Dan Ge Performance: Masks and Music in Contemporary Cote d'Ivoire (review)

In Dan Ge Performance: Masks and Music in Contemporary Côte d'Ivoire, Daniel Reedintroduces readers to the ways in which a masked performance tradition known as Gegenerates meaning among the Dan population of Man, a city in western Ivory Coast. Reed's narrative is sprinkled with personal anecdotes on his experiences in the field, descriptions of a variety of performance events, excerpts of ethnographic interviews he conducted with Dan consultants, and passages from his field notes, which combine to offer an engaging introduction to how members of Dan society manifest genu (pl.) (ancient spirit entities, which act as intermediaries between ancestral spirits and human beings) and use Ge for all kinds of necessities: to adjudicate sorcery accusations, to ensure that young people are successfully socialized, to reinforce ideal gender roles, to legitimate the authority of elders and local leaders, to settle disputes, and to preserve a sense of Dan cultural identity in the wake of rapid social change.

The city of Man provides a fascinating context for this study, as it is the site where a revival of Dan religious practice is taking place in the increasingly long shadow of a growing number of conservative Muslims and Christians. In the late 1980s, a Man resident named Gba Gama inspired a renaissance of Dan religion that led to the reemergence of genu manifestations in Man. From the bar he owned and operated, Gba Gama acted as "booking agent for the genu of the neighborhood," arranging Ge performances that featured long-lost genu, such as Gedro, one of the tanke ge category of dancingspirits called on to perform for celebratory events (p. 54). Gedro, appreciated more for his entertainment value than other genu, has retained enormous popularity over the past decade, since even those Dan who do not wish to associate with Dan religion per se feel free to enjoy tanke ge. The tension between those who want to nurture traditional Dan culture and religious practice and those who embrace "imported" culture and religion is particularly palpable at festivals featuring masked dance. As Reed suggests, such events provide performers "a chance to demonstrate to the diverse crowd of thousands that despite the fact that many of their elders had embraced Islam and abandoned Ge, despite the growing influence of Christianity, despite the ubiquitous presence on the streets of Man of mediated popular musics and expressive traditions of other ethnic groups, Ge was still central to their lives" (p. 151).

In addition to the fame that performers earn at dance festivals and other special events, regular manifestations by Gedro and other dance genu provide an acceptable living for groups (drummers, dancers, and organizers) whose members are skillful in predicting what each new performance context calls for. The fluidity of the aesthetic criteria that spectators and patrons use to evaluate Ge is best illustrated by a Gedro performance that occurred at a party honoring the country's hairdressers. Reed explains that by performing a variety of dance styles, including those typically used in ritual contexts and accompanied by "traditional" drumming patterns, as well as the latest dances accompanied by "modern" (prerecorded) music by contemporary Ivorian pop stars (such as Meiway), Gedro exhibited his command over the past and the present. Reed argues that by skillfully adapting to the tastes and desires of the audience, Gedro ultimately gained control over the performance by "reinscrib(ing) Meiway's music with his own meaning, appropriating it for his own purposes" (p. 60). Through Reed's interpretation of this performance, the reader learns that Gedro's popularity is a result of not only his secular proclivity, but his ability "to compete with such commercial forms of popular entertainment in this interethnic city" (p. 62). Readers learn later that only genu such as Gedro, whose job it is to lift people's spirits, dare incorporate pop music and dance into Ge performance—an adaptation that is still highly controversial in Man.

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