A Pious Poetics of Place



Tata Diabaté and Dialyco. Photograph by the author

Chapter 4: A Pious Poetics of Place  examines the Islamic voice as a morally steeped and widely deployed discursive resource in Bamako popular music. It focuses on the inter-textual and inter-subjective references to Islamic thought and practice in three distinct, though frequently overlapping genres of vocal performance: praise song, rap, and dance band lyricism. The chapter argues that the pious poetics of a vocal Islam is part of what makes culture “popular” in contemporary Mali. It also traces the ways in which Islam has become a site of contestation and debate in Mali, and beyond.

KEY TERMS

• fasada: A Mande musical term meaning “vocal praise,” in which the Mande person (mɔgɔ) is poetically tied to familial lineage and cultural patrimony (fasiya) 
  
• interpellation: any communicative practice whereby individuals are called upon (or hailed) as subjects within existing ideological systems in society
  
• poetics of recognition: a recursive practice in verbal art in which culturally salient utterances (such as Qur’anic citation) are interpolated into vocal texts to interpellate specific modes of identification (such as a popular Islamic subjectivity)
  
• popular Islam: a broadly shared sense of Muslim community produced through the circulation of pious texts (including song lyrics) in the public sphere (as a poetics of recognition), emphasizing integrative over sectarian Islamic modes of identification
  

WHO'S WHO

• Tata Diabaté: traditional Mande griot (jeli) and praise singer (fasadala); sister-in-law to Dialy Mady Cissoko, and lead singer in the group Dialyco
  
• Dixon: rapper and member of hip-hop group Tata Pound; known for his deep, melodic, and measured verbal art
  
• Moussa Niang: a Senegalese vocalist who performed with Toumani Diabaté’s Bamako dance band, the Symmetric Orchestra, in the late ‘90s and ‘00s; he is the lead singer on the track “Tapha Niang” from the album Boulevard de l’Indépendence (2006)
  

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. This chapter argues for a conception of a “popular Islam” in contemporary Mali. What does it mean for a global religion to be “popular?” How does this perspective trouble stereotypes about Islam and its practitioners? What does this take on Islam say about “popular culture” more generally? 
   
2. This chapter also shows how popular Islam in Mali today can be “misrecognized” as unorthodox, or even illegitimate. How is this so? When does a “poetics of recognition” become a poetics of misrecognition? 
   
3. Consider the “multiple moralities” encountered in the book thus far: urban, professional, cultural, and religious. To what extent do these social positions meaningfully co-exist in contemporary Bamako? What potential frictions does such moral co-existence suggest?
   

FURTHER READING & DISCUSSION

• "Religious Peace and Tolerance in Mali: The Other Ansar Dine" by Brian Peterson:  http://thinkafricapress.com/mali/religious-peace-and-tolerance-mali-other-ansar-dine  
  
• “Islam in Mali since the 2012 Coup” by Benjamin Soares:             http://www.culanth.org/fieldsights/321-islam-in-mali-since-the-2012-coup 
• “Muslim Group Criticizes LittleBigPlanet Recall” by Andy Chalk: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/86936-Muslim-Group-Criticizes-LittleBigPlanet-Recall 
  
• “Singing, Spirituality, and Islam: If Music be the Food of Love” by Thembi Mutch: http://thinkafricapress.com/tanzania/nightingale-still-sings-african-musicians-provide-important-perspectives-islam-and-music