No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
“Bilali of Faransekila”: A West African Hunter and World War I Hero According to a World War II Veteran and Hunters' Singer of Mali
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 May 2014
Extract
“An only son must never die in war until the end of the world.”
(Seydou Camara, “Bilali of Faransekila,” 1:396)
Discussing the significance of Kande Kamara's oral history of West African experiences in the First World War, Joe Harris Lunn observes that, although historians have begun to examine the effects of that war on west Africa, their studies are mostly based on written sources, “and therefore shed little light on the lived reality of the war for the African masses whose perceptions of their experiences were never recorded.” Of particular value then, is the oral history provided by the Guinean veteran Kande Kamara, offering as it does an opportunity for assessing the European war's impact on west Africans. Lunn finds, however, that west African soldiers who served in France during the First World War have left very few records of either their wartime experiences or its effects on their later lives. The text by the late Malian hunters' singer Seydou Camara that is presented here helps to redress this lamentable deficiency because, although it is a step or two removed from the sort of firsthand eyewitness account offered by Kande Kamara, it provides valuable support for and confirmation of certain elements of Kande Kamara's testimony. Composed and sung by Seydou Camara, “Bilali of Faransekila” provides us with an oral traditional counterpart to Kande Kamara's firsthand account.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © African Studies Association 1989
References
NOTES
1. Lunn, Joe Harris, “Kande Kamara Speaks: An Oral History of the West African Experience in France, 1914-18” in Africa and the First World War, ed. Page, Melvin E. (London, 1987), 29–30, 49.Google Scholar
2. “Bilali of Faransekila” was recorded at Bamako, Mali, October 16, 1975. It is the shortest of fourteen songs collected along with several interviews and monologues from Seydou Camara during twenty-one sessions between 29 September 1975 and 12 February 1976. Copies of the musical recordings are on deposit at the Archives of Traditional Music, Indiana University, Bloomington. The translation was made at Bamako in 1976 with the assistance of Sekou Camara, son of Seydou. I was introduced to Seydou Camara by Charles Bird, to whom I am grateful. I also wish to thank both Charles Bird and Humphrey Fisher for their constructive criticism of this paper. However, any errors in translation and interpretation are strictly my own responsibility.
3. Vansina, Jan, Oral Tradition as History (Madison, 1985), 12–13.Google Scholar
4. For information on the type of slavery referred to here, in the time preceding World War I, see Roberts, Richard L., Warriors, Merchants, and Slaves: The State and the Economy in the Middle Niger Valley, 1700-1914 (Stanford, 1987), 174–207.Google Scholar Although in detail this mainly addresses the subject in a part of the Mande culture zone that is in modern-day Mali rather than Guinea, the general circumstances of the servile estate were similar.
5. Gerald Cashion rates Seydou Camara as one of the two best hunters' singers he encountered during more than three years of fieldwork. Cashion's criteria in their order of importance are: depth of knowledge, voice power, facility with words, stamina, musicianship on the ngoni, and the ability to play, sing and dance simultaneously. Cashion, Gerald, “Hunters of the Mande: A Behavioral Code and Worldview Derived from the Study of their Folklore,” Ph.D., Indiana University, 1984, 293–97.Google Scholar
6. Vansina, , Oral Tradition, 7, 11.Google Scholar As “verbal art” Vansina includes “poetry, songs, sayings, proverbs, and tales.”
7. Page, Melvin E., “Introduction: Black Men in a White Man's War” in Africa and the First World War, 1.Google Scholar
8. Seydou Camara's ethnic group is often called “Maninka,” which is correct, but Seydou and his sons refer to themselves as “Malinke.” The Maninka or Malinke are of the Mandekan language group of the Niger-Congo family of languages, along with the Bamana, Soninke, Dyula, Khasonke, and others. See Greenberg, Joseph H., The Languages of Africa (Bloomington, 1966), 6–8.Google Scholar For the origin of the term “Mandekan” see Bird, Charles S., “The Development of Mandekan (Manding): A Study of the Role of Extra-linguistic Factors in Linguistic Change” in Language and History in Africa, ed. Dalby, David (New York, 1970), 146–59.Google Scholar
9. Hunters' singers of the Mande heartland occupy a niche in the social system that is separate from that of the “griots” (jeliw) of Malinke, Bamana, and related groups. In the traditional hierarchical social structure, the jeliw are an endogamous, occupationally-defined group of ascribed status. By contrast, anyone can take up the ngoni and become a hunters' singer, i.e., a donso ngonifola, or “hunters' lute-player.” Cashion was told that they are also sometimes called serewa (roughly, “witness”) because the true role of this type of singer is to bear witness to the hunters' exploits (“Hunters,” 286). For an explanation of the Mande social system see McNaughton, Patrick R., The Mande Blacksmiths: Knowledge, Power, and Art in West Africa (Bloomington, 1988), 1–7Google Scholar; for a recent study of the history of its development see Tamari, Tal, “Les castes au Soudan Occidental: éude anthropologique et historique,” thesis for the degree of Docteur d'Etat és-Lettres, Université de Paris X, 1987, 337–566.Google Scholar
10. Interviews in Bamako, Mali between September 1975 and April 1976; Cashion, , “Hunters,” 286–87Google Scholar; Bird, Charles S., Koita, Mamadou, and Soumaouro, Bourama, The Songs of Seydou Camara, 1, Kambili (Bloomington, 1975), v.Google Scholar
11. See especially McNaughton, , Blacksmiths, 7–21.Google Scholar
12. Cashion, , “Hunters,” 115.Google Scholar
13. Bird, /Koita, /Soumaouro, , Songs, vi.Google Scholar For a discussion of Mande perceptions of “the hero” see Bird, Charles S. and Kendall, Martha B., “The Mande Hero: Text and Context” in Explorations in African Systems of Thought, ed. Karp, Ivan and Bird, Charles S. (Bloomington, 1980), 13–26.Google Scholar
14. See note 2.
15. Lunn, , “Kande Kamara,” 30.Google Scholar Seydou Camara's home village of Kabaya in the Wasulu region of Mali near the Guinea frontier and Kande Kamara's village of Kindia are at opposite sides of the present-day Republic of Guinea.
16. Lunn, , “Kande Kamara,” 28.Google Scholar Michael Crowder believes that in terms of human and economic suffering, the impact of the First World War “was much greater for French West Africa than the Second World War, throughout two years of which it was isolated from involvement by the Vichy regime.” Crowder, , “West Africa and the 1914-18 War,” BIFAN, 30B (1968), 227.Google Scholar
17. See annotation to 1:221. In these cases the appropriate passages from Lunn's article are provided in the annotations to Seydou's text.
18. For details about this Bilali see Conrad, David C., “Islam in the Oral Traditions of Mali: Bilali and Surakata,” JAH, 26 (1985), 33–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19. Lunn, , “Kande Kamara,” 42–43.Google Scholar
20. Diagne was frequently attacked for recruiting his fellow Africans, but Lunn points out that in doing so he achieved very significant concessions for the Africans, and his actions were seen by them as an assertion of African dignity (“Kande Kamara,” 43). The attacks on Diagne are mentioned by Crowder, in “West Africa,” 243.Google Scholar For details of Diagne's background and early career see Johnson, G. Wesley, “The Ascendancy of Blaise Diagne and the Beginning of African Politics in Senegal,” Africa, 36 (1966), 235–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
21. Lunn, , “Kande Kamara,” 48–49.Google Scholar