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  • Masters of the Sabar: Wolof percussionists of Senegal
  • Thomas Salter
Patricia Tang , Masters of the Sabar: Wolof percussionists of Senegal. Philadelphia PA: Temple University Press (pb $27.95 – 978 1 59213 420 5; hb $79.50 – 978 1 59213 419 9). 2007, 209 pp.

Tang's first book is based on the research she conducted for her PhD in ethnomusicology. As such the text profits from a substantial period of fieldwork and a focus on a subject that has not previously been given significant attention: Wolof griot percussionists performing the Sabar repertoire in Senegal. As she says in her introduction, the lack of academic attention accorded Wolof percussionists means there is 'a widespread notion that the phrase "griot percussionist" is an oxymoron'. It has been Mande griots who sing and play the kora, balafon and ngoni who have come to stand for what it means to be a griot amongst those non-Senegalese in the West interested in African music. This misconception is one she attempts to rectify. Sabar refers both to the drum itself and the event at which it is played, whether that is a Sabar in a nightclub or at a community event in the street.

Tang begins her work by addressing the effect of the strands of her own identity as a female Asian American ethnomusicologist on her research. In particular she reflects on the extent to which any 'reverse exoticization' she experienced helped or hindered in her research. She is open in giving her principal research assistant his due. She is also open about how she gave or withheld money in exchange for interviews and lessons, and discusses her participation in the Senegalese practice of rewarding musicians with money during performances. Tang based her research on participant observation in the capital Dakar, with one particular griot family – the Mbaye family – who agreed to teach her. This family is one of three that dominate the performance of Sabar in Dakar, whether for life cycle events, wrestling matches, meetings of social associations or in popular music. In addition to learning the Sabar repertoire with the Mbaye family, Tang used her training as a classical violinist to gain the respect of Senegalese musicians as a musician in her own right, through both recording and performing.

As in most recent ethnomusicology change is an important theme in Tang's work, whether she is dealing with the music of Sabar percussionists or with their role in society. Tang goes back to the earliest references to the music from the fourteenth century and follows it through to the oral histories told by older members of the principal griot families concerning changes in the twentieth century. There has been an increase in the number of different drums and the number of drummers in ensembles, though the centrality of the drumming technique, using one stick and one hand, has remained constant and distinctive to the form. Six of the drums now used are the nder, the tungune, lamb, the talmbat and the mbëng mbëng ball, and a smaller version of this drum that plays the accompaniment (mbalax). Both these last two were invented in the second half of the twentieth century. In the 1990s, one of the most famous of Sabar drummers, Doudou Ndiaye Rose, invented a seventh member of the Sabar drum ensemble called the gorong yeguel. The description given of these drums would benefit from pictures of each drum next to the descriptions.

The context for the performance of Sabar, at the level of the community, is typically at life cycle events, wrestling matches and women's association meetings (tur), with performances specific to each event. Dancers interact and improvise with a lead drummer in the ensemble. With the mediaization of [End Page 303] music in the twentieth century, Tang describes how Sabar music has also been integrated into Senegalese popular urban dance music, especially by Youssou N'dour. Its use in the performance of Senegalese nationhood is something Tang does not make central to her work, as she is more concerned with the music itself and its role in community events. Tang discusses the applicability of the concept caste as a concept to the place of...

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