Malick Sidibé (review)

MALI CK SIDIBE It 's commonly assumed t hat t he fecund locus of gest at ing black st yle is, and always has been, t he Unit ed St at es. More specifically, New York, where t he zoot suit first f lourished, where t he "Ivy League" look of Blue Not e's j azz musicians was est ablished, and where hiphop reinvent ed t he way t hat cool urban yout h, bot h black and whit e, would present t hemselves t o t he world. There's a lot of t rut h backing up t his assumpt ion. Hip-hop, of course, was invent ed in Washingt on, DC, but t hat 's st ill t he Unit ed St at es. Blacks living in European cit ies oft en mimic t he st yle experiment s of t heir clubhopping cont emporaries across t he At lant ic. But t o suggest t hat black pop-cult ural chic is ent irely an American invent ion is t o overlook several crit ical i ssues. One is money, and how much of it , relat ively speaking, st yl e-conscious American blacks have oft en had access t o. Anot her is t ranslat ion._ American blacks, in t he abilit y t o create st yle and t hen dist ribut e it t o t he rest of t heir cult ure (black _and__ w hi t e—and Asi an, and Hispanic, and so on), have oft en luxuriat ed in t heir accompl i shment . There's not hing inherent ly t roublesome about t his, but it does mean t hat black st yle in America has t radit ionally lacked, once it s init ial t hrill has faded, t he ongoing shock and f lash of improvisat ion. To a degree, Phat Farm and Tommy Hilfiger, t hough designed from radically different perspect ives, are made exact ly t he same by t he leveling forces of t he American popcult ural cont rapt ion, which event ually makes everyt hing alike, regardless of how "out l aw" t he original art icle was. In Africa, t he st ory is different . In America, t he est het ic pleasure t hat can be derived from st yle is ult imat ely driven t oward t he arguably grander pleasure of commerce. Black Af ricans, however , part icipat e in a much less monol it hic cult ural mat rix. At t imes, t his absence of t he monolit hic can lead t o unimaginable horror; t he Rwandan genocide is only t he most recent example. But t he very absence of hulking cult urMalik Sidibe al i nst i t ut i ons has also given Af ricans, in bright er t imes, t o push t he limit s of improvisat ory pleasure . As Andre Magnin's assessment of t he Sudanese phot ographer Malick Sidibe reveals, t his is an indigenous t alent . All t hat t he reveling club-goers t hat Sidibe chronicled for decades required was t he raw mat erial of American and West ern European pop cult ure; t he madcap cosmopol i t ani sm was somet hing t hey conceived all on t heir own. The result , as Magnin's book copiously document s, was a cult ural episode during which African pop cult ure defied it s hidden or secondhand st at us (always a West ern cliche, but somet imes a legit imat e label) and bust ed out all over t he place. But not in t erms of t he now commonplace imagery, of "nat i ve" Africans in t radit ional dress bobbing and keening for t he benef it of CNN. Inst ead, what Sidibe document ed was an aft erhours declarat ion of confident selfst yl ing, inf l uenced by West ern modes, but made fresh by free adapt at ion. Confidence, energy, and complexit y of spirit are not concept s rout inely applied t o African cult ure t hese days. The cont...