Notes

1. The term “Mande” refers to a broad category of peoples with historical ties to the thirteenth-century Mali Empire encompassing parts of modern-day nation-states of Mali, Mauritania, Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea-Conakry, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Côte d’Ivoire, and Burkina Faso.

2. Throughout this book, foreign language terms appear in italics. Foreign languages include French, Mali’s official language; Arabic, the language of Islam, most commonly articulated in Mali in its classical register; and Bamana (or Bambara), a Mande language and Mali’s lingua franca. Bamana is the predominant foreign language employed in this book. When employing French or Arabic terms, I indicate their use either in the text or parenthetically to distinguish them from Bamana terms. In transcribing Bamana speech and song, I follow the orthographic standards set by the Malian National Office of Functional Literacy and Applied Linguistics (DNAFLA). For Arabic, I employ a simplified transliteration system based on the International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES) guidelines. However, when citing other sources (such as song texts, articles, and books), I follow the spelling conventions employed by the authors.

3. Sidiki Diabaté, interview with the author on December 15, 2010, in Bamako, Mali.

4. “Culture,” much debated, contested, and all but dismissed during anthropology’s disciplinary critique of the 1980s and ’90s (Marcus and Fischer 1986; Dirks 1998)—as “a mystification of material relations of production, an ‘effect’ of dominant ideology, the product of culture industries and colonial and state bureaucracies” (Fox 2004, 32)—has more recently been given a sophisticated (and, I argue, salutary) reappraisal. “Culture,” writes anthropologist Michael Fischer, “is not a variable; culture is relational, it is elsewhere, it is in passage, it is where meaning is woven and renewed often through gaps and silences, and forces beyond the conscious control of individuals, and yet the space where individual and institutional social responsibility and ethical struggle take place” (Fischer 2003, 7). Culture is neither an effect of power nor its condition. It is, rather, “an active and hegemonic (or power-inflected) process of organizing communal experience and social relations” (Fox 2004, 31), in which “power and meaning are not placed in theoretical opposition but are shown to be intimately linked in an intersubjective matrix” (Biehl, Good, and Kleinman 2007, 14). As Michael Jackson observes, culture is “the field of a dialectic in which the sedimented and anonymous meanings of the past are taken up as means of making a future, and givenness transformed into design” (1996, 11). And, to rephrase the ideas of Fischer, culture mediates the psychosocial tensions between individual agency and institutional responsibility. Such conceptions of culture have strongly shaped the ethico-moral approach to the nested structures and practices of human social life I elaborate in this book.

5. My argument that multiple moralities socially constitute a dynamic and coherent urban African structure of feeling in Bamako resonates with Matt Sakakeeny’s observation of the “multiple orientations” toward the soundscape of African American social space in New Orleans. As Sakakeeny argues, “While identity politics bind individuals together according to shared characteristics of race and place in a way that allows us to speak of a community of black New Orleanians, those operating within and across this community construct an individual subjectivity by drawing upon a shifting set of identifications based on their interactions in historical and social context. . . . Soundscapes encompass multiple, sometimes opposing, subject positions, and this is precisely why they have been so critical to the production of locality in New Orleans” (2010, 20–21, 25).

6. This dialectic of social position and existential project resonates with what Judith Butler, in her reading of Althusser’s theory of subjectification, terms an “ethics” of the “desire to be,” which she posits as being in tension with the socially conditioned, interpellated form of “being,” interpreted here in terms of “morality” (1997, 130–31).

1. My interest in the coupling of aural experience and the production of social space has been strongly influenced by the work of Steven Feld. Feld’s “sense of place” emerges ethnographically, observing “how spaces are transformed and ‘placed’ through human action, and, more crucially, how places embody cultural memories and hence are substantial sites for understanding the construction of social identities” (Feld 1996b, 73). Feld is particularly attentive to the sonic dimension of such sociospatial production, an acoustic mode of being-in-the-world he describes as an “acoustemology of place,” or “local conditions of acoustic sensation, knowledge, and imagination, embodied in the culturally particular sense of place” (Feld 1996a, 91).

2. In fact, Samory Touré defeated the French at Woyowayankɔ on April 2, 1883, but then abandoned the Niger Valley in favor of eastern territories in Côte d’Ivoire. Samory was captured in 1898 in Côte d’Ivoire (Brandon County, personal communication on January 15, 2014).

3. In Bamako, several adjoining neighborhoods on the Niger River’s left bank include the name “Bolibana.” The neighborhood I am describing here is officially known as “Oulofobougou-Bolibana,” though it and the other Bolibana districts are collectively referred to as Bolibana.

4. This lyric (“Badenya duman tunbɛ”) uses the past imperfect tense and would more literally translate as “Good conviviality has been here.” When discussing this and other lines from the track “Bolibana” with the group Need One, however, the present tense was always used in their translations of the Bamana into French. Thus, I use the present tense is to translate the past imperfect has been throughout the track. Further, I have indicated the emphatic adjective duman (pleasant, good, useful) with an exclamation point.

5. Because I did not record this particular encounter with Need One, I recall their words through my field notes, written after the visit. Because the sentiments I ascribe to them are of a general nature, and because I did not note the particular attributions of statements made that evening, I use the third-person plural they as opposed to individual names.

6. The video for Need One’s “Bolibana” can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKPgjzw8X1E.

7. Hɔrɔnya describes the state of being “noble” or “free-born” in Mande society. While hɔrɔnya refers to a particular group (free-born nobles, hɔrɔnw) within the Mande social hierarchy, which also includes clan-based artisans (ɲamakalaw) and captives (jɔnw), its use in everyday discourse is more generalized. Anyone may possess hɔrɔnya. Thus, I translate it as “dignity,” rather than, say, “nobility” (see Conrad and Frank 1995 and Hoffman 1990).

8. Today, with more than half of the city’s population living in so-called spontaneous districts (French, spontanés), describing unregulated shantytowns on the outskirts of the city (Diarra, Ballo, and Champaud 2003, 42, 44–46), one must wonder about the enduring coherence of civil space in the face of unrelenting urban poverty.

9. Tiécoura Traoré, who performs the role of Chaka, worked as an engineer for the Malian railroad, before furloughs as a result of privatization in 2003 led to his dismissal. In addition to screen acting and farming (his current profession), Traoré is the leader of COCIDIRAIL (Collectif Citoyen pour la restitution et le development intègre du rail / Civil Association for the Railroad’s Restitution and Sustainable Development), which lobbies on behalf of railroad workers, former railroad workers, and rural communities that had been served by Mali’s national railroad before its privatization.

10. This “perceived” space of “appearance” in the (African) city is strongly resonant with Brian Larkin’s notion of “immaterial urbanism,” defined as “modes of affect [that] suffuse the bricks and mortar of streets and buildings: the tedium, fear, arousal, anger, awe, and excitement felt as one moves from one space to another or seeks out particular places at particular times.” Coupling affect with experience, Larkin observes that “moving through the city means moving through these emotions—praying in the morning, eating, traveling, working, dealing with petty bureaucracies, hanging out with neighbors, reading, and praying again—circumambulating the routes offered by the city and the forms of life that come with them” (2008, 148).

11. Personal communication, April 2, 2013.

12. My reference is to Hannah Arendt, who, in The Human Condition, writes, “The remedy for unpredictability, for the chaotic uncertainty of the future is contained in the faculty to make and keep promises. . . . Binding oneself through promises, serves to set up in the ocean of uncertainty, which the future is by definition, islands of security without which not even continuity, let alone durability of any kind, would be possible in the relationships between men” (Arendt [1958] 1998, 237).

13. Need One’s “Sabali” can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fAkh0BCNxY.

14. On social stratification and hierarchy in the Mande world, see Bird, Kendall, and Tera 1995; Camara [1976] 1992; Conrad and Frank 1995; Hoffman 1995; and McNaughton 1988.

15. In her study of gendered personhood among the Sana (Mali) Bamana, Grosz-Ngaté cites a proverb that captures the distinct ontological risks associated with shameful behavior among men and women: “If you find a woman in trouble, help her. But if you find her in a shameful situation, leave her because she will get over it. If you find a man in trouble, leave him because he can get out of it on his own. But if you find him in a shameful situation, get him out of it because otherwise he might die” (1989, 171).

16. This means that attempts to discipline another’s child may be justified (“The porridge is boiling”) but are not sanctioned or blessed (“The stirring spoon is lost”) when elders and parents alike are themselves perceived to be uneducated. More generally, the proverb argues that children who are entering adulthood cannot be put on the right path (that is, properly socialized) if their elders lack the moral authority to guide them.

17. This proverbial expression is used to convey a general sense of dismay and desperation. The “horse and her/his master,” in this context, may be understood as the child and her/his parents or elders who are exhausted by incomprehension and mutual suspicion.

18. Earlier, I defined the term sabali as “patience.” I translate the term in the track’s chorus as “chill out” to reflect an English vernacular expression closer to the speech of contemporary Bamako youth.

1. The following history is based on interviews with former Pionnier Jazz members Amadou Traoré, conducted on June 26, 2007, and August 11, 2008, and Karamoko Isiaka Dama, conducted on January 25, 2007, in Bamako, Mali.

2. Quoted from Cutter 1968, 77. I have retained the original Bamana orthography from the citation, though I have amended the translation.

3. The video I consulted on YouTube has been taken down due to “multiple third-party notifications of copyright infringement.”

4. I limit my discussion in this chapter to the professional lives and works of musical artists. It is to them that the term artistiya most often refers in contemporary Mali, perhaps given popular music’s great public appeal, among young women and men (Schulz 2002, 2012), and music’s far greater commercial success, locally and globally, over the other performing arts (Diakité 1999).

5. On public/private shifts in radio content, consumption, and broadcast in contemporary Mali, see Mamadou Diawara 1997; Schulz 1999; and Tower 2005.

6. On the social position, roles, identity politics, and local and global expressive culture of Mande jeliw, see, among others, Charry 2000a; Ebron 2002; Eyre 2000; Hale 1998; Hoffman 1990; 2000; Knight 1973; 1991; Roth 2008; Schulz 2001; and Skinner 2004.

7. Malians have been very well represented among the recipients of RFI’s Prix Découvertes since its inception in 1981. Winners of the prestigious award include Nahawa Doumbia, Amadou & Mariam, Habib Koité, Rokia Traoré, and Idriss Soumaoro.

8. The term siyɔrɔko, meaning “bedroom trouble,” expresses a whole range of socioeconomic issues, including those of unwed lovers for whom intimate evening encounters must take place in secret and urban migrants who struggle to find stable lodging (siyɔrɔ, “a place to sleep”) without regular employment.

9. Bob White (2008) notes the musical idiom of ambiance expressed in urban popular music in postcolonial Congo-Kinshasa, highlighting its polysemic and thus “poorly defined” character (23). Venturing a definition in the context of Mobutu-era Kinshasa, White writes, “The term generally refers to the city’s particular combination of sexuality, spectacle, and dance music” (254n9).

10. Such mixing of regional instruments was made possible by the socio-cultural heterogeneity of urban space and the cultural policy of newly independent African states, which sought to bolster “national” culture through the curatorial mixing of “traditional” musical idioms from the countryside (see Mamadou Diawara 1997, 42).

11. Consider the following description of an Ambiance Association event in the mid-1960s: “The afternoon before the evening performance, low-ranking ñamakala [artisanal clans, including griots] of the association prepare a large space in front or near the house of the person who issued the invitation. They drive poles into the ground around a square, and hang a chain of electric lights on all four sides. Loud speakers set at every corner amplify the music of the orchestra. The show begins at night, after dinner” (Meillassoux 1968, 109).

12. Panka Dembelé, interview with author on April 29, 2007, in Bamako, Mali.

13. In his memoir, written with Lilian Prévost, Sorry Bamba (Issa Bamba’s father) describes his membership in a musical association known as goumbé in the town of Mopti in the late-1940s and ’50s. The term goumbé referred to a modern dance and musical style that was “all the rage” in contemporary Côte d’Ivoire, perhaps derived from the gombey popular dance rhythms of early twentieth-century Sierra Leone (Collins 1989). By the mid-1950s, the Mopti youth association had become a “modern” orchestra with horn and woodwind players, an acoustic guitarist, percussionists, singers, and dancers. In Bamba’s words, “The ambiance was contagious” during Goumbé performances, adding “that the youth really appreciated our modern music. It was because it gave them a rare occasion to dance, one against the other, like the Whites” (1996, 31–39). Meillassoux’s study of Bamako associational life includes a detailed account of similar gũbe events in the Malian capital, present in the city from the mid-1930s (1968, 116–30).

14. In a related discussion, Durán notes the vocal timbre preferred by young female griots (jelimusow) in Bamako, described as a “high-pitched, shrill nasal sound with a narrow, fast vibrato.” “This type of voice,” Durán writes, “has been in vogue since the early 1980s. . . . It is a type of vocal production associated with the style sometimes called ‘musique d’ambience’ (music for dancing at weddings and other life-cycle celebrations).” Durán suggests that the ambiant aesthetic of vocal jeliya may have been “created in part by amplification using inferior quality PA systems” (2007, 591).

15. Issa Sory Bamba, interview with author on May 9, 2007, in Bamako, Mali.

16. The term Bama Ɲare is a reference to the city of Bamako, combining the word bama, meaning “crocodile,” the city mascot, with the family name Ɲare (or Niaré), one of the founding clans of the city.

17. Issa Bamba, interview with author on July 17, 2007, in Bamako, Mali.

18. These plots are located in a part of Ntomikorobougou known as the cité sportif, originally designated as a residential area for Mali’s national soccer team.

19. Bruno Maiga and Dialy Mady Cissoko, interview with author on August 17, 2011, in Bamako, Mali.

1. This new recording of solo kora music would be released seven years later as The Mande Variations (Diabaté 2008).

2. An audible manifestation, perhaps, of what Richard Waterman describes, in an early theorization of form and function in African music, as the “metronome sense”: “a theoretical framework of beat regularly spaced in time” and, in the musical elaboration of rhythmic patterns, “of co-operating in terms of overt or inhibited motor behavior with the pulses of this metric pattern whether or not the beat are expressed in actual melodic or percussion tones” (Waterman [1952] 1973, 86–87). While Waterman’s representation of what he calls, in essays from the 1940s and ’50s, “Negro Music” relies on overly essentialist and general characterizations of African and African-derived musics (see Agawu 2003; Waterman 1991), I have found many of his conceptual insights (“metronome sense,” “off-beat phrasing,” and “hot music” in particular) relevant to my analysis of Mande popular music in Bamako.

3. Chérif Keïta, conversation with the author on February 18, 2012, in Ségou, Mali.

4. When asked, Toumani Diabaté refers to himself as a musical autodidact, acknowledging the instrumental patrimony he inherited from his father as a kora player but insisting on his self-taught mastery of the instrument (interview with the author on September 17, 2000, in Bamako, Mali). The elder Sidiki, who learned to play the kora during his youth in The Gambia, was among the first to perform the kora in southwestern Mali, along with Batourou Sékou Kouyaté, who was also present in Kita in the mid-1940s (interview with Djelimory Nfa Diabaté on November 9, 2006, in Bamako, Mali; see also Charry 2000a, 117–18).

5. All of the Kayiratɔn contemporaries I interviewed in Bamako and Kita in November 2006 and July 2007 spoke of the group’s vital presence in 1940s Kita. “Everybody in Kita loved Kayira,” Djely Bourama Diabaté, a relative of Sidiki Diabaté and a Kita native, declared, emphasizing community members’ strong respect for the group. “If you wanted to get married, and didn’t have the consent of the Kayiratɔn, the marriage didn’t happen” (November 12, 2006). Djely Mady Diabaté, who was only a child at the time, described how Kayiratɔn musicians would motivate farmers in the fields, singing and drumming during the harvest (November 5, 2006). Others spoke of social and cultural concerns. Kankouba Diawara and Fanta Kanté (July 21, 2007) related how the Kayiratɔn intervened in arranged marriages, decrying such unions as unfavorable without the couple’s consent. At one point during my interview with kora player Nfa Diabaté (November 10, 2006), he exclaimed, “In the Kayiratɔn, it was a revolution! Just like the Mamayatɔn was.” The “Mamayatɔn” referred to a popular music and dance movement similar to the Kayiratɔn that emerged between the two World Wars in the Guinean city of Kankan (see Kaba and Charry 2000). For an historical analysis of the piece “Kayira,” see Camara et al. 2002.

6. In Bamana, the lyric is “Dondon kana kasi / Fajiri sɔgɔma wuli ka gɛlɛn ne ma.” Mohamadou Diabaté, the youngest of Sidiki Diabaté’s sons in Bamako, explained these lyrical interpretations to me during an interview on November 2, 2006, in Bamako, Mali.

7. Bakari Soumano, interview with the author on November 29, 1998, in Bamako, Mali.

8. According to Nfa Diabaté, a native of Kita who came of age as a young observer and participant in the Kayiratɔn, Sidiki Diabaté was the most widely respected kora player of his generation. Born to a family of ngoni (lute) players, the younger Nfa frequented the elder Sidiki to learn the kora, because the instrument was not well known in Kita at the time (interview with the author on November 10, 2006, in Bamako, Mali). Nfa would later go on to join Sidiki in the Ensemble Instrumental National du Mali in the early 1960s (Charry 2000a, 118; Skinner 2009: 69–72). Djeli Bourama Diabaté, a young contemporary of the Kayiratɔn, described Sidiki Diabaté’s public rivalry with kora player Batourou Sékou Kouyaté, also a founding member of Mali’s National Ensemble (interview with the author on November 12, 2006, in Bamako, Mali). Both Djeli Bourama and Nfa recalled a public competition between Sidiki and Batourou Sékou in which the two exchanged solos in a performance of “Kayira” (though Nfa did not specify the piece they performed). For Nfa, Sidiki was the apparent victor; for Djeli Bourama, Batourou Sékou had no equal when it came to “Kayira.”

9. In her vocal performance, Nana moves along a continuum of Mande language, using both Bamana and Maninka syntax and morphology. For example, both the Maninka plural ending -lu and the Bamana w are used, as in the second person plural alu (Maninka) and aw (Bamana). Though Bamana is Bamako’s lingua franca, Nana’s use of Maninka, predominant in southwestern Mali and northern Guinea, represents, I believe, an aesthetic choice. For many Bamako artists, Maninka is perceived as the privileged language of sung poetics, perhaps due to the influence of prominent jeli vocalists from the Maninka towns of Kita and Kela, such as Kandia Kouyaté and Kassé Mady Diabaté.

10. The term balimaya more literally translates as “kinship,” describing the condition (indicated by the suffix -ya) of being among one’s family (balima). I translate the term, here, as “fellowship” to encompass the broader sense of “family” Nana invokes among her band mates.

11. Lucy Durán (1978) uses the Mandinka (western Mande) terms donkilo and sataro to refer to the melodic patterning, thematic content, and metrical periodicity of song and the melodic variability, narrative improvisation, and metrical irregularity of narration respectively; what I call here “chorus” and “recitation.”

12. Ethnomusicologist Heather Maxwell offers the following definition of “song” (dɔnkili) based on her fieldwork among popular artists in Mali: “The world for song itself is dònkili, meaning at once ‘the egg or testicles of the dance,’ or ‘the egg or testicles of knowledge,’ depending how one interprets dòn (dòn is a noun for both knowledge and dance” (2008, 29–30). The consensus among Mande linguists is that the term better translates as “to call to the dance,” combining the word “dance” (dɔn) with the verb “to call” (kili) common to southern and western Mande languages (Maninka and Mandinka, in particular). I, like Maxwell, gesture to the “popular” etymology here out of deference to the artists and audiences in places like Bamako who appeal to a different, polysemic sense of the word in the Bamana language.

13. In Mande cosmology, ɲama refers to the “vital force” found in all animate, inanimate, and esoteric objects, such as human beings (mɔgɔw), iron (nɛgɛ), and speech (kuma). The ability to control the last (speech) is the hereditary claim of griots. On the sociomaterial nature of ɲama in Mande social thought, see Cissé 1973, 160–61.

14. Chernoff’s work has been criticized for its essentialist appeal to “African unity,” generalizing from particular expressions of rhythm and collectivity among Ewe and Dagbamba communities in Ghana themselves juxtaposed with an equally essentialist rendering of “Western” music culture (see Merriam 1980, for an example of this critique; see also Ebron 2002, 33–53). Yet, African unity is not merely an ethical and aesthetic conceit in Chernoff’s work, reliant on socio-musical generalizations; it is also a cultural and political practice of actively negotiating and representing difference, at home and abroad. See, for example, Chernoff’s reflections on the florescence of African popular music in the early 1970s, with reference to dozens of bands from across the continent to reveal the growing presence of an identifiably African musical presence in the world (1979, 115–16).

1. To call such spoken and sung expressions “musical” risks offending those who hold a more doctrinal perspective on Islamic verbal art. From this point of view, blessings, chants, recitations, and prayer calls do not qualify as “music,” per se, but as eloquent verbal expressions designed to heighten one’s piety through focused listening (sam‘) (see Hirschkind 2006). Music, especially in its popular forms (as performed in concert halls and nightclubs), is said to inspire feelings that rival one’s affection for God and, for this reason, should be discouraged or even forbidden among the faithful. While this perspective may be found among certain conservative reformists in West Africa, it is perhaps still more common to encounter those who accept a broader spectrum of musical expression within the context of Islamic practice in their daily lives.

2. It should be noted, however, that this popular confluence of national and religious identity has been profoundly unsettled by the March 2012 coup d’état and its destabilizing aftermath throughout the country. In this context of internecine conflict, to identify oneself as Malian or Muslim has implied tensions—in terms of political subjectivity (“Who belongs to this nation-state?”) and public piety (“Who represents Islam?”)—exacerbated in the months leading up to and following the coup (for commentaries on the question of national belonging, see Moseley 2012; on the question of religious identity, see Peterson 2012). Moreover, these political and religious dissonances have been textured, in certain public forums, by a heightened sense of ethnic and racial difference, in which northern grievances are cast in black and white—figuratively and racially (Mann 2012b)—while southern critiques turn toward sectarian prejudice (Baba 2012).

3. While describing what it means to be a Muslim in the Malian postcolony, Benjamin Soares observes that “the public sphere has helped to foster a supralocal sense of shared Muslim identity in Mali, an imagined community of Muslims often linked to the Malian state whose members are to varying degrees attentive to the broader Islamic world that lies beyond the state boundaries” (2005, 238). For Soares, this national sense of Islam represents an important point of orientation among those who have distanced themselves from provincial traditions (such as local Sufi orders) without abandoning a sense of local distinction in their identities as Muslims (238–43). My observations of an Islamic popular culture in contemporary Bamako may be taken as situated expressions of this “postcolonial tradition” of Islamic identification (243).

4. “Marie” is a pseudonym.

5. On the use of the socioaesthetic practice of “sweeping away the dangerous energy of a place” during funerary rites, see Cissé 1973, 175, 175fn131.

6. Djo Dama Diarra, interview with author on December 6, 2006, in Bamako, Mali.

7. Lyrics reprinted with permission of the group Tata Pound. The translation of this particular passage, originally in French, is my own.

8. This has been exemplified, more recently, by the formation of the Malian hip-hop collective Les Sofas de la République (The Soldiers of the Republic), including two members of Tata Pound (Ramsès and Dixon), which Bruce Whitehouse describes as a vocal and youthful expression of Malian civil society whose mediated expression (with several tracks released on YouTube) have produced poignant, critical responses to the social, political, and economic crises of the March 22 coup and its aftermath (Whitehouse 2012b).

9. Like those who consume and circulate Islamic cassette sermons on the subaltern margins of urban Egyptian society described in Charles Hirschkind’s seminal ethnography, The Ethical Soundscape (2006), artists and audiences within Bamako’s hip-hop community often “stand in tension with the moral and political exigencies and modes of self-identification of national citizenship,” and, again, like their Cairene counterparts, perform this “disjunctive relationship to the public sphere” through pious expressions of the voice and embodied practices of listening (117). Unlike the pious subjects who populate Hirschkind’s study, however, established hip-hop artists in Mali are typically affluent members of the Malian middle class (see Charry 2012, 304) who use their positions of privilege to speak to the broader societal concerns of contemporary African urbanites.

10. By contrast, Michael Ralph has recently examined the absence of sociable discourse in comparable streetside conversational tea circles in Dakar (2008). Ralph analyzes the gaps and silences in everyday speech that draw attention to the impossibility of convivial intersubjectivity in social spaces where poverty is endemic, employment is scarce, and anomie is pervasive.

11. Brandon County, personal communication on May 19, 2011.

12. This lyrical passage is drawn from a transcription made by Lucy Durán and included in the liner notes to the compilation album Jarabi: The Best of Toumani Diabate, Master of the Kora (Durán 2001). I have slightly modified the transcription in accordance with Bamana language spelling conventions.

13. Moussa Niang, personal communication on June 30, 2012.

14. I thank my colleague Cheikh Thiam for providing me with a full translation of the Wolof language lyrics to “Tapha Niang.”

15. As the principle copyright holder, Diabaté has a particularly strong claim to the content of Boulevard de l’Indépendence, including “Tapha Niang,” a point of contention that Moussa Niang is quick to point out in his reflections on this song.

16. On the sounds of African alterity, see Agawu (1995) and Ebron (2002).

17. The song can be heard, along with some images from LittleBigPlanet, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zV5AB0AIQFU.

18. Toumani Diabaté, interview with the author on December 22, 2010, in Bamako, Mali.

1. In this chapter, I use the term copyright in the francophone sense of le droit d’auteur, employed in Mali, a former French colony. “The right of the author” includes both moral and proprietary rights (droits moraux et patrimoniaux) pertaining to the material publication and exploitation (proprietary rights) as well as the personal attribution and integrity (moral rights) of a work (for a definitional history of French copyright, see Latournerie 2001).

2. For a broad-based ethnographic survey of money—its materiality, uses, and troubling effects—in contemporary Mali, see Wooten 2005. For a more general, comparative discussion of shifting forms and understandings of wealth and value in sub-Saharan Africa, see Guyer 1995.

3. I thank Marc Perlman for bringing my attention to this reference.

4. Panka Dembelé, former member and director of the Orchestre National du Mali, interview with the author on May 3, 2007, in Bamako, Mali.

5. Djelimory Nfa Diabaté, interview with the author on November 9, 2006, in Bamako, Mali; see also Amselle 1978, 343, 348.

6. See, for example, musical selections included on the two-volume release, Epic, Historical, Political and Propaganda Songs of the Socialist Government of Modibo Keita (1960–1968) (Various Artists 1977).

7. Ethnomusicologist Graeme Counsel documents a pair of recordings released in 1968 by “Republic [sic] du Mali Radiodiffusion Nationale” in his extensive online “Radio Africa” discography (2012). Elsewhere, Counsel writes that “commercial recordings were sporadic until the German label, Bärenreiter-Musicaphon, in conjunction with UNESCO and The Malian Ministry of Information, released over a dozen discs in circa 1971. It wasn’t until 1973 that the Malian government first released its own material” (2006, 138). These recordings sought to sample the regional diversity of Malian cultural expression and likely served as tools of promotion, to “perform the nation” (Askew 2002) abroad. Examples of such state-sponsored promotional releases include Panorama du Mali and Regard sur le passé à travers le présent (Various Artists 1973a and 1973b).

8. Comité revolutionnaire de coordiantion de la JUS-RDA de Bagadadji to Comité Nationale de la Jeunesse (Bamako, December 26, 1967), Archive National du Mali, Hamdallaye, FBPN 52/140.

9. On the late and postcolonial politics of the Union Soudanaise de Rassemblement Démocratique Africaine (US-RDA), which governed Mali as a single-party state from 1960 to 1968, see Hodgkin 1957 and Morgenthau 1964. On the US-RDA’s postcolonial politics of culture, see Skinner 2012b. For an artful account of Bamako’s unofficial postcolonial youth culture, replete with foreign sounds, see the photographic work of Malick Sidibé (Mangin 1998).

10. Amadou Traoré, former member and director of the Orchestre National du Mali (section B), interview with the author on June 26, 2010, in Bamako, Mali.

11. “Special Clôture,” 8ième Biennale Artistique et Culturelle (1984), edited by the Commission de Presse et d’Information. Unfiled archival document at the Direction Nationale Patrimoine Culturel, Bamako, Mali.

12. In Bamana, Sanjikɔrɔwɔsi tɛ dɔn.

13. Mandé Moussa Diakité, adjunct director at the Bureau Malien du Droit d’Auteur, interview with the author on January 20, 2007, in Bamako, Mali.

14. Bruno Maiga, former administrative director of the Théatre National du Mali, interview with the author on August 17, 2011, in Bamako, Mali.

15. Journal Officiel de la Republique du Mali, August 15, 1986, 42–44.

16. Bourama Diarra, the president des Partants Volontaires à la Retraite at the Bourse de Travail (Labor Exchange) in Bamako, states that the VER programs persisted until 1995 (interview with the author on December 16, 2008, in Bamako, Mali). My own inquiries revealed VER legislation pertaining to the “second wave” through 1993 (see Journal Officiel de la Republique du Mali, February 28, 1991, 155–58; March 15, 1991, 167; October 15, 1992, 694; and April 15, 1993, 258).

17. Bourama Diarra, December 15, 2008.

18. Amadou Fofana, former member of the Badema National (Malian National Orchestra) and VER participant, interview with the author on August 15, 2008, in Bamako, Mali.

19. Jeli Magan Diabaté, former member of the Ensemble Instrumental National du Mali and VER participant, interview with the author on November 23, 2006, in Bamako, Mali; Amadou Fofana, August 15, 2008.

20. Mandé Moussa Diakité, January 20, 2007.

21. Ibid.

22. Albums associated with Toumani Diabaté’s internationally touring groups in the 1990s include the Mande Jazz Trio’s Djelika (Diabaté et al. 1995), New Ancient Strings (Diabaté and Sissoko 1998), and Kulanjan (Diabaté and Mahal 1999).

23. Symmetric Orchestra band members would eventually get their break in the decade that followed, for those who endured the wait, with the group’s internationally acclaimed release, Boulevard de l’Indépendence (2006).

24. Mandé Moussa Diakité, January 20, 2007.

25. It is worth noting that Blondy recorded his own version of Marley’s “War,” titled, “La Guerre,” on the album Dieu (1994), which preceded Grand Bassam Zion Rock (1996).

1. Here is a sampling of headlines from international media reports detailing Islamist violence in northern Mali at this time: “Radical Islamists Stone Adulterous Couple to Death in Northern Mali” (July 30, 2012. theguardian.com); “Mali Crisis: Gao Protests ‘Stop Hand Amputation’” (August 6, 2012. bbc.co.uk); “Mali Festival in the Desert Postponed Due to Insurgence” (August 30, 2012. news.bbc.co.uk); “Mali: Rebel Groups Ban Music and Replace Ringtones” (December 6, 2012. bbc.co.uk2012); “Blues for Mali as Ali Farka Toure’s Music Is Banned” (December 7, 2012. bbc.co.uk); “La Musique Malienne, En Berne Au Sud, Interdite Au Nord” (January 1, 2013. france24.com); and “Mali’s Musicians Defiant in Face of Music Ban” (January 21, 2013. cbc.ca). For a nuanced dialogue about the varied experience of “Islamist” administration in northern Mali during this time, see Hall et al. 2013, especially the section on “Secularism, Political Islam, and Justice.” Andy Morgan deals explicitly and extensively with the plight of music culture in Mali following the social and political upheavals of 2012 in his book, Music, Culture, and Conflict in Mali (2013), and in his recent freelance journalism (andymorganwrites.com).

2. On March 22, 2012, a military mutiny in Kati, Mali’s main garrison town, spawned a military coup, destabilizing Mali’s political order, sending its economy into a tailspin, and ushering in myriad parastatal factions that thrust this poor, landlocked nation into the theater of global warfare (Mann 2012a; Soares 2012; Whitehouse 2012c). The latter issue of armed conflict has not been limited to the rebellion in the North, where a complex mix of ethnic nationalists, territorial separatists, Islamists, and smuggling cartels vie for territorial hegemony (for a historical perspective on this “complex mix,” see Lecocq 2010); the southern capital, Bamako, too has witnessed the strong-armed politics of a military junta, compounded by the vigilantism of civilian mobs (Whitehouse 2012d). For a historical account and analysis of the unfolding of these (and other) events in Mali in 2012, see Lecocq et al. 2013.

3. This film can be viewed here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=k16Eoyccip4.

4. The apparent morality of Malian music is, of course, neither universally embraced nor uncontested. It is precisely this social position of “musical Malian-ness” that groups like Tinariwen have refused, articulating, by contrast (though relatedly), a social position of Tuareg nationalism under the banner of a culturally distinct and politically independent Azawad. See, for an example of this position, the blog post “Tinariwen Speaks on the Coup in Mali” from the website africasacountry.com, published on April 2, 2012. For a critique of this position, see Gregory Mann’s commentary on “the racial politics of Tuareg nationalism” from the same website (Mann 2012b).

5. A headline from Der Spiegel’s international website on January 21, 2013: “Mali Conflict Opens New Front in War on Terror” (spiegel.de).

6. See, in particular, Andy Morgan’s Music, Culture, and Conflict in Mali (2013) for detailed accounts of artists, audiences, and the politics of everyday life in northern Mali, related with a historically informed perspective on the current crisis.

7. Here, I echo the insights and interventions of Partha Chatterjee, whose notion of a “politics of the governed” among subaltern populations in postcolonial societies stresses that “the functions of governmentality can create conditions not for a contraction but rather an expansion of democratic political participation” (2004, 76).

8. The video for Iba One’s and Sidiki Diabaté’s “Cinquantenaire du Mali” can be viewed here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vTqHNb_2gs.

9. The video for Mokobé Traoré’s “Mali Debout” can be viewed here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWnI3z7L2qw.

10. The interview, “L’Afrique 50 ans après les indépendences avec Achille Mbembe,” can be viewed on the website franceculture.fr. I first viewed this interview on a blog post by Tom Devriendt (“Achille Mbembe’s Africa”) on africasacountry.com.

11. An online version of this text was published on April 1, 2010, on courrierinternational.com.

12. This image can be viewed here: www.journaldumali.com/article.php?aid=1976.

13. The video for Djeneba Seck’s “Maliba” performed with the Symphonie du Cinquantenaire can be viewed here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IO1of_GqMO.

14. The title of the section is a reference to Partha Chatterjee’s essay, “Beyond the Nation? Or Within?” (1998).

15. Interview with Achille Mbembe on franceculture.fr (October 19, 2010), as cited by Tom Devriendt in his blog entry “Achille Mbembe’s Africa” on africasacountry.com.

16. Mbembe’s recent text Critique de la Raison Nègre echoes this criticism of postcolonial nativism while also suggesting that the objectified condition of “race” coupled with the idea of “blackness” (la raison nègre) has become much more generalized across the globe in the current era of neoliberalism (2013).

17. An announcement of the “state of emergency” was made by the U.S. Embassy in Bamako on January 11, 2013, (mali.usembassy.gov) and reported (for the purpose of clarification) in the Malian press on January 12 (journaldumali.com).

18. This quotation refers to a headline on January 13, 2013 (“France Determined to ‘Eradicate’ Terrorism in Mali, Official Says”) that cites French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian on cnn.com.

19. The audio file for Fatoumata Diawara’s “Maliko” can be streamed here: soundcloud.com/theworld/maliko.

20. For a lyrical transcription and analysis of “Maliko,” see Whitehouse 2013c. Fatoumata Diawara’s commentaries on the track’s release in Mali can be viewed here: youtube.com/watch?v=Hg1f3pBHoPQ.

21. I am thankful to Bruce Whitehouse for bringing my attention to the proximate release of these singles (2013a and 2013c).

22. This statement is quoted from an interview with Master Soumy, “‘Sini yé kêlêyé’ de Master Soumy bientôt dans les bacs,” published via the weekly journal Bamako Hebdo on January 19, 2013, on maliweb.net.

23. This statement is quoted from an interview with Fatoumata Diarwara, “‘Maliko’: le cri de coeur des artistes pour le Mali,” published January 18, 2013, on journaldumali.com.

24. This statement is quoted from an interview with Madina Ndiaye, “Madina Ndiaye, unique femme malienne joueuse de la kora,” published May 11, 2013, via the weekly journal Bamako Hebdo on maliweb.net.

25. Working remotely from the United States, I sent two questionnaires by email to interlocutors within Bamako’s artistic community in February and May 2013. Fassiriman Dembelé, a professional musician and music educator in Bamako who has long assisted me, recorded the responses of the seventeen artists who chose to participate in the survey. Seybou Keita, a local journalist, then transcribed the responses and sent them to me electronically in April and July 2013.

1. I attended this talk on November 23, 2013, in Baltimore, Maryland. Citations from the talk are from my own notes taken during the lecture.

2. In a recent article titled “Rethinking African Culture and Identity: the Afropolitan Model” (2014), Chielozona Eze takes a more accommodating stance toward cosmopolitanism as a framework for understanding contemporary African subjectivities, at home and abroad. Eze critiques exclusive and elitist understandings of the cosmopolitan in favor of what he calls a “normative conception of morality” that fosters an “empathetic imagination.” This “new universalism” grounds his account of Afropolitanism “explored within a cosmopolitan context” (243–44). I am drawn to Eze’s Afropolitan “reading of the African postcolonial identity as necessarily transcultural [and] transnational” (241), though I think the singular moral compass of his overarching cosmopolitanism may obscure (in its noble aim for a more convivial theory of identity) more than it reveals about worldly (and, in my view, morally multiple) African cultures in the twenty-first century.