A Bird Dance near Saturday City: Sidi Ballo and the Art of West African Masquerade

5. Individuals Intertwined

5 Now we arrive at the place in scholarship that gave me so much trouble. I did not realize it during the years after Dogoduman, but there was a reason I was not rushing toward writing this book. I thought I would. But I never really started because I did not seem to know what it ought to be about. Sidi Ballo was ablaze in my mind. I knew he was a most impressive individual and a spectacular performer, and felt strongly that those two things were critically related. Certainly, I should write about that. But the Dogoduman performance was equally embedded in my mind as an orchestrated coming together of many participants who articulated characters, concepts, and their own personalities into a stunning whole. My thoughts about Sidi Ballo were shadowed by the grand reality of Dogoduman, so clearly I would need to write about that, too. I stumbled, however, at imagining how to balance the two, how to bring the two together. Somehow I did not think I could do justice to both Sidi Ballo and the Dogoduman performance. An emphasis on one would diminish the other. I failed to see a way to write that would avoid reducing the importance of either while showing the unity and co-dependency of both. This practical dilemma—which I was only gradually able to express—has led me to a strong appreciation of what seems a rich paradox of being human. At the very same time that we are completely steeped in each other and almost INDIVIDUALS INTERTWINED Individuals Intertwined 107 unimaginable as separate beings, we are also deeply and sometimes quite creatively unique. We are individuals intertwined. It is like an excess of riches in two directions, and that is what I want to explore in this chapter. For me these are the broader implications of Sidi Ballo at Dogoduman. Individuals Individuals1 matter in two crucial ways. First, they are not interchangeable, and their character and attributes constantly influence their expressive acts, which may go on to influence society. Second, like the proverbial tree falling in the woods, the realities of society and culture are experienced fundamentally and irreducibly by individuals, so if we want to understand the subject matter of social science and humanities, we must try to understand how individuals think, feel, and function. These two aspects of people in society are deeply intertwined and worthy of attention. At Dogoduman, Sidi Ballo and Mayimuna Nyaarè, for example, focused their personal perspectives and expertise on the shaping of an event that could have been quite different and possibly less affective with different performers. Even in performance moments when they presented or represented widely shared Mande concepts, their attributes as individuals and performers gave their delivery the specific character that was experienced by many audience members as moving and memorable.2 People are not interchangeable. Sidi Ballo can be characterized by a collection of constantly developing personality traits, abilities, and interpretations of the world. Many elements of each are shared with large numbers of other people, in and out of Mande societies. But no one is just like him. Armed thus with himself, he waded into relationships with other people and with Mande social and artistic institutions to exercise a unique presence for nearly half a century of performing in a broad region around Bamako. Many other masqueraders performed in the same area during the same period of time. Not nearly so many would have been considered professional, however, and very few would have continued to perform for so long. Some, like Sidi, were extremely talented, an ample number were good, and some were mediocre. Many would play minor roles in the memories and contemplations of local people. Some, again like Sidi Ballo, would remain strong in people’s memories and even be invoked when people considered issues in their lives or contemplated ideas about their social world. At a fundamental level, Sidi Ballo, Mayimuna Nyaarè, Sori Jabaatè, everyone that performed at Dogoduman, and everyone in every society can be characterized quite simply—they think, feel, make choices, and act. Herein lies a world of difference—between people in the same society, community, even family. The thinking may be brilliant, insightful, passable, or slipshod. The emotions may be displayed or hidden, held at bay or harnessed. The choices may be careful and deliberate, or by the seat of the pants, or almost unconsciously “in the moment.” Actions...