè to, n’ nyè tè ko la.” O tuma ni min bè i nyè n'a ma sòn ka bò yen, hali n'i yèlènna o kan, foyi t'i la.

INTERVIEWER: Donc, o la jinaw bè yen?

KOJUGU: Nhun.

42. These are the mounds constructed by both Macrotermes bellicosus and Macrotermes natalensis.

43. See Brett-Smith (1982b, 27). In this article I refer to the Basiae as protecting the initiate from malevolent sorcery by terrifying anyone who might want to interrupt the cicatrization of the wound.

In 1984 Salimata Kone reported that the Basiae would kill any enemies of the wearer who looked at it. Interview with Salimata Kone, 4/20/84, Grossesse-2, Book 2, p. 33 of transcribed tapes. The passage reads as follows:

SALIMATA: But, in any case, according to my ideas, this Basiae, if you see that the newly circumcised young women wear it, if you observe that a girl wears it when going to her husband for the very first time, our old people say that when your enemies lay their eyes upon that [the Basiae] and if they are frightened, they die. That is it – the meaning that I know. Your enemy, the person who doesn't love you, perhaps even tomorrow he [or she] wishes that you may die, but if you attach that pagne with a white belt, as soon as he [or she] sees that, if he [or she] is afraid, that year [the following year] will not be good for him [or her]. That is its meaning.

44. When constructing a house or founding a village, elders watch to see if lizards visit the first layers of mud brick. If no lizard darts across the foundation, the house or village site will be abandoned; the reptile's absence is interpreted as a negative omen that signals bad luck, infertility, and poverty.

45. The mina is a small red antelope with horns set close together. Cashion (1982, 181) identifies the mina as the guib or bushbuck.

46. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/14/84, Book 7, p. 99a of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Nhun, parce que … u b'a fò, ko bagabaga, daba ka so ye jina ma yòrò ye, parce que sogow caman bè taa u da yen de. Minanw bè denw wolo yen, fènw caman bè taa denw wolo yen.

47. Professors Craig Packer, E. O. Wilson, and William Gotwald all commented that this belief reflects a certain measure of scientific truth, since termite mounds are cooling towers that are kept moist by the insects’ saliva. The mounds also act as funnels, moving cooler air from the soil up into the top of the construction. Furthermore, their cementlike surface creates a protective barrier against the heat of the savanna.

The ant heaps, which will shortly be discussed, are also kept cool and humid. The Bamana believe that underground streams run below the ant heaps (C. Packer, personal communication, 8/19/93; E. O. Wilson, personal communication, 8/26/93; and W. Gotwald, personal communication, 8/30/93).

48. Dominique Zahan (1960, 220, note 4) also reports this belief.

49. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, Questions-2, Book 14, p. 38 of transcribed tapes. For the Bamana text see note 6 of this chapter.

50. Conrad (1990, 88) identifies the N'tigin as Malopterurus electricus.

51. I have been unable to identify this species, although Professor Koné has suggested that it might possibly be the viper, Bitis nasicornis. Professor Koné interviewed a fisherman who described catching a venomous water serpent similar to the N'kara three times. This fisherman was unable to provide the Bamana name for his catch, but remarked that this snake is most often found on small islands in the middle of the Niger river, where it hides in the thick grasses and foliage at the edge of the water. It measured more than a meter in length and was of a brownish-yellow color with dark patterning. The fisherman described this snake as sluggish and not at all aggressive, but as possessing an extremely dangerous bite. He also noted that it lives on small acquatic animals. According to Professor Koné, this description corresponds closely to that given for Bitis nasicornis, and would seem to resemble Nyamaton's N'kara (personal communication, 10/22/93).

52. Interview with Nyamaton Diarra, 4/20/84, Book 19, pp. 74–5 of transcribed tapes.

NYAMATON: Dò ye N'tigin ye. Dò ye N'kara ye. Ba tigitò a fè, a ka boli min binna ji rò, boli fila. Kelen ye N'tigin ye. Dò ye N'kara ye. N'kara min'i ci ji rò, ni maa t'u dafè, ni aw maa saaba don, aw teliya. Aw bè taa baji soli ka n'a sigi a kòrò. Aw bè tò ka ji funfun a la. N'a ji ma ja, a tè sa. Nka, n'a ji jara, ni jògò ma k'a kan, a bè sa. O ye sa dò ye. O bè ba rò. O ye N'karan de ye. Dò in, o ye N'tigin ye. O ye boli musoman ye. N'i y'i bolo d'a kan, i bi yèrè yèrè, k'i bò, k'i bin. Nka i bi tila ka nyamatigè, i bè wili.

53. Interview with Nyamaton Diarra, 4/15/84, first interview, Book 17, pp. 70–1 of transcribed tapes. For the full text see note 21, Chapter 6.

Also see the interview with Nyamaton Diarra, 4/15/84, second interview, Book 17, p. 93 of transcribed tapes.

Dieterlen (1951, 69) reports that the right side of the body is male and represents uprightness, firmness, and directed action. According to her, the left side is female and represents uncertainity, indecision, and unpredictable behavior.

Kojugu (interview of 6/14/84, Book 7, pp. 88–9) also identifies the right hand as male and the left hand as female. However, he also states that if one encounters a woman early in the morning one must pass her on one's left, and one must use only the left hand for sexual play and intercourse. These observations may explain why Nyamaton designated the left hand as the “woman's” and the right hand as the “man's.” What is important is not which hand is called female and which male, but that all the sources (Nyamaton, Basi, Kojugu, and Dieterlen) agree that ritual and sexual acts are performed with the left hand, while the right hand is used for ordinary activities.

54. Interview with Salimata Kone, 4/15/84, Grossesse-1, Book 1, pp. 15–16 of transcribed tapes. Here, Salimata's use of Bamana is extremely personal and idiosyncratic. It is clear that she refers both to the boy's sex and to the girl's, but it is unclear what specific sex organs she has in mind. The words Salimata uses are onomatopoetic terms that describe the visual appearance of the male and female genitalia in the fetus.

55. A small amount of the water iá also used to massage her belly.

56. I observed it used in Bamako and was also given the recipe in Kurusa. The information cited here can be found in the following interviews: with Nyamaton Diarra, 4/20/84, Book 19, pp. 80–1 of transcribed tapes; and with Salimata Kone, 4/20/84, Grossesse-3, Book 2, p. 52 of transcribed tapes.

57. In drawing attention to this association, I do not mean to imply that there is no pharmacological value to this recipe. The N'tigin skins may or may not contain ingredients that would accelerate labor. This pharmacological question awaits further research.

58. Interview with Salimata Kone, 4/6/84, Enfantement, Book 10, p. 89 of transcribed tapes.

59. Many Bamana refer to “angels,” borrowing both the word and the concept from Islamic theology.

60. Interview with Salimata Kone, 4/6/84, Enfantement, Book 10, pp. 88–9 of transcribed tapes.

SALIMATA: Oò, ne yèrè sukora sa, an taalen bè dogò nyini. An nato, an sera tinkun dò kan, ne sinna ka sa caman melekelen ye a sen kelen rò. Eè, ne ko, ko, “Nyabara, nko, wa, sa caman filè i sen rò.” Aa! Eè! n ko, “Wa a fila bèe don!” A ko, “Eè, Salimata, k'e yèrè y'i ta lajè wa? Ko, sa bè ne sen na, ko, nk'a b'è sen la.” Ne ko, “Eè!” Suko rò sa koni. Ne sinna ka n sonzoro k'ale sen nò ta saalo tan ka yèlèn sanfè ka n’ bolo fa. A tun ka ca dè. K'olu bèe tumun murudu. Ka kunkuru dòw fili yan fè, ka dòw fili yanfan fè. A ko, oò, ko kelen nin don. N’ y'o fana kè ten. A k'o tuma na, “K'e yèrè bè taa n'i ta ye?” Ne ko, n’ ko, “Ne sen na ta, nk'u tè se so dè.” N’ ye n’ yèrè fana sen na taw kè ten. Nka ne lajòra. Ale yèrè fana lajòra. Nka kònòn fila in bèe tinyèna ka bèn a kalo saaba ma. N’ koni y'o kòlòshi n’ yèrè de la.

61. The Dogon view ant hills as representing the earth's sexual organ, and termite mounds as representing its clitoris (Griaule 1975, 17). Van Beek (1991, 140) clarifies the poor translation of termitière in Conversations with Ogotemmêli by explaining that the Dogon are actually referring to a specific type of ant (unidentified) that makes its nest in a hole in the ground. Van Beek observes that this identification, “is crucial to the sexual metaphor Ogotemmêli uses,” implying that the old man is referring to a correspondence between the ant hole and the vaginal entrance. Whatever the details of the Dogon case, it is entirely possible that the Bamana also identify both ant holes and termite mounds with the female sex. In this context it is important to note that Dumestre (1981, no. 1, 25) identifies the word babugunin not only as anthill, but also as a vulgar term for the female sex.

Mr. Adama Mara pointed out that there is a possible linguistic association between the term sculptors sometimes use for their adze blade, kise, descriptions of termites, and the name for a woman's clitoris. Literally translated, kise means “kernel” or “nut,” as in kaaba kise or “kernel of maize.” However, the Bamana use the term to refer to termites; termites are not simply bagabagaw but bagabagaw kisew or “kernels of termite,” and in fact the expression, which implies a reference to heaped-up kernels of grain, well conveys the teeming multiplicity of the insects.

When talking among themselves, women also use the word kise to designate the clitoris. Furthermore, midwives and the blacksmith women who excise call a woman who has a long clitoris with a head that falls downward like a penis, dibiritigi, or “owner of the hat,” in a curious parallel to the grey-black termite mounds “with hats” that dot the savanna landscape (interview with Salimata Kone, 4/20/84, Grossesse-2, Book 2, pp. 22–3 of transcribed tapes; and interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/4/84, Book 7, p. 100 of transcribed tapes).

As Mr. Mara noted, these expressions suggest that there may be a conceptual connection between the nyama associated with the clitoris, termite mounds, and sculptor's adzes. However, I am still not sure exactly what this connection is, or whether it is significant for the interpretation of the material presented here. Further field research may clarify this problem.

62. Ritual objects that are too dangerous to keep are usually those that traditionally required human sacrifices. Since it is impossible to make such offerings today, and a basi that has not received its due will turn on its owners with disastrous results, such objects are often sold to Europeans or returned to the djinns in the manner described here.

63. For the origin and nature of wòklòw or dwarfs see Cissé (1985).

64. Originally, bilisi was one of the names of a deformed warrior who figures in various semimythical tales from the Segu region. These tales are supposedly based on the exploits of a specific historical figure. The fame of the bilisi stories has transformed the word into a general term that the Bamana now use to describe any deformed child. Salimata employs the word in this sense.

In A State of Intrigue: The Epic of Bamana Segu According to Tayiru Banbera (Conrad 1990) Tayiru recounts the story of the original bilisi, whom he calls Amidu Nyangadu. He asserts that bilisi was not half genie, nor was he a supernatural dwarf (wòklò), but was, rather, a human born either near Segu or in the town of Macina with a grossly enlarged head and irregular skin pigmentation. Bilisi's legs were white up to his knees, his arms were white up to his elbows, and his face was white. Ámidu Nyangadu became a menace to the citizens of Segu, since he was accustomed to capturing small children on his way to the local bar and selling them into slavery in exchange for liquor. When he became impossible to bear, he was forced into exile in Macina, where he is said to have assisted the Fulani with raids on the Segu Bamana. He was finally killed by the hero Bakari Jan in an epic battle between the Fulani and the Bamana that is supposed to have occurred in 1841.

Bilisi's deformities are interpreted, like most such deformations, as signs of his extraordinary ritual and magical powers, powers that enabled him to break every rule of society with impunity.

This note is based on David Conrad's discussion of the bilisi story (1990, 268–318). For details concerning the nature of a bilisi see Conrad (1990, notes 6092, 6097, and 6123). For historical details concerning the bilisi of legend see Conrad (1990, notes 6287, 7220). Note 7220 gives the approximate date of the bilisi–Bakari Jan battle.

65. Interview with Salimata Kone, 4/20/84, Grossesse-4, Book 2, pp. 84–5 of transcribed tapes.

SALIMATA: Ayi, maa minw koni bè, n'u kuwalen bè kosèbè, sèbè, sèbè, u bè se ka taa a di olu ma, o bè komi ba … ninnu, komi kow caman bè yen o fura bè olu bolo, kow tè se k'olu sòrò. A bè di o tigilamògòw ma, olu b'a sigi ntinkènyèso la, k'i Kb don. No tè, ni o tee da, i mana taf a sigi, jinèw b'i don da la. Bèe tun t'o kèbaga ye dè. Bèe ye kèwale ba minnu lakali, n'o bònyògònnako minw bè cè min na, a ka ca – jinèw tè se ka gèrè o la few, few, a tigilamògò de bè di o tigi ma, o bè taa a sigi ntinkinyèso la. Wa jina don wa, wòklò don wa, bilisi don wa – i t'o don, o koni bè se k'a fili yen. Nka, i tè se k'a faa dè.

INTERVIEWER: I t'a faa?

SALIMATA: Ayi. N'a lafilila, fènw minnuw ta don, olu tun bè n'a ta.

It is always possible that Salimata is referring to the abandonment of living but deformed children on the ant hills. However, Salimata's description (in another interview) of her efforts to save a deformed baby born to a neighbor's daughter, her continuing insistence that the midwife's mandate is always to preserve human life, and her statement that “you can't kill such a child,” suggest that she is probably discussing the abandoment of dead infants. My own judgment is that she would view the abandonment of a living child on the antheap as a type of ‘killing,’ much as we in the West would. One should also keep in mind that the chances of such a child surviving in a Malian country town are extremely slim, since even now normal children have a good chance of dying in the first two years of life.

Furthermore, men are usually summoned to deal with the disposal of all dead bodies once they have been washed and laid out by knowledgeable women. Thus, the mere fact of summoning the men suggests that the children in question would already be dead.

Unfortunately, Professor Koné did not send me the Latin name of these ants, but he did confirm that they are quite different from termites, describing them as “a species of ant of large size and of a black color.” He also noted that “these ants are very active in the transport of cereals (above all sorghum) into their nests, which are below ground level. They work even by night, and form a long column, composed from thousands of individuals, leading to their source of provisions (cereal granaries). Thus, they can store up considerable quantities of grain” (personal communication, 1/24/93).

Professor Craig Packer observed that army ants are found throughout East Africa, where there is considerable evidence (and a widespread belief) that these insects eat flesh and will pick any animal carcass clean. As he observed, if the ants mentioned by Salimata are army ants, they may well begin the process of consuming the dead infant, although the body is probably finished off at night by carrion-eaters such as hyenas and vultures (personal communication, 8/19/93). Professor E. O. Wilson confirmed these observations (personal communication, 8/26/93). Professor William H. Gotwald, a specialist working on army ants in West Africa, noted that he had received reports of army ants attacking and killing babies left on the ground by their mothers, who were working in nearby fields. Thus, if Salimata's ants are army ants, it is very possible that the dead children are placed on ant heaps rather than on termite mounds because the army ants eat flesh, whereas termites would not.

However, Professor Gotwald also pointed out that Professor Koné's identification of these ant heaps as populated by a grain-eating insect does not support an identification with army ants. Army ants do not eat grain, and grain-eating ants would not eat human flesh (personal communication, 8/30/93). If Salimata's ants are actually herbivorous, the dead infants would presumably be consumed by carnivorous animals and birds, not by the insects.

66. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, p. 83 of transcribed tapes.

For the Malinke text see note 5, this chapter.

67. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/20/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, p. 20 of transcribed tapes.

For the Malinke text see note 4 of this chapter.

68. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 4/15/84, Création, Book 8, pp. 25–6 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: Bon, u fila la, ka nègè dan, ani ka yiridèsè, jumèn de ka gèlèn?

KOJUGU: Nègèdan de ka gèlèn.

INTERVIEWER: Nègèdan de ka gèlèn? Mun na?

KOJUGU: O ju ye tasuma.

INTERVIEWER: Tasuma bè mun kè mògò la?

KOJUGU: I bè nègè don ta rò, ka fan fè a la, k'a bilen, ka baronw kè k'a ta, k'a la kulan kuncè rò, k'a gosi. Peut-être, ni mògò ma k'i kèrèfè kafò, a kè tan, baranw bè nègè porokoto. N'a ma e yèrè jogi, a bè kèrèfè mògò dò jogi. O kòsòn, yiribaara ka nògòn ni nègè baara ye. Nka, a fila la, yiribaarala, ani nègèbaarala, yiribaarala de bè fiyen joona, ka tèmèn nègèbaarala kan.

INTERVIEWER: O de bè fiyen joona?

KOJUGU: Kosèbè! Kosèbè!

INTERVIEWER: O daliluya ye jumèn ye?

KOJUGU: Yiri nyama.

69. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, p. 45 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: U fila la, yiri de nyama ka bon. Yiri de nyama ka bon. Nyama bè yiri de la.

70. Presumably this sacrifice prevents the tools from breaking, and also from slipping and cutting the sculptor. Written notes on interview with two blacksmith elders of Npebala in the Jitumu, 6/10/84.

71. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, pp. 47–8 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Yiriw dòw bè, i b'a tigè, klissi tè fò a la, fèn tè k'i la. Yiriw dòw bè, n'i y'a tigè, n'i m'a nyama lakari, awa, a bè k'i la sunògò bana ye. N'a ma k'i la sunògò bana ye, i bolo ninnu, ninnu bè yèlèma kòfè. Ka tèkèfara kò kan ta, ka o yèlèma nyèfè. O kèra ne yèrè la. O kèra ne yèrè la. Ka ne tèkè kònòna yèlèma kòfè, ka kòfèla yèlèma nyèfè. A kèra n’ na bumu na.

INTERVIEWER: O tun ye bumu sugu jumèn ye? Kala bilen wa?

KOJUGU: Belebeleba dè. A bumu tun jòlen bè ntonbilen kan. K'a tilen, k'a tilen, k'a jè pew ka yèlèn. Ne yaalatòla ka na bumu nin ye, k'a ko diya n’ ye fo k'a dan matèmèn. N’ ye bakasi [from the French bagages] bila, ka n’ k'a kan, k'a tigèli daminè. Kabii n’ ye jele danya kelen k'a rò, bumu ye kule daminè, “Sheèè!” fo ka bumu nin tigè k'a ban, k'a bin, a n'o kule kelen bè nyògòn na. Ka taa a kuntigè, a n'o kule kelen bè nyògòn na. N’ ye n’ lo, ka sika, k'a to yen. N’ ko, “Sinin,” ko, “N’ bèn'a kama.” Dugu bè jè tuma min, ne tigè kònòna nin yèlèmana kòfè, ka kòfèla nin yèlèma nyèfè. Numu cèkòròba dò tun bè Saworo na, ko, Mamadou Jan, o de y'a furakè. Nkalon tè yiri nyama ko la dè.

72. Written notes on conversation with Basi Fane, 1/23/84. Written notes on interview with Dese Cissoko, blacksmith from the Jitumu region, 1/12/84. Dese specified that “there are certain large jalaw [for identification see note 9, this chapter] that bleed if you cut them” (“Jalaw baw dow be ye, n'i y'aw tigè basi bè bò”).

73. Written notes on conversation with Basi Fane, 2/16/84. Written notes on interview with two blacksmith elders of Npebala in the Jitumu, 6/10/84. These elders also spoke of certain trees that could be felled only by an unmarried man. In precolonial times an unmarried man would not have experienced intercourse with a woman. Thus, the implication of the elders’ statement is that these trees could be felled only by a man who was a virgin.

74. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/14/84, Boliw-2, Book 17, pp. 8–9 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Aaa, yiri koni nyama ma yòrò ye a tigè yòrò ye. A bè tigè yòrò min, ni nyama b'a la, nyama t'a la, n'i m'o lakòlòshi, o kò yiri o yiri, i bè jò a rò de, o kò yiri jòn jòn jòn, a bèe n'a ta kun-na-sigili fèn don. Mògò ni fèn bè nyògòn fè cogo min, yiri fana kunnasigi fèn de b'a la. Oò, n'i kèra lònbaga ye, i bè se ka kunnasigi to, kunnasigi wililan to ka taa i yaala, yòrò dò rò, i bè yiri tigè a kòfè. A b'a fò, “Aa, n'a tun kèra n’ nyè na, a tun tè tigè.” U i bèn'a sunògòtò sòrò, i bè se ka yiri tigè. Yiri bikan b'a lakunu; a b'a fò ko, saya koni, sunògò ni saya bèe ka kan. Ko ni nin tun kèra ka n’ to n’ nyè na k'a tun tè tigè. Awa, u bè nyògòn fènkè ten. Kow ka ca.

75. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, pp. 69–71 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: Bon, est-ce que, jinaw dòw bè yen, olu bè se ka numuw dòw kèlè, n'u bè yiri dèsè la?

KOJUGU: Jinaw bè yen. I ka kan ka yiri tigè ni laada fèn min ye, n'i m'o bò, jinè b'i kèlè, a b'i kèlè kosèbè.

INTERVIEWER: Nhun, o kèlè bè kè cogo di?

KOJUGU: O kèlè bè kè cogo min, n'i ye jinè, laada min fòr'i ye, n'i m'o dilan, e dun taara yiri tigè, ni Allah ma fara i kan, i bolo bè minè ka na so. N'i bolo ma minè ka na so, k'i bolo minè, o kòrò ye an fè farafinna k'i fiyen. So ni kungo cè, k'i fìyen. N'i ma fiyen, kaya bè jig'i la. O bè k'i la. Ne yèrè min ye nin ye, a kèra ne Kojugu. Ne, Kojugu Cissoko, a kèra ne la. Hali bi, a mògò tò balolen ye. N’ ye bumunin dò tigè, a laada fora n’ ye, n’ ma sòn. N’ ye n’ nyè tugun, ka taa a tigè. Nin tèkè kòkanna yan, nin yèlèmana ka taa kòfè, ka nin dò yèlèma kònòna. O kèra ne Kojugu yèrè la. Ka kaya jigi n’ na. Kabii o kèra, n’ y'a lòn, ni min fòr'i ye, i k'o k'a kècogo la. Nhun.

When visiting Basi Fane, Mr. Mara and I observed an elderly blacksmith, Jigi Bagayogo, who limped because of a continuing infection located between the foot and the knee of his right leg. Basi explained that Jigi had cut too many trees; it was their nyama that was attacking him. Written notes, 2/6/84.

76. In 1983 (Brett-Smith 1983, 47–8) I reported a case in which one of my informants was poisoned by his older brother out of jealousy. In 1984, Salimata Kone provided further information concerning this death that sheds light on the belief cited here. Apparently, the dead man, whom I will call Duga, had declared publicly at three successive weekly markets that his personal djinn was being attacked by another spirit. He reported that the two spirits were engaged in a continuous battle, and that he sensed that his djinn would lose the fight. Duga also said that when this defeat occurred he would become vulnerable and would die shortly thereafter.

Salimata explained that in order to poison Duga, his older brother had first consulted a ritual expert. The expert told the brother that Duga was protected by a powerful djinn, and that no poison would be successful in killing him unless the djinn had already been conquered. The ritual expert then agreed to use his own djinn on the brother's behalf to vanquish Duga's spirit, leaving the way open for the brother to administer poison successfully. Salimata commented that although the poisoning was the ostensible cause of Duga's death, the real battle for his life had been fought by the two spirits at an earlier date.

77. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/14/84, Book 8, pp. 3–4 of transcribed tapes.

Cashion (1982, 209) observes that the Bamana associate the sacrifice of both red (manandunun) and spotted cocks with traditional religious practices, whereas the sacrifice of a white cock is associated with Islam. Bamana men use red and spotted cocks as sacrifices for entering the hunters’ association.

78. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/14/84, Book 8, pp. 3–4 of transcribed tapes.

Kojugu uses the term lagalagatò, which designates a person who may be mentally sound but is neurologically damaged. A lagalagatò may stutter or lack precise control over his hands, arms, feet, and legs. A man who is a lagalagatò is considered unfit for either the office of dugutigi, the titular head of a Bamana village, or for that of Kòmòtigi, the head of the Komo society, despite the fact that he may possess the intelligence and knowledge to occupy these posts. I have overheard Bamana observers criticizing the appointment of an elderly man who could not control the trembling of his hands and his slight stutter, as the head of a team of Western consultants. The observer asked me why we would ever place power in the hands of a lagalagatò, since such a person was obviously unfit to handle it. No matter what his intelligence, a lagalagatò will never be respected because of his lack of bodily control. Such a person is in fact the opposite of the ideal ritual expert, who exercises total control over eating, defecation, pain, and all bodily movements. Thus, the transformation of a knowledgeable sculptor into a lagalagatò is an extremely severe punishment, for it wipes out the ritual expert's painfully won self-control, totally annulling his status and power.

79. Dègè is an extremely important sacrificial item for both the Bamana and the Malinke. It is made by taking either millet or rice and pounding it at least three times, until it turns into an extremely fine, white powder. In the case of millet, this flour is much finer and whiter than the normal flour used to make tot. When the woman preparing dègè finally decides that the flour she has produced is fine and white enough, the powder is mixed with a small amount of water and molded into small, truffle-sized balls. The woman places these together in a bowl, silently making a vow over them (for example, in offering this sacrifice she may wish for a son), and then offers the bowl to every household member, who takes one or two balls and eats them. This “sacrifice” is a standard procedure for women who wish to resolve a personal problem on their own, and may also be recommended by various diviners, both male and female. If a man receives instructions to make a dègè sacrifice, he must obtain the balls from a woman (usually his mother, sister, or his most trusted wife). Dègè can also be made in liquid form; the white powder is mixed with a large quantity of water or milk to produce a thin, gruellike liquid. The liquid is then used by men to anoint ritual objects (for instance a Komo mask), and is usually accompanied by blood from a sacrificial animal. After a yearly sacrifice, a sacred stone or wooden object will run red and white with a mixture of sacrificial blood and dègè.

In addition to being a primary sacrificial liquid, dègè can also be a treat; children love to eat dègè balls sweetened with honey or sugar, and women frequently make these for sale in weekly markets, where they are consumed like candies. In the sacrificial context, however, the honey and sugar are omitted from the mixture, which consists solely of uncooked flour and water or milk.

Dègè is not only a sacrifice and a candy; it also carries a powerful charge of nyama, since it is identified with a mother's breast milk. Mothers prepare liquid and dried dègè for their sons and daughters when they wean them, and when her son grows up, no loving mother will allow him to leave home to go to school in another village without giving him a plastic bag full of the dried flour (normally only boys would travel to go to school). When boys or men are feeling physically weak or depressed they will take out this package and mix their own dègè by adding water or milk to the dried flour. In drinking this brew, they return to the one constant and reliable source of moral support, their mothers. Although a young man will prepare his mother's dègè in public and then offer it to all his companions, none of them will ever accept even a sip of the mixture. Everyone is well aware who prepared the flour, and they assume that it is laced with protective “medicines” that will strengthen their companion in his moment of weakness. Dègè is thus a medium and a carrier for other drugs. For instance, women often try to feed their lover or husband a bowl of liquid dègè as a breakfast, but this is frequently refused, since such mixtures are said to contain irresistible love potions that will leave the man totally at the mercy of the woman who prepared the dègè. Dègè prepared by women from the Segu area is particularly famous in this respect.

Neither the Malinke nor the Bamana distinguish between what we would call ‘magical’ medicines or basiw added to the dègè, and active pharmacological ingredients (also called basiw). Dègè is frequently used as a base for herbal medicines prescribed by healers. For instance, a nursing woman may add substances such as the sap from the siratoro tree to dègè, which she then drinks as a drug to increase her milk supply. The identification of dègè with mother's milk and its role as a medium for drugs and “medicines” makes it a highly charged and nyama-filled substance; both men and women are constantly warned to avoid consuming dègè prepared by a woman they do not know. In fact, dègè is feared as much as it is desired, and its psychological power is extreme when compared to the simplicity of its ingredients.

Ngolo Diarra, professor of botany at the Ecole normale supérieure, Bamako, tentatively identifies the siratoro as Ficus capensis Thumb. (personal communication, 1/3/93). He adds that it can also be called seretoro.

Neither Bazin (1906), nor Dumestre (1981–9) lists the siratoro. Thoyer-Rozat (1981, 98) identifies the seretoro as Ficus capensis. Garnier (1976, 27) identifies the seretoroni as Ficus capensis. He explains that the name translates literally as “prolific,” and adds that it is used to describe a woman who becomes pregnant while she is still breast feeding.

80. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/20/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, p. 23 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N'i bè jinaw laada k'a la, malo dègè, malo dègè, malo dègènin saaba, woro jè fila, dununjè, o ye a jina laada ye. I b'o kè ka jinaw de sòn, k'a tigè o kòfè. O y'a jina laadaw ye.

81. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, p. 89 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Nyama lakari, i bè shè bò. Ni yiri gèlèn yèrè don, i bè ba bò, ka shè bò, ka woro bò. A kèra worobilen saaba ye, a kèra wolonfila ye, i b'o bò.

82. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/15/84, Création, Book 8, pp. 34–5 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: An bankena k'a kètò to.

INTERVIEWER: Hun?

KOJUGU: Nk'an bankena kasòrò an na mògòbaw b'a kè. Nka, ne yèrè koni ma yiri-ju-labin shè minè mògò la, n’ ka numuya daminè ni sisan cè.

83. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/15/84, Création, Book 8, p. 32 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: Bon, sisan, tògò bè nin bèe la wa, n'i bè taa yiri tigè kungo kònòn sisan, bon, hali ni mògò sigilen don, n'i b'a fè ka fò i numu nyògòn dò ye, i b'a fò cogo di?

KOJUGU: N'i bè taa yiri tigè wula kònòn?

INTERVIEWER: Nhun.

KOJUGU: I numu nyògòn sigilen bè, n'i dun bè taa wula kònòn de?

INTERVIEWER: Nhun. I dun y'a dòn yiri min don, i bèn'a dèsè k'a kè fèn dò ye.

KOJUGU: I b'a fò, “Karisa, n’ bèna n’ munumunu dafèla in na,” fo n’ bèna nin yiri masina sòrò ka na. “Aa, i b'o kè mun ye do?” “Aaa, dò sarala n’ na mako dò la, n’ b'a k'o ye.” Kelen, “Aa, n yèrè mako b'a la.” Tògò b'a la.

84. For the issues involved in speaking and silence in the Bamana and Malinke world see Brett-Smith (1984, 135–9) and Zahan (1960a).

85. Information concerning klissiw has been adapted from Brett-Smith (1984, 139).

86. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, p. 45 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Eè, yiri nyama lakari, eè, o ye farafinna gundo de ye. O ye klissi de ye. I b'o fò jele la, k'a fò ka yiri lamini, ka yiri tigè.

87. Written notes on interview with Yoro Jan Bagayogo in Kurusa, 4/13/84. To my knowledge, Yoro Jan carved only nonritual objects such as troughs for animals to drink out of. Yoro Jan said that it was customary to inform the tree of the client's name, irrespective of whether the wood would be used for ritual or nonritual objects.

88. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/14/84, Book 8, p. 5 of transcribed tapes. Kojugu agrees that some sculptors carve Komo masks on Fridays. This is the most commonly cited day for making the mask.

89. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/14/84, Book 8, pp. 2–3 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Ni anw don, ni anw b'a tigè, an b'a tigè sibiri don sogoma. K'a dèsè wula kònòn yen, k'a ban yen. A tè na so dè.

INTERVIEWER: Sibiri don sogoma? O b'a sòrò tile wilila wa, tile ma wili?

KOJUGU: O y'a sòrò tile bòra dòonin. Tile bòra, a ma san sòrò, awa, a ma dugu bila kosèbè. A bè tigè o waati.

INTERVIEWER: Mais, a tè tigè sufè dè?

KOJUGU: N’ m'a fò, ko, bèe n'i ka laada don. Dòw bè se k'a tigè sufè.

The hour and day cited here are valid only for Kojugu, although Saturday morning is a common time for cutting a tree destined for a Komo mask. Every important sculptor and every geographic region has slightly different rules as to timing. Nevertheless, it is clear that certain moments have a positive influence on the sculpture's power and others a negative one.

90. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, pp. 45–6 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Yiriw dòw be, ni a bincogo ma nya, i b'a to yen.

INTERVIEWER: Mun na yiri bincogo ma nya?

KOJUGU: N'i bè yiri tigè, i b'a kè kolon ye, i b'a kè kon ye, n'a binna k'a kunsin tilebi ma, i b’ a to yen. I b'a fò nafa tè sòrò a la. N'i ye yiri tigè, n'a binna k'a kunsin ba yanfan ma, i bè nafa sòrò o la. N'a binna k'a kunsin kòròn na, i b'a baara, o san, i t'a nafa sòrò o san, f'o san na yèlèma.

INTERVIEWER: N'a binna kanyaka fè?

KOJUGU: Kanyaka fè, ni yiri binna kanyaka fè, o teriw sira sòn de ka ca ni i yèrè ka mako nya sòn sira ye.

91. Much of the material in the following section depends on McNaughton's discussion of iron smelting (McNaughton 1988, 28–32). McNaughton presents a clear overview of the current technical literature on African smelting.

For a comprehensive overview and an important analytic discussion of the gender issues involved in smelting and ironworking, the reader should consult Herbert 1993. Unfortunately, her book only became available after my own was almost completed. Herbert's data is cross-cultural, but both she and I seem to have arrived at similar and mutually supportive analyses of the smelting, ironworking, and carving processes independently (personal communication, 8/24/93).

92. For a comprehensive discussion of smelting, furnace types, and iron ore see McNaughton (1988, 31–2). In Mali iron ore occurs in two forms: as small pebbles on the surface of the ground (the Banamba area), and as large lumps of bog ore three to ten feet underground. McNaughton (1988, 31) reports that pits were dug to obtain the bog ore.

Mande smelting furnaces were constructed in two basic forms: the shaft type was relatively tall and thin (six to twelve feet high), whereas the dome type was squat (less than seven feet high). For drawings of these two types see McNaughton (1988, Plates 15 and 16).

Although he describes the long ceramic air tubes that conducted air into the center of the furnace, McNaughton (1988, 31–2) does not indicate whether Mande furnaces were natural draft or bellows-driven. All the furnaces I was shown in the field appeared to be natural draft, and no blacksmith I interviewed ever referred to the use of bellows for smelting. While these observations fit with Herbert's mapping of the occurrence of natural draft and bellows-driven furnaces, and her identification of the Mande as an area where only natural draft furnaces were in use (Herbert 1993, 9–10), it would be useful to confirm this point through further research.

According to Mr. Mara, guari nègè (“furnace iron”), nègè fiyn (“black iron”), and guan nègè kolow (“furnace iron bones”), are all terms used to describe traditionally smelted iron. Nègè duman (“sweet iron”) denotes traditionally smelted iron that is hard, but which can also be worked easily (personal communication 7/27/93). Tubabu nègè (“white foreigner's iron”) describes all imported iron.

However, one suspects that further interviews with blacksmiths would provide more precise definitions of each name, especially guan nègè kolow, which may well indicate a specific portion of the iron produced in the smelting process. Professor Herbert commented that obtaining precise definitions for each term would probably require sitting down with an experienced smith, showing him samples of different-quality iron, and discussing these at length. In Togo, she was able to obtain precise terms for different types of traditionally smelted iron only by using this method (personal communication, 8/24/93).

93. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Outils-2, Book 13, p. 18 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Nègè min bè kè jele nègè ye, fold, fòlò, fòlò nègè, o ye guan nègè ye. Mais, nègè min don, guan nègè kolo don. A kolo de bè kè jelew ni sèmèw ni katlèninw ni tòntònw ye. Guan nègè kolo, o de bè k'a ye, ani kulan, ani marteau, nègè kolo de bè kè o ye.

For a full discussion of the various terms for traditionally smelted iron, see note 92, this chapter.

94. Basi commented that once imported iron (tubabu nègè) breaks you cannot fuse it back together again, as you can with traditionally smelted iron (farafiyn nègè). Written notes on conversation with Basi Fane, 1/27/84.

Professor Herbert observed that the belief in the technical superiority of traditionally smelted iron is widespread throughout Africa, but that so far it has not been supported by laboratory testing. In fact, such tests have indicated that Western iron produces better tools (from a technological point of view) than the traditionally smelted metal (personal communication, 8/24/93). Thus, Basi and Kojugu's observations may not be technically accurate, but they do express these blacksmiths’ emotional and ritual attachment to traditionally smelted iron.

95. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/14/84, Boliw-2, Book 16, p. 67 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Sanu yèrè yèrè.

96. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/14/84, Boliw-2, Book 16, p. 68 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Awa, wulu de bè fag'a la. A bè sòn ni manandunun bilen ye, danworo bilen fòlò bè ci a la, ka manandunun fag'a la. Ka wulu kè k'a son. Hali bi, o bè kè anw yèrè fè yen. Hali bi, o bè kè anw yèrè fè yen. I bè wulu fag'a la, ani bakòrò bilen.

97. For the Bamana and Malinke the true albino is not colorless, but has copper-colored skin and reddish-gold hair.

98. Jonckers (1979, 111) gives two days as the smelting time.

99. For this interpretation of menstruation see my forthcoming article, “The Red Iguana,” to be published in RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, 1995.

100. See note 92, this chapter for a discussion of this term.

101. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/14/84, Boliw-2, Book 16, p. 66 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Mais guan nègè, numu min sara ka nègè to guan so kònòn, o la nègè, o de bè bò, o de bè dilan k'o kè bonninan ye. Komi, o kèra su ye ka ban, o bolo fèn, n'o kèra k'i bon, i bè kè su ye.

102. This analysis is derived from my informants’ comments; I do not mean to imply that every informant is necessarily aware of each step of this argument. Blacksmiths may very well understand what is at stake in the use of tubabu nègè implicitly, rather than explicitly. As with all artists, the capacity to verbalize intellectual arguments varies from carver to carver.

103. Today most sculptors use tools inherited from their fathers for ritual purposes. Ordinary tools for everyday purposes are usually new.

104. Probably because the principal investigator was a woman; it is hoped that a male researcher will carry my preliminary explorations further.

105. The tiny tools similar to dentists’ instruments that were once used for incising features and scarification patterns on human figures have usually vanished.

106. For example, Basi Fane reported that his sons and nephews had taken, used, and lost his set of ritual tools. Basi requested his son Bakari to replace a tiny ritual chisel, in order that he might carve the details of the Tyi Warra mask he was making for me. Despite the fact that Bakari did his best, he was only able to turn out a chisel far larger than the one his father had inherited. This instrument was too clumsy for Basi to use with anything like the precision he wished. Basi's experience with his son's lack of skill parallels my own with another relatively young blacksmith in the Beledugu. This smith, a man about thirty-five years old, was unable to reproduce the iron binyew, or metal palette knives, used to draw the details on mud cloth. Even when using an old example as a model, this smith could produce only a much larger version of the instrument, a rough tool that was actually useless for drawing the precise, fine lines required to design a traditional mud-cloth pattern. It would appear that the present generation of middleaged smiths has lost the ability to create and use the precision tools that formerly enabled smiths to carve and incise the fine details characteristic of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century ritual sculpture.

107. The reader should also consult McNaughton's excellent description of the Bamana blacksmith's tool kit (1988, 26–8).

108. McNaughton (1988, Plate 9) illustrates an axe that he calls a semen. Bazin (1906, 524) defines the sèmè as a ‘sort of axe that the indigenous people carry over their shoulder,’ leaving it unclear whether he is referring to an adze or an axe, since both adzes and the axe illustrated in McNaughton can be carried in this manner. However, Bazin (1906, 158) and Dumestre unequivocally (1984, no. 3, 400) identify the jele as an axe (hache).

My informants consistently used the term jele to designate a large tool used to fell trees, whereas they employed sèmè for the medium-sized adzes used to shape previously cut wood. It may be that some jelew are simply very large adzes, while others have a true axe form with the blade parallel to the handle.

109. Written notes on interview with Noumou Madou Danyogo at Koukouni, 6/10/84.

110. This list of tools is derived from the following interviews with Kojugu Cissoko: 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, pp. 57–65 of transcribed tapes; 6/24/84, Outils-2, Book 13, pp. 11–18 of transcribed tapes; and 6/15/84, Création, Book 8, pp. 39–40. Information was also obtained from an interview conducted on 5/25/84 with FaMusa Kone, N'YiriCe Kante, Kojugu Fane, and Métie Cissoko of the village of Kolon near Buguni.

111. It is possible that McNaughton's doliw are Kojugu's Katlèni and Loyi. Names of tools would seem to vary greatly from region to region and artist to artist.

112. In the interview conducted with FaMusa Kone, N'YiriCe Kante, Kojugu Fane, and Métie Cissoko at Kolon on 5/25/84, my informants identified the body of the bellows as the fan daga. It is possible that the same names are used for different instruments in different geographic regions.

113. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Outils-2, Book 13, p. 26 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Ni kalanden b'a dilan, n'o y'a dilan, n'o ma se k'a manugu, awa, karamògòkè yèrè b'i gèrè k'a manugu, a fan bèe ka nyògòn ta. An k'o, ma ko, k'a dalakènyè, k'a manuguya. O ye karamògò la baara ye. Kalanden ta ye fanga la baara ye, k'a ma gosi gosi. O tè se k'a latilen, o tè se k'a dalakènyè. N'a ser'o yòrò ma, o ye karamògò baara ye.

114. Here Kojugu means both that the sèmè and the bellows are difficult to maintain in proper working condition, and that they are the most essential and therefore the most important tools. Kojugu also specifies that it is the condition of the skins over the pottery bowls of the bellows that is crucial to their effectiveness. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, p. 77 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Mais, n'i la jele da man di, n'i la sèmè da man di, fan wolo man nyi, mògò pressebaatò [from the French pressé] maa na, a tigi jigi tè tugun, e tè fèn sòrò. O gèlèya yòrò ye yen ye.

115. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, pp. 74–5 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Ni i ye sèmè ni jele dagèn, ni i ye u lamin, u man kan ka ji min min, ni e y'u min fo ka u se o dégré ma, u tè se ka baara kè dè. A da tè kari, nka u tè se ka baara kè. Bon u ka kan ka min ka se hakan min ma, ni e y'a min ka dèsè yen ma, i ma se u min hakan ma, n'i bè baara la, toujours u da bè gòlòn, toujours a da bè gòlòn.

116. The information in this paragraph comes from written notes on an interview with Numu Madou Danyogo of Koukouni on 6/10/84.

117. Neither Bazin (1906), nor Dumestre (1981–9) identify the changora. Thoyer-Rozat (1981, 111, 165) identifies the changora as Combretum glutinosum. Garnier (1976, 21) identifies the ntyakara as Combretum ghasalense and notes that it “includes at least four forms.”

118. See note 15 of this chapter for identification.

119. Bazin (1906, 428) identifies the nere as Parkia biglobosa, as do Thoyer-Rozat (1981, 94–5, 164) and Garnier (1976, 20). Dumestre (1981–9) does not yet list the nere.

120. See note 14 for identification.

121. See note 16 for identification.

122. See note 17 for identification.

123. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Outils-2, Book 13, pp. 16–17 of transcribed tapes. See note 18 for the identification of the mango.

124. Professor Diarra identifies the ngenu as Pterocarpus erinaceus Pair. He also notes that it can be called genu and geni (personal communication, 1/3/93).

Neither Bazin (1906), Dumestre (1981–9), nor Thoyer-Rozat (1981) list the ngenu. Garnier (1976, 19) observes that guenu is another pronunciation of the plant called goni. He identifies the goni as Pterocarpus erinaceus.

125. Bazin (1906, 522) identifies the nsèkènè as Balanites aethiopica. Dumestre (1981–9) does not yet list the nsèkènè. Thoyer-Rozat (1981, 152) lists the zègènè, identifying it as Balanites aegyptiaca. Garnier (1976, 21) lists the nzegene, identifying it as Balanites aegyptiaca.

126. Bazin (1906, 617) identifies the ntomi as Tamarindus indica, as do Thoyer-Rozat (1981, 108–10, 165) and Garnier (1976, 25). Dumestre (1981–9) does not yet list the ntomi.

127. Neither Bazin (1906) nor Dumestre (1981–9) list the suajè. Thoyer-Rozat (1981, 98–9, 164) lists the suajè as sagè and identifies it as Acacia seyal. Garnier (1976) does not identify the suajè.

128. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Outils-2, Book 13, pp. 15–16 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Ngenu bè kè jelekala ye. A bè kè sèmè kala ye. A bè kè katlèni kala ye. Yiri dò bè an fè, ko nsèkènè, min ju lòlen filè nin ye so kònòn yan, o bè kè jele kala ye, o bè kè sèmè kala ye. O bè kè katlèni kala ye. Ntomi bè k'a ye. O bè kè jelekala ye. O bè kè sèmèkala ye. Yiri wèrè b'an fè, ko suajè, ngòni b'a la, a bè kè jele kala ye, a bè kè sèmè kala ye, a bè kè katlèni kala ye.

129. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Outils-2, Book 13, p. 20 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N'i ye kulan kura dan, kulan kura, n'i y'o dan, n'i y'o turu, i bè woro ci a la, ka gèran ji bòn a la, ka shè fag'a la. N'i yèrè bolo seien, i bè ba fag'a la, samiya donda fè.

130. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Outils-2, Book 13, p. 20 of transcribed tapes.

131. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, p. 70 of transcribed tapes.

132. Professor Herbert confirmed that some version of this type of interpretation occurs in most ironworking African societies (personal communication, 8/24/93). For further details see Herbert 1993.

133. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Outils-2, Book 13, p. 13 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Tòndo d***e ye muso ye. Fan wolo fila min bè don tòndo wo fè, o de ye cè ye.

134. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-2, Book 13, pp. 11–12 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: I m'a fò, ko, kulan kòrò ye mun fèn si ye? Ne k'i ye, nko, kulan bè i komi sotigi. Sotigi min bè i komi so kunkolo don. Marteau, o ye bolo de ye. Fankun, o ye kònònbara de ye. Baranw, o ye bolo de ye. Bolo de bè kè ka baranw minè. Baranw de bè kè ka fènw minè. O kòrò ye, baranw ye bolo de ye. Tòntòn, o ye tigèlilan de ye. N'i ye woro d'e ma sisan k'i k'a nyimi, i b'a nyimi n'i nyin de ye. Nègè bè tigè ni tòntòn ye, o kòrò y'o ye. Fan wolo, fan wolo ye fèn min ye, n'i bè fan fè f'i k'i bolo kòròta de ka fan bila, ka i bolo kòròta ni fan wolo ye k'a bila.

135. For Kojugu's negation of any association between gender and tools see 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, pp. 62–3 of transcribed tapes. For his identification of specific tools with men and women see 6/24/84, Outils-2, Book 13, pp. 11–14 of transcribed tapes.

Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Outils-2, Book 13, p. 14 of transcribed tapes.

136. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/15/84, Création, Book 8, p. 40 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: O ye yiri nyègènnan ye. U ko, ale ma ko sònninan.

137. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, p. 59 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N’ y'a famuya, nka a bè se ka kè mògò y'a, dò b'a jate mògòninfìn fan dò ye. Nka, anw koni b'a jate baara kè minanw cogoya dò la, parce que n'i ye ale kè ka yiri baara, awa, wonin min bè a la nin ye, yiri mòrònyò bè munu munu munu munu ka b'o fè. A tè geren. A tè e lalò i la baara la, a tana défaut bila i la baara la. A kuru yòrò filè, o ye k'a kè sònimba ye.

138. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, pp. 66–8 of transcribed tapes.

139. Professor Herbert confirmed that tools frequently possess either a male or female gender in other African societies, suggesting that Dieterlen may indeed have observed specific gender markings on individual tools (personal communication, 8/24/93). Professor Herbert's comparative data (Herbert 1993) would tend to support the hypothesis that the Bamana and Malinke once ascribed a male or female gender to particular tools, but that this system has fallen by the wayside in more recent times.

140. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Outils-2, Book 13, p. 12 of transcribed tapes.

141. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, p. 62 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Den dè. Den min don, den tilennen don. N'i ma tilen, i tè se ka baara kè. O kòrò ye, ko katlèni. Nhun.

142. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Outils-2, Book 13, pp. 13–14 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Sèmè kunba, o ye ka yiri fanga ma, ka a mawalon, n'a ser'a nògòyali ma, i bè sèmè ncinin ta. O kòrò ye, i denmisèn ma ka kan ka min kè, n'i kèra cèkòròba ye, i ka kan ka baara kè hèkèmannin na.

143. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, p. 64 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Muso man kan ka maga min na, few, few, few an fè, o ye jagi ye.

INTERVIEWER: Jagi?

KOJUGU: Nhun.

INTERVIEWER: O bè yiri lèsè wa?

KOJUGU: O bè yiri lèsè. Kolon, nyò bè susu kolon min nò, o kònòn baaralen don. Jagi.

INTERVIEWER: Mun na muso tè mag'a la?

KOJUGU: N’ m'a dòn o bè kè k'a da yòrò o yòrò kan, nka muso magalen a la, n'o y'a sòrò muso nògòlen don, ou a y'a sòrò muso bè koli la, n'a magar'a la, jagi nin, n'a tora k'i jogin, i bè mèn a bana bolo. O kosòn, an b'a lakana. Numunna baara fèn bèe, ni bi, bi, bi tè, a bèe fèn nakannalen.

144. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, pp. 77–8 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Ne ko, i ma nko, n'i y'a joginnen ye, o doni tè da muso kun, o doni tè la den kun. I b'a sòrò peut-être i yèrè nògòlen i sera baara kè da rò, baara kè minan y'i jogin. N’ y'o f'i ye, nk'o doni tè la mògò si kun, nk'o doni bè la i yèrè kun. N'i ye muso tigè, i ma ko, e tar'i d'a ye, e taara baarakèyòrò la, e dun magara baara kè minanw na, e bè farati k'a baara k'a la kafò i diyar'i yèrè ye, e dun nògòlen, n'i joginna, mògò m'i jogin, i yèrè de y'i jogin. N’ tun y'o de f'i ye.

145. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, pp. 72–3 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N'o kèra numu na, nègèmaya fèn k'i jogin ten, n'o y'a sòrò e ye Fula muso, n'i ye Fula muso sunguruntigè, i nògòlen ka taa fanda la, a kèra sèmè ye, a kèra jele ye, … a kèra sèmè ye, fo a dò k'i jogin. Ou, i yèrè, i ma muso wèrè yèrè si tigè, i yèrè muso i ka si a fè, i nògòlen, i m'i ko, e ka taa fan da la, k'i bè baara kè, ko ka i yèrè nyèkun da, ko k'a kè mògòw ni-kan-ko ye, i ye nkalon tigè. I bè jogin. Ne yèrè joginn'a rò sòonò fè. O filè, o da filè nin ye, k'a sògò yan, ka na sòonò kun bò nin fasa fè. O y'a sòrò mògò taalen sunguruntigè, n’ si dilan nò. N’ m'a dòn, n’ nara ka na, n’ bòra dugu kònòn ka na n’ da. Dugu jèra ka taa fan na ko, n’ bè dabakala sògò. Sòonò bilennen, ka sòonò la dabakala kan ko n’ bè n’ tintin a rò, ka sòonò porokoto, ka n'a turu yan, ka n'a turu yan, ka n'a kun bò yan. Nhun. Nhun. Ani ni kulan ko namara b'i la, o yèrè joginni, o yèrè ta ka telin.

146. The current practice of separating ritual from nonritual tools may date from the relaxation of traditional sexual rules that followed independence in 1960, or it may have started much earlier. Given the liberal nature of contemporary sexual mores, it is the only practical solution to the problem of purity posed by carving ritual objects.

Carving and Aesthetics

1. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/22/84, Modèles-2, Book 13, p. 2 of transcribed tapes. For the full citation see note 5, Chapter 3.

2. Kojugu also notes that such an object, were it to be carved, would not receive any offerings and would not be kept in the sacred wood belonging to the Komo society. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/22/84, Modèles-2, Book 13, pp. 3–4 of transcribed tapes.

The passage cited in the text is found in the interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/22/84, Modèles-2, Book 13, pp. 2–3 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: O tuma na, ka Kòmòkun ladegen bil'a kèrè fè laada tè?

KOJUGU: Hun?

INTERVIEWER: Laada tè?

KOJUGU: K'a dèsè k'a bila i kèrèfè?

INTERVIEWER: Owò.

KOJUGU: K'a mara yen ten?

INTERVIEWER: Owò.

KOJUGU: En cas la ten?

INTERVIEWER: Owò.

KOJUGU: Laada tè. Mògò o mògò b'a kè a bè fu le di mògòw ma. A tè foyi nya.

3. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/22/84, Modèles-2, Book 13, p. 4 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: Donc, o la Kòmòkun kura tè dilan fo ni mògòw mako sera kura ma?

KOJUGU: Nhun.

INTERVIEWER: O don, wa o tè?

KOJUGU: Fo mògòw mako ka s'a ma. O kò k'a bò k'a bila yen ten, o tè kè dè.

4. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, pp. 56–7 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Hmmm. Tilonkè tè. A yiri bèe n'a cogo don. Dugu yèrè mumè b'a fò a’ ye, “Tilonkè fèn bò an ye.” Awa, o bòlen koni, o ye tilonkè ye. Nka, cèya gundo yiri – o tè tilonkè fèn ye dè. Tilonkè tè k'a la, a ni tilonkè ma surunya ka jè. Ayi.

5. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/20/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, p. 16 of transcribed tapes.

6. Unrecorded conversations with Masan Diarra throughout 1984 and 1985. Diarra noted that this procedure was linked to the creation of guan jo figures – large, almost life-size statues of men and women in various standardized poses produced for the Jo association. The Jo was formerly common in the Bougouni region, but, as far as I know did not extend into the Beledugu or Kita regions. For further information concerning the Jo and guan jo figures the reader should see Ezra (1983, 1986).

7. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, pp. 54–5 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N'i b'a lèsè k'a di denmisènninw ma, olu b'a kè tilonkèlan ye, o tè dogonni ko ye dè. I b'i sigi k'o lèsè kènè kan, k'a ban, k'a di denmisènninw ma.

Olu b'o kè u ta tilonkèlan ye. Nk'a mako-nya-ta yèrè yèrè, o ye man di kènè ma bèe fè dè. Nhun.

8. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/20/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, pp. 25–6 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Ni i y'a yiri tigè ka na, ni mògòw nyè b'a la i bolo, a ka kan ka kè min ye, sani i k'o totali [from the French totale] labò, mògòw sigilen bè kònògan. O koni, dòw bè miri komi muso kònòma, n'a jigina, n'a ma kè cè ye, a na kè muso ye. Bon, ni min da lateliyala, n'o y'i nyininkan, “K'i bè nin kè mun ye?” i b'a fò, ko, sigi ka n’ filè. “I sigi i kè n’ filè.” Oò, n'i t’ a fè k'a fò mògò ye, i b'a fò, “K'i sigi i ka n’ filè.” N'o m'i diya, i b'a fò ko, “N’ b'a kè i kònòn rò ko ye.” Bon, n'i t'a fè k'a ban mògò yèrè nyina pew, pew, n'i y'a jate sigi sigi, i b'a to ten, i bè mògòw kòlafò, k'a lèsè. O kun ye ni i y'a lèsè jama rò, i bònyònòko wèrè bè yen, o b'i nyènò bil'a ma, o fana bè se ka a bò. Nka, n'i y'a lèsè mògòw nyinama, a lèsè cogo bè numu caman kònògan, u b'i nyininkan …

INTERVIEWER: A tò laban. I ko, k'i bè mògòw kòlafò.

KOJUGU: N’ ko, n’ bè mògòw kòlafò, awa, o kun ye, awa, tubabu baara wo, farafinna baara wo, fo gundo yòrònin ka ye mògòw ni nyògòn cè a la. I bè mògòw kòlafò o yòrò la. N'i dun b'a fè ka i den kalan a la, i n'a bè taa wula kònòn ka a nyèyir'a la.

9. Bakary Traore was Basi's shadow and the only elderly man with whom the great sculptor seemed truly comfortable. Traore's family had once been slaves, and, in all probability, one of his ancestors had been given to a sculptor in Basi's family in partial payment of a ritual object. Old and trusted slaves are known for their ability to listen to all the gory details of a noble or blacksmith family's scandals, to memorize them, and to pass this knowledge on to younger members of the family. Such people have a reputation for keeping what they know absolutely secret. Their diffidence, their caretaking attitude, and their complete identification with their former owners interests make them understanding and safe confidants. This role is so well known in Bamana and Mande society that the figure of the compassionate ‘old slave’ who possesses never-to-be-revealed but powerful information becomes a social and linguistic trope. This stereotypical figure is said to possess great nyama.

10. A woman who is menstruating cannot cook for her husband, but she can prepare meals for herself and for her children. In general, blacksmiths try to avoid entering their wives’ kitchens because they fear accidental contact with a menstruating woman who may be sitting down to talk with a nonmenstruating co-wife or preparing a small meal for herself on a separate fire. If they stay out of the kitchen, men know that they will not encounter menstruating women, for the women will avoid them too, and they will be presented with meals cooked only by a nonmenstruating woman.

Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-1, Book 13, pp. 74–5 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Ne y'o f'i ye, nko n'i donna, muso bè tobili la gabugu kònòn, e dun bè baara la, i bè baara gèlèn de la, i t'a fè mògò k'a dalilu lòn, i ni mògò wèrè tè se k'a kè, ni muso bè kalo la k'a ko, muso bè don ka bò la gabugu kònòn, e nan'a sennò ròtigè, e k'a sennò ròtigè ka tèmèn ka taa i ka baara la, e k'i sigi k'i ka baara kè. A bè fò koni i ye baara cè nyi kè, barika t'a la, nafa t'a la. O ye numuw tangakun ye gabugu ma.

11. The Bamana are well aware that a woman may begin bleeding before her period really starts, and that spotting can occur as menstruation ends as well as in the middle of her cycle.

12. Interview with Nyamaton Diarra, 4/15/84, Book 17, p. 68 of transcribed tapes.

NYAMATON: Saya jumèn ka jugu? Muso kònòma maa sa.

INTERVIEWER: O de ka jugu ni saya bèe ye?

NYAMATON: O de ka jugu ni saya bèe ye. Muso kònòma salen, a n'a den sara nyògòn na. Ni kelen ye tinyè ye kè, nka ni fila dun? A bè fò ko karisa torà musokèlè rò. Musokèlè de ye, muso kònòma maa sa. O kaburu de, u mako b'o la. U bè taa ka taa o baara k'o kan.

13. Interview with Salimata Kone, 4/20/84, “Grossesse-2, Book 2, p. 20 of transcribed tapes.

14. The person who actually wears the mask is not the Kòmòtigi, but a younger man, the Komo suruku or “Komo hyena,” who is chosen for his ability to go into possession and communicate with the other world when he is dancing the mask.

15. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-1, Book 13, pp. 61 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: O kosòn, bula den na, ni i bè baara kè, n'i ye baara dòn su sibo rò, i b'a to i kònòn fo ka kalo kelen, kalow fila, kalow saaba, i b'a baara kè.

The time period cited corresponds (in principle at least) to the four and a half weeks that Basi Fane made me and my associate wait while he decided whether or not it was safe to accept our commission and carve a Kita style Tyi Warra mask in public.

16. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 14, pp. 33–4 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Ne ko a dò bè dilan alamisa, o ye musow la sankan ye. Dò bè dilan ntènèn, o bè dilan kodòn kama, dò bè dilan juma, o bè dilan fanga la. I sònna, i ma sòn, o bè kè. Nhun. I m'a fò, ko nkalon ni tinyè ko, “Jumen ka ca?” Nyuman man ca dè. A bèe n'a ka baara don. Nin Ion tile wolonfila in bèe la, i ka kan ka yiri min baara lon min ma, i ka kan ka yiri min baara lon min ma, n'i y'a baara nin lon ma, k'a kè nin kun ye, o tè cè. N'i y'a baara nin waati la, k'a kè nin kun ye, o tè cè. A bèe n'a ta lon don.

17. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/14/84, Boliw, Book 16, p. 97 of transcribed tapes.

18. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/14/84, Book 8, pp. 2–3 of transcribed tapes. See Chapter 4 for the English text of this passage and footnote 89, Chapter 4, for the Malinke text.

19. Interview with Nyamaton Diarra, third interview, 4/16/84, Book 18, p. 88 of transcribed tapes, and conversations with Basi Fane.

20. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/20/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, pp. 17–18 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Lèsèli yèrè bè kè cogo min, n'i n'a nana, n'i yiri nana, n'i b'a lèsè, i b'i sigi k'i nyèsin ba yanfan na, k'i kòsin saheli la. I bè sèmè ta, ka sèmè ta, ka sèmè danya fòlò k'a rò, k'o janba ta, ka o la dugu ma, ka i sigi o kan.

21. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, p. 49 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Ni mako nya yiri yèrè yèrè don, dòw bè tile o tile, sèmè danya saaba. Dòw bè tile o tile, sèmè danya kònòntòn, lèsèli sèmè danya kònòntòn. N'i b'o dakun na, fo k'i tila, o bènna tile bikònòntòn ma, o bènna tile binaani ma, o bènna kalo saaba ma, i tè se muso ma.

22. Written notes on conversation with Basi Fane, 2/10/84. However, when Basi carved our Tyi Warra mask he worked nonstop from dawn to dusk, barely breaking his concentration to eat. It may be that Basi's fear of the repercussions that might arise from executing our commission determined this breathtaking pace. It may also be true that Basi did not consider our Tyi Warra to be a true ritual object, since he observed only some of the appropriate interdictions while he was working for us. If Basi considered our mask to be a commercial proposition, this would explain his fast pace.

23. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/14/84, Book 8, p. 6 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Tile fila t'a ban de. A baara, a baara nyèmènè nyèmènè yòròw ka ca. Nhun.

24. Unfortunately, I do not know at what date this change occurred, but it must have begun almost immediately after colonization due to new demands for teenage and young-adult manpower.

25. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Outils-2, Book 13, p. 30 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Musow yèrè tè doroko anw na baara kè minanw, … anw na baara kè yòrò lo, ni numu musow tè. Musow yèrè jate o jate, o tè doroko an nò, an t'a fè. N'an bè numuya baara la, an t'a fè musow wèrèw ka gara an na. A man di an yèrè ye. Ni muso garal'i la, ni hali a tora baro la, baara yòrò dò bè yen, hal'i kumatò n'o ni sèmè jigini bènna, ka i to kuma la, a bè défaut bil'o baara la, kelen n'a kèra k'i to hali nègèdan la, nègè yòrò dò bè tinyè i bolo. O bè sòrò baro fè. O kosòn, an ni musow ka duruku nyògòn na an ka baara yòrò, o man di an ye. A tè se ka kè.

26. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/11/84, Djinns-2/Ciw, Book 14, p. 89 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N’ ka kuma kelen don, n'i yèlèmayòròw bonyana, awa, n'i yèlèmayòròw bonyana a kun fila nòfè, i b'a bèe tògò sòrò. N'i yèlèmayòròw ma bonya, i dan ye bolokoli ye, i b'o kè, ka tògò sòrò o la. N'i dun kèra yiribòla ye, o tè jangolako ye, o ye fèn dogonnen de ye. Mògòw koni b'a dòn, kafò peut-être i bè se ka yiri baara, nka nin yiri kelen don, nin yiri kelen don, ou a bè bò nin dugu masina, ou a bè bò nin kabila la, o dòn man di dè.

27. When the owner of an important object dies without entrusting his important basi to a new guardian, a village may decide to hand the “medicine” over to a ritual expert who is well known for his adherence to traditional rules. If the object is kept within its natal village but does not receive the appropriate sacrifices, or if it comes into contact with people who do not observe traditional rules of sexual abstinence, it may react very violently, bringing disaster on its owners. Many objects are conserved by one or two old men who still obey every tana (interdiction) explicitly. Often, when these men die no one else is willing to cut their arms so that the objects can drink human blood, or to observe the sexual restrictions that enable one to handle the sculptures without danger. Thus, many villages that do not wish to sell old and valuable basiw seek out a regionally known expert like Basi to whom they then entrust their object. In recent times famous sculptors who maintain a rigid adherence to tradition have become the guardians of what one might call a traditional ‘museum’ of extremely harmful and therefore undisposable objects. If a village does not entrust their object to such a person, they usually take it out into a remote area of the bush and abandon it there to be eaten by termites. Finally, they may sell the object to an art dealer, but when objects of great danger are concerned this is a risky business, as the sale is often believed to bring misfortune on the village.

28. Kojugu confirmed that clients could sometimes kill the sculptor in order to prevent him from working for others. For this reference see the interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, pp. 87–8 of transcribed tapes.

29. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, pp. 86–7 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: Bow, sisan, ne b'i nyininkan, numu min bè se baara la kosèbè, min bè se yiridèsè la kosèbè, est-ce que mògòw bè sòn k'u faga parce que u ka baara ka nyi kojugu, u bè jina baaraw kè, wala mògòw b'u bon, u b'u dabali, ou bien, u numuw nyògònw bè ko jugu k'u la wa k'a masòrò u baara nò fè, u baara nò ka nyi kojugu. A bè jinaw ladegen. A bè dakabanan, dakabanan, baaraw kè.

KOJUGU: O bè kè. N'i kèra baarakèla sawan [a Bamana deformation of the French word savant] dò ye cogoya dò rò, …

INTERVIEWER: A fò bamanakan na.

KOJUGU: Ni i kèra baarakèla … e dun ye baara kalan i kankolo rò cogoya dò rò, kelen i ni kungo fènw bè nyògòn fè, awa, mògò sabatilen ba t'i kòfè, i jigi sèmèlen tè mògò sabatilen ba la, n'i y'i balan o dakabanan baara kè ma, farafinna, u b'i bon k'i faga.

INTERVIEWER: Bon, u b'u faga cogo jumèn na?

KOJUGU: Korotè.

INTERVIEWER: Bon mun na?

KOJUGU: Tari k'i dabali k'i nyè fiyen, k'i la baara tunun i la.

INTERVIEWER: Mais, numuw wèrèw de b'o kè wa, wal'a bè baara kè minnu ye wa, ou bien …

KOJUGU: Numuw wèrèw b'a kè. Numuw wèrèw b'a kè, ani i fanin ncinin, kelen i ba sina, olu bè se ka wili ka i dabali, ka i tinyè.

30. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, pp. 88–9 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Mògò, n'i y'a bila yiribò la, sani a k'a damine, i b'a ko. I b'a ko yiriw la. Ni a y'a damine yèrè, i b'a ko. N'a ye fila ni saaba bò, n'i ye hakilima ye, i b'a lalò fana, i ka tèmènsila wèrè nyini a ko la. N'i tora ka to a kan ten, n'i yèlèmabolo ma bonya, a bè ladòn i bolo. Ni yiri m'a ladòn, mògòw b'a ladòn. O kosòn n'a ye yiribaara kè, a bè yiri baara fo sennya kelen, fila, wala saaba, mògò yèrè t'a lòn ko ale nò don. O tuma, i bè a labò a la baara kèlenya la, k'i yèrè y'a baara. An b'a kè ten de.

Although the interviewer's first question could at first be interpreted as prompting the witness, the length and detail of Kojugu's response suggest that he is describing his own prior understanding of the sculptor's situation, not concocting an answer to please my associate. In asking questions about situations or beliefs that informants take for granted, it is often necessary to pose direct questions in order to obtain a response.

31. In Chapter 3 I noted that the sculptor's jatigi or “host” can both mediate commissions and act as a negative influence on the artist. If the host feels that the sculptor is gaining too great a reputation and too much power, he can intervene and discourage the artist from accepting a commission. If the host is a diviner or ritual expert himself, he may be able to foresee that the acceptance of a particular commission will bring disaster on the artist, or even on the entire village, and he can alert the sculptor. Thus, hosts often act as a brake on a sculptor's career, exerting a considerable measure of social control on the ambitious ngana.

32. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/11/84, Djinns/Ciw, Book 14, p. 89 of transcribed tapes.

33. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, p. 67 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N'i ye cèkun ye, ko o ko i ye dò nyini a bèe kunbèn na, i ma nègèn i siyòrò lò. I ma nègèn i kun nò fèn fè, i bè yirimògòninw baara k'a nyè, i bè Kòmòkunw baara, k'a nyè.

34. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, p. 83 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Nka, ka n'i sigi k'a lèsè, k'a k'i sago ye, o de ka gèlèn. O kò, n'i y'a dilan k'a k'i sago ye, i b'a manugu. N'i y'a mèn, n’ bè nin fèn manugu nk'a kèr'i sago ye de.

INTERVIEWER: O ye tinyè ye.

KOJUGU: N'a ma k'i sago ye, i tan'a fili?

INTERVIEWER: O ye tinyè ye.

35. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, p. 80 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Ne b'o fò ka da min kan, n'a bòra, a ka kan ka tilen ka taa sawura min nò n’ m'a ye o sawura rò, n’ b'a fò nin tigi tè se. A ka kan ka majigi, ou a ka kan ka kun mabiri ka kè cogo min, n'a bè o dun cogo la, n’ b'a fò nin tigi bè se. Ne b'a lòn n’ kun na ten. N'a tigi tè se bugubugu, n'i y'a ye i nyè la, i be défaut mayòrò dò y'a la. I b'a fò ko ni nin défaut tè, nin défaut ye nin sòrò, nin tigi tè se.

36. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 13, pp. 95–6 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Ka yiri ye k'a lèsè, k'a cè nyè, ka tògò sòrò a rò, n’ ko, o ye nyèlakekuya de ye. O ni kònò ta tè kelen ye. I bè ko fò mògò min ye, k'a takamasere bèe fò a ye, n'o y'o baara kè, an b'o filè mògò kekuma ye. I ye fèn min ye i nyè la, n'i y'o dila, i bè kè mògò keku ye. Nka n'i nyè m'a ye, i tè se k'a dila dè. O difaransè [from the French différence] bè mògòw ni nyògòn cè.

37. Cf. Chapter 2, and interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, p. 84 of transcribed tapes.

38. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/20/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, pp. 31–2 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: A fòlen n’ ye, ko, n’ ka Kòmòkun kura bò, k'u bè kòròlen feere. Ne ye kura bò, k'a ban, kasòrò n’ nyè ma da kòròlen kan. Kòmi a karannen n’ kònò rò, i nyè b'a la, i nyè t'a la, n'a karannen i kònò rò, i b'a bò. Ne y'a bò kasòrò kòròlen ma na. A bòlen k'a ban, ne ko a tigiw ye, n ko u la fèn banna. Aa, ko a ni kòròlen bè na, ko k'o jateminè. Awa ni kòròlen nana, ka n'o la, ne ka n’ na kura bò k'a la, a kèra kòmi y'a bèe pese baiansi [from the French peser dans une balance] kelen na. A kèra i komi mògò kelen bolo ye a bèe dila. A kèra ten. O de ye u kònògban.

39. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/20/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, p. 36 of transcribed tapes.

40. In Chapter 2 we saw that Kojugu had traveled in order to see specific pieces whose reputation had reached him. In one case he used a Komo mask he had viewed on one of these voyages as a model for his own work. Clearly, ambitious artists like Kojugu try to see as many ritual objects as possible, thereby gaining a clear mental picture of what each type of object should look like.

See also the interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-1, Book 13, p. 74 of transcribed tapes.

41. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/20/84, Modèles-1, p. 36 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Ne koni y'a ye dòròn, ni i ye fèn o fèn ye, n'i y'a jatè ta i hakili la ka i dusukun nakòntan dòròn, awa i b'a baara a cogo la. Awa n'a ma nya ni kòròlen ye, kòròlen koni tè nya n'a ye.

42. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 14, p. 26 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: U tè kelen ye?

KOJUGU: Ayi. Ka nègè dilan.

INTERVIEWER: Ani ka nègè dan, est-ce que olu ye kelen ye wa?

KOJUGU: U tè kelen ye. Ka nègè dan, o ye komi i yèrè k'i miri komi an na farafìnna guan don tuma, ka nègè dan, i yèrè kè sin ka a labò, a ka kan ka kè baara fèn min ye. Ka nègè dilan, o ye n'i ye nègè cogoya o cogoya sòrò, i b'a dilan k'a kè i mako nyè fèn ye.

43. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, p. 85 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Jiña bè na, a bè n'a f'i ye su siko rò, “Nin yiri lèsè,” nka fèn min bè n'o fi ye – i t'a fèn kelen dòn. I b'i mantòn. Dugu maa jè, a fòr'i ye cogo min, i b'a kè ten. I tè fèn fò mògò ye. Mògòw b'a f'i ye, “Eè,. karisa, i dun ye baara kura daminè dè?” I b'a fò, “N’ hakili de jigin'a la dòròn.” N'i y'o ko nasòn fò mògòw ye, laban na, a bèn'a jèya i ye, kafò nin kè tan, nin kè tan. A bè sòrò o fè.

44. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 13, pp. 96–7 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N'o kèr'i la, eè, i y'a ye, i ma kè sunògò jònjònba la, i dun t'i nyèna fana, kelen su kibaruya senfè a kè na yir'i la, i b'a bò. N'i y'a bò, n'i y'a bò a bè nin kun nya, n'o ma fi ye, i b'a bò, k'a bila yen. N'i y'a bila yen, san kelen, san fila, san saaba, dòw yèrè san wolonfila, a bòlen kun min kama, o bè f'i ye. Nk'a bè yir'i la lon min kònòn, o lon kelen i b'i ji ja i b'a baara k'a bil'i bolo yen.

45. See Chapter 2 and interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/20/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, p. 35 of transcribed tapes.

46. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 13, p. 87 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Dòw bè, u b'a baara kè, ayiwa, hali n'a n'a siginyògòn wèrè don, a bè se. Mais, dòw yèrè bè i b'a baara, i ni cè yèrè tè, hali ni cè tan don, i kelen b'i ka baara kè. Bèe n'i ka jatè don.

47. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/15/84, Création, Book 8, p. 33 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N'i y'a yiri tigè ka na, ni an dama sigilen nyògòn kan, i b'a fò, ko, “Numuw,” ko, “Aw la bolo ye.” U b'a fò, ko, “K'i bèn i sen ma.” I b'i sigi ko, “Wa!” ko, “An bèe ka nyògòn karan.” Dò b'a fò, “A kè tan tan,” dò b'a fò, “A kè tan tan.” O koni daminè fan kelen si t'o la. N'i y'a daminè ka taa cogo o cogo, pour a ka nya dòròn.

48. An example of the Konon association mask is illustrated in Abbé Henry (1910, 148). According to Henry, the Konon association is analogous to the Komo, but its trumpets are made from bulls’ horns, both goats and dogs are sacrificed to it, and its boli is shaped in the form of a humanoid (cf. the illustration in Henry, p. 148). Henry (1910, 149) remarks that the Konon costume is made from the black feathers of the djougo, probably the same Dugon that Kojugu cites. This bird is almost certainly the Abyssinian ground hornbill (Bucorvus abyssiniens, see note 49), and should not be confused with the duga or vulture (Necrosyrtes monachus monachus).

Zahan (1960b, 23–4) identifies the Konon as the secret association concerned with the human conscience and the meeting of man's thought with his body.

Dieterlen and Cissé (1972, 17) report that young men enter the Konon voluntarily if “they wish to perfect their knowledge and acquire a solid foundation for their authority.”

McNaughton (1979, 2–9) provides an excellent overview of the existing literature on all the Bamana secret associations in his monograph, Secret Sculptures of Komo: Art and Power in Bamana (Bambara) Initiation Associations. He reports that the Konon association seems to be important “in the area between Koutiala and Sikasso among the Miniarlka.” He also notes that some informants identified the Konon as being similar to the Komo, except for the fact that the leadership of the Konon is held by griots rather than blacksmiths. In a note he adds that the linguist Charles Bird and the Malian researcher K. Tera have been given the same information over a number of years.

My informants reported that the Konon is a subassociation of the Komo. Some Konon associations are “given” by djinns who select the leader for the Konon and continue to inspire him during possession trances. The revelations he obtains are said to be stronger or “harder” (i.e., more truthful) than those obtained via the Komo medium. Unlike the Komo, the Konon does not appear at specific moments of the year (for instance, the beginning of the rainy season), but comes out whenever its leader receives messages from his djinns and is possessed. Interview of 5/31/84, written notes.

For another discussion of Bamana ideas concerning resemblance in sculpture, see Arnoldi 1983, 186–9.

49. Issa Koné, professor of zoology at the Ecole normale supérieure, Bamako, identified the dugon as Bucorvus abyssinicus or the Abyssinian ground hornbill (personal communication, 1/24/93).

Bailleul (1981, 332) also identifies the dufon or dugon as the Abyssinian ground hornbill.

This identification differs from that proposed for the digon in 1977 by Dr. Mary Jo Arnoldi (Leptop-tilos crumeniferus; Arnoldi 1977, entry for no. 37), although Arnoldi now believes that the identification as Bucorvus abyssinicus is more probable (personal communication, 3/3/93). Several conversations convinced both of us that her informants’ digon is probably the same bird as Kojugu's dugon. Arnoldi's informants stressed the elusiveness of the digon (Kojugu also emphasizes this) and its mystical, visionary capacities. According to Arnoldi, one of the digon’s eyes looks one way while the other gazes in the opposite direction. The bird is said to be “symbolic of the wisdom of the seer who penetrates the darkness of the unknown to arrive at the light of understanding” (Arnoldi 1977, entry for no. 37). Arnoldi reported that her informants, like Kojugu, associated the digon with the Komo association. In this context the bird's visionary capacities would make perfect sense, since the Komo masquerader (who would be wearing the Konon headdress described by Kojugu) is a medium who becomes possessed the moment he puts on the mask and costume, and while in this state prophesies the future.

I am grateful to Dr. Arnoldi for providing me with the information in this paragraph, since it throws considerable light on Kojugu's selection of the dugon as an example of visual inspiration (personal communications, 3/3/83 and 2/19/84).

As discussed in note 48, the dugon may tentatively be identified with Abbé Henry's djougo (Henry 1910, 149).

50. Professor Koné identified the ntolen as a small bird belonging either to the genus Bycanistes or the genus Tockus. Each genus includes several species. He added that the name ntolen is sometimes used for small hornbills (personal communication, 1/24/93).

Bazin (1906) does not identify the ntolen, and Dumestre (1981–9) does not yet list it.

51. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/14/84, Book 8, pp. 9–10 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Kònòn kunkolo de ye kònòn kunkolo ba ye, i ko dugon kunkolo.

INTERVIEWER: O tuma na, dugon ye kònòn subaga ye?

KOJUGU: Nn, Nn.

INTERVIEWER: Mun na miseli tara dugon kunkolo kan?

KOJUGU: Ehe! Ehe! Ehe! u miri de dar'o kan. Baara ye n'i miri gunna min na, n'o kalikili [from the French calculer] bonyèna i kun na, i b'i k'o kan.

INTERVIEWER: N’ y'a don. Nka farafin, farafin tè foyi kè fu. Anw de tigèlen don an yèrè la, nka farajèw ma tigè an na dè.

KOJUGU: A dilala, k'a da dugon ma suya la. I bè kònòn bèe minèto ye denmisèn ninw ni cèbalen ninw fè ka na so fo dugon.

INTERVIEWER: Nhun?

KOJUGU: Kafo dugon, n'ma marifa tigi fò, ko, awa, denmisènnin ka fènw kuntanw dila kungo kònòn, ko ka kamiw ni wòlòw ni ntolenw ni ntufaninw minè ka na, habada, i bè si jè cè kèmè fara nyògòn kan, a b'a f'i ye, ko, a ye a la denmisènya kè ko fo ka n'a kòrò, a ma dugon sen fila ye bolo rò ka na so mògò fè. Kònòn kun dilara, k'a ni dugon kunkolo kènyè k'a da nin yòrò in kan.

52. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, p. 85 of transcribed tapes.

53. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/15/84, Création, Book 8, p. 37 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: K'i miri kasòrò i m'a yiri labin wa?

INTERVIEWER: I y'a labin.

KOJUGU: I y'a labin; ka i miri da o kan yani i ye yiri kènè to?

INTERVIEWER: C'est ça.

KOJUGU: I b'a miri dè.

INTERVIEWER: I b'a miri?

KOJUGU: Nhun.

INTERVIEWER: Ko mun de don? Muso wa cè?

KOJUGU: I na miri koni. I na miri koni i ni min miri mana bò so kònòn, i b'a k'o de ye.

54. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, p. 83 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: K'a lèsè fòlòn, k'a bèe sigi a sigi cogo la, o de ka gèlèn.

55. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, pp. 80–2 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: I bè se k'a fò cogo jumèn k'a ma nya? N'a nyinw jannyana, ou bien, n'a nyinw surunyana. Ou bien, n'a tulow jannyana, ou bien, n'a tulow ka surun, ou bien, n'a gerew ka jan, ou bien, n'a gerew ka surun?

KOJUGU: A gerew jannya, o t'a tinyè. A gerew surunya, o t'a tinyè. Kòmò kun yèrè, a kunkolo nin ye nin ye, o kundama, o kana tèmèn, o kana dèsè.

INTERVIEWER: A kundama ye mètri joli ye ou bien bolokoni joli hakè?

KOJUGU: N’ koni hakili la, an b'a mumè suman …

INTERVIEWER: Bon, sisan, an tun bè yòrò min na, an tun bè, n’ y'i nyininka, Kòmò kun cogoya de la, kafò n'i ye Kòmò kun ye sisan, e bè se k'a. fò cogo jumèn, kafò, ko, a ka nyi. An tun t'o yòrò de la?

KOJUGU: Nhun.

INTERVIEWER: Bon, sisan, ni numu dò ye Kòmò kun dila sisan, i y'a mèn? Ni kasòrò a m'a gerew bilayòrò nya, e bè se k'o … ka a gerew bil'a nun kan sisan. Est-ce que e bè se k'a fò, k'o, ka nyi wa? E bè se k'a fò, k'o ma nyi?

KOJUGU: Ni ne don, n'a ye gerew bil'a nun kan, gere dò bè yen, n'a ka d'i ye, a bè bila nun kan, nk'a tè kè fèn ye, fèn cènyi ye. Ni i y'a bò, a ma nya tigi, tigi, tigi, ni ne y'a ye n’ nyè na, daliluya min b'a to, ko n’ b'a lòn, kafò a ma nya, n’ b'a lòn gerew sigi cogo fè, gerew sigi cogo ani nyè fila bòyòrò, ka na se nun ma, nun ni da cè ka kan ka dan jateya min na, da ka kan ka bò cogoya min nò. Dawolo dò man kan ka jannya ni dò ye, u ju kòrò ta de ka kan ka jannya, ou sanfè ta de ka kan ka jannya. N'o dun ma ye, n’ b'a fò k'a tigi tè se, wala k'a tigi filila.

56. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 14, p. 37 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: E ka kan k'a dilan miraya minnu na, e y'a dila k'a ban, fo ka se, tèmèn i hakiliman yòrò la, e b'a dila ni miri min ye, e m'o nòrò y'a la, i b'a fò, ko, “I yèrè fili l'a la.” O yòrò dòn cogo filè nin ye.

57. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/15/84, Création, Book 8, p. 28 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: A bèe bòli ka gèlèn. N'i kèra hakili jèlen ye, i bè … baara koni, i b'a ta ni hakili de ye. Kòmò kun wo, Kònòn kun wo, awa, nin yiri tògò ma ta nin fèn o fèn baarali, a bèe ka gèlèn. Nka hakili de bè a nògòya i ma jana. Awa, n'i y'a desèn [from the French dessin] ta i kònòn, n'i y'i sigi a kan, awa, i mirina yòrò ma tinyè, i b'a dila yòrò nin kelen.

58. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/8/84, Questions-1, Book 13, p. 59 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Bilakorow bè, n'a ye fèn min ye a nyè la, ni numu den yèrè yèrè don, n'a ye fèn min y'a nyè la, a bè dila k'a kè nin kun kelen ye, o tè fò a ye, nka a b'a dila. Ka a kè … a bè dila k'a kè nin kun ye, mògò t'o fò a ye.

59. Here I am interpreting the text in the light of traditional, preindependence sexual mores.

60. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 13, pp. 87–8 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: An b'a fò, “Nhun, karisa bè karisa la, n'i ye nin fèn kofò a ye, k'a nyè … a bòra cogo min na k'o nyè bèe fò a ye, k'a baara cogo nya bèe fò a ye, a b'a baara komi i y'a fò cogo min na, a b'a kè ten.” Anw de b'o numuw fè. Anw de ye baara kalan ten. O kò, i y'a ye i nyè la, o ye nyèlakalan ye. A dal'i kòrò, n'i ser'a la, o t'i la nganaya ye, o t'i la seya ye. A kofòr'i ye, i k'a mèn, mògò k'a fò a suruman, a jamanjan, a finman, a kalankalannen don, a senw bè tan, a nyèw bè tan, a kò bè tan, a nyèfèla bè tan, n'o fòr'i ye, i b'o kalikili [from the French calculer] bèe tigè i kònòn, k'a baara, k'a kè o tigilamògò ta ye, anw b'o de kè ten. O ye subagaw de ye.

61. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, 1984, Book 13, p. 88 of transcribed tapes.

62. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, pp. 83–4 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: I b'a degen. Dow b'a degen ka dèsè. Dow yèrè degenni tè mèn. N'olu ye min ye u nyè la dòròn, u b'o baara.

63. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/20/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, p. 36 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Sani ne ka n’ ta lèsè, kòròlen yiralen n’ na, a yelen, a yecogo diyara n’ ye: mais n’ fana ye n’ ta bò, ne y'a yira u la. U ko, ko, “Yali an de mòkè ye nin kòròlen bò wa, ne fa de y'a bò?” Ne ko ne fa ma deli ka se yan, ne mòkè ma deli ka se yan.

64. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 13, pp. 85–6 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: E ko, kafò, ni i ye Kòmò kun kòrò bila Kòmò kun kura kèrèfè, n'i bèna Kòmò kun kura bò, k'o b'i kònòngan. Bon, e kònòngan kun ye jumèn de ye? Mun b'i kònòngan?

KOJUGU: Ni ne ko k'a bè n’ kònòn gan, fènw fila, k'o la nyògòn kèrèfè, i bè min baara la, i k'i nyè lò o rò, min baaralen, k'e k'i nyèlò o rò, i bè fili o baara lò. N'i ye numu piri piri [from the French pur] ye, n'a yiral'i la, n'i y'a yèlèma, k'a yèlèma, k'a yèlèma, k'a rògbè, sennya kelen, sennya fila, sennya saba, n'i ko, “Aa, nin ka nyi tan,” o tuma a kòròtal'i kònò rò, i b'a lasegin. N'i y'a lòjè, a lòjèlan nò, i b'a baara i yèrè hakili la, ni mògò m'a fò a kè tan, a kè tan, n'i ye kòròlen lajè ten i kònòn. N'i ye a miri ta i kònò rò, i b'a baara, k'a k'i sako ye. N'i bè kura k'a baara, è k'i nyè lò o rò, k'i nyè lò kòròlen nò, diyagoya yòrò dò bè lupe [from the French louper], yòrò dò bè tinyè kasòrò i nyè wusulen a la. O tuma nyè de bè baara kè, a nyè b'a la, nka hakili de bè baara kè ka nya, ka tògò di mògò ma. Ne de bè baara kè tèn tèn.

65. Bazin (1906, 355–6) defines the verb as “to assemble [people],” “to succeed,” “to consider, examine,” and “to try.”

Dumestre (1989, no. 7, 1055) defines it as “to examine, look at, take account of,” and “to try.”

66. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/20/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, pp. 33–4 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: Bon, sisan, ni mògòw b'a fè i k'u ka Kòmò kun ladegen, bon, u bè na n'a ye k'a bila i kèrèfè de wa, kungo kònòn wa, wala a bè cogo di?

KOJUGU: K'a ladegen?

INTERVIEWER: Kòmi n'i bèna kura bò.

KOJUGU: Ni mògòw nan'a fò n’ ye ko n’ ka Kòmò kun kura bò?

INTERVIEWER: Nhun.

KOJUGU: Ka na ni kòròlen ye, k'a bila n’ kèrèfè?

INTERVIEWER: Nhun.

KOJUGU: Nn, nn. Ne b'a bò, n'i y'a fò n’ ye dòròn, n’ b'a jateminè n’ kunkolo la, k'a Ièsè, k'a ban. N’ b'a f'i ye, nko, i ye min fò, nko, a bòra.

67. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/22/84, Modèles-2, Book 12, pp. 96–7 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: Ni Kòmò kun dira e ma sisan, k'i k'a bò, ka kòròlen da i kèrèfè, i b'a suman cogo jumèn? I b'a suman ni kala de ye wa? I b'a suman ni bolo de ye wa? I b'a suman n'i sen de ye wa, ou bien, i b'a suman n'i nyè jate de ye hakili la miri la?

KOJUGU: N’ ma mògò wèrè fò, n'a dira ne ma, ko ne k'a lèsè, n b'a jate ta n kònònbara lò. N’ t'a suman bolo la, n’ t'a suman juru la, n’ t'a suman foyi foyi la. Ni n’ y'a yèlèma sennya saba n’ nyè kòrò, n’ b'a jate, a jate yèrè mumè bèe, n’ b'a bèe ta n’ kònònbara lò; n’ b'a lèsè ka a kè o kòròlen cogo ye.

68. Dr. Arnoldi also discusses the Bamana concept of resemblance, which she relates to the term for a person who has the same name as oneself, togoma (Arnoldi 1983, 186–9).

69. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 14, p. 19 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: O bè kè kè. I la mògòbaw, k'olu ja ta.

INTERVIEWER: Nhun.

KOJUGU: Karisa ye karisa ye. Karisa ye karisa ye, ka o karisa k'o baara; ka yiri dò baara kafò, ko, “Nin ye karisa ye”; ka dòwèrè baara, “Nin ye karisa ye,” a bèe n'a tògò, a bèe n'a lòyòrò. I b'a baara kè ten. A bè ten.

70. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 14, p. 21 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: A bè n'a minè. N'a y'a sòrò aw ka di, a bòlen ni terimuso nin y'a ye ka ban nyè fè, kafò, “Nin Dusu cè de ye nin ye, n’ ye Dusu filanan bò yiri la,” o maralen bè n’ bolo yen. Ni Dusu tè yen, Dusu terimuso, n'o mako ser'a ma, o bèn'a minè; k'a minè k'a k'a ta ye, an tè son o ma. O sikan sikan ma, i bè san saaba, san naani fo k'a se san tan ma, a b'i bolo. Nk'a taara sira min fè, a bè kòsegin o sila kelen fè.

71. According to Kojugu, ‘portrait’ statues are usually family property and are conserved by the head of the extended family in a cave located in the bush. When not kept in a cave, such figures are hidden in an enormous pottery jar the size of a human being (fènyèrì) specially made for keeping sacred objects. The jar is closed and then buried in the floor of one room in the compound. The head of the extended family who owns a ‘portrait’ statue reveals its hiding place and explains its use to the man who will succeed to his position (often a nephew or younger brother rather than a son). ‘Portrait’ statues may receive sacrificial offerings of liquids (spilled on the statue's feet), kola nuts, chickens, and goats, depending on the gravity of the petition made to them and the number of family members making the request.

The information in this note summarizes material on pp. 21–3 and 27–30 of the interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 14 of transcribed tapes.

72. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 14, pp. 19–20 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Kow fila. An b'a kè a sen, an'a kunkolo. Sen kòrò ye jumèn ye, n'a sen ka bon, i bè yirimògònin, i b'a sen bonya. Ne benbakè, n'a tun y'a sen lò yan, cè tè sòrò nin lamini nò a sen nyògòn ye kè min ye. I bè sen dila ni o ye. N'a kunkolo ka bon, i b'a dila, k'a kunkolo bonya. Ne benbakè nin koori in kònòn, n'ale dèsèra donin min kòrò, a tabaga tè yen. N'ale dèsèra ko min na, a nyabaga tè yen. N'a dèsèra donin min kòrò, a tabaga tè yen. Nhun.

73. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 14, p. 29 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: A bè bila a yèrè plasi [from the French place] la. A bè bila a yèrè plasi la k'a da dalilu jumèn kan? Mògòw ninnuw, n'u b'a sònkan dòn, a bè bil'a yèrè plasi la. Nka, n'u t'a sònkan lòn, fèn koni de bè aw bolo yen, o koni ye fèn de ye ten. Aw tè min yèlèmabolo dòn. Nn.

74. Kojugu states that carving a twin figure is the hardest possible task for a sculptor in the interview Outils-1, 6/23/84, Book 12, pp. 78–9 of transcribed tapes. However, the reason he gives – that the two twin figures must be physically connected – seems very technical, and is not directly related to the problem of resemblance. To my knowledge, this type of figure is known among the Lobi but not among the Bamana.

In another more general discussion of portraiture in the interview, Questions-2, 8/9/84, Book 14, pp. 32–3, Kojugu describes the manifold difficulties of carving, preserving, and using human figures. The fact that he evades giving any direct answer concerning the difficulties of achieving a resemblance to a living person suggests that this is a problematic issue.

For a discussion of the ritual problems involved in carving yirimògòniw see Chapter 6.

75. Neither Bazin (1906) nor Dumestre (1981–9) provide definitions for ka kusun.

76. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, p. 66 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Awa, n'i bè taa o gundo baara gèlèn suguya la, n'i y'i kusun dòròn, i b'a fò peut-être ne la sèmè ni jele nin, mògò nògòlen ser'a ma wa, mògò fènkèlen ser'a ma wa, i tè kè Allah ye k'a dòn. I b'u ta, k'i sigi, k'u dagèn. O tuma n'i yèrè nògòlen tè, o ye cogo min na, i la baara kè minan bèe bè ten.

77. Expression used by Kojugu Cissoko on 8/11/84 in the interview, Djinns/Ciw, Book 14, p. 87 of transcribed tapes.

78. See Chapter 4 and interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/20/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, p. 17 of transcribed tapes.

79. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/14/84, Book 8, p. 6 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: An, an, o koni, i bolo mana bèn yòrò min ma, ni daminè yòrò bòr'a la dòròn, i bolo mana … i yèrè dusukun mana fa ka da yòrò min kan dòròn i b'o baara.

80. I would like to thank Ms. Abeer Awdul for translating and transcribing Bazin's Arabic.

81. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/20/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, p. 24 of transcribed tapes.

82. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/20/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, p. 18 of transcribed tapes. Kojugu gave a summary of this information without adding any additional details in the same interview, p. 20 of transcribed tapes. Another even briefer summary occurs in the interview conducted with Kojugu on 6/14/84, Book 8, pp. 5–6 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: O tuma, i b'a lèsè, i bè lèsèli daminè. I bè kunkolo jate folo, kunkolo min bè jate koori, n'i y'o sigisira lòn, i bè nyèda suman k'o jate bila. Ka nyèbòyòrò bila. Ka nunkala jate sigi. N'i ye nunkala jate sigi, i bèna da, nunkala ni da cè i bè n'o jate tigè. Ka yèlèma ka tulow fanfèla makaran. N'i ye tulow fanfèla lèsè, i bè tila ka da jate bò. N'i ye da jate bò, sani i k'o lèsè k'a ban, i bè kan kòròla ni bonbon cè, i b'o folon makaran, k'o lèsè ka o dalakanya, ka o bèn. O tuma, i bè tòn lèsè sa, ka gerew, n'i bè gerew bò a la, i bè gerew bò. N'i dun tè gerew bò a la, n'i b'a kè muntukulu ye, i b'o lèsè ten, ka ban ka o masiri ni kolonkisèw ni kònònw kunkolow ye. N'koni bè Kòmò kun ko nyè min dòn, o bè kè ten ten.

83. Ka dèsè or ka lèsè is a general term applied to any cut made into the wood. When referring to specific actions, such as hollowing out the inside of a cavity as in a mortar or the head of a Komo mask, sculptors use the term ka suruku (Fig. 45). Ka suruku means “to hollow out the inside of something”; this meaning may be related to the frequently used noun suruku, or “hyena.” Hyenas obtain their food by ‘hollowing out the interior’ of carrion, and the verb may very well originate in this association. I suspect that sculptors use a number of other specialized terms to designate specific movements in carving, and hope that further research will reveal these.

84. Bazin's translation (1906, 378) is less helpful. He defines the verb as “to rush toward something or someone,” and “to apply oneself with ardor.”

85. Dumestre (1983, no. 2, 225) translates ka dalakanya as “to place at the same level, to plane, to equalize, to complete, to adjust.” Bazin (1906, 103) translates it as “to plane, to level, to finish off.”

86. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, pp. 75–6 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Ne m'a f'e ye, nko, bèe n'i ka baara kalan cogo don? Ni ne, Kojugu, b'a dila, yòrò min ka gèlèn ne bolo, k'a kunkolo mumè détaillé [from the French détailler], k'a kunkolo mumè kooli k'a ban, o de ka gèlèn. Ni ne y'o kooli k'a ban, fan, défaut ma la fan si la, a ko tò ka nògòn. Mais, bèe n'i ka baara kalan cogo don. Dow bè, i b'a sòrò nun bòli, o ka gèlèn olu ma. Dow bè, da bòli ka gèlèn olu ma. Dòw yèrè bè, tulow bòli ka gèlèn olu ma. Dòw yèrè bè se ka nin bèe bò, nka n'a ser'a gerew bòyòrò ma, a ser'a kònòganyòrò ma. O si man gèlèn ne bolo. A kunkolo yèrè mumè ka o koori dòròn, o de ka gèlèn ne bolo.

87. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Modèles-2, Book 12, pp. 97–8 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: Bon, aw bè a gerew ninnu bò cogo jumèn? A gerew? Aw b'o suman de wa, ou bien aw b'a kè cogo di?

KOJUGU: A tè suman dè. A tè suman, i b'a bò i nyè la jate le la. O kò, a tè suman dè.

88. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Modèles-2, Book 12, p. 98 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: A bè kontè [from the French compter].

INTERVIEWER: A bè kè nyinw joli ye?

KOJUGU: Mògò ta ye nyinw bisaaba ni fila ye. I b'ale ta kè sanfèla naani ou duuru. I bè duguma la kè saaba ou bien naani.

89. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/11/84, Boliw-2, Book 16, pp. 63–4 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Bari nin fòli ye ko ba ye. An yèrè fè, n'i ye Koma tontigi ye, an bè silan a yòrò min nyè, a da, a bè fò ko yòrò min y'a da ye, a bè siran o nyè, yen fanfèla tè. A da yèrè yèrè o bè sanfè, o y'a iugula fanfèla ye.

90. McNaughton (1988, 27) provides an excellent discussion of the technical problems facing the artist as he finishes an object.

91. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/20/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, p. 24 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N'i t'ala a dèsèli la, i bè manukuli … i bè a dèsèli ni manukuli bèe kè kelen ye kè. N'i ye a maparon ni sèmè ye fòlòn k'a jate jate sigi sigi, ni a baara fòlò bè nògòya tan, i b'a tò nèmènèmènin lèsè, i bè o kè sèmè da ye, iko bolokonin kelen jate, k'a danin sigi i komi nin bolokoni jate. O bè kè k'a yòròw dòw manugu. Bon, sèmè kunba yèrè, o bè kè k'a yòrò dòw manugu. Nhun.

92. Neither Bazin (1906) nor Dumestre (1981–9) lists ka manugu.

93. Bazin (1906, 445) lists the noun nuguya as “the quality of being polished,” and defines the verb as “to plane, render smooth, polish.”

94. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/15/84, Création, Book 8, pp. 31–2 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: I b'a fòlò, a kunkolo sigi cogo fòlòn, i bè fòlò o la, k'o desèn [from the French dessin] ta ko nyuman. K'a kunkolo sigi. Ka tila ka manyòkòlònw tòw, k'a bèe desèn fòlòn k'a ban, o tuma i bè i ka boli ta, k'a lèsè. N'i y'a lèsè, i bè tila k'a manuku. A koni bè kè ten de.

95. Written notes on conversation with Basi Fane, 1/25/84. Professor Diarra identifies the ntonbilen as Erythrina senegalensis D.C. He notes that it is also called musoni nte, nceme, zoroba, timeba, or sorodale.

96. Neither Bazin (1906), Dumestre (1981–9), Garnier (1976), nor Thoyer-Rozat (1981) identifies the ntonbilen.

Adama Mara noted that the ntonbilen seeds are pounded, the resulting flour is boiled, and the solution given to women in an advanced state of pregnancy as a catalyst for immediate childbirth. The source for this information was probably Basi Fane. Written notes on interview with Basi Fane, 2/4/84.

The recipe suggests that Tyi Warra masks decorated with ntonbilen seeds may not only celebrate farming prowess, but may also be associated with the promotion of human fertility. This interpretation would fit my analysis of the carving process as a special type of ‘childbirth’ (see Chapter 6). The ntonbilen decorations occur on Tyi Warra masks of all four types.

97. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Outils-2, Book 13, pp. 48–9 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: Bon, sisan, ne b'i nyininka, i y'a mèn? Bon, sisan, ne b'i nyininka. Mun na, Kòmòw dòw bè yen, i bè balajolow y'a la, i bè fènw caman jolow y'a la, i bè fènw caman siw y'a la, nka dòw be yen, i tè fosi ye olu la. Mun de b'o kè?

KOJUGU: O ye bèe n'i nyèdiyanyè ko de ye. Dòw, u maa fèn sòrò, u bè fènw kuntanw caman k'a la, mògòw ka silan a nyè, kelen a ka diya mògòw ye. Dòw yèrè bè, n'olu y'a sòrò, u tè foyi foyi k'a la. A tè kònònw shiw k'a la, a tè balajolow k'a la. Nka n'a ko k'a bè ko min nya a la, a b'o nya a la. N'a ko k'a bè ko min tinyè, a b'o tinyè.

98. Neither Dieterlen (1951), Dieterlen and Cissé (1972), nor Travélé (1929) mentions a group of Komo initiates called timidenw, but they appear to be relatively junior association members. Kojugu defines their role as that of clapping their hands to make the noise that intimidates the young men who are being inducted into the Komo. He also notes that they carry the kalaw or “rods” of the Komo (cf. interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Outils-2, Book 13, pp. 29 and 40 of transcribed tapes). On page 40 of this interview Kojugu states that “the names [of the different groups of initiates] change according to the place [the town where the particular Komo association one is talking about is located].” This suggests that every description of the Komo association hierarchy including my own may be limited to a particular time and place.

99. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Outils-2, Book 13, p. 49 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Kòmò min masirilen ba tè, mògò t'a fò ko, Kòmò kuntan don dè. Masiriw koni ye dòròn, kòmi a bè fò minnu ma ko, timidenw, ani k'a masiri dòròn, mògòw ka siran a nyè, a ka lòn silannyèfèn ye.

100. It is unclear whether sculptors always consecrate their creations themselves. Certainly Kojugu mentions additional sacrifices and rituals performed by the client to endow a new Komo mask with power. I suspect that many objects are ‘consecrated’ twice, once by the sculptor and once by the client. However, some artists may feel that their observance of ritual interdictions and their extended physical contact with the object make a formal ritual, such as the washing carried out by Basi and his apprentice, unnecessary. Further research is necessary to determine this point.

101. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/20/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, p. 34 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N’ b'a f'i ye, nko, i ye min fò, nko, a bòra. Awa, a tigi bè na, awa, an b'a di nyògòn ma. N’ bè laadaw fò a ye, a bè laadaw bò, n’ b'a ta k'a d'a ma.

102. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, p. 87 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N'i b'a baara la, i t'i miri foyi wèrè la. I bè baara min na, o bè baara kun min na, o miri fila.

103. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/15/84, Création, Book 8, pp. 37–8 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: I b'a lajè yirikurun de ye fòlòn kè. Mais, n'i y'i sigi ka i miri tuma min, a ka kan ka kè nin ye, i sigilen a kun na i b'o miri. I bè se yèrè kafò, ko, n’ bèna nin kè cè ye, mais a bèna se jate dò rò, i b'a fò, ko, “Aah!” ko, “N’ bè nin yèlèma ko k'a kè muso ye.” Ko, a cèya ma bò. O b'a sòrò defo [from the French défaut] dara a yiri yòrò dò la. Mais, n'i ko k'i b'a kè muso ye, o defo tè fèn tinyè a la. A bè yèlèma ten.

104. In the past, a prominent sculptor like Basi would have received several commissions a year, but now he is only occasionally asked to make a basi. In fact, five years can easily pass without a commission.

105. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 14, p. 36 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N’ bè sèmè kè k'a carón carón, k'a jeni. A tè di mògò ma. Ni n’ filila, a dilacogo rò, n’ tè a ròtinyèlen ta ko, n’ b'a di mògò wèrè ma, kafò, “N’ filila.” N’ bè sèmè kè k'a tigè tigè, k'a jeni. Kòmi ni n’ filila a kè to n’ yèrè kelen na, mògò wèrè kan'a lòn.

INTERVIEWER: Basi tè. O ye numuw bèe ye wa, oubien, cogo jumèn?

KOJUGU: N,n. O tè numuw bèe ye dè. Bèe ni ne tè kelen ye. Dòw b'a rò, n'olu filila, olu b'a ta k'a di denmisènninw ma, ko, “Aw ye hòn, n’ tun b'a kè nin de ye,” ko, “Ne filila.” Hòn, i b'i si kè o filili la, i tè gundo sòrò.

106. Kojugu's nkoson is almost certainly the ngoson kun or Buguni style Tyi Warra described by Zahan (1980) and Brink (1981) as well as other authors. For a detailed description of this headdress see note 16, Chapter 3.

Sacred Secrets

1. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions- 3, Book 15, pp. 63–5 of transcribed tapes. For the Malinke text see note 100, Chapter 2.

2. Bamana and Malinke men often express fears that too much sex will undermine their health and cause them to lose their power to make independent decisions.

3. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, p. 65 of transcribed tapes. For the Malinke text see note 100, Chapter 2.

4. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, p. 62 of transcribed tapes. For the Malinke text see note 102, Chapter 2.

5. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/15/84, Création, Book 8, p. 38 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: U tè miriya kèlen ye.

6. Joking relationships (Bamana, senankunw; Malinke, sanankunw) exist among and between many ethnic groups in Mali, including the Bamana, Malinke, Fulah, Wolof, Songhai, Dogon, and Bozo. Senankunw are institutionalized alliances between defined groups of people. These may be ethnic groups such as the Dogon and the Bozo, ‘caste’ groups such as the smiths (numuw) and the Fulani (Fulah) ethnic group, or clans within the same ethnic group. For instance, Bamana bearing the last name Traore are senankunw for Bamana who are Kone or Diarra (these two names are considered “the same”). These perplexing bonds allow individuals to hurl the worst possible insults at one another in public without incurring any retribution except the return of additional insults. Such exchanges serve both to enhance the structural separation between the individuals in question and to cement bonds of mutual aid and support. Senankunw are bound to offer each other food, lodging, and both ritual and legal assistance. Furthermore, many families request a trusted senankun to arrange marriages on their behalf. Although senankunya is a social institution, many senankunw become close personal friends who spend most of their time together and exchange confidences that they will share with no one else. Such senankunw frequently intervene in marital and fraternal disputes, for their special status gives them the ability to adjudicate thorny family problems and long-standing rivalries.

Most senankunya trace their origin back to a story concerning the ancestors of the two groups in question. In many of these tales, one protagonist saves the other from death by shedding his own blood, or the two ancestors institutionalize their personal friendship by opening their veins, exchanging blood, and then eating together. Whatever the genesis of the alliance, the heroes end by swearing never to shed the other's blood and never to intermarry (this would involve the shedding of blood when the bride loses her virginity). They also take an oath of mutual aid and support that serves to explain the present-day relationship between their descendants.

Senankunya is an extremely useful research tool. It can be used to introduce a much-needed element of play and fun into conversations or interviews that are often all too serious. It also enables informants who are senankun with members of another group to have access to the traditions and rituals of that group, and to recount this information without fear of reprisals. For instance, information concerning smelting procedures was collected from a Fulani informant whose senankun status had enabled him to accompany blacksmiths to their smelting site deep in the bush, watch the ritual of processing the iron ore, and ask his joking partners about the meaning of these rituals. This informant was able to relay this information to me without fear, due to his senankun status with regard to blacksmiths. In fact, it would have been impossible to obtain the information provided by our Fulani informant from a blacksmith. A numu would have gone to great pains to conceal any knowledge of the procedures in question, maintaining a strict silence regarding what he would have felt to be trade secrets.

This description of senankunya is based on Dieterlen (1951, 83–5), Labouret (1934; 1929), McNaughton (1988, 10–11), and my own fieldwork.

7. Many youthful Bamana believe that vulgar speech emulates spoken French, since French speakers are observed to offer each other the grossest insults with no appreciable consequences. Thus, such exchanges have come to be perceived as Western, modern, and therefore acceptable. Of course, this is not the point of view of most elders.

8. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/11/84, Djinns/Ciw-2, Book 14, pp. 94–5 of transcribed tapes.

Biyè ka dun de

Biyè ka jan de

Biyè sima da dumani

biyè bò diyarò.

The vagina is deep

The vagina is large

The hairy vagina has a small, sweet mouth to reach the sweetness of the vagina.

I plan to publish the complete text of the song, together with an interpretation, in a future article, “The Theft of the Komo.”

9. Zahan (1963, 75) also notes the Bamana reluctance to pronounce explicit terms for the male and female genitalia.

10. While “nobles” or horonw are trained to speak quietly, to avoid the use of insults, and to maintain an impassive and unperturbed demeanor under all conditions, nyamakalaw or ‘casted’ people and “slaves” are allowed, and indeed required, to master a complex code of behavior and speech that identifies their caste status. In some cases, nobles of importance were apparently trained to speak as little as possible, and then only to their preferred griot in a low undertone. The griot then translated ‘his’ noble's words into an elaborately embroidered discourse declaimed in a loud voice. In fact, one can learn to identify casted people and slaves at a distance by their highly specific verbal patterns and body language; both are completely different from that of nobles. Whereas nobles tend to sit, to move slowly, and to make very few dramatic gestures with their arms when they speak, griots, blacksmiths, and slaves punctuate their witty and bitingly intelligent conversation with flamboyant and sometimes explicitly sexual gestures. Thus, blacksmiths, griots, and slaves can use sexual terminology and insults in public that nobles would use only in the context of a medical consultation. Their inborn charge of nyama enables nyamakalaw (casted people) to deal verbally with explicitly sexual issues without danger, making them preferred intermediaries for arranging marriages, and for resolving sexual and marital disputes.

Furthermore, the traditional dress code was entirely different for nobles and casted people or slaves. In traditional times, adult blacksmiths could wear a tailored bila (sometimes called a cache-sexe by French authors, this garment was the traditional equivalent of short shorts and was worn only by uncircumcised men or blacksmiths) when they worked in the forge. However, it would have been unthinkable for an adult noble to go about in public with so little covering. In fact, I once identified a Senegalese in New York as a griot by the fact that he was the only man in a group of seven or eight to walk around in soccer shorts and nothing else. This ability to deal with the nyama inherent in sexuality enables blacksmiths both to excise and circumcise. It is also one reason they often become specialists in traditional gynecology in addition to problems of impotence and infertility. A well-known numu’s acute intelligence, his native endowment of nyama, his medical experience, and his ability to talk about the most delicate sexual problems straightforwardly and without shame (maloya), makes him an invaluable counselor and friend.

11. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/15/84, Création, Book 8, p. 32 of transcribed tapes.

12. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, p. 54 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Yirimògònin lèse, n'a bè kè jo ye, a ni muso ko misali bèe ye kelen ye. I b'i dogon muso ko la cogo min, i b'i dogon a la ten. I b'i dogon k'a lèsè, k'a ban, mògò tè n'i lò i ma k'a fò, ko, nin bè kè mun ye? O kosòn, ani muso ko misali bèe ye kelen ye. I b'i dogon mògòw la muso ko ye cogo min, i b'i dogon a fana la ten, k'a lèsè, k'a ban.

13. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, p. 54 of transcribed tapes. For the Malinke text see note 12, this chapter.

14. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, p. 54 of transcribed tapes. For the Malinke text see note 12, this chapter.

15. Women are not allowed to see the Komo mask on pain of death. This rule often applies to other ritual objects belonging to men, and crosses ethnic boundaries. Throughout my research, both male and female informants agreed that this rule had been rigidly enforced in the past. In December of 1978 and January of 1988 I interviewed Alou Coulibaly, a Minianka informant near Koutiala, who as a boy of twelve had witnessed his mother's forced exposure to a secret male object and subsequent murder. The men of his community had been jealous of his mother's financial acumen and accumulating wealth, and had cornered her as she left the compound on her way to market. They had deliberately unveiled a secret male object in front of Alou's mother, forcing her to view the object, while another man, using a club, had come up behind and split her skull with one powerful blow. Alou's father had restrained the boy from going to his mother's assistance, in order to save his son's life. The murder was aimed at limiting Alou's father's growing power and influence, which was apparently based on his wife's productivity and intelligence. According to Alou, it was this experience that had made him resolve to pay only lip service to traditional religion, and to convert to Islam as soon as he reached adulthood.

16. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/14/84, Book 7, pp. 92–3 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: Bon, mun na, u dun b'a fò, ko, ni mògò tora ka muso lankolon ye, k'i nyèw bè minè? Mun na, u b'o fò?

KOJUGU: O bè fò min na, aa, muso lòlen ten, i k'a lòlen ye, ko hijabulen don dè. N'a lad'e kòrò dun, ko, e k'i nya lò a rò ten, o ma nyi.

INTERVIEWER: A ma nyi?

KOJUGU: Cc.

INTERVIEWER: Mais, wuyen de bè bò a la wa, ou bien, jumen don wa?

KOJUGU: Funteni de bè bò a la.

INTERVIEWER: Aw dònnikèbaaw fè?

KOJUGU: Gasi [from the French gaz] de bè bò, gasi de bè bò a la. O bè yèlèn i nyèw fè. N'o ma yèlèn i nyèw fè, n'o donna e nun kònòn, o bè kè sògòsògòninjè ye i la. O t'e bila fo kaburu kònòn. Tubabu tè se k'a furakè, somaden tè se k'a furakè.

17. Interview with Salimata Kone, 4/20/84, Grossesse-2, Book 2, pp. 22–3 of transcribed tapes.

SALIMATA: The main thing, haven't I told you this already, is that they are both equivalent [that both performing excisions and acting as a midwife require washing in the same medicines to remove the nyama of seeing the female sex]. The problem of the midwife is the same problem as that of the woman who excises. Some have light-colored clitorises, but the interior [of the sex] is not white. For others both the clitoris and the interior are clear; they are truly, truly, truly light colored. The person who is going to perform the excision, when the moment of surgery arrives, the person who holds the girl – we say that the nyama goes onto her. This one too [in addition to the blacksmith who performs the operation] will seek medicines to wash herself with… . Some girls have clitorises as if they were men. But, it isn't long like it is for men. It stays close to the entrance [it is unclear whether Salimata refers to the labia majora or, as is less likely, the vagina] like that and the head bends over. We call this dibiritigi [literally, the “owner of the straw hat”]. In any case, if a blacksmith woman must excise such a girl, you must offer her [the blacksmith woman] a goat and a skirt length of cloth. If you don't, she won't do it [the surgery].

INTERVIEWER: How does this happen?

SALIMATA: If you don't offer her these things, the blacksmith woman will refuse to cut it [the clitoris of the dibiritigi].

INTERVIEWER: I am asking what it is like?

SALIMATA: I am telling you that the clitoris, the clitoris is large like this at the entrance [again, it is unclear exactly what portion of the female sex Salimata refers to]. But when you see it, you won't say that it is a man, but it closely resembles a man's penis. However, it isn't long, and then the ears [probably the labia majora] – it is large instead of splitting the mouth like that [it is unclear what physical formation Salimata wishes to indicate]. We call this dibiritigi.

INTERVIEWER: But does this have nyama?

SALIMATA: The blacksmith women, in any case, are afraid of it.

INTERVIEWER: The blacksmith women are afraid of that?

SALIMATA: Nhun [yes]. The blacksmith women are afraid of that.

18. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/11/84, Djinns-2/Ciw, Book 14, p. 97 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Yani i kè se muso ko ma, o y'a sòrò i y'i ko fura caman na.

INTERVIEWER: Wayi, nka i bè muso ko kè don min na, o fòlò, fòlò, fòlò?

KOJUGU: O fòlò, fòlò, fòlò, i bè ko fura la. I bè kò fura la, o kun ye muso nyama ye.

Kojugu describes this procedure:

KOJUGU: You will “dig the door of sleep” [the meaning of this phrase is obscure], fill the calabash of water, and pour it into the hole. You will already have taken off all your clothes. When you have poured the water into the hole, you act quickly, filling your hand with this water and pouring it over yourself. That which falls on you, that which your hand can take to pour over you before it dries in the hole, you will put that on your body. Whatever kind of woman it is, her nyama will not touch you. We do this.

From the interview Djinns-2/Ciw on 8/11/84 with Kojugu Cissoko, Book 14, p. 98 of transcribed tapes.

19. It is highly probable that he also washes with medicinal plants after carving, but my informants did not state this explicitly.

20. This is a common euphemism, since dogs are observed to indulge shamelessly in sex whenever their fancy takes them. The penis, which has its own life in the sense that it becomes aroused whether its owner wishes it to or not, is compared to a dog that cannot be restrained from sexual activity even at the most inappropriate moments. The Bamana are deeply offended at being called a dog because the insult implies that one is unable to control one's sexual desires. A man is a man, not just because he can have sex with a woman, but above all because he can control and moderate his sexual desire. In an environment where, by modern Western standards, life, death, and ill health are almost totally uncontrollable, control of all bodily processes (especially urination, defecation, and sexual desire) assumes an enormous and overriding importance.

21. Interview with Nyamaton Diarra, 4/15/84, first interview, Book 17, pp. 70–1 of transcribed tapes.

NYAMATON: Nhun, anw b'a fò, n’ mòkè tun b'a fò an nyèna, ko nin bolo in ye cè bolo ye. An b'a fò, ko, o mankè o ka fisa to dunbolo ye wa? K'o kafisa o ye kè. Ayiwa, a ko, “Aw wololen filè nin ye. Aw wulu filè nin ye, aw b'o minè ni mun ye? A’ t'o minè n'aw numan ye wa?” An bèe bè jè k'a fò k'o ye tinyè ye. O ye tinyè ye. A ko, “Wa cèbolo de ye nin ye.” Nin ye muso bolo ye. O ye bèe jè ye. Bèe bè don o rò. Nka, cè ka bolo de ye numanbolo ye. Nhun.

Also see the interview with Nyamaton Diarra, 4/15/84, second interview, Book 17, p. 93 of transcribed tapes.

See the passage in Chapter 4 that identifies M'Fa Jigi's right hand as female and his left hand as male, and note 53 of that chapter for Dieterlen and Kojugu's comments regarding the same issue. Both Dieterlen (1951, 69) and Kojugu (interview of 6/14/84, Book 7, pp. 88–9) identify the right hand with men and the left hand with women. What is important to my argument is not which hand is called female and which male, but that all the sources (Nyamaton, Basi, Kojugu, and Dieterlen) agree that ritual and sexual acts are performed with the left hand, whereas the right hand is used for ordinary activities.

22. Many informants also referred to the lènkè or Afzelia africana as the danga. For the identification of the lènkè see note 7, Chapter 4.

23. Neither Bazin (1906), Dumestre (1981–9), nor Garnier (1976) identify the nyanyaka.

Thoyer-Rozat (1981, 96) identifies the nyanyaka as Combretum velutinum, and mentions that it is used as a medicine for cancer, sore throats, and liver infections, and as a diuretic.

24. Bazin (1906, 512) identifies sanyò as Panicellaria spinata. Dumestre (1981–9) does not yet identify sanyò, whereas Thoyer-Rozat (1981, 98) identifies it as Pennisetum spicatum. Garnier (1976, 29) identifies it as various cultivated varieties of Pennisetum.

25. Interview with Nyamaton Diarra, 4/15/84, Book 17, pp. 31–3 of transcribed tapes.

NYAMATON: Dugu maa jè, a muso min bè yen, n'o y'a muso fòlò ye, n'a y'o mpogotigiya ta, a b'o wele. Ko, “Sogoma, n’ ka taa i sòrò danga kòrò.” O b'a ka fini siri, ka taa i sigi yen. A bèna ka na fandugu dilan ka nègè nin faa. A bè kulusi bò k'o da. Muso bè taafe fonin k'o bila. O tuma, u bèe b'i sigi. O bi faa ten. Nègè maa bilen, a b'a dilan. A maa dilan ka ban, k'a daw se nyògòn ma, o tuma na fè a bè sanyò jalan nyini, ka shènin finnin nyini. A maa tila a dilan la, a bi n'a lasagon, k'a masala. A ko,

“Kòmòtigi sobilen,
Kòmòtigi nyanbilen,
kulan ba sama,
balanba sama,
fan diyara,
f'an k'i faa de.
Fan ma diya,
fan y'i ta ye.
Dotigiw benba,
an b'i balima.
Dò tigè dò la,
an b'i balima.
I ka nyòshi jalan filè nin ye.
Shènin finnin filè.”

O de fòlen sa, a b'o minè a sen fila ma, k'a jeni. “Maa o maa, n'o b'i taam'a sen fila la, n'o de ma don e rò, e ko, N’ ma fa, N’ ma fa, N’ ma fa, i k'o dun.” I k'o bila nyeki ju la. Shè in su majeninen, a bè bò k'a fili, a bè jigin tasuma kan. A b'a to ten, k'a to ten, k'a to ten, fo shènin bèna kè finfin ye sa. Muso fana bè n'a kè yen. A b'i wele k'i ka fini siri. “Maa o maa n'e nya dara nin kan, e ma don Kòmò rò, a b'o faa.” O ye Kòmò Saman ye. O de ye Kòmòko jujòn ye.

26. Kojugu implied that this child was approximately three years old.

27. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/14/84, Book 7, pp. 75–81 of transcribed tapes.

28. Interview with Salimata Kone, 4/20/84, Grossesse-2, Book 2, pp. 22–3 of transcribed tapes. For the text of this passage see note 17 of this chapter. Salimata uses the everyday word for ears, tulow.

29. Bazin (1906, 241) defines gundo as “secret,” gundo siri as “hold a secret reunion,” and gundo jè as “secret society.”

30. Interview with Nyamaton Diarra, 4/15/84, Book 17, p. 46 of transcribed tapes.

NYAMATON: I bè taa sufè, i bè taa si muso fè, e nalen, i b'a fò maa ye, k'i taara si muso fè?

INTERVIEWER: Nn. Nn.

NYAMATON: Gundo fòlò fòlò de y'o ye. O y'o ye.

31. Bazin (1906, 168) defines jò as “legal case,” although Basi Fane (interview on 2/4/84) defined the term as “reason” and used the term as we use the word law or rule.

In contemporary Bamana and Malinke, this use of jo has given way to the more frequently used sariya borrowed from the Arabic. Bazin (1906, 515) defines sariya as “judgment” or “court case.”

Dumestre defines jò (low tone)(1984, no. 3, 441) as “fetish, secret convention or agreement, an understood clause,” and jó (high tone) (1984, no. 3, 441–2) as “reason, right, priority.” My informants did not distinguish clearly between the two words, and explained the first in terms of the second.

32. This discussion is based on an interview with Kojugu Cissoko. See Kojugu Cissoko, 6/14/84, Book 8, pp. 19–20 of transcribed tapes.

33. Bazin (1906, 156) defines ka jè as “to unite, reunite, to couple with.” Dumestre (1984, no. 3, 404–5) defines it as “to unite, unite oneself with, to assemble, to agree with, to associate with.”

34. Bazin (1906, 364) defines lasiri as “to be full, to be pregnant.”

35. For an explanation of boliw or ritual altars see Brett-Smith 1983.

36. The term siriw can include sculpture as well as wrapped ritual objects when it is used in a general sense. When employed in a narrower sense, it refers only to objects such as boliw that are actually constructed by wrapping something with cotton thread or cloth.

37. It is possible that the expression a lasirilen bè, may relate to the fact that a cord links a fetus to its mother. The literal translation of the phrase may also explain the interdiction that forbids a pregnant woman to walk across the cord tying up a donkey. If she does so, the nyama released by this act will attack her fetus and harm it. It may be that a woman who is already ‘attached’ like a donkey will only harm her child or ‘attachment’ if she traverses the material cord of the donkey's rope, ‘tying herself up’ a second time.

This interpretation is supported by an understanding of the mud-cloth design, fali fereke, “the donkey's fetters,” whose appearance on women's skirts is explained by the belief that children are the “fetters” on a woman. It is thought that a newly married woman will have affairs, quarrel with her husband, and leave him to return to her natal family up until the moment that she has her first child. After one or two children, the woman becomes calm, since she is firmly ‘fettered’ to her new life and her husband's family. The comparison between women and donkeys is far-reaching, for, just as it is believed that a donkey who deflowers a female donkey will pay for this act with its life, so a man who deflowers a woman with the character of a donkey will also die. See interview with Salimata Kone, 4/15/84, Grossesse-1, Book 1, p. 8 of transcribed tapes.

38. See the final pages of Chapter 4 for the dangers inherent in carving when impure, and Chapter 3 for the way in which broken sexual interdictions empty the sculptor's work of any power.

39. See note 15, this chapter.

40. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-1, Book 13, p. 78 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N'i bè baara bilen na, cè man kan ka dorogo muso rò, muso man kan ka dorogo cè ro. An koni tana ko, n’ y'o fò o ye.

41. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, pp. 50–1 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N'i bè yiri baara la, mako-nya-yiri yèrè, muso t'i ye few, few, few. Muso yèrè t'i ye, denmisèn lamògò t'i ye, fo i bè si kosabi min nò, bònyònko, a bè dilan dinnò min na, olu b'a dòn, o kò mògò wèrè si man kan k'i ye.

42. It is common for men to share a bedchamber when they are not sleeping with their wives. This closeness is regarded as evidence of a true friendship, and is in no way associated with homosexuality.

43. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, p. 56 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Hall ni mògò wèrè b'a nyèdòn ka tèmèn e min b'a baara la, hall ni mògò wèrè b'a nyèdòn ka tèmèn e kan, n'a ko ten, k'a b'a minè, e dun n'a tè si nyògòn kan, i t'a jogo dòn, i tè sòn. Bon, n'a nògòlen kèra, e t'a dòn, fini nògòlen kèra, e t'a dòn. Fini dun nògòlen kasòrò a jèlen, n'o magar'a la, n'o ye yiri in dilan, ka i kali k'a fò, ko, nin waati masina n'i ye nin k'a la, a bè nya, n'a ma nya dun? O tuma, e min y'a bò, i bè siga i yèrè ma. N'i dun y'a bò jèlenya ye, i ye waati min fò, o waati tè se kasòrò ni a bè bò ko min na, n'o ma nya.

44. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, pp. 55–6 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Anw fè, n'i bè o cè yiri bò, i ka kan ka yiri bò ka fini min to i la, n'i ni muso jèra, i t'o fini don fo n'a fini kora. I yèrè, n'i b'o baara gèlèn daminè, i bè se tile fila, n'i y'a baara daminè, n'a tèmènna tile kelen, fo k'a se tile fila, saaba, fo k'a ban, i nògòlen tè se ka mag'a la. I tè sòn mògò wèrè fana ka mag'a la.

45. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, pp. 49–50 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N'i b'o dakun na, fo k'i tila, o bènna tile bikònòntòn ma, o bènna tile binaani ma, o bènna kalow saaba ma, i tè se muso ma. I tè se muso ma dè. N'i sera muso ma, i b'i la baara tinyè. U n'i sera muso ma, i bè ji ta, k'a kè filen kura rò, ka taa nton bilen kan. N'i sera nton bilen ma, yiri o yiri, n'o bè nton bilen kan, i b'o fura bòshi, i b'o fura dò bòshi, k'o kè filen kura lò ji kan, k'a lamaga, k'i ko a la nton bilen kan. N'i jara, i b'i la fininw don, i bè na so. O tuma, hali n'a y'a sòrò i ye muso tigè, o tè mako sa i la baara lò. N'i m'o kè, i ye baara lankolon kè.

46. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Outils-2, Book 13, p. 23 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N'i y'i da muso wèrè fè, i dun muso tè, numu muso tè, n'i bè taa cèya minan dilan, a tè sòn dè. I bè taa fèn de dilan k'a d'a tigi ma o kò mako-nya-fèn tè dè.

INTERVIEWER: E min ye minnuw ye, mun de bè k'i la?

KOJUGU: Fèn tè k'i la dè, nka i la baara kè nò le tè nya. I b'a dilan kun min na, a tè se k'o kun nya.

47. The verb ka burun burun is used to describe fruit that falls from trees, as in the sentence “Mangoro den buruna,” or “the fruit of the mango fell down.” The phrase is a technical, medical expression that implies spontaneous abortion as a result of the adultery. A self-induced abortion would be indicated by the expression “N ye n’ konon tinye,” “I spoiled my belly,” where the verb ka tinye, “to spoil,” implies intentionality.

48. Interview with Salimata Kone, 4/15/84, Grossesse-1, Book 1, pp. 34–5 of transcribed tapes.

SALIMATA: Aa! Ni sisan tè, n’ terikè, o kònòn tun bi burun dè fòlò, fòlò koni. Ni sisan tè, i kònòma k'i cè to yen ka taa shi cè wèrè fè, o kònòn tun bè burun fòlò. O koni tun bè kè. N’ tè sisan dòn dè. Ohòn. Bari sisan muso kònòma bè se ka cèw saaba bèe jè. Ehe! Ehe! Nhun.

49. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, p. 62 of transcribed tapes.

50. When a child crawls or walks, the mother may begin weaning and can resume sexual relations with her husband. In some villages, women refuse to resume sexual relations until the child is two or three years old, saying that they will be ashamed to face their community if they become pregnant any earlier. One striking case was Basi's now deceased daughter-in-law, who persisted in remaining abstinent long after the appointed time in order to maintain her self-respect and reputation, although she acknowledged that she missed and would have liked sexual relations with her husband. In Bamako, it is common to hear older men and women reproach young girls with their lack of restraint when the young women become pregnant only a few months after giving birth. Despite changes in sexual mores, these continuous pregnancies are still shameful, since they imply a lack of control.

51. For a lengthy discussion of the abstinence expected of a new mother and the ravages of sere see the interview with Salimata Kone, Grossesse-3, 4/20/84, Book 2, pp. 36–7 of transcribed tapes.

52. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-1, Book 13, pp. 73–4 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Kalo tile mugan ni kònònton su, o ye kalo san-ma-kolon piri piri [from the French pur] ye, i man kan ka jè muso fè. N'i jèr'a fè n'a kèra musoman ye, a ni mpogotigiya tè na. N'i jèr'a fè n'a kèra cè ye, n'a tèmènna san tan, san tan ni duuru kan, cèya bè b'a rò. Mògòw b'a fò ko dabali don. I b'a nyènyini ka dèsè. Dabali tè, foyi, foyi, kasòrò a bòlen cèya rò, o bè mògòw ban a ma.

53. I heard of one case of a woman born without a vagina who, although publicly accepted in everyday social life, was privately regarded as a monstrous freak and greatly feared. No one would marry her, and it was believed that her family must have broken some extremely significant interdiction to have produced this abnormality. This case was reported to me as an example of the worst calamity that could befall a human being.

54. The only way a woman could divorce her husband prior to colonial times was to assert and prove his impotence.

55. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/20/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, p. 25 of transcribed tapes. For the Malinke text see note 8, Chapter 5.

56. Interview with Salimata Kone, 4/15/84, Grossesse-1, Book 1, pp. 26–7 of transcribed tapes.

SALIMATA: A koni ba bè wili Allah yòrò rò. Barisa, den de bi sòrò cè fè. N'i y'a ye an bè taa joli ta la, e yèrè joli b'a rò. Nka, a bè bò cè min fè fòlò, fòlò, fòlò, fòlò k'a d'e ma. A ju bè wili Allah la. Ni maa min tè yen, i t'o ju wili yòrò dòn. Hali ni min bè bò ba fè, i b'a sòrò cè nòrò de bè la fòlò, kasòrò ka ba ta bila. O koni yòrò nin sèmèntibaga o ye Allah ye. An tè o dòn.

INTERVIEWER: Aw t'o jateminè?

SALIMATA: An t'o jateminè. Ehe. Ehe. An t'o jäte sòrò dè. An t'o jäte sòrò.

57. See the discussion of last-minute changes in carving sculpture at the end of Chapter 5. The Malinke text of the relevant passage is given in note 103, Chapter 5.

58. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, pp. 44–5 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Nègè baara ka gèlèn. N'i donna fan na, i kaburu bè datigè fo k'i bò fan na. N'i bòra fan na, buguri bè k'a kan. O ko, n'i donna fan na, fo k'i bò, i kaburu datigèlen don. An fa ye min fò an ye.

59. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-1, Book 13, pp. 76–7 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: Basi tè. Bon, sisan, mun na i y'a fò, kafò, ko, ni numukè, n'a donna fan na, ko, a kaburu dayèlèla. O ye cè ye. Mun na, i b'o fò?

KOJUGU: O bè fò k'a da min kan, n'e donna fan na, i bè baara kè nègè-ma-fènw de la: tòntòn, marteau, baranw, kulan. Ni baranw ma kari, nègè ma pan i bolo, tòntòn ma pan, marteau kala ma kari, o don i tè su ye. Nin dòn dun n'o kèra, i sigilen kulan min kun na, ni marteau kala karila, ka n'i ci i kun nò, dinyè ni lahara bèe kiri t'a rò. Ni numu sara fan na, i sar'i sa yòrò. I salen min bolo kiri t'i n'a cè, fon'a y'a tuku k'a k'i la. O bè kè fan da. Ohòn.

60. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-1, Book 13, p. 76 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUCIJ: Muso kònòma kaburu dayèlèlen, o bè sòrò a jigin tuma fè. Awa, o bè sòrò yòrò min fè, ni den bè bò ni rò. Ni den bè bò ni rò. Ni min bè na, o nyuman-na-ma bè na, e t'a dòn. A bè bò min nò, o tè bò a rò, e t'a dòn. O kosòn muso kònòma, n'i koni ye wololi daminè, i kònòma, n'i ka kan ka jigi lon min, n'o dugu yèrè jèra, ou o su yèrè kora, tin dimi bè n'i la. Muso kònòma o waati la, a tè suw fè, a tè nyinamaw fè. A kaburu bè dayèlè de. Ni Allah y'a kè jòn kunandi ye, a bè bò. Ni Allah m'a kè jòn kunandi yc, a bè to a rò.

61. See Chapter 2 and the interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/11/84, Djinns/Ciw, Book 14, p. 49 of transcribed tapes. For the Malinke text see note 114, Chapter 2.

62. See Chapter 2 and the interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, p. 88 of transcribed tapes. For the Malinke text see note 112, Chapter 2.

63. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-1, Book 13, p. 77 of transcribed tapes. For the Malinke text see note 59 of this chapter.

64. Interview with Salimata Kone, 4/20/84, Grossesse-2, Book 2, p. 26 of transcribed tapes.

SALIMATA: A fura tè yen. Foyi si tè sc ka maa kisi saya ma, ni Allah yèrè kelen tè. Saya fura tè maa da dè. A fura tè yen.

65. I do not mean to imply that women are unaware that it is possible to abort intentionally or that they never do so, simply to state that the system of traditional law forbids it. Salimata Kone reported that a man whose wife is ‘sterile’ (that is, who has not become pregnant for a suspiciously long period of time) is advised to beat the woman severely as a preliminary step, to make sure that she is not taking, and does not continue to take, traditional contraceptives or abortifacients. The couple seeks direct intervention from traditional experts in sterility only if the woman continues to remain barren after the beating. The assumption seems to be that women frequently do not wish to become pregnant, and that a man should make sure that his wife is not preventing conception or aborting the pregnancies that are his legal property, and to which he is entitled as a result of the bridewealth paid to the woman's family.

Salimata also made it clear that expert midwives are fully conversant with a range of traditional drugs and ritual procedures believed to prevent pregnancy or produce instantaneous abortion. Unfortunately, it was extremely difficult (and ultimately impossible), to persuade her to reveal these drugs or procedures, since she made it quite clear that revealing such knowledge was tantamount to a public declaration that one had given young women contraceptives or arranged abortions. In fact, Salimata responded to our request for a recipe for an abortifacient by citing a preparation that is used to stop the flow of blood when a woman is spontaneously aborting and her family, her husband, and his family wish to save the pregnancy. She refused to tell us the ingredients of the konon mugu (literally “stomach powder”), the black powder consumed by women who wish to abort.

The Bamana consider that an induced abortion constitutes intentional destruction of property belonging to the woman's husband and his family. The woman in question has no traditional legal rights over the decision as to whether she should become pregnant or not, or whether a child that has already been conceived should be aborted. Salimata told us that when a young unmarried woman became pregnant, the midwife to whom she confided this fact would immediately summon the girl's family, the fiancé, and the fiance's family. Together, these authorities would make the decision as to whether the woman's family's honor would be preserved by inducing an abortion, or whether the pregnancy would be allowed to continue to term. Illegitimate children could thus be aborted at the request of the young girl's fiancé and the two families, even if the girl herself wished to bear the child. Such an abortion would maintain the fiction that the girl had remained obedient to traditional custom and the wishes of her family in the choice of a husband. Such situations clearly became far more common following the relaxation of the traditional rules governing sexual behavior that occurred after Mali's independence in 1960. Many different informants reported that premarital sex with a partner of one's own choice (as opposed to that of one's family) was extremely rare prior to this time, and that illegitimate children were frequently aborted. Now young people of both sexes engage in relations with multiple partners as a matter of course, and illegitimate children are common, although they still bear a certain stigma. Many Western family-planning programs prove useless in Mali because the planners assume that women of childbearing age possess the power of decision over their pregnancies. According to traditional law, this is not the case; the woman has no rights over the pregnancy. She is simply held responsible for assuring that it comes to term, and for presenting her husband with an undamaged, living child.

This note is based on the interview with Salimata Kone, 4/6/84, Enfantement, Book 10, pp. 92–7 of transcribed tapes.

66. Interview with Salimata Kone, 4/15/84, Grossesse-1, Book 1, p. 43 of transcribed tapes.

SALIMATA: Muso kèlè nyama ka bon. Ni min tora kèlè la, o nyama ka bon kè. Ni sisan tè, ni Allah sinna k'a komasegin kasòrò a ma bila, hali sisan, hali sisan, Worodugu, salon dò kèra i kòrò yan, dugutigi ko, a tè don. U bi taa n'i ye kaba fè rò. Ka taa kabakuru kè, i ko musèlè, ka kaburu kè k'a lamini, lamini. U bè yiriw ni sakaw tigè k'a bari. A tè don dugu rò. Oò, i y'a dòn, n'a fora k'e maa min ta kèra ten, e yèrè de b'a dòn, tòw bè don dugukolo rò cogo min na, a ti don ten. Ko di? I y'a dòn, i nisò bè kasi dè?

INTERVIEWER: Nhun.

SALIMATA: Oò. I b'a fò, k'o de nyama ka bon. I b'a fò, ko, Allah kana n’ ta to muso kèlè rò dè. I b'o de fò dè. Ohòn.

67. Interview with Salimata Kone, 4/20/84, Grossesse-2, Book 2, p. 20 of transcribed tapes.

SALIMATA: An ka mògòw kòròbaw ko a bè ji-ntannya kè, se dugu ma. O ni a ko bè caya dugu kònòn. U tun b'o fò an nyèna. A ti don in koni, o kòrò ye olu fila ye. K'a bè ji ko gèlèya. A mana kè san o san, n'a donna, oò, a bè caya dè, a kèlen bè caya dugu kònòn. A kòrò koni y'o ye u fè.

68. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, p. 44 of transcribed tapes. For the Malinke text see note 58 of this chapter.

69. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-1, Book 13, p. 76 of transcribed tapes. For the Malinke text see note 60 of this chapter.

70. As ‘creators,’ women are not allowed to perform blood sacrifice, but must request help from men in killing the necessary animals.

71. See note 41, Chapter 3.

72. Interview with Salimata Kone, 4/20/84, Grossesse-4, Book 2, p. 74 of transcribed tapes.

SALIMATA: A tè se ka foyi si ke. Ni a yèrè koni daminèna, cè tè taa cikè yòrò la, foni a y'a fò, “Nin fèn in bè nin yòrò in na,” n’ bè taa ciya la, ka na. N’ fana bè taa nin fura in bò ka na. O fana bè to gamanagan na fo k'a jigi.

The remainder of the passage states:

SALIMATA: You know, if it is happening [the childbirth is occurring] and it happens that you are outside the village, you don't know about it, but even if you go to the hospital on that day, his body is without energy [whether the husband is aware of the birth or not, he is still depleted of energy].

73. Interview with Salimata Kone, 4/20/84, Grossesse-4, Book 2, p. 74 of transcribed tapes.

SALIMATA: Nka anw fè bamanan na, n'i muso kònòma don, a kamanen bè gan. I garisèkè bè siri.

74. Interview with Salimata Kone, 4/15/84, Grossesse-1, Book 1, p. 30 of transcribed tapes.

SALIMATA: Ne yèrè cè ye baia dò faa, kasòrò ne kònòma don. Baia bòr'a kan tuma min… . Ne yèrè cè, n'a yèrè nalen bè a masala bò an ye, a ma kè n'nyana dè. A ko, eè, ko, “Bina Sani, k'i ya n muso kònòma faa dè. “Ko,” Basi tè, i ya muso kònòma faa. Nin muso ti kè n’ ta ye. Den tè n’ ta ye. Nka, sisan, komi aw nyè tè ko la, ne tè se k'a fo, ko, ne bè n’ ta jurusara i la. Ni ne ye n’ ta jurusara i la, fadenw bè yèlè i la dè, bawo ne ye muso filatigi ye, e ye muso nin kelentigi ye. Nka, nin koni den in t'i nafa, i muso man'i nafa, nka, i koni den in t'i nafa.” Ne cè, a ko, balasogo in, maa si kan'a kè ko ye. Maa si kan'a kè ko ye. A nana ni baia sogo in ye. A kèra ka kònòn min to ne la, a den wolola ani ni ma na. Anw ka jate ye min ye, o bi sòrò cèw yèrè yèrè de fè.

75. See Salimata's references to the role of djinns in both animal and human pregnancies; interview with Salimata Kone, 4/15/84, Grossesse-1, Book 1, p. 31 of transcribed tapes.

76. Interview with Salimata Kone, 4/16/84, Grossesse-2, Book 2, p. 15 of transcribed tapes.

We can begin to assess the extent of their exclusion as unwanted outsiders when we examine an expert midwife's description of the only situation in which a man is allowed to enter the birthing room:

SALIMATA: If your childbirth becomes serious [i.e., there are serious problems], if, before you have finished giving birth, the blood prevents the child from coming, now, if we [the midwivesj really have problems and we have used everything that we can think of [every medicine and every solution], we will consult the men [this is principally in the case where the woman's loss of blood cannot be controlled and threatens her life]. They have their own [medical knowledge] that is similar [to ours]. The man who can cure her, he enters the birth chamber. He, too, will work on the woman who is in labor. The person [man] who can see her, it is this one. Apart from this, no man ever sees her. We do this only when we are in really serious difficulties.

Unless a sculptor possesses the special medicines cited by Salimata, he is no exception to the rule that forbids men to view births. However, both sculptors and ordinary men are curious about this process that they cannot view, and they spend a lot of time discussing it. The average man acquires a basic familiarity with birth procedures and the ritual rules that orchestrate them, from his mother and from the experience gained through his own marriages. Many ritual experts gain a much deeper knowledge of the medical aspects of childbirth from conversations with the elderly midwives who are their peers in the realm of women, and from consulting these women for information and assistance when faced with clients who seek help for problems of infertility.

For instance, Kojugu spontaneously reported that women are more fertile immediately after their period, revealing an unsuspected familiarity with beliefs about the female reproductive cycle. Such knowledge, whether conscious or hovering at the edge of consciousness, provides a base of information for men and goes far toward explaining why so many of the ritual restrictions observed by sculptors correspond to those for pregnant women, women in childbirth, and nursing mothers.

Kojugu's comment is found in the interview, Questions-3, 8/9/84, Book 15, p. 92 of the transcribed tapes. One should note that this observation is not scientifically valid. In fact, ovulation tends to occur fifteen days before the menses, so a woman is not at her most fertile immediately after her period ends, but rather closer to the midpoint between periods (Cutler 1980, 838).

77. Probably women always cry out in childbirth, but the cries should not be loud enough to be heard by any but the midwives in attendance, who camouflage the woman's distress by telling the community that she behaved well and was “silent.” An ill-disposed midwife can easily ruin a woman's reputation by spreading the rumor that she was unable to prevent herself from crying out during childbirth. What is important is that both midwives and mother maintain the façade that she faced these moments of extreme pain without uttering a sound. This insistence on silence is similar to the rule that requires that a young woman undergo excision without uttering a word.

On one occasion I saw a young girl receive six knife cuts about a quarter inch deep in her chest without any anesthetic and without uttering a sound. Her only response to the pain was the quiet falling of a few tears. Otherwise, she remained completely impassive, and was praised for this impassivity. (The cuts were made in order to rub a medicinal powder into the girl's chest to cure her of an unspecified lung disease.)

I suspect that many Bamana and Malinke train themselves and are trained by their own culture to bear extraordinary pain without flinching. This ability is a stated goal of many initiation rites and rituals.

78. Interview with Salimata Kone, 4/14/84, Grossesse-1, Book 1, p. 14 of transcribed tapes.

SALIMATA: Certain old women – these are only observations since, among us, we don't write – the old woman [the midwife] who is disgusted by the placenta [at the moment when she is burying it], if you are in the process of making it go in [to the hole dug for it in the outhouse] and you spit out your saliva, and you bury it, and you spit out your saliva – the babies that have come from these placentas [that have been buried with the midwife's spit] cannot live. Those who live are not numerous, and then, also, if you put it [the placenta] in the hole, if you see that the cord is outside the hole, and you put earth over it, and if you try to put the earth over it little by little, among us, the children from these placentas who survive are rare.

See also interview with Salimata Kone, 4/16/84, Grossesse-2, Book 2, pp. 4–5 for the case of a midwife who intentionally buries the placenta in the wrong position and thus causes the child's death.

79. In fact, the only way in which a man can guarantee himself some control over his children's birth is to win the respect and liking of the most famous midwife in the village, by showering her with small attentions and constant gifts, so that she will do everything in her power to preserve the infant at the critical moment.

80. This includes children born to a woman and her lover, who are the husband's and not the lover's property.

81. Interview with Salimata Kone, 4/6/84, Enfantment, Book 10, pp. 97–9 of transcribed tapes.

SALIMATA. Anw fè bamanannaw, anw fè a tè fò mògò si ye, n'i yèrè cè tè. Ne ye o fò aw ye fòlò. N'i yèrè ya, … i ka waati tèmènna, ka kalo min se o kò, i m'a ye, dòw bi sèbè siran siran u cèw nyè. U b'a fu cè ye, “Aa, sisan kbni, ne ya kalo kelen bila.” Oò, ni, o sen cè yèrè fana b'a kòlòshi. N'o sera fila, o b'a fò, “Oò, i yèrè y'a fò n’ ye, ko, i ye kalo kelen bila. Sisan a dafara fila dè.” I b'a fò, “Owò.” N'o tè, koni, bamananna, i tè taa a fò mògò si ye, fo n'a bòra kènè nò ni mògòw y'a dòn.

INTERVIEWER: Bon, a bè bò kènè ma cogo jumen?

SALIMATA: K'a kunbaya kè. K'a bonya tan. Owò, mògòw koni b'a dòn o la sa, i kònòma don, o kò, i tè taa a fò mògò si ye.

INTERVIEWER: Ohon?

SALIMATA: Owò.

INTERVIEWER: Bon, ni muso don, a bè taa k'a fò a bamuso wala mògò wèrè ma, bamanaya, mun bè k'a la? Den bè tinye, wala mun bè kè?

SALIMATA: Foyi, foyi, koni t'i k'a la. O koni bè an fè kòròlen don, i k'a dogon fo ka i kòrò bò kènè kan, mògòw b'a fò o ka fisa n'i yèrè k'a fò ye. Parce que, bamananna, jugu tè ban maa na. N'i yèrè y'a fò, dòw bè yen i ka den sòrò, o man di olu ye. A bina fèn dilan ka taa a bila i nyè. N'i bè taa kungo rò, wali n'i bè taama, n'i bè soli ka bò, dòw bè baara dò kè k'o bila i nyè, n'i sen dar'o rò, n'a burunna, cè b'a fò i yèrè nò don. A dogon kun bamananna, o kòrò de y'o ye.

82. See Chapter 4 and interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/15/84, Création, Book 8, p. 32 of transcribed tapes.

83. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, pp. 48–9 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Wala! N'i bè gundow lòn yiri lèsè, farafinna gundow lòn yiri, n'i b'a lèsè, ni muso bè jigin so kònòn, o bè dogon cèw la cogo min na, a bè dogon musow misènw la cogo min, muso denmisènninw, i y'a dòn, a bè dogon olu la?

INTERVIEWER: Nhun. Nhun.

KOJUGU: N'i bè yiri lèsè, i b'a dogon awa mògòw la ten, kòmi jubatò bè dogon cogo min, ni muso bè wolo, a bè dogon an fè farafinna cogo min, n'i bè gundo rò yiri lèsè, n’ m'a fò, k'a lèsè k'a kè jangonnan fèn ye dè, jago fèn ye, k'a kè tilonkè fèn ye, n'o tè ko fo mako-yiri yèrè yèrè, i b'a lèsè, a bè dogon kòmi jubatò bè dogon cogo min na. Nhun. Minnu b'a kalama, cèkun, cèkun, minnu b'a kalama, a bè dilan gundo min na, n'olu b'o gundo lòn, i n'olu de bè jè k'a dilan.

84. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 14, pp. 41–2 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Jubatò filè, ni muso jiginna, san'i kè wili k'a fò, bèe t'a ye. Farafinna bèe, bèe tè jubatò ye i nyè la. Bon, yiriw bè, yiriw lò, n'i b'u baara, mògò t'i ye. Mògò yèrè, fan o fan, t'i ye. I kelen. Allah bè da i kan.

85. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, p. 58 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N'a bè yiri baara kungo kònòn, mògò wèrè t'a ye. N'a bè kungo kònòn, ani jubatò bèe ka kan. N'a bè na ka bò wula kònòn, a bè yiribaara bila, n'a nana so, ani mògò bèe ka kan.

86. Interview with Salimata Kone, 4/20/84, Grossesse-4, Book 2, pp. 78–9 of transcribed tapes.

See pp. 60–2 of the same interview for a case in point. Salimata describes how she prevented her second son's first wife from going into the bush to work when she knew that the young woman was about to give birth.

87. See Ortner's well-known article, “Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?” (1974).

88. McNaughton (1988, 61) observes that if a smith were commissioned to create a metal amulet and he had to work nude in front of his client, the amulet increased in cost. McNaughton does not link working nude to the creation of ritual sculpture.

In childbirth, Bamana women not only are naked, but, as Salimata states, they place only the oldest and most ragged garments beneath them. Then, if the cloth is so stained that it cannot be washed, but must be buried, it is no great loss.

89. Interview with Salimata Kone, 4/20/84, Grossesse-4, Book 2, pp. 77–8 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: Cèw bè se k'i sen bila o rò wa?

SALIMATA: Ayi. Komi, dinga dò bè sen, u b'a ji k'o rò. Wali n'i bè sutara kònòn, bamanan na fòlò, i y'a dòn, sutara tun bè yen, u b'i na dinga dò sen nin nyègèn na, a bi k'o kònòn. U b'i ko dingè kunna. K'i ko k'i jè. Komi cèw kan'i nògòlen ye. Finiw bè ko k'u jè. Awa, an b'a kè ten.

INTERVIEWER: O ma nyi wa? Nyama b'o la wa?

SALIMATA: Bèe nyè man kan k'a ye. Cèw ka fèn ye ta tun tè.

90. Today most batems are dominated by Islamic practices such as the sacrifice and eating of a goat or sheep, and children are named by the local Muslim holy man, who is sometimes the imam and sometimes a wandering marabout. Formerly, children were named through divination or according to birth order by the head of the father's extended family. Furthermore, the mother celebrated the shaving of the child's head (which was a pre-Islamic as well as an Islamic practice) by making dègè (very finely ground white millet flour), forming it into small balls, and visiting neighbors’ compounds, where she would offer a bowl of the dègè balls to everyone. Each person took a ball as a gesture of goodwill toward the child. In the past, midwives shaved the child's head, and it was named the day that the remainder of the umbilical cord fell off (perhaps four to five days after the birth).

Now, the batem is often arbitrarily set for one week after the birth.

91. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/11/84, Djinns-2/Ciw, Book 14, p. 82 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N'i bè sèmè kòròta k'a cun, sèmè cun tuma yiri yèrè kan, o b'a sòrò nunakali tònna. Ni sèmè jiginna, nunakali bè bila.

92. Unfortunately I cannot identify this object with any of the familiar object types known to us in Western museums.

93. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, p. 52 of transcribed tapes.

94. See this chapter, note 77.

95. Kojugu is probably referring to a southern- (or Buguni-style) Tyi Warra.

96. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/23/84, Outils-1, Book 12, p. 51 of transcribed text.

KOJUGU: Nkòsòn ka gèlèn. A bèe ka gèlèn dè, nka nkòsòn de ka gèlèn. Nkòsòn ka gèlèn. Nkòsòn, a gèlèya yòrò, i b'a bò k'a ban, mògò t'i ye, i tè kuma mògò fè. I tè wili ka taa i nyègènè kè. I tè taa bin nò. I tè dumuni kè. I tè ji min fo k'i d'a la.

INTERVIEWER: O bèe be kè tile kelen wa?

KOJUGU: Tile kelen. Tile kelen.

97. Interview with Salimata Kone, 4/16/84, Grossesse-2, Book 2, p. 5 of transcribed tapes.

SALIMATA: Dòw bè yen, u koni bi ja kere, kere, kere, kere. Oò, ni den na tuma sera, kònòn bi labila. Awa, nka ni a ya dò in kun bò, dògòtòròw [from the French docteurs] bi mara ka fènnin bari a ni den cè. O caman bè kè n’ nyè na. N'a sera den mò, den tè balo.

A little later in the same interview Salimata reiterates her assertion:

SALIMATA: There are some women, when they are pregnant, they eat tot [the basic Bamana meal of millet paste] which has been kept overnight. In the morning they reheat the tot [from the previous night's dinner], and then they eat it. Among the Bamana, if you were pregnant, the elderly women [i.e., the midwives] forbade you to do this. One shouldn't eat tot that has been kept overnight. This gives you the desire to defecate during childbirth. But some women don't pay attention to what they eat. If the belly is completely dry [constipated], then, when the pains of childbirth begin, your belly will give way [you will have diarrhea]. For some, when they go to the maternity clinic, if they give her a laxative, she will defecate before the child comes. In the case where this does not happen, these ones defecate [at the moment of childbirth]. But there are many women nowadays who don't do it [defecate at the moment of childbirth]. But there are some rare cases that I can cite [who do this], but this isn't something that one should speak about.

Interview with Salimata Kone, 4/16/84, Grossesse-2, Book 2, p. 5 of transcribed tapes.

98. It is important to be aware that ritual experts of all types are the only other category of person, besides women, who are required to manifest an extreme degree of control over their intestines. In and of itself, this type of control is perceived as a source of miraculous ritual powers, for the Bamana regularly offer the following statement as a completely satisfactory explanation of such powers: “No one has ever seen him eat or defecate.” Control over both the mouth and the anus represented and continues to represent the ultimate in power.

Ritual experts achieve this ideal state of permanent constipation and apparent self-sufficiency by seeming never to eat, defecate, or urinate. Of course, they do indeed perform these acts, but they usually avoid being seen to do so. Specialists are presented with their food in private; they eat alone partly because they are believed to salt their food with numerous poisons and antidotes as a self-protective measure. Similarly, such experts wait to urinate or defecate until they are deep in the bush, and they often refuse to speak in public, remaining stubbornly silent throughout lengthy village assemblies, and only proferring their deciding vote on the matter under consideration to one or two selected colleagues late at night.

99. A great deal of my data, particularly that on excision, suggests that, for the Bamana, control is not control unless it can be demonstrated in the most difficult and extreme situation.

100. The Bamana and Malinke normally think of dariya, “openness, accessibility, receptivity,” as a female, not a male, quality.

101. Kojugu specifies that a sculptor who carves a filani yiri (sculpture for twins) for an individual must be given an old chicken together with an old cock and a goat. The artist who makes the same object on behalf of an entire village is presented with a ram, which is killed in order to prepare a special meal for the sculptor, and a bull, which is the final payment for the object. See the interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/24/84, Outils-2, Book 13, pp. 31–2. This payment is discussed in Chapter 3.

102. Presumably this dish is prepared by either the sculptor's wife or the client's wife. The dish would then be given to the sculptor's apprentice or a ritual expert who is allowed to visit him, and this person would bring the meat to the artist in the bush.

103. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 14, pp. 42–3 of transcribed tapes.

Unfortunately Kojugu does not explain what he means when he says, “Here is the clear meaning of this laada.”

KOJUGU: N'i bè yiri lèse, n'i bè yiri lèse, i k'a bò mako-nyè-fèn kama, farafinna gundo ladilan fèn kama, bègan bè faga. A kunkolo a n'a senw, ani kan, o bè d'i ma. Mògò tè fèn sòrò, ni kun t'a la. Mògò tè fèn sòrò ni kan t'a la. Mògò tè fèn sòrò, ni sen t'a la. O y'o laada ye. An fè, farafinna, o laada kòrò filè o ye kènè kan.

104. There is also a parallel between the sculptor's meal and the dishes prepared for men prior to sleeping with a new wife for the first time. Whereas women were traditionally starved and given laxatives before their first sexual experience, so as to weaken them and render them unable to resist, men were given aphrodisiac medicines and fed special meat dishes, similar to that prepared for the sculptor, to increase their sexual performance.

105. Interview with Salimata Kone, 4/20/84, Grossesse-3, Book 2, p. 39 of transcribed tapes.

SALIMATA: They give you the furu [stomach] when you give birth. That is when one actually gives birth. They give you a chicken as well as the stomach [of a domestic animal], which they prepare for you. This was the custom in the past. People arrange everything and she [the new mother] simply stays inside the house [where she has given birth] – just good food [Salimata means to say that the new mother only eats specially prepared, high-quality food].

Salimata goes on to say that the chicken is killed in honor of the child, for its arrival is similar to that of a stranger. One does not know the personality or character of a newborn infant any more than one knows a stranger who arrives unexpectedly in one's compound and for whom one is obliged to kill a chicken in greeting. The presentation of the furu or stomach probably refers to the area of the woman's body that has recently lost part of its substance through childbirth. Presumably, the consumption of an animal's stomach strengthens and replaces the force that the new mother has recently lost from the same area of her own body.

106. Today, Islamic law prescribes that a new mother be completely secluded for one week, and then stay close to her compound and refrain from visiting other quarters of the village or traveling for a total of forty days. Currently, even non-Muslims obey the forty-day rule. It is probable that the time during which the new mother and her child are separated from the external world was once longer or shorter than forty days. However, the idea that a new mother should pass through a period of seclusion seems to be entirely traditional. The washing process described here may extend throughout the entire forty-day period.

107. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, p. 66 of transcribed tapes.

In fact, the charge of nyama absorbed from participation in the birth process is so high that midwives must also wash in special preparations.

108. Written notes on conversation with Basi Fane, 1/25/84.

109. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 14, pp. 39–40 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: In my case, as you see like this – I gave my first child [almost certainly a boy]. He was born, and the day he was born, before he was born, I said to his mother, Dusu, and to her alone, “This child here, I have made of him my mako [need, problem, affair, solution to a problem].” She replied that she didn't know anything about it [i.e., that this decision was not her responsibility], and I gave him [to the spirit world].

For the Malinke text see note 84, Chapter 2.

110. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/20/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, pp. 35–6 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Nka, n’ ye min ye ko o ye n’ hènè, k'a diya n yèrè sòlòmè ye, a bèe bòcogo ye kelen ye, nka hal'i yèrè denw, fo dò kè diya i ye ka tèmèn dò kan, n’ y'o min ye, n’ y'o ye Sagadugu ye.

111. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/20/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, p. 30 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: O kò, min yèrè bòli ma nyi bugu, bugu, bugu, i b'i nyè tugun k'a bò, a man di Allah ye, o ye yirimògònin ye. Bawo, o ye Allah ladegentò ye. O de b'a to o bòli ma nyi.

112. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/20/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, p. 30 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N'i y'i balan a bòli ma kadaw kadaw, i b'a bò k'a kundama dan cogoya min nò, a ka ca rò, n'i ma se a nyama gèn cogo la, i maa den wolo, den maa se o kundama rò, o bè sa. O bè k'o julusara ye.

113. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, pp. 92–3 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N'i y'a bò o waati la, a bè komi i ye mògò dilan i yèrè ye. Bon, ni muso dun bè laada la, a bè garisèkè de o kòfè. O waati la, n'i ye yiri bò, k'a kè mògò ye, a bè kè. I ka kan ka mògò min, i ka kan ka den min sòrò, ka muso … muso maa laada bila, n'i n'a jèra, n'o ka kan ka kè den ye, i ye yiri min bò, o bè k'o sara ye. Nhun. O kòsòn, an tè sòn a ma.

Kojugu describes the sculptor breaking two rules, one against sleeping with his wife while she is still menstruating, and the other against having sex while carving a human figure. Both of these actions would normally result in a dead child, but the sculptor can avoid the negative consequences of either transgression by offering the wood carving to the spirit world in lieu of the child.

114. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, p. 99 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: I b'i ko fura la yèrè. I b'i ko fura gèlèn na. A kèra shè ye wo, ni se yèrè b'i ye, a kèra ba ye wo, i b'o kè den ni masaraka ye, ko kana den sòrò cogo min. I b'o k'o ni masaraka ye. Nka i t'a fò mògòw ye k'a d'a kan.

115. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 14, pp. 32–3 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Yiri mògònin dilan ka gèlèn min na, muso, a dilali k'a kè muso ye a ka gèlèn. Yiri, k'a dilan, k'a kè muso ye, f'i k'a dilan a ka mako nya, k'a kè girinkan ye, k'a kè mako nyali yiri yèrè, yèrè ye, n'i m'a dilan alamisa fon'i y'a dilan ntènèn. Alamisa ma den, mògòtigi don. Ntènèn ma den, kodònna don. Juma ma den, fangatigi don. N'i b'a dilan fangatigi ye, i b'a dilan juma. Eè! O ka di dè! N'i b'a dilan juma, i b'a dilan fangatigi ye, o la fanga bè nyèkòròta, o la fanga bè yiriwa ka taa. N’ ye minnu f'i ye olu de y'o ye.

116. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 14, pp. 33–4 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Ne ko a dò bè dilan alamisa, o ye musow la sanka ye. Dò bè dilan ntènèn, o bè dilan kodòn kama, dò bè dilan juma, o bè dilan fanga la. I sonna, i ma sòn, o bè kè. Nhun. I m'a fò ko, nkalon ni tinyè ko jumen ka ca? Nyuman man ca dè. A bèe n'a ka baara don. Nin lon tile wolonfila in bèe la, i ka kan ka yiri min baara lon min ma, n'i y'a baara nin lon ma, k'a kè nin kun ye, o tè cè. N'i y'a baara nin waati la, k'a kè nin kun ye, o tè cè. A bèe n'a ta lon don.

117. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/20/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, pp. 28–9 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Yirimògònin ta laada, n'i b'a bò mògò wèrè ye, i b'a fò, a bèna ni, awa, woro tan ye. Woro tan maa bò, i b'a fò, shè kòrò ani dununkòrò ani bamuso kòrò, a b'o bò. O ye yirimògònin ta laada ye.

INTERVIEWER: O tuma na … a tè foyi si wèrè di numuw ma … a tè nyò di numuw ma?

KOJUGU: O ye a laada ye. O kò, o kò, a n'a sara, o t'a sara ye dè, o ye a laadaw de ye. N'e muso jigina, mògò min bèn'a f'i ye, muso kòrò min maa n'a f'i ye, k'i muso jigina, i tana i bolo bila i kun ko, “Aw ye, hòn, woro la!”? Bon, ni i donna so kònòn dun? Jubatò ta laada tè, ni anw fè bamananna don, ni den ye muso ye, i bè sè muso fag'a da la. Ni cè don, i bè dununkòrò fag'a dan na. I y'a dòn, o tè k'o ye wa?

INTERVIEWER: Nhun.

KOJUGU: Bon, ni den kundi don sera dun? Ni se b'i ye, i tana bagan faga?

INTERVIEWER: Nhun.

KOJUGU: Bon, o jate bèe de ye nyògòn juru ma ka taa ten.

INTERVIEWER: O jate kelen olu de fana bè yiridèsè la wa?

KOJUGU: Nhun.

118. See the interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 6/20/84, Modèles-1, Book 12, p. 31 of transcribed tapes. Kojugu says, “It is all the same laada, whether it [the yirimògòni] is a man or whethr it is a woman, it is the same thing. For both of them, the customary offerings are the same.”

119. Kojugu uses both these phrases in response to the interviewer's question, “Have you become a woman?” See the interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, p. 62 of transcribed tapes. For the Malinke text see note 102 of Chapter 2.

“The Foundation of the World Is with Women”

1. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, pp. 62–3 of transcribed tapes. For the Malinke text see note 102, Chapter 2.

2. Traditional mores forbade young men who had not been circumcised to have sex. Formerly, circumcision occurred when men were in their early or even late twenties; a boy remained a bilakòrò until he had been “seated under the iron.” For documentation concerning the late age of traditional circumcision see Dieterlen and Cissé (1972, 32).

Nyamaton Diarra reported that he had been circumcised at the age of twenty-seven see the first interview with Nyamaton Diarra, 4/15/84, Book 17, p. 25 of transcribed tapes.

Traditionally, uncircumcised men wore several strips of white cotton sewn together and suspended from a cord around the waist. This bila or cache-sexe was attached at the back of the waist, pulled from the back of the body between the legs and up under the cord in front. The tail drooped down over the groin. Bila means “to leave,” “to abandon,” or “to allow”; the term refers to the fact that the cotton strip was held in place by a cord, and left to fall freely in front of the body, rather than being sewn into a precise shape. Kòrò means “under,” so a bilakòrò is someone who is “under the bila” that is, an uncircumcised man who is still wearing the garb of childhood. No matter how old he might be, a young man could not wear tailored trousers until he was circumcised, an ordeal that was often referred to by using the circumlocution, “N ye finin ta,” “I took on cloth,” or “N ye kulusi ta,” “I took on trousers,” meaning, I abandoned wearing the bila and began to wear tailored clothing, because I was circumcised. Another form of bila was tailored to ressemble short shorts, and was worn by adult blacksmiths when working in the forge. A blacksmith's special status enabled him to wear such skimpy clothing as an adult without being embarrassed or embarrassing others. This type of bila was extremely convenient when working in the intense heat produced by the forge.

3. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-1, Book 13, pp. 57–8 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N’ delila k'a mèn. N'i y'a ye ko n’ na fòli bè s'a ma, an fè farafinna, i ma fèn o fèn ye, i m'a mèn, i la fòli tè s'a ma. A bè an yèrè le bolo yen. An koni benbakè, Sine Cissoko, o ta denkè, Tierna Cissoko, o ta denkè, Jigi Cissoko. Jigi Cissoko, o ta denkè fòlò, o ye ne Kojugu Cissoko ye. A bè an yèrè la du kònòn yen. Hali bi, a bè yen.

INTERVIEWER: Mais, jòn y'a dilan?

KOJUGU: Min y'a dilan?

INTERVIEWER: Nhun.

KOJUGU: Min y'a dilan, o ye an mòkè de ye, ko Farakurun.

Sani o ka fini ta, o de y'a dilan, ko Farakurun.

INTERVIEWER: Farakurun, a jamu?

KOJUGU: Cissoko.

INTERVIEWER: Cissoko?

KOJUGU: Nhun. Farakurun Cissoko, o ta dògòkè ye Sega Cissoko. Sega dògòkè ye Sine Cissoko. Sine ta denkè fòlò, o ye Tierna Cissoko ye. Tierna Cissoko nòròla, o ye Jigi Cissoko. Jigi Cissoko, o ta denkè fòlò, o ye ne Kojugu Cissoko ye.

4. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-1, Book 13, p. 55 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: O yiriw bè yen. A bè dilan bilakòrò yèrè de bolo.

Mògòw wèrèw t'a dilan, bilakòròw yèrèw dòròn.

INTERVIEWER: Mun na mògòw wèrèw t'a dilan fo bilakòròw dòròn?

KOJUGU: Mun na a bè di bilakòròw ma? A bè fò ko, ko, nyama tè bilakòrò la.

5. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-1, Book 13, p. 56 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: O bè kè k'a da dalilu minnu kan, dòw bè yen, i b'a dilan, k'a kè mògò fagalan ye. Dòw bè yen, a bè kè jugu o jugu, ni bilakòrò yèrè tè, a tè s'i la, jugu tè s'i la. Nka, ni bilakòrò donn'i juguya rò, o bè se k'i lakari, a bè se ka dilan nin kunw de la.

6. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-1, Book 13, p. 59 of transcribed tapes. For the Malinke text see note 58, Chapter 5.

7. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/14/84, Boliw-2, Book 16, p. 90 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: A tun bè kè kabii anw ma bange. Nka, kòsan in na, kòmi mògòw dalafiyènyara, mògò kelen kelen ninnu, a bè fò k'a tun bè karisala, k'a tun bè karisala; nka a mògò tè yen bilen. A mògò tun ka ca fòlò. An bè waati min na bi, a ko sumayara dòoni, dòoni, k'a sababu kè mògòninfin ka dalafègènya ye. Kungo fèn tè dalafègèn mògò si fè. Mògò bèe kèra dalafègèn ye. O de kelen bè ka kungofèn ko kè kelen, kelen, kelen ye.

8. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-1, Book 13, p. 65 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: An fè farafinna, o tè fò dè. Ni muso bè nin baara sugu kè, a b'a baara mògò min ye du kònòn, o kelen, muso kelen. Du kònòn mògò wèrè t'a lòn fo ni mògò min bè lutigi nòfè, kuma tè dugu kònòla ma. Dugu kònòn, mògò si t'a lòn. Nka, ni ko n'ara cogo dò la, muso bè i lò a la, n’ ni lutigi dòròn jèmakan don. O ko mògò wèrè si t'a dòn du kònòn, kuma tè k'a se dugukònòla ma. O tuma mara bè kè. Mògòw da man telin. Sisan kow tinyèna.

9. For an explanation of a woman's tere see note 4, Chapter 3.

10. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/14/84, Boliw-2, Book 16, p. 100 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: U bè yen kè.

INTERVIEWER: Mun na o tè se ka kè?

KOJUGU: U cèw ma dinyè n'a ye.

INTERVIEWER: Bon, u bè kuma kojugu wa, wala u tere ma nyi, wala, mun de don?

KOJUGU: U bè kuma, u bè kuma kojugu.

11. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/14/84, Boliw-2, Book 16, pp. 92–3 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: A ka jiña, a n'a bè na.

INTERVIEWER: Est-ce que o b'a fò a ye a ka yiri lèse wa?

KOJUGU: Nhun. A bè se k'a lèsè kè, ni a nòfè jina d'a bil'a la. N'a nòfè jina kèra cè ye, a b'a bil'a la. N'a dun nòfè jina kèr'a bònyòonnako musoman ye, a komi bè se ka dakabanankow wèrèw kè ten, numuya la; a bè se … ka juguman … kòmi ni numumuso don, a kate bè gèlèya. A b'i tògòma goninkisè rò, ka taa dagaw bilennenw ta, n'a bolo ye, ka na n'a ye, ka n'a sigi, ka n'a yira numumusow la; o ye n'i nòfè jina kèra muso ye. Nka, n'i nòfè jina kèra cè ye, numuya baara o baara, ni cèw b'a baara, n'i cè dinyèna n'a ye, i b'a dila. N'i cè ma dinyè n'a ye, i tè se k'o kè dè. O de y'i cè ye.

12. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/14/84, Boliw-2, Book 16, p. 85 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: An b'a lòn. Hali bi, n'an y'a muso ye, an b'a lòn. A bè lòn a nyakisèw sigi cogo la. A bè lòn a filèli kècogo la. A bè dòn, n'a bè sunògò, ni den don, n'a bè sunògò, i b'a dòn a siyòò la. An b'a dòn nin yòròw saaba de la.

13. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/14/84, Boliw-2, Book 16, p. 88 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: A bè dòn muso nyèkisèw, ani nyè-kankan-siw, ani n'a bè sunògò, n'i b'a kòlòshi, a bè kumakan minnu fò. A bè kumakan minnu fò, a bè olu jabi cogo min. A bè kòlòshi mina kan. O ko, Ion kelen baara tè.

14. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/14/84, Boliw-2, Book 16, p. 86 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Ni i y'a dòn a ni denmisènninw bè nyògòn senna, u bè manamana kow la, i b'a koshi k'a b'o o sila kan, k'a mara, k'a mara a nya yèrè, yèrè de ma. K'a mara a nya yèrè yèrè de ma, fo k'a se mògòninfinya sawura rò. I b'a degen sarakaw la. I b'a degen yèrè-lakanw-fènw la.

15. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/14/84, Boliw-2, Book 16, p. 98 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: “A b'a hakili dayèlè. A b'a la baara nyalòn. Wa mògò wèrè mana wili a ko dabari juguya la, o tè se a la.

16. See the interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/14/84, Boliw-2, Book 17, p. 7 of transcribed tapes. The text in question reads as follows:

INTERVIEWER: Good, now, the nyama, the nyama of the wood, it takes blacksmith women faster, or men?

KOJUGU: It takes hold of everyone.

INTERVIEWER: Aa?

KOJUGU: It takes hold of men. It takes hold of women.

INTERVIEWER: Nhun, but, who does it take the quickest? It is quickest …

KOJUGU: It takes hold of men faster. For instance, if you have become a great worker in wood, and if you obtain a child, if you haven't washed yourself against the problem of the nyama of wood, in the antidote to the nyama of the wood, it will take hold of you. But it doesn't take you, yourself. It takes your child.

17. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/14/84, Boliw-2, Book 17, p. 1 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: A bè ko yiri nyama fura la kè. Ba! Ba! Ba! A bè ko yiri nyama fura la.

INTERVIEWER: Bon, n'a ma ko a la, n'a ye nyama nin sòrò, mun de bè kè a la? A bè sa wa? A den dò bè sa wa? Wala mun de bè k'a la?

KOJUGU: N'a ma sa, a bè nakasi.

18. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-1, Book 13, p. 81 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Cèw bè min kè, ni u tè sòn k'a di musow ma, muso, n'i y'a di muso ma, ni muso dimin'e kòrò, ka dimi don i rò, e dun y'a dila k'a kè i komi i yèrè, i n'o dimi bè to de dè. Dimi tè bò.

19. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-1, Book 13, pp. 79–80 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N'i muso kòròla, n'a ka d'i ye, bawo muso de b'a susu. N'a ka d'i ye, i man'i ka fura tigè ka na, n'i y'a d'i muso ma, kafò, nin susu, n'i muso in, n'a diminen t'i kòrò, e diminen t'a kòrò, n'a y'i nyininkan, “Aa, mun fura don? yani n’ k'a kè dumuni kolon na”; n'a ko, “Nn, koli fura don.” Ni muso y'a susu, a bè dòoni t'a la. Muso b'i ko a la n'a ye.

INTERVIEWER: Mais, a b'a dinyè nyin'i fè, wa a b'a t'a yèrè ye?

KOJUGU: A b'a dinyè nyin'i fè. N'a y'i ka fura susu k'a bò ka n'a d'i ma, a b'a fò: “Aaa, karisa, ne nyinèna dè. N’ ye dòonin t'a rò.” N'a ko o bènna, o don. N'a ko o ma bèn, ko, “Nin ye n’ na fura ye,” i n'a bè na, “Hun.”

20. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-1, Book 13, pp. 82–3 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Ni a kèra mògò ye, mògò min sabatilen, i bè gundo fa ye a t'a fò a terimuso ye, a t'a fò mògò wèrè ye, n'i bè taa cèya yòrò, i yèrè b'i ko fura minnu na, i b'a ko o la, i n'a bè taa yòròw la. Hali cèw maa fò k'u bè jòmaya k'a la, a b'i majigin kasòrò gundo b'a bolo, a bè se ka baara jugu kè cèw la. Nk'a b'i majigin. Ni cè min ko k'a tè sòn majiginni ma, ce b'i lò kènè kan k'a fò ni min ka d'aw ye, aw k'a kè. O tuma, ni muso nyèna, a tlenna cè ye, a sònna cè ye, ni muso nyèn'a cè ye, i sonn'a ye, i tlenn'a ye, cè bè ko fura min na, i bè muso ko a la. Cè bè fura min min, muso b'a min. Cè bè fura min tigè k'i la kan dlan kan, i b'a tigè k'a di muso ma, a b'i l'a kan. Nka, n'i y'a dòn, sennya kelen, a dalakafiyèn; i y'a dòn sennya fila, a dalakafiyèn, a b'a yèrè fò, dinyè kònòn, i tè fèn fò a ye, i taa a bila i la baara la.

21. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/14/84, Boliw-2, Book 16, pp. 89–90 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: O bè yen. O bè yen. O numu bonda bè yen. A mògò yèrè bè yen.

INTERVIEWER: Bon, n'i b'i den di, i b'o kè cogo di? I bè taa numucèw de fè yen wa, wala i b'a kè cogo di?

KOJUGU: I tè taa numukè nòfè dè. Fèn min b'i nòfè, a gundo bè i n'o de cè. N'o tè, mògò wèrè si t'a lòn. Mògò wèrè si t'a lòn, i yèrè kelen ni Allah kelen, ani i fèfèn kelen. Mògò wèrè si t'a dòn dè.

22. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-2, Book 14, pp. 39–40 of transcribed tapes. For original text see note 84, Chapter 2.

23. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/14/84, Boliw-2, Book 16, p. 87 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N'a furula, n'a furula, ka i la cè wèrè fè, numu tè, a tè se. A yèrè tè se. A tè se yèrè de. A tè se yèrè de. Kabii a dògòmannin fèn min b'a nòfè, a tè se ani cè wèrè ka jè ni numu tè. A tè se. A yèrè ni cè wèrè si tè bèn fò la. O ye kòmi an donna tile kura min na, o kò, ni fòlò fòlò yèrè de don, i bè npogotigi maminè, fo ka taa a kònyò wili, k'a don, e de b'a dòn muso ye, fo ka taa a sa fana, a tè cè wèrè fana dòn cè ye. Nka an t'o tile la bi dè. Bi ta ye i ni min mana bèn, cogo o cogo, o bèe ka nyi.

24. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/14/84, Boliw-2, Book 16, pp. 83–4 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: An mòmòmuso, min tun b'a lèsè, cè b'i tanga fèn o fèn ma, a fana b'i tanga o ma. Cè man kan ka fèn o fèn kè, a fana b'i tanga o ma. Hali cè bè kulusi don, ka yiridèsè, a bè kulusi don wula kònòn, ka i sigi ka yiri dèsè wula kònòn. N'a filala, n'a bè na so, a kulusi bò, ka taafe siri, ka na so.

Among the Bamana and Malinke, trousers of various types predate direct European contact. Textiles have been documented in Mali as early as the eleventh century A.D. (at Tellern sites in the Bandiagara cliffs), and trousers were probably adapted from Arab models. Among the Bamana, a wealthy man displayed his riches by wearing enormously wide trousers gathered by a belt at the waist. The amount of surplus cloth used testified to the wearer's status.

25. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/14/84, Boliw-2, Book 16, p. 95 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: A ni fèn min bè nyògòn fè, o de b'a bil'a la, a b'a lèsè. Wala, n'a sikora, ka n'a fò a ye, nin kè tan sinin, nin bò tan sinin, ni dugu jèra, a b'a fò, “N’ matigikè, kan dò fora ne ye suro dè. Ko, ne ka nin yiri tigè. Ko ne ka nin yiri dila, ko ka nin kè nin ye, n’ k'a kè wa, n’ kan'a kè?” Ni cè ko, “I k'a kè,” i b'a kè. Nka mògò wèrè t'a dòn. E kelen, cè kelen.

26. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/14/84, Boliw-2, Book 16, pp. 96–7 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Muso ta yiribòyòròw, yòròw fila de ye: ntinkinyèso. A bè lèsè ntinkinyèso de la.

INTERVIEWER: O ni yòrò jumèn?

KOJUGU: Muso la yirilèsèyòrò tila ye ntinkinyèso ye. Ntinkinyèso. U b'a lèsè ntinkinyèso de kan.

INTERVIEWER: Nhun. Yòrò filanan?

KOJUGU: Peut-être, a bè se ka taa a lèsè …

INTERVIEWER: A fò kè.

KOJUGU: A bè lèsè … a bè se ka taa a lèsè, dankènè rò, su dugutila fè.

INTERVIEWER: Dankènè rò, o ye mun ye?

KOJUGU: Dugu cèmancè, komi an la buguda tun bè tilonkè yòrò min nò, an k'o, ma ko, dankènè. Su tilancè, su tilancè tuma, aw ko, su minuit, anw ko, su tilancè, i cè bè t'a i la i kèrèfè, i b'a lèsè. Aw tè baro bila nyògòn na, aw tè kuma nyògòn fè. N'i sègènna, i bè wili ka n'i bolo da i cè kan, ko wili an ka taa. O de don.

27. This design usually represents human presence, as in the Samory ni toubabou kèlèyoro or “the place where Samory fought the white man,” pattern, where the maltese cross stands in for the soldiers who fought in the famous battle at the Woywayanko river just south of Bamako on the road to Guinea.

28. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/14/84, Boliw-2, Book 16, pp. 91–2 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: A bè se k'a lèsè kè. Ni cè wèrè tè fa yèrè cè, a bè se k'a lèsè.

INTERVIEWER: Bon, ni muso bè yirilèsè la, muso kòròba, a bè yiridèsè la, a cè de b'a degen wa, kafò, i ka kan ka sèmè sigi yan de. I b'a sigi yan. I b'a sigi yan. Wala, a b'a to muso de bolo yèrè ma ten.

KOJUGU: A b'a ta bila yèrè ma. Ni muso bolo, ni muso yèrè hakili y'a ye, k'a dila cogo min, a bè t'o de ma ten.

INTERVIEWER: Nka, a bè fèn min dila, est-ce que a b'a tògò dòn wa, a dila tuma na?

KOJUGU: A b'a tògò dòn kè.

29. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/14/84, Boliw-2, Book 16, p. 99 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Cè b'i bolo mag'a la kè. O tè ko jugu ye. Cè b'i bolo mag'a la. Cè t'a fi a ye, “A kè tan, a kè tan,” nka, i b'i bolo kè ka tagamasere yir'a la. Kafò, “A bè kè tan, tan, a tè kè tan, a ci tan, nin kè tan, tan. I ka nin tigè tan. I ka nin tigè tan.” Cè b'o tagamasere yira, nk'i tè fèn fò. Kòmi n'i kumana, n'a yiri banna dilala, a yiri mako nyèyòrò, aw ye nyògòn sòsò min kè, yiri b'o yira fana. O kosòn, i tè kuma. I koni b'i bolo kè ka taamashèn yira; kafò a kè tan. A tè tana, bolokoni na.

30. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/14/84, Boliw-2, Book 16, p. 97 of transcribed tapes.

31. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/14/84, Boliw-2, Book 16, pp. 99–100 of transcribed tapes.

INTERVIEWER: O la cè bè joli d'a ma? Cè bè mun d'a ma? Misi kelen? Ba kelen, saga kelen?

KOJUGU: I yèrè dina mana min ta k'a d'a ma, a b'o ta.

32. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/14/84, Boliw-2, Book 16, p. 88 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Nn! Nn! Nin koni kèra an mòkè muso fòlò fòlò de ye, a ma muso wèrè furu. Eè, safurulayi. A ye muso furu, o ka den sòrò, denkènin kelen. O muso filanan, o bòra ka ale to yen. O muso filanan, o sara ka ale to yen. O denkènin kelen, o ma kè sosigifèn ye. O fana taara jamana fè. Ca fait, a bè mògò nakan de la; dabari juguya tè, nyanyini tè.

This quote is somewhat ambiguous as to whether Kojugu's great-great-grandfather had two sons, one by each wife, or only one by the first wife. In the first case, the son of the second wife (who died) presumably is the one who disappeared, leaving the son of the first wife to become Kojugu's direct ancestor.

In the second case, one would have to assume that in referring to his “great-great-grandfather,” Kojugu is simply making a reference to an older or younger brother of his lineal great-great-grandfather, since the term mòkè can refer to any male ancestor two or more generations back.

I have chosen to interpret the passage as indicating the first alternative, because of the details provided by Kojugu concerning the great-great-grandfather's first wife, NumuNiene. This information is found in the next quote cited in the text.

33. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/14/84, Boliw-2, Book 17, p. 5 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Fala tun tè. Jòn tun tè. Den kelen tun tè. U ba ye, u musoman fila, ba dann'u ma. Ale ye denmuso fòlò ye, n'o ye an mama ye. O de ye denkè sòrò, n'o ye anw benbakè ye; a ye denkèw saaba sòrò. Denkèw saaba, denkè fòlò ta den, o ye ne wolo.

34. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-1, Book 13, pp. 62–3 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N’ y'a ye. Nka, a y'a dèsè kun min na, o kun ma fò an nyè na. Ne yèrè woloba, ko, SiHawa, an yèrè wolofa y'o bila ka yiri dèsè, k'a kè i ko, Fara. Nk'a dèsèra nin kun in na, u m'o fò n’ ye.

INTERVIEWER: A y'a lèsè kun jumèn de kan? Est-ce que i kòròbayalen i y'a dòn, ou bien, hali sa, i m'a dòn? Mun na a dèsèra?

KOJUGU: A y'a dèsè k'a da kun min kan, n’ b'a kun dòn. A dèsèra k'a da, a bè baara k'a kè dibi de ye. Ni kèlè bè na jamana kònòn, ni kèlè bè na dugu kònòn, n'i bè yen, i b'a ta k'a baara, i b'a ta k'a don i la, ka taa i lò, kèlèdenw ka kan ka na fan min fè, dibi bè don yen fè. Aw bè fan min, dugu bè jè yen fè. Ca fait, kèlèdenw tè kèlè kèyòrò sòrò. A bè fò, ko,

Tile dibi, su tile.

Tile ye dibi ye,

su ye tile ye.

A bè yen.

INTERVIEWER: A bè yen?

KOJUGU: A bè yen.

35. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-1, Book 13, pp. 63–4 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: A bè se ka nya kè. Ni cè ko k'i k'a lèsè, n'i m'i denkè fòlò di, i b'i muso fòlò di. O tuma, n'i y'a dèsè, a bè nya.

INTERVIEWER: Mais, mun na muso bè se k'a lèsè kasòrò a m'a den di, a m'a denkè fòlò di, a m'a cè fòlò di? Mun na?

KOJUGU: Muso b'a lèsè a tè den fòlò di, a t'a cè fòlò di, o kòrò ye, muso ye kòfè fèn de ye. Muso ye dugumafèn de ye. Fèn min nyama ma dugukolo minè, o nyama tè se ka mògò minè. Muso b'a dèsè k'a da o yòrò kan.

36. Among the Bamana, the missionary position is the standard one for traditional sex.

37. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-1, Book 13, p. 64 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: A waati la, a yc densòrò hila. O kò, a dcnkèfòlò fòlò yc ne yc, musoman fòlò ye ko, Fanta. Ne ta dògònin ye ko, Dofolo. Dofolo ta dògònin ye ko, Abdou, an mògòw naani.

38. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/14/84, Boliw-2, Book 16, pp. 93–5 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: N’ m'a mògò ye ka caya de. Nka n’ ye kelen de ye o rò. O tun b'a kè.

INTERVIEWER: O tun ye jòn ye? O tun ye jòn ye?

KOJUGU: O tun ye, o tògò ye ko, BaSaran.

INTERVIEWER: A jamu?

KOJUGU: BaSaran Fane.

INTERVIEWER: A dugu?

KOJUGU: A bè Banankoro. A furulen Banankoro. A be ba ninnu la lu de kònòn. A fiyennen sisan. Nka hali bi, a bè dugu yaala, mògò t'a bolo mina, mògò t'a fò a ye ko taa yanfè, taa yanfè. Awa, ni a ya daga jenin, a b'i tògòma goninkisè rò, ka taa daga bilennen ta, k'i bolo d'a kòfè, k'a yira numumusow la, k'i tògòma ka na. Daga ka kan ka lasa yòrò min, a bèn'a lasa yen. A bè shèn. A b'a yira numumusow la, ko, kabii Allah ye ale dan, ale ma cè wèrè tigè, k'ale kunnòfèn ma sòn. Kabii Allah ka ale dan, ale ma cè wèiè tigè, ni a cè tè. Cè tòw bè taa yòrò min, ale bè taga yen. A ye denmusonin kelen de sòrò. O tògò ye ko, Marnine. Marnine Danba. An yèrè wolo tènènmuso. Denmusonin kelen. A dann'o ma.

39. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-1, Book 13, pp. 66–7 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Ni dagaw bilenna, a bè i tien k'i tògòma, ka taa a t'a bolo la, ka n'a fili kènè ma, kuma tè baara wèrè ma. Nka kòmi, a bè silan, cèw la gundow, a bè silan o nyè. Hali bi, o balolen bè yen.

40. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-1, Book 13, pp. 71–2 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Mun na i bè muso bil'a la? Muso b'a dilan kun min na n'e m'o fò muso ye, i bè muso bil'a la a k'a dilan. A bè dilan nin kun na, muso t'o dòn.

INTERVIEWER: Oui, n’ y'a famuya sisan. N’ y'a famuya. Mais, ne bè k'i nyininkan sisan, mun na cèw b'u bil'a la, u k'a dilan? Ni musow b'a dilan, alors que cèw yèrè bè se k'a dilan, mun na a bè muso bila muso k'a dilan kasòrò cè yèrè bè se k'a dilan? Mun na a bè muso bil'a la?

KOJUGU: Mun na a bè muso bil'a la k'a dilan?

INTERVIEWER: Nhun.

KOJUGU: Muso bòra cè galaka laban de rò. Muso bòra cè galaka laban de rò. I ka kan ka cè dò mina ni dalilu dò ye, ni cè tè se k'a nya few fo muso, muso ka dalilu de bè se k'a mina, i bè dalilu nin, i bè muso bila ka dalilu nin, i bè muso bila ka yiri nin baara, i bè dalilu nin baara rò k'a d'i cè nyògòn ma.

There are two possible interpretations of the last phrase, “and then you will give it to another man.” The first is that the blacksmith gives the powerful object created by a woman to a client, who will then use its destructive force against his enemies. The second is that the blacksmith presents the object as a ‘gift’ to his own enemy, who takes it, thinking that it is beneficial, and is then destroyed by its negative power. Both alternatives are possible, and the second is a well-known subterfuge.

41. See Johnson (1986), p. 45 for a brief summary of the story, pp. 171–3 for the text of Fa-Digi Sisòkò's version of this incident in the epic, and pp. 217–8 in the same book for the accompanying notes.

42. One informant frequently cited this tale as evidence of the power of women.

Bird (1974, xiii) documents a similar trope in his edition of the oral epic, Kambili. Here, Kambili's wife, Kumba, turns herself into a lion and lures Kambili's enemy, Cekura, into a trap, where Kambili can shoot him. Without the help of his wife, Kambili would have remained powerless against Cekura.

43. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/14/84, Boliw-2, Book 16, p. 94 of transcribed tapes.

44. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/14/84, Boliw-2, Book 16, p. 84 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: A tè se ka kè. Ni muso bè laada la, muso yèrè mana kè laada la, gundo-rò-fèn o gundo-rò-fèn, mako-nya-fèn o mako-nya-fèn, a bolo tè mag'a la, a t'a lajèla yèrè.

45. The “empty night of the month,” kalo su-rò-kolon, appears to be particularly associated with menstruation (see notes 46 and 47). However, it is worth noting that the word kalo by itself can mean “menstrual period,” as well as “month” or “moon,” (Dumestre, 1987, no. 5, 769). Dumestre also defines the associated term kalolabo as “menstrual period” (Dumestre, 1987, no. 5, 769).

Professor Noel Swerdlow, a historian of science in the Department of Astronomy, University of Chicago, informed me that the interlunar period when the moon is invisible was considered an ominous time in ancient Greece and Rome (personal communication, August 1991). Ghosts and demons were believed to prowl, and evil events to occur, during this period. The interlunar period appears to be associated with ominous events in many different cultures. For further details see Grafton and Swerdlow (1988, 34–5).

Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/14/84, Boliw-2, Book 16, p. 97 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: Dow bè kè tile saaba. Dòw yèrè kalo saaba. Dòw yèrè kalo su-rò-kolon, kalo su-rò-kolon, kalo tile mugan ni kònòntòn, u ta gundo-rò-fèn caman bè dila o de ma. Kalo tile mugan ni kònòntòn koni. A bè dilan o la. Dòw bè dilan o ma. O ye a jugumankètaw ye.

46. The Malinke belief that women should menstruate during this period corresponds to beliefs recorded in numerous industrial and nonindustrial societies (Buckley and Gottlieb 1988, 46–7). Such beliefs received little scientific attention until the late 1950s, when biologists began to consider whether there were any evolutionary or synchronic connections between lunar periodicity and the menstrual cycle in Western societies (Hauenschild 1960; Menaker & Menaker 1959).

In 1977, Dewan, Menkin, and Rock (1978) used all-night exposure to artificial light, on days fourteen through seventeen of the menstrual cycle, in an experiment that attempted to regulate the cycles of fifteen women through photic stimulation. Their preliminary results seem to indicate some linkage between light exposure and both the length and regularity of the menstrual cycle. Although this article does not connect menstruation with the interlunar period, it does indicate that a twenty-nine – rather than a twenty-eight-day cycle should be considered statistically normal for women (Dewan, Menkin, & Rock 1978, 581), a periodicity that would correspond to the cycle suggested by the interview cited above.

In 1980, Cutler (1980) tabulated the menstrual-cycle records of 312 randomly selected adult women. Cutler found that women with an irregular menstrual cycle, and those with a cycle that approaches the 29.5-day lunar cycle, tend to ovulate in the dark phase (which includes but is not limited to Kojugu's “empty” nights), and menstruate during the light phase of the moon's cycle. This information would contradict the data from Kojugu.

Knight is the most recent author to make an encyclopedic survey of the scientific data concerning the length of the menstrual cycle (1991, 246–9), menstrual synchrony between women (1991, 212–5), and the possibility of synchrony with the moon (1991, 249–52). He observes that much of the experimental data documenting women's failure to synchronize with the moon derives from the observation of contemporary cultures (Knight 1991, 249; Pochobradsky 1974). Knight also suggests that non-Western data may produce different and more positive results. He cites Law's study of 826 female volunteers carried out in 1982 in Beijing and Guangchow, China, which found that “a large proportion of menstruations occurred around the new moon (28.3%)” (Law 1986, 45). Knight proposes that an increased tendency for women to menstruate at the time of the new moon may exist in non-Western cultures, and may be due to lack of artificial lighting. He concludes by stating that “there is a clear need for large-sample statistical studies which control for variables such as exposure to artificial light” (Knight 1991, 249–50).

I found Law's article considerably less convincing than Pochobradsky's, although one would have to be a specialist in lunar phase locking to judge between them accurately. Clearly, a number of different social, environmental, and biological factors affect the timing of menstruation, and only an on-site study of ovulation and menstruation among Bamana and Malinke women will provide final answers as to whether the implications of Kojugu's statement correspond with objective reality. Knight stresses the need for this type of research (1991, 354), while providing a comprehensive overview of recent ethnographic work on synchronic menstruation (1991, 351–8). Here, again, I find that he tends to overestimate the contributions made by researchers who have found evidence of lunar synchrony.

Recent fieldwork has produced some suggestive parallels to the Malinke data. Thomas Buckley (1982, 1988) was the first anthropologist to link modern medical research on menstrual synchrony to a traditional culture. Buckley's research among the Yurok of northwestern California suggests that, through planned exposure to the full moon, Yurok women were able to synchronize their menstrual periods with each other, and with the dark phase of the moon (1982, 55–7).

The ethnographic research most relevant to Kojugu's statement and the Malinke data comes from Frederick Lamp's field experience among the Temne, a Mel linguistic group in Sierra Leone that has been strongly influenced by the Mande Kuranko and Susu in Guinea (personal communication, 3/18/93). Lamp suggests that Temne women try to synchronize their menstruations with two phases of the moon's cycle. Lamp cites three different historical sources, one as far back as 1678, that strongly suggest that the Temne believe that women menstruate either at the new moon (the period cited by Kojugu), or at the full moon (Lamp 1988, 222–3). He also analyzes Temne phrases for referring to menstruation, concluding that they suggest synchrony with the new moon, and cites other researchers who have noted beliefs similar to those of the Terrine among the Baule and the Beng of the Ivory Coast, and the Ngas of Nigeria (Lamp 1988, 224–5, 277–8). In fact, Lamp takes the indications that Temne women manage to synchronize menstruation with either the full moon or the new moon as a reasonable possibility, and suggests that the Temne have evolved some type of indigenous gynecological regulation to achieve this ideal. This would support my own information that the Malinke administer traditional drugs to women in an attempt to synchronize their menstruation with the new moon. Lamp does not connect this synchronization to the creation of ritual sculpture, but he does use it to analyze the timing of Bondo and Poro association rituals (1988, 226–30).

Unlike Buckley, neither Lamp nor I have encountered reports of deliberate exposure to the light of the full moon as a method of synchronizing menstruation with the new moon. Furthermore, Lamp observed (personal communication, 3/18/93) that the large menstrual shelters that would be necessary for housing all the fertile women of a Temne village if they menstruated simultaneously are conspicuously absent from village architecture. This contrasts with Buckley's description of communal menstrual shelters large enough to hold a number of women (1982, 54–5). In conclusion, both Lamp and I agree (personal communication, 3/18/93) that, for the Temne and Malinke, lunar synchrony may be more significant in terms of cultural belief than in terms of ‘scientific’ accuracy.

47. I would like to stress that my interpretation of this data is tentative, and although Mr. Mara provided information concerning the synchrony between women's menstrual cycles and the “empty” period, he does not correlate this with women carving. One of his informants, a fifty-six-year-old blacksmith, Siriba Kante, reported that women never go near ritual objects, let alone sculpt, when they are menstruating (Adama Mara, personal communication, 7/27/93). Clearly, if menstruating women do carve, this fact is well hidden from all but the most learned blacksmiths. Although the menstrual interpretation of Kojugu's statement seems logical, especially when the destructive powers of the fara are taken into account, it must remain an intriguing hypothesis that requires further research for corroboration or disproof.

It is possible that Kojugu's information is incorrect, or that I have interpreted it inaccurately, and that women carve during the “empty” period of the lunar month for reasons unrelated to menstruation.

One should consider the additional possibility that the women who carve should normally menstruate at this time, but that they are actually women whose menstrual cycle is irregular and who carve only when this time period arrives and they are not menstruating. Another possibility is that women carvers are actually pregnant or breast-feeding at the time they carve and are therefore probably not menstruating. Presumably carving by pregnant or breast-feeding women would transfer a positive reproductive potential to the objects created; therefore this alternative seems unlikely in view of Kojugu's comment that “these are the things that work harm.”

Both Buckley and Gottlieb (1988, 44–6) and Harrell (1981) note that even our ‘scientific’ paradigm of regular menstrual cycles is culturally constructed and may not be accurate for non-Western societies in which the diet is much less high in proteins and fats, and in which women are constantly involved in hard physical labor. Buckley and Gottlieb (1988, 45) cite the report of one ethnographer, Diane Bell, who found that the elderly Australian aboriginal women with whom she worked could “remember every menstrual period of their fertile lives and count them on their fingers.”

Harrell (1981, 803) also suggests that “menstrual months occupy less than one-fourth of a preindustrial woman's reproductive span,” and that menstruation is the exception rather than the rule for women in preindustrial societies (1981, 816). Harrell (1981, 816) theorizes that “not only is menstruation relatively uncommon, but it represents a liminal state.” Harrell (1981, 816–17) hypothesizes that the relative infrequency of menstruation in non-Western societies, and its appearance between the normally productive times when a woman is either pregnant or breast-feeding, contribute to the menstrual flow's liminal status and the fears and suspicions that surround it.

48. This interpretation was provided by Mr. Adama Mara.

49. Interview with Kojugu Cissoko, 8/9/84, Questions-3, Book 15, p. 65 of transcribed tapes.

KOJUGU: My time has not yet come, there remains a little while longer before my time comes.

For the Malinke text see note 100, Chapter 2.

50. An observer who had watched my research over many years made this off-the-record comment toward the end of my work.

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Index

abortion, 6, 12–13, 223, 323n.47, 324n.65

abstinence, 100–1, 152, 159, 190, 276n.72

abstraction, 171–2

adultery, 217, 276n.73

adze (dèsèlan, sèmè, sonbè), 182, 191, 194, 195; associated with honesty, 149, 150; as carving tool, 141–4, 304n.108; first tool made by apprentice, 50; nyama of, 297n.61; used for polishing, 187

aesthetic judgment, 89, 101–2

aesthetics, 154–6, 161–2, 166–79

age-grade association (ton), 95, 285n.21

age hierarchy, 104–5, 256n.7

agriculture, 33–4, 42, 43, 45, 264–5n.25, 265n.26

albinos, 303n.97

Alhassan, Alhaji Adama, 291–2n.2

animals, 74, 126. See also specific animals

animism, 21

ant heaps (ntinkinyèsow), 130–1, 244, 296n.47, 297n.61, 298n.65. See also termite mounds

antelope headdresses. See Tyi Warra

antelopes, 126–7, 296n.45

antipoisons, 57, 64

anvil (kulan), 38–40, 142, 146, 247, 152, 266nn.39, 47

apprenticeship: advanced, 54, 56; age of beginning, 39–40; and circumcision, 57; common pattern of, 260n.56; and development of dreaming, 66; and development of visual memory, 175–6; focus of, 179; Kojugu on, 49–53, 56; length of, 49; masks made in, 52; and nyama, 152; and relationship with master carver, 56–7, 67–8, 157, 165; and relationship with personal spirits, 54–61; sacrifice during, 67–8; selection for, 52–3; and setting up forge, 146; and spirit contracts, 81–2; stages in, 50–2; tools made in, 50–1, 142, 144; travel during, 53, 55; of women sculptors, 247

Arnoldi, Mary Jo, 312n.49, 314n.68

authoritarianism, 28, 32–3

awl (katlèke, katlèni, loyi, soónó, sògòlan), 141, 142, 149

axe (jete), 50, 141, 142, 144, 149, 304n.108

Ba biyen (a sacrifice), 98, 99

Ba mansa Biyen (a sacrifice), 98, 99

baara (negative ritual work), 104

badenya (mother-child-ness), 28, 30, 32–3

baga baga kisèw (black worker termites), 124, 295n.34

Bagayogo, Jigi, 300n.75

Bagayogo, Yoro Jan, 58, 136, 161, 302n.87

Bagayogo clan, 267n.49

Bala, Jitumu, 267n.49

balanzan (a tree), 257n.11

balenbo (a tree), 121, 122, 134, 293n.13

Bamako, 3

Banamba, 137

Banankoro (village), 250

Banankoro bolon (mud-cloth pattern), 255, 245, 246

Banbera, Tayiru, 298n.64

Basiae (type of cloth), 44, 269n.68, 295–6n.43

basiw. See drugs; medicines

bathing, ritual, 38–9, 63–6, 209, 227, 230, 232, 320nn.18, 19, 329n.107

Bazin, Hippolyte, 24

Beledugu region, 2, 19, 62, 137, 267n.49, 284n.16, 285n.21

Bell, Diane, 337n.47

bellows (fandaga, fangolow, fanwolow), 142, 146–7, 148, 304nn.112, 114

benbe (a tree), 121, 292n.12

bilisi (type of spirit), 59, 130, 298n.64

Bird, Charles, xvi, 38, 335n.42

Birgo region, 3, 19

birthing room (tin so), 226, 244, 325–6n.76

blacksmiths: avoid wives’ kitchen, 307–8n.10; and guan nègè, 140; identifiable by skin color, 38; as intermediary with spirit world, 38; joking partners with Fulani, 205; as Komo leaders, 284n.28; literature on, 265n.30; and nudity, 259n.39, 327n.88; nyama of, 40, 45, 266n.34; origins of, 38–9; perform excisions, 44–5, 269n.69; race of, 40, 58, 266n.49; as social intermediaries, 256–7n.9; tend to group together, 266n.34. See also nummo

blindness, 77–8, 208–9

Bobo, 19

body, female, 44–5

body odor, 39

bògòlanfini. See mud cloth

boliw. See ritual objects

bonya (respect), 44

bow drill (frin frin la), 142

Bozo, 317n.6

Buckley, Thomas, 336n.46, 337n.47

Buguni region, 27, 89, 156, 284n.16, 307n.6

bulaw (race of blacksmiths), 40, 58, 266n.49

bulls, 110, 266n.44, 389–90n.63

bumu (kapok tree), 121, 131–4, 146, 293nn.15, 20, 294n.24

Camara, Seku Ba, xvi

Camara clan, 267n.49

Cashion, Gerald, 275n.61, 300n.77

castes, 34

catfish, 127–9

cattle, 107

cekalan (vertebral column), 96, 98

cèkun (“important man”), 79, 91, 92

ceso (consulting room), 92

cèya minato (inventory of tools), 149

changora (a shrub), 146, 305n.117

Chernoff, John, 291–2n.2

chickens, 98, 111, 131, 133, 134, 138, 146, 212, 233, 300n.77

child exposure, 44

childbirth: associated with smelting, 140; catfish and, 128; compared to carving, 157–9, 218–31; death in, 221–3; and excision, 44, 46, 269n.68; feared by men, 223; and food, 229–30; interdictions concerning, 223–9; interviews on, 5, 6; ntonbilen seeds as catalyst for, 316n.96; nudity during, 327n.88; nyama of, 220–1, 230, 329n.107; sacrifices for, 233; seclusion after, 329n.106; and silence of mother, 326n.77

children: conception of, 218–19; deformed, 130, 244, 298nn.64, 65; equivalent to ritual objects, 2, 131; importance of, 33; nyama of, 43–4, 46, 230, 236; of sculptors, 71; as sculptors, 174–5; as sorcerers, 236; symbolized by mud cloth, 1, 269n.68; as targets of spirits, 71–2; twin, 289n.59; viewed as a “need,” 70–1

chisel (sònimba, sòninan, sòninfara, jagt), 141, 142, 144, 145, 148, 151, 188

circumcision: and apprenticeship, 57; and carving, 174, 235–7; as prerequisite to marriage, 43; selection of blacksmith for, 269n.69; terminology of, 44; timing of, 268–9n.60, 270n.4, 330-ln.2

Cissoko, Abdou, 249

Cissoko, Dese, 293n.20, 299n.72

Cissoko, Dofolo, 249

Cissoko, Farakurun, 235–6

Cissoko, Filaten, 242

Cissoko, Jigi, 235, 236

Cissoko, Kali, 53

Cissoko, kojugu: on abstraction, 171–2; and adultery, 276n.73; on aesthetics, 89, 101–2, 154–6; age of, 260n.56; on age hierarchy, 104–5; on apprenticeship, 49–53, 165; attitude toward Islam, 21; on avoidance of women, 208–9, 215–16, 217–18, 225; on bulaw, 267n.49; carves Komo masks, 51; on carving process, 179, 182, 184–8, 192, 194–5; on children as sculptors, 174–5; chosen as informant, 6–8; on comparison of carving to childbirth, 157, 225–6, 233; on circumcision, 257n.17; on comparison of carving to sexual act, 204; and confidentiality, 14–15, 101; on consecration of sculpture, 317n.100; on copying, 176–7; on creative imagination, 167–8, 173–4; on cutting a tree, 131–6; on dangers of smithing, 219–20; on deformities as spirit payments, 73–4; on divination, 61; on djinns, 14, 54–61, 80–2, 99–100, 113, 114, 220, 272n.35; on dreaming, 66–8, 169–70; effect on urban residence of, 3–4; on failed carvings, 202; family of, 235–6, 242, 247–8, 249, 334n.32; fears the anvil, 39; fears female abilities, 253–4; fears sanctions, 12; on feminization, 203–4; grandfather of, 44, 71; on human figures in wood, 14–15, 111, 159–60, 177–9, 231–2, 315n.74; and impotence, 75–7; on individual nature of commission, 116–17, 277n.79; on intercommunity commissions, 91; on interdictions, 88–9, 227–8, 330n.113; interview procedures with, 1–2, 12; as interview source, 3–4; on iron smelting, 137, 169; isolation of, 208; on Komo flutes, 286; on Komo leader, 294n.27; on Komo mask, 91, 154–5, 173, 182, 186, 263n.7, 290n.68; on locating correct tree, 119–21; on manufacture of slave shackles, 13; on membership in bula category, 40; on need to master everything, 166; on “needs,” 70–1; on negotiations for commission, 86, 94–5; on nyama of wood, 332n.16; on patron-client relationship, 103–4, 106, 115; on place of carving, 156–8; on “portrait” statues, 314n.71; on pregnancy and carving, 105; prefers carving female figures, 14; relationship with teacher, 56, 67–8, 171; on repression of fears, 199, 201; on reputation, 71, 163; on responsibility for commission, 85; on “rewards” for artistry, 164–5; on ritual bathing, 320n.18; on ritual payments, 115–6, 196, 229–30, 233, 328n.101, 330n.118, 290n.66; on sacrifice of children, 67–73, 231, 329n.109; and secret speech, 10, 11, 13–14; on sexual payments, 74–7; on sexual speech, 205–6; on slave shackles, 113; on son's lack of skill, 42; on spirit contracts, 68–70, 72–4, 78–80; on termite mounds, 124, 126–7; on timing of carving, 159–61, 232–3; on tools used, 142, 144, 146–52, 266n.45; on twin wood figures, 110, 315n.74, 328n.101; on type of tree for sculpture, 121, 122, 123; on use of correct hand, 296–7n.53; on use of drugs, 65, 239–41; on use of menstrual blood, 13–14; on use of traditional principles, 20; on value of the hoe, 42–3, 268n.57; on visual memory, 175–6, 310n.40; on women sculptors, 237–44, 246–52

Cissoko, Métie, 304n.112, 304n.110, 112

Cissoko, Sega, 236

Cissoko, Sèkéné-Mody, 263n.10

Cissoko, Sine, 235, 236

Cissoko clan, 266–7n.49

cleanliness, 44

Clifford, James, 7

clitoridectomy. See excision

clothing, 216, 226, 243, 331n.2, 333n.24

collaboration, 105

commissions: and artist's nyama, 117; author's, 96–100; completion of, 22; cost of, 101; criteria for selecting artist for, 84–90, 117; decision to refuse, 96, 100–1, 105–6; economics of, 107–17; effect of geography on, 89; individual nature of, 116; intercommunity alliances for, 90–1; length of, 108; negotiations for, 86, 90–103; number of, per artist, 317n.104; nyama of, 230–1; parallels of, with marriage, 85–6, 107, 112–13, 117; possible pitfalls of, 103–7; public versus private, 90–2, 101; role of elders in, 84, 88–93; role of gifts in, 291n.79; role of women in, 90; sacrifices surrounding, 96, 98, 109; sculptor's responsibility in, 85; secrecy of, 165. See also ritual objects; ritual payments; sculpture

communal meal, 30, 32

competitive rivalry, 32

conception, 218–9, 258n.36

confidentiality, 15

Conrad, David C., 11, 298n.64

consecration of sculpture, 190, 192, 197, 198, 199, 290n.68, 317n.100

contracts (sarati): between apprentice and spirit, 81–2; breaking of, 79–82; and children, 71, 74; defined, 277n.79; and impotence, 72, 74–7; and madness, 74; and physical disabilities, 72–4, 77–80; between sculptor and spirit, 67–83; and sculptor's wife, 70, 277n.81; specific nature of, 78. See also ritual payments

copying, 176–7

corpses, 158

Coulibaly, Alou, 319n.15

Coulibaly, Numu Madou, 144, 146

Coulibaly, Oumou, 246

Coulibaly, Tinyetigiba, 146

creativity, 167–9, 173–4, 218–31, 238, 240, 251, 254

Cutler, Winifred, 336n.46

Dabà mask, 26, 29, 168, 263n.7

Dalby, David, 259n.54

Danba, Mamine, 250

Danba, Sokona, 44, 269n.69

Danyogo, Kege, 125, 157, 181, 183, 190, 197

Danyogo, Numu Madou, 144, 305n.116

Danyogo, Numufiyn, 69

Danyogo, Nunfayiri, 71

Danyogo family, 58

Daoudabugu commission, 175–6

dariya. See receptivity

death in childbirth (muso kele), 221–3

decorations (manyòkòlònw), 187–8, 192–5, 200, 201, 316n.96

deformities, 73–4, 217–18, 244

dègè (millet balls), 98, 133, 300-ln.79, 327n.90

Delafosse, Maurice, 259n.54

demographic figures, 263–4n.12

denial, 14–15

Dewan, Edmond, 336n.46

details. See decorations on masks

Diallo, Moussa, 139

Diarra, Masan, 156, 307n.6, 316n.95

Diarra, Ngolo, 301n.79

Diarra, Nyamaton: age of, 260n.56; attitude toward Islam, 21; on bulaw, 267n.49; on circumcision, 330n.2; comes from Beledugu, 19; compares soma and doma, 276n.66; confirms author's hypothesis, 16–17; on creation oiboliw, 21, 294n.23; dedicated to Kòmo association, 270n.4; fears female abilities, 253–4; on gender of hands, 297n.53; interview procedures with, 1–2; as interview source, 6–8; on making of iron flutes, 210, 212; on making of Komo mask, 17, 158, 212; on M'Fa Jigi, 293–4n.22; personality of, 3; required to kill, 275n.65; on sexual relations, 209–10, 213–14; speaking style of, 10, 13–14; on use of traditional principles, 20

dibiritigi, 320n.17

diet, 28

Dieterlen, Germaine, xix, 7; on divination, 275n.61; Essai sur la religion Bambara, 19; Les fondements de la société du Komo, 19; on the forge, 147; on gender of hands, 296n.53; on guan, 140; on ja and ni, 289n.60; on Kòmòtigi, 294n.26; on Konon association, 311n.48; presentation of data by, 8; on uses of boliw, 23; on tools, 148; on women's destiny, 283n.4

disabilities, 72–4, 77–80

disease, 27

divination, 2, 60–1, 62, 167, 270n.3, 275nn.59, 61, 62

djinns (spirits): acquired during apprenticeship, 54–61; associated with locales, 55; and blacksmith women, 238–9; characteristics of, 54; contract with, 67–83, 220; differences between male and female, 54–5; and divination, 60–1; and dreams, 66–8; establishment of contact with, 60; evasiveness about, 14; exchange of, 59; and feminization of sculptors, 217; housed in termite mounds, 126–7; inheritance of, 58–9; interdictions by, 81–2; killing by, 80–1, 220; killing of, 59; messages from, 63–9; needed by sculptors, 55–6, 170; owned by communities, 54; power of, 80; provide inspiration, 169; quest for, 58; race of, 59; responsiveness of, 99–100; and sculptor's wife, 277n.81; terms for, 272n.35; of trees, 119, 132–3; of water, 126, 127

Djitumu region, 267n.49

Dogon, 7, 297n.61, 317n.6

dogs, 138

doma (traditional healer), 276n.66

donkan kurun (stool), 50, 51

donkeys, 322n.37

dori powder, 13

drawing, 60

dreams: development of, during apprenticeship, 66; and the future, 129; as inspiration, 169–70, 243–4; by sculptors, 66–7, 159

drugs, 63–6, 76, 249–41, 263n.9, 301n.79. See also medicines

dubalen (a tree), 121, 146, 293n.16

duga (divinatory device), 60, 270n.3

Dugo (Salimata's uncle's wife), 278n.88

dugon (hornbill), 171–2, 312n.49

dugura (a tree), 121, 292n.10

dugutigi (“owner of the land”), 90, 300n.78

Dumbiya clan, 267n.49

dunan (guest), 93–4

Dusu (Kojugu's wife), 70, 178, 242

dyafereke (a tree), 125, 183, 293n.20

elders: avoid slender women, 185n.19; and childbirth, 230; and deformed children, 130; evade direct speech, 9, 94; and Komo association, 282n.1; provide counseling, 205; and role in commission, 84, 88–93

energy transfer, 166–7

ethnic-group distribution, 32

excision: and childbirth, 44, 46, 269n.68, 326n.77; performed by blacksmith, 44–5, 270n.70; and marriage, 43, 44; mud-cloth used for, 44, 45, 46; and nyama, 44, 269n.62; Salimata on, 6, 43, 319–20n.17; terminology of, 44; timing of, 268–9n.60

Ezra, Kate, 262n.4

fadenya (father-child-ness), 28, 30, 33

fadenya (rivalry), 56–7, 91, 199. See also jealousy

Fakoli, 40, 266–7n.49, 268n.50

family life, 4, 27–8, 264n.20, 274n.51

famine, 3, 4, 6, 17, 124, 126, 226, 263n.10, 265n.25

fandugu (portion of the forge), 40

Fane, Bala, 20, 72

Fane, BaSaran (Kojugu's great-aunt), 247, 250

Fane, Basi: age of, 260n.56; alert for poisons, 64; animist identity of, 21; on artist's character, 87–8; assessment of author by, 4–5; aware of human fragility, 234; from Birgo region, 19; on dangerous trees, 294n.29; a dermatologist, 4; fears female abilities, 253–4; “gives” nephew to spirits, 20, 72; indecision on author's commission, 96, 102; as interview source, 3, 6–8; on Komo mask, 263n.7; needs seclusion for carving, 157; a ngana, 163–4; on nyama of tree, 132; pauses during carving, 182, 192; personality of, 264n.15; position of, during carving, 185; on preparations for carving, 162; relations with family, 27, 264n.14, 270n.6; refuses to be recorded, 2, 4, 11, 16; sacrifice by, 99; selection of tree by, 120; suffering of, 82; on timing of carving, 161; Tyi Warra mask by, 180, 181, 186, 188, 189, 193, 199, 200, 201, 210, 286n.24, 308n.22

Fane, Bourama, 56, 67–8, 71, 170

Fane, Kanfoliba, 34, 36, 38, 265n.33

Fane, Kojugu, 304n.112

Fane, KoMakan, 57

Fane, Moriba, 194

Fane, Nantene, 87–8

Fane clan, 58, 267n.49

fankun (portion of forge), 40, 142, 146–7

Fara (wooden baton), 248–9

feminization of sculptors, 16, 75, 203–4, 217, 220, 222, 229, 234, 235

fertility: clothing and, 167; controlled by ritual cloths, 16, 245; importance of sculpture to, 33; and medicines, 264n.24; and termite mounds, 121, 124, 125, 129–30, 137

file (kaka), 141

flutes (Komo saman), 286n.27; blacksmith's wife required for, 210–13; nudity required for carving of, 17, 212, 259n.39; owned by Kòmòtigi, 109–10; power of, 263n.7

fonfonfogolon (a tree), 121, 146, 293n.14

forge, 93; danger of using, 219; interdictions concerning, 40, 161; location of, 266n.34; set up by apprentice, 146; sacrifices to, 146; sexual symbolism of, 146–9; as site for negotiations, 92

foroba kuma (communal language), 135–6

fòròba djinnew (community-owned spirits), 54

fòròba yiriw (community-owned ritual objects), 90, 285n.20

forobaw (communal fields), 108, 264n.25, 285n.20

Foroko, Nonkon, 267n.49

Fugan fèerè (mud-cloth pattern), 244, 245

Fulani (ethnic group), 152, 205, 259n.54, 298n.64, 317n.6

funèw (mimes), 34

fura ci (excision ceremonies), 44

fur aw (medicines). See drugs

furnace, 137–40

Futanke, 261n.59

Gabakoro (village), 69

Gamble, David, 295n.33

garankew (leather workers), 8, 34

gender: of tools, 146–9, 306n.139

genitals, female, 209, 215, 269n.67, 297n.61, 318n.9

geographic setting, 19, 27, 31, 256n.1

Glaze, Anita, 256n.7

goats, 108, 109, 110, 134, 146, 233

gorodaga (basin used to cool hot iron), 39, 63, 146

gòtè (type of spirit), 59

Gotwald, William H., 295n.38, 296n.47, 299n.65

Griaule, Marcel, xix, 7, 8

griots (oral historians), 8–9, 34, 38, 212, 256–7n.9, 318n.10

guan nègè (ritual iron staff), 39, 41, 137, 139, 140

guan sow (clay furnaces), 139

guandusu figures, 24, 162, 262n.4

guests, 28, 30, 279n.95

guinea worm, 27

gundòw (secrets), 11, 321n.29

hallucinations, 65

hammer (fuluma, tori), 142

Harrell, Barbara, 337n.47

Herbert, Eugenia W., 302n.91, 303n.92, 306n.139

Historical and Ethnographic Division Concerned with Mali's Cultural Heritage, 5

hoes (dabaw), 42–3, 50, 268n.57

host-guest relationship, 93–4

human figures (y ir imo gòni w): ability to carve, 120; commemorative role of, 110–11; and concept of resemblance, 177–9; correspond to day of week and month, 159–60, 232; dangers of, 231–2; difficulties of carving, 179, 315n.74; illustrations of, 26; Kojugu's statements on, 14–15; nyama of, 52, 233; power of, 26, 263n.7; sacrifices to, 233 See also twin figures

imagination, 52–3, 167–8, 175

imitation (ka ladege), 176–7

impotence, 72, 75–7, 218, 323n.54

incantations (klissiw), 8, 26, 60, 133, 135–6

inheritance, 58–9

initiation, 256n.7

insects, 276n.67, 295n.36, 37. See also ant heaps; termite mounds

inspiration, 168–72, 243–4

intelligence, 173–4, 271n.11

“intelligence of the eye,” 50, 52–3

intercommunity alliances, 90–1

interdictions (tanaw): on abortion, 324n.65; and carving, 215–17, 223–9; and declining of commission, 100; and the forge, 40; and pregnancy and childbirth, 222–9, 322n.37; prevent carving “empty” objects, 201–2; punishment for breaking, 81–2, 215; reasons for, 45; sculptor's ability to observe, 88–9; sexual, 85, 155, 190, 204, 207–10, 217–18, 226, 243; and tools, 151–2, 306n.146; and trees, 299n.73

interpersonal relations, 14

intestinal tract, 228, 328n.98

iron: difficulty of working with, 131; fusion of blacksmith with, 39; nyama of, 138, 139; smelting of, 39, 40, 42, 169, 268n.51; tools, 137–41; types of, 303nn.92, 94

Islam, 20–1, 34, 66, 261n.59, 269n.62, 272n.35, 297n.59, 327–8n.90, 329n.106

isolation, 207–8

ja (shadow, double), 283n.4, 289n.60

jala (a tree), 121, 292n.9, 293n.20, 299n.72

Jamin, Jean, 256n.7

Jan, Bakari, 298n.64

jango celebration, 5

jatigi (host), 93, 103, 111

je (reunion), 213–14

jealousy (keleya), 32; between relatives, 278n.89, 300n.76; between ritual experts, 269n.69; between sculptors, 104; and secret associations, 253; between women, 224–5. See also fadenya

jeliw (oral historians), 34

Jigi, M'Fa, 121–2, 127, 129, 152, 216, 267n.49, 292n.8, 293–4n.22

Jitumu region, 299nn.72, 73

jo. See secret association

Johnson, John, 264n.17, 265nn.29, 31

joking partners (senankunya), 205, 317–18n.6

Jonckers, Danielle, 140, 288n.41

jonforo kuma (individual speech), 135

ju (roots), 123

ka ci kè (field labor), 45

ka dan, ka dilan, ka dlan (creativity), 168–9

ka nyègen (drawing), 45

kabila (group of associated villages), 91, 111–12

Kakolo (Kagoro alternate spelling), 19, 259n.54

kala, 266

Kambili epic, 335n.42

Kamissoko clan, 267n.49

Kante N'YiriCe, 304n.110. 112

Kante, Siri, 58, 144, 337n.47

Kante, Soumaoro, 266–7n.49

kapok tree. See bumu

karite nut oil, 192, 198, 199

Karta region, 261n.59, 284n.16

Kayes, 137

keleya. See jealousy

keninge (plant), 27

Khamissoko lineage, 42

Kita region, 3, 89, 107, 284n.16

klissiw. See incantations

knife (muru), 142, 145

Knight, Chris, 336n.46

knowledge, 7, 11, 256n.7

Kobala (village), 73

kobo (a tree), 121, 146, 293n.17

kola nuts: as ritual payment, 108; used to pay fines, 40; as sacrifice, 96, 98, 109, 111, 138, 146, 233

Kolon (village), 304n.110

Komo association, 17, 205, 262n.6, 282n.1, 312n.49, 316–17n.98. See also Kòmòtigi

Komo mask: carved by Kojugu, 51; carving of, 154–5, 179, 182, 184, 221; commissioning of, 86; consecration of, 317n.100; endowed with great power, 12, 26, 263n.7; fear of, 209; features of, 173, 186; first, 212; gold in, 138; illustrations of, 25; as a medicine, 25; needed by village, 111; process of acquiring, 87; sacrifices for, 109, 133–4, 290n.68; seriousness of, 206–7; terminology of, 286n.27; timing of carving of, 160, 161, 302nn.88, 89; trees used for, 121, 122, 124–7, 294n.24; varying quality of, 231; and violence, 294n.28; wearing of, 308n.14; women forbidden to see, 215, 319n.15

Komo saman. See flutes

Kòmòtigi (Komo association head), 90, 94; blacksmiths as, 294n.28; flutes of, 109–10; swears an oath, 122–3, 294n.27; and violence, 294n.26; wife of, 241

Konare, Alpha Oumar, 5

Kone, Bakary, 270-ln.7

Kone, FaMusa, 304nn.110, 112

Koné, Issa, 295nn.34, 36, 37, 296n.51, 208n.65, 312n.49

Kone, Salimata: age of, 260n.56; age-grade association of, 285n.21; attitude toward Islam, 21; from Beledugu region, 19; on barring outsiders during childbirth, 325–6n.76; on birth defects, 130, 298nn.64, 65; on birthing cloth, 226–7; on death in childbirth, 220–1; on defecation in childbirth, 228, 328n.97; evasive responses of, 13; on excisions, 6, 43, 319–20n.17; fears sanctions, 12; on gender of aborted children, 128; as interview source, 4, 5–8; iron ore of, 137; on labor, 222; limits on, 264n.22; marriage of, 33; on making mud cloth, 184; on midwives, 326n.78; mud-cloth painting by, 150, 245; on nyama of childbirth, 220; personal characteristics of, 48–9; reputation of, 270n.1; and sexual terminology, 297n.54; on silence about pregnancy, 223–4; on termite mounds, 129; unable to explain conception, 218–9, 258n.36; on visual impairment, 78; on violence and Basiae, 296n.43; work pace of, 161

Konon (bird mask), 25, 155, 171, 311n.48

Konon association, 213, 263n.8, 311–12n.48

Koré, 25, 263n.8

Koroba, Mamadou, 132

kòsi (a tool), 142

Koukouni, 305n.116

Koutiala, 286n.26, 319n.15

kulukutuma (uncarved wood), 179, 180, 181

Kulunkan, Sugulun, 251

Kuruma clan, 267n.49

Kurusa region, 2, 5, 6

lagalagatò (neurologically damaged person), 300n.78

Lamp, Frederick, 336–7n.46

Law, Sung Ping, 336n.46

leather workers (garankew), 8, 34, 256–7n.9

left hand, 17, 127, 179–80, 210, 296–7n.53

lènkè (a tree), 121–3, 131, 133, 134, 152, 210, 292n.7, 294n.28, 321n.22

lever (tòntòn), 142

Levtzion, Nehemiah, 261n.59

lineages, 139

linguistic note, xvi-xvii

life expectancy, 27

lizards, 128, 129, 296n.44

McNaughton, Patrick, 7, 34, 36, 38, 161, 263n.8, 265n.30, 302n.91, 304nn.107, 108, 311n.48

madness, 72, 74, 278n.89

makow. See needs

maize, 27

malnutrition (sere), 217

Mande region, 262n.6, 267n.49, 268n.50

mango tree, 146, 293n.18

Manianbugu, 278n.88

Mansa su saraka (an offering), 96

Mansadugu, 56

Manyan (sculptor), 82

manyòkòlònw. See decorations

Mara, Adama: enthusiasm of, for research, 17; interviewing techniques of, 14–16; on Komo flutes, 286n.27; on identification of termites, 295n.36; and Mansa su saraka, 96, 98; on menstrual cycle, 337n.47; relationship with Salimata Kone, 5; role of, in the research, 1–2; on terminology of sex organs, 297n.61

marriage: arranged, 85, 86–7; and excision, 43, 44; interdictions concerning, 265n.33; parallels with ritual commission, 85–7, 107, 112–13, 117; and village power structure, 43

Masina, 261n.59

medicines (basiw), 25–7, 221, 230, 239–41, 251–3, 264n.21, 309n.27

memory training, 8

Mende, 237

menstrual cloth, 206

menstruation, 335n.45; and carving of ritual objects, 13, 232, 251–2, 337n.47; and contamination, 158, 217–18, 307–8n.10, 308n.11; cycle of, 336–7n.46; as greatest poison, 17

metaphor, 9–10

midwives, 324n.65, 325–6n.76, 326nn.77, 78, 79

mimes (funèw), 34

Minianka, 19, 38, 140, 266nn.42, 47, 278–9n.89, 282n.1, 311n.48, 319n.15

mògòw bon yòrò (a ritual object), 138, 140

mògòya (personhood), 28

moon, 335n.45, 336–7n.46

mortar, 151

mother, sculptor's, 63–4

mouth, 8

mud cloth (bògòlanfini): as analogy for first child, 1; and control over fertility, 16; designs, 150, 244–5, 322n.37, 333n.27; and excisions, 44, 45, 46; making of, 184; men prevented from seeing, 226–7

mud-cloth painters, 71

Naburaman, 267n.49

naloma (women's mime), 5

Nama association, 25, 155, 213, 262n.6

names, personal, 11

naming ceremony (batem), 227, 230, 327–8n.90

needs (makow), 25, 27, 33, 95

nègè fiyn and nègè kolo (traditionally smelted iron), 137–8

nere (a tree), 146, 305n.119

N'Gale (type of cloth), 44

nganaw, 162–3, 168, 174, 192

ngana muso (woman who is a ngana), 5, 162

ngenu, 146, 305n.124

ni (breath of life), 283n.4, 289n.60

Niger river, 127, 128

N'kara (water snake), 127–9, 296n.51

N'kòsòn (a sculpture), 227, 317n.106

nobles (horonw), 8, 36, 318n.10

nsèkènè (a tree), 146, 305n.125

N'tigin (electric catfish), 127–9, 296n.50, 297n.57

ntinkinyèso (ant heap), 130–1

ntonbilen (a tree), 316nn.95, 96

ntomi (a tree), 146, 293n.20, 305n.126

N'tomo association, 25, 121, 262n.6, 263n.8

nudity, 15, 212, 226, 259n.39, 327n.88

numbers, and gender, 271n.22

NumuNiene (Kojugu's great-great-grandmother), 247–8, 250

numuw (blacksmith-sculptors): as casted group, 34; and circumcision, 42, 45; essential for agriculture and reproduction, 42, 43, 45; lineages of, 40, 42; patronage relationships, 94; rights of, 42; separate from others, 36; specializations of, 42–3; status of, 104. See also sculptors

numuya (blacksmithness), 40, 146

nyaguan (an association), 262n.6

nyama (potential power): of adzes, 297n.61; of animals, 74; and the apprentice, 152; of blacksmiths, 40, 45, 266n.34; of childbirth, 220–1, 230, 329n.107; of children, 43–4, 46, 230, 236; of corpses, 158; with death in childbirth, 220; definition of, 38; of dègè, 301n.79; and excision, 44, 269n.62; of faraw, 249; of female genitalia, 209, 215, 297n.61; growth of, 117; of human figures, 52, 233; inherited capacity for, 40, 42; of intestinal tract, 228; of iron, 138, 139; of jala, 293n.20; of lènkè, 152; of naked bodies, 212; of ntomi, 293n.20; of nyamakalaw, 319n.10; potential to control, 45, 152; and pregnancy, 105; of ritual commission, 230–1; of ritual objects, 47, 52, 209, 230–1; of ritual payment, 9, 115; and sacrifice, 38; of sculptor-client exchange, 116, 117, 291n.79; of sculptor, 113, 117, 212, 230–1; of sexuality, 319n.10; of slaves, 307n.9; of soil, 43; of speech, 8, 135, 136; of submission, 241; of termite mounds, 297n.61; of trees, 109, 121, 123, 131–2, 136, 300n.75; women carvers’ resistance to, 240; of wood, 240, 332n.16

nyama mògò (nyama person), 38

nyamacenin (a tree), 12, 124, 258n.26

nyamakalaw (casted groups), 34, 38, 288n.41, 318–19n.10

Nyangadu, Amidu, 298n.64

nyanyaka (a tree), 210, 321 n.23

nyèmènèw. See decorations on masks

Ogol village, 7

Ogotemmeli, xviii, 7

openness. See receptivity

Owo Yoruba, 288n.45

Packer, Craig, 296n.47, 298–9n.65

paralysis, 72

paranoia, 13–14, 223, 225

patron-client relationship, 103–4, 116, 117, 291n.79

payment, 22, 217. See also ritual payment

pliers (balanw), 142

Pochobradsky, J., 336n.46

poison, 300n.76; and breaking of interdictions, 215; and food, 30, 32; insects used to, 276n.67; from intestinal tract, 228; menstrual blood as, 17; used in sacrifice, 70; sculptor's fear of, 164–5; stored in flute, 213; of third person, 275n.64

polisher (yiri ma nugu), 142

polygamy, 4, 74, 85

portrait statues, 314n.71

pregnancy: compared to artistic creativity, 218–31; eflect on carving, 105, 158, 232; and human figures in wood, 231–3; interdictions concerning, 222–9, 322n.37; and nyama, 105; paranoia concerning, 11–13, 223, 225; Salimata's openness about, 6; and termite mound, 129–30; of unmarried woman, 324n.65

proportions, and achieving equilibrium in, 184, 186, 187

puberty, 43

puppets, 284n.16

Rathbone, Richard, 276n.72

receptivity (dariya), 75, 82, 220, 229, 234, 280n.98, 328n.100

red color, 126

reputation (tògò), 71, 84, 162–3, 165, 270n.1

resemblance, concept of, 176–9, 314n.68

respect (bonya), 44, 104, 269n.62

right hand, 127, 179–80, 210, 296–7n.53

risks, incurred in the creative process, 218, 219–20, 231

ritual meals, 109, 229–30, 279n.95, 289n.55, 329nn.104, 105

ritual objects (boliw): alter existing power structures, 196, 199; attitude towards sexual relations, 204–18; concluding ceremonies for, 229–31; dangers of, 298n.62; efficacy of, 102–3; essential to reproduction, 112; expense of, 107; failed carvings of, 202; and feminization of sculptor, 203–4; gender of, 282n.1; have life of their own, 26; illustrations of, 24; importance of sacrifice to, 26–7; interdictions on carving, 201–2, 223–9; place of carving, 156–9, 244; and menstrual blood, 13; nature and purpose of, 24–5; nyama of, 47, 52, 209, 230–1; process of carving, 179–202; regarded as children, 2, 131; secrecy surrounding, 23; and stages in sculptor's transformation, 21–2; timing and pacing of carving of, 159–62, 232; transported in leather sack, 294n.23; by uncircumcised boys, 52. See also commission; sculpture

ritual payment (laada): affected by djinn, 114; of animals, 289–90n.63; depends on client's wealth, 110–11, 115–16; immutability of, 114; and marriage, 87–8, 108, 111–12, 113, 282n.1; nyama of, 9, 115; for portrait figure, 110–11; for public commission, 95, 106, 110; release of, 195–6; for sculpture by women, 247; slaves used for, 111–13; types of, 107; for twin figures, 328n.101

ritual power, 252–3

ritual washing. See bathing, ritual

rivalry. See fadenya

Robinson, David, 261n.59

sacrifice: and apprenticeship, 67–8; to anvil, 39, 266n.39; of bull, 110; of chicken, 98, 111, 133, 134, 138, 146, 212, 233, 300n.77; and childbirth, 233; of children, 278n.85; clothing and, 167; on conclusion of sculpture, 229–30; of dègè, 98, 99, 300-ln.79; of dog, 138; essential to ritual objects, 26–7; of family members, 112–13, 266n.42; to forge, 146; of goat, 134, 146, 229; and gold, 138; human, 12–13; of kola nuts, 96, 98, 111, 133, 134, 138, 146, 233; and nyama, 38; to protect tools, 131–2, 146–9; required of sculptors, 67–71; of sheep, 96, 229; to tree, 109, 135–6; and women, 325n.70

Sakho, M'Fa Moussa, 267n.49

saliva, 190, 197, 230, 326n.78

sanan (a tree), 121, 292n.11

sand divination (tinye da), 60–1, 270n.3

Sanga (region), 7

sankan (type of human figure), 159

sanyo (plant), 27, 321n.24

sculptors: abstinence required of, 280n.97; aesthetic judgment of, 101–2; attempt to control generative power, 124, 125–9; body control by, 228; and childbirth, 326n.76; childlessness among, 71; clothing worn by, 216, 226, 243; considered essential and dangerous, 8; as decision maker, 274–5n.57; and divination, 60–1; and dreams, 66–7; emulate successful relatives, 79; and fear, 164–5; feminization of, 16, 75, 203–4, 217, 222, 229, 235; importance of, 33–4, 36, 38; impotence of, 75–7; needs “intelligence of the eye,” 50, 52–3; interdictions on, parallel childbirth, 228–9; intestinal control by, 328n.98; jealousy between, 56–7; limited role of mothers of, 63–4; as living “medicine,” 65; motivation of, 162–5; need seclusion for carving, 156–7; need to travel, 53, 55, 65; as nganaw, 163–4; and nudity, 15, 226; nyama of, 113, 117, 212, 230–1; older, 38; payment for commission, 22; personal characteristics of, 48–9, 56, 82; position while carving, 185; possess female spirits, 55; and pregnant wives, 232; relations with apprentices, 56–7; relationship with spirit familiars, 54–61, 67–83, 276n.72; relationships with women, 66, 215–17, 225–7; risks in the human world undertaken by, 106; rhythmic breathing of, 227; and sacrifice, 67–71, 109, 112, 229–30; search for trees, 119–21, 129, 131; selection of, for training, 49, 52–3, 58–9; signs signalling, 48–9, 239; stages in transformation of, 21–2; sterility of, 75–6; uncircumcised boys as, 235–7; use of traditional drugs by, 63–6, 76; women as, 237–44, 246–52; work in the nude, 15. See also apprenticeship; numuw

sculpture: consecration of, 190, 192, 197, 198, 199; decorations on, 187–8, 192, 194–5; and fertility, 33; as medicine, 25; personal and communal, 285n.20, 290n.70; power of, 47, 262–3n.7; sense of proportion in, 184, 186; terminology for, 33, 70, 213; “uncovering” of, 182, 186, 188, 189; use of water in, 190, 192. See also commissions; ritual objects

seclusion, 156–7, 225–6

secrecy, 10–12, 23, 165, 196, 204–8, 213, 215, 223–4

secret associations (jow), 213, 263n.8; compared with tonw, 95, 285n.21; description of, 262n.6; jealousy and fear as motivation for, 253; referred to as female, 282n.1; respect for, 91; rules of, 287n.32

Segu region, 261n.59, 263n.10, 284n.16, 298n.64

selection of sculptors, 49, 52–3, 58–9

senankunw (joking partners), 205, 317–18n.6

Sen ufo, 19, 237, 256n.7

sensa (a tree), 12

sere (malnutrition), 217

sexual indulgence, 77, 85

sexual insults, 204–5, 320n.20

sexual payment, 74–7

sexual relations: associated with smelting, 140; before marriage, 110; and childbirth, 323n.50; compared to making sculpture, 204–18; considered “work,” 155–6; and family power structure, 43; and fears of contamination, 34, 36; interdictions concerning, 85, 151–2, 155, 190, 204, 207–10, 217–18; 226, 243, 265n.33, 279n.96, 330n.113; as model for men's secrets, 17, 213, 215; Salimata's openness about, 6; and successful sculpture, 167; terminology of, 213–14

sexual speech, 204–6

sexuality, 17, 44, 146–9, 319n.10

shamelessness (malobaliya), 204–5

sheep, 96, 98, 108, 109, 110, 290n.63

SiHawa (Kojugu's mother), 247, 248, 249

silence, 9, 210, 224–5, 242

silensa (tree), 12

Sinayogo clan, 58, 267n.49

siratoro (tree), 301n.79

siya (race), 34

slave shackles, 13, 113–14

slavery, 12–13, 28, 39, 103, 111, 113, 208, 266n.44, 288n.41, 307n.9

smelting, 39, 40, 42, 137–41, 169, 268n.51

snakes, 129

social rules, 32–3, 34, 44

soil, 43, 268n.58

soma (traditional healer), 275–6n.66

Songhay, 256n.7, 317n.6

Soninke, 259n.54

sorcery, 175, 192, 236, 269n.69, 278n.89, 295–6n.43

Soro (ritual object), 59–60

sotigi (family head), 264–5n.25

Soumaoro, 251

Soumaoro, Fadama, 73–4

Soumaoro, Nukulumba, 74

spatula (farani, sonkalan, biyen), 147, 271nn.14, 16

speech, 8–11, 136, 136, 206–7

spirit contracts (saratiw). See contracts

spirits. See djinns

sterility, 75–6, 123, 218, 278n.88, 324n.65

Sterner, Judy, 259n.51

Stoller, Paul, 256n.7

stools, 50, 51

suajè (a tree), 146, 305n.127

subaga (sorcerer), 175

submission, 241

sugow ka farin (spirit dreams). See dreams

Sundjata epic, 251, 267n.49, 268n.50

suraka muso konogoro ta la (mud-cloth pattern), 245, 246

Swerdlow, Noel, 335n.45

symbolism, 45–7

Tamba, 261n.59

tanaw. See interdictions

tax collection, 30

tere (luck, destiny), 283n.4

termite mounds, 125, 294n.27, 296n.47; associated with fertility, 121, 124, 125, 129–30, 137; consumed during famine, 124, 126; house djinn, 126–7; identified with female sex, 122, 297n.61; nyama of, 297n.61; ritual objects placed on, 130; types of, 124, 295n.42; types of termites in, 295nn.36, 37. See also ant heaps

textile production, research on, 15

time frame of study, 19–29, 260n.56

toads, 128, 129

tògò (“name”), 163–4

ton (age-grade association), 95, 285n.21

tondo (portion of the forge), 40, 146–7

tools: delicacy of old tools, 304n.106; gender of, 146–9, 306n.139; human qualities of, 149–51; inherited, 304n.103; interdictions concerning, 151–2, 306n.146; made during apprenticeship, 50–1, 142, 144; miniature, 266n.45; sacrifice to, 131–2; types of, 141–2, 304n.105; and women, 151; woods used for, 146

Touré, Samory, 94, 286n.25

town square (dankènè, fèerè), 244

training. See apprenticeship

Traore, Bakary, 157, 307n.9

Traore, M'Fa Sory, 2, 6

Traore, Nci, 96, 98

Traore, Tieba, 71

Travélé, Moussa, 109, 286n.27

travel by sculptors, 53, 55, 65, 291 n.1

trees: cutting of, 131–7, 299n.73; dangerous, 123, 295n.29; djinns of, 119, 132–3; nyama of, 109, 121, 123, 131–2, 135, 136, 300n.75; sacrifices surrounding, 109, 135–6; sculptors’ search for, 119–21, 129, 131; types of, for sculpture, 121–3; used for ritual bathing, 64

trousers, 333n.24

tuberculosis, 208–9

twin figures (filani yiri), 110, 179, 315n.74, 328n.101

twins, 289n.59

Tyi Warra mask: carved with right hand, 180, 210; danced by age-grade assocation, 285n.21; decoration of, 187, 193, 200, 201, 316n.96; iconography of, 34; illustrations of, 35, 36, 37, 184, 186, 187, 188, 189; inferiority of Basi Fane's, 199, 201; types of, 284–5n.16

Umar Tal, Amadu, 261n.59

Umar Tal, El Hadj, 261n.59

Vansina, Jan, 260n.56

vegetation, 126

violence: and casted persons, 288n.41; and djinns, 300n.76; Komo association and, 16–17, 275n.65, 294n.26; among Owo Yoruba, 288n.45; and ritual objects, 263n.7, 294n.28, 295–6n.43; against sculptors, 309n.28; women and, 22, 324n.65

virginity, 43, 44

visual memory, 175–6, 310n.40

visual skill, 60–1, 89, 175–6, 287n.38

wanzo (inherited impurity), 283n.4

washing. See bathing, ritual

Wasoulou region, 137

water, 190, 192, 197, 199

water basin used in forge (gorodaga, gborodaga), 142

water snake, 127–9

water sources, 126–7

Westermann, Dietrich, 259n.54

white color, associations of, 133–4

Wilson, E. O., 296n.47, 299n.65

Wolof, 317n.6

women: associated with number four, 271n.22; assumption of male roles by, 16; avoidance of, 206–9, 215–18, 225; body control by, 228; body of, compared to wood, 179; compared to furnace, 139–40; compared to donkey, 322n.37; and creation, 238, 240, 251, 325n.70; determination of destiny of, 283n.4; and djinns, 239, 242; forbidden from entering forge, 92, 161; forbidden sexual relations, 190; forbidden to view Komo mask, 215, 319n.15; identified with culture, 226; men's fear of, 208–9; mud-cloth painters, 71; nudity of, required for forging flutes, 17; pass their character to children, 85–6; as powerful creatures, 22; publicly acknowledge male superiority, 241–2; and sacrifices, 325n.70; as sculptors, 66, 237–44, 246–52, 278n.85; and sexual relations, 323n.50; as “things of the earth,” 249; and tools, 151; preferred weight of, 285n.19. See also childbirth; pregnancy

wood, 146, 156, 179, 240, 332n.16. See also trees

words, attitude towards, 9

yiri baarakèbagaw (workers in wood), 24

yirimògòniw. See human figures

Zahan, Dominique, 7, 9, 296n.48, 311n.48