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4. A Closer Look at Sidi Ballo
- Indiana University Press
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4 Not everyone could become as good a drummer as Sori Jabaatè, as good a singer as Mayimuna Nyaarè, or as good a masquerader as Sidi Ballo. Desire, drive, and dedication; the capacity to acquire the talent; the years of work to do just that—all these and more are required. Many people would not want to become such artists. Others might want to but would not have the ability or the fortitude. And plenty of people would not have had the good fortune of opportunities and resources falling into place. Character and personal history play important roles. Because we are so social by nature, we like to know biography. We enjoy stories about people’s personalities, the things they have done, and the lives they have led. Knowing a little of Sidi Ballo’s biography and character is interesting just for its own sake. But it also gives insight into the reasons for his success. Dogoduman’s citizens knew a bit about Sidi Ballo. Some, especially the very young, had simply heard about him as a tremendous bird masquerader. Others, especially people in their teens and twenties, knew one thing or another about his exploits in the youth association or his travels as an itinerant performer. Still others, somewhat older, were in the youth association themselves when Sidi Ballo had danced before in Dogoduman with his own youth association troupe from Sikòròni, and some of them might have been involved A CLOSER LOOK AT SIDI BALLO A Closer Look at Sidi Ballo 81 in the interaction and competitions between youth association branches.1 All of this fueled the perspectives and imaginations of the 1978 Dogoduman audience when Sidi came to town. So now let us look a little closer at Sidi Ballo. We start with a short biography , followed by a consideration of the personal characteristics that made him effective on dance arenas. To gain a little extra background and flavor, we then move to Sidi’s relationship with the town called Sikòròni, where he was living when I saw his Dogoduman performance. We finish with an examination of ideas and activities that bring Sidi’s accomplishment into a cultural focus that lets us see how he was appreciated locally. A Brief Biography When I met Sidi Ballo in 1978, he was thirty-six years old and living in the small urban hamlet of Sikòròni. He had been performing the bird masquerade since he was twenty-two and was still using the original carved bird’s head he had sculpted when he started. By then his career had included performing as a member of two different community ton branches and working on his own as an itinerant dancer. Sidi was raised in a small farming town named Tègèdo, only about twenty miles north of Bamako. This was back in the days when Bamako was a wonderfully bustling but much smaller version of the enormous metropolis it has become today, and Tègèdo was a truly rural community. Sidi’s father was a practicing blacksmith who specialized in mortars and pestles and various kinds of masks. He trained Sidi, who specialized in agricultural tools and sculpted wood figures (jirimògònin) carved as playthings for children. Sidi was a talented sculptor. The bird’s head he carved for his first masquerade was beautifully proportioned and elegantly articulated. With large, beefy protrusions on the top and bottom, the head was dynamically shaped to give it a powerful presence. Some people become good at whatever they set their minds to do. Sidi Ballo seems to be that kind of person. But while Sidi was being trained by his father in a typical Mande smith’s apprenticeship, he was also becoming an excellent masquerade dancer in the Tègèdo youth association. He had a passion for performance, and he proved himself an accomplished, hard-working dancer. As Imperato (1972, 1980) notes, bird masquerading is near the top of the ton hierarchy of complexity and dancing difficulty. When a generation of masked dancers got too old at Tègèdo, Sidi was asked to take over their bird masquerading. He loved it, but he told me he did not choose it. The elders and leaders of the youth association chose him for it because, he said, it is the old men who know who will be outstanding performers. [107.23.157.16] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 14:09 GMT) Bird masquerading definitely suited...