Beauty Saloon Music: Artists/Articles

Niger is a dry, red-orange bed of clay with its head at the Niger River in the west, its foot resting on Lake Chad in the east, its northern underbelly merging into the great Saharan sea of sand which links Sub-Saharan Africa to the Mediterranean world, and its southern flank the gateway to a lusher, greener Africa beyond the Sahel, Nigeria and onward. On this bed lies a richly interwoven tapestry of peoples and cultures, the center of a unique Sahelian civilization which joins Arab and Berber North Africa to the Sub-Sahara and which stretches from the Atlantic coast to the Red Sea, Dakar through Darfur to Mecca. Although the many different ethnic groups that have traversed this land and continue to transform Sahelian life are highly diverse in terms of lifestyle, language, and physical appearance, and at times have had competing interests and hostile relations, there is an interlinking system of trade, belief, and cultural practice that has bound them together over the centuries.

One of the main unifying factors in the Sahel is Islam. Although Islam did not make full inroads among the villages and cities of Sahelian West Africa until the Fulani-led jihads of the early 19th century by such revolutionary figures as Usman Dan Fodio and Al-Hajj Umar Tall, it has been a major influence on Sahelian life for over a thousand years. In the first centuries following the life of the Prophet Muhammad, Berber merchants from North Africa began to spread Islam along the trading routes and in the trading towns of West Africa not so much through active proselytization as through the formation of communities which established a local model of Islamic life and a point of contact for the many local Sahelians who encountered these traders in their daily lives. Some scholars, such as Professor Djibo Hamani of Niger, posit that the influence of Islam on such ethnic groups as the Toubous even predates the full Arabization of North Africa (Hamani, interview in Le Republicain). In other words, since the earliest decades that the religious and social revolution of Islam swept out from Arabia it has played a role in Sudanic Africa.

In time, West African leaders saw the political utility in conversion to Islam and a unique West African Islamic culture took shape alongside the pre-Islamic local cultures. To take two examples, the Mali and Songhay empires featured a class of Muslim political elites even while most of their populations followed local belief systems and practices. Mansa Musa, the celebrated king of the Mali Empire in the 14th century, is one such figure who gained much renown in the Muslim world and even in Europe for his building of mosques and sponsorship of Sankore University and other centers of scholarship in Timbuktu and Gao as well as for his lavish hajj in 1324. The empire of Mali was the source of the majority of the world's gold at the time and it is said that Mansa Musa's generosity during his overland voyage to Mecca (a much traveled east-west pilgrimage route that in addition to the great north-south trading routes of the Sahara did much to bind Sahelian culture and spread ideas) both greatly impressed local rulers and seriously distorted local rates of inflation. Mansa Musa was one of the most important figures in bringing West African Islamic culture to the world's attention and he broadened the ongoing dialogue with North African Islam by bringing architects and scholars from Morocco, Egypt, and elsewhere to Mali and sending scholars from Timbuktu and other Malian cities to the great centers of Islamic learning such as the universities in Fes. Askiya Muhammad continued this process of official Islamization in the Songhay Empire of the 15th century.

However, both the Mali and Songhay empires were founded by rulers with nominal attachments to Islam and strong connections to traditional beliefs and forms of power. The enduring legacy and celebration of these ambivalently Muslim leaders, Sunjata and Sonni Ali respectively, are reflective of the ongoing strength of pre-Islamic African traditions and ethnically based values in Sahelian society. The historian Nehemia Levtzion describes this important contrast between the founders of empire, Sunjata and Sonni Ali, and the expanders of empire, Mansa Musa and Askiya Muhammad, to show ongoing tensions in Sahelian culture between traditional beliefs and Islam. He writes,

"Sunjata, a great hunter and magician, fought against Sumanguru, the king of Soso, another great magician. Though a nominal Muslim, he turned to the traditional religion for support, to the particularistic spirit of the nation, rather than to the universalistic appeal of Islam. Two centuries later, Sonni Ali, who made the small kingdom of Songhay into a large empire, behaved in a similar way. Kings like Sunjata and Sonni Ali, founders of empires, are the heroes of the national traditions, whereas the exploits of their Muslim successors--Mansa Musa of Mali and Askiya Muhammad of Songhay--were recorded by the Arabic sources." (Levtzion, 66)

These Arabic sources, such as the Tarikh es-Sudan and Tarikh el Fettash, denigrate the figure of Sonni Ali because of his marginal adherence to Islamic practice. His celebration in Songhay oral traditions underscores some of the complex popular attitudes and competing strands of thought in Sahelian society.

As with the history of religion in other regions, Sahelian and Saharan Islam is characterized by an ongoing creative tension between longstanding ethnic traditions, beliefs, and rituals and the local interpretation of Islamic law and practice. Muslim marabouts divine the future with cowrie shells and marks in the sand like traditional seers. Everyday, people, from peasant farmers to urban civil servants, make sacrifices of chickens, cocks, goats, and cows to seek divine favor and protection. Amulets with Quranic verses are worn like traditional gris gris. In Niger, pre-Islamic spirit possession rituals such as among Hausa bori priests and priestesses and Songhay zimas and sorkos coexist with mosques and public prayers in villages and city neighborhoods and within the complex, sometimes divided hearts of many modern Nigeriens (see the work of Paul Stoller). Religion provides a conceptual framework to comprehend and accept the difficulties of life in such an unforgiving land, with its intermittent droughts, the fear of famine, and the specter of malaria and other hidden dangers of the natural world. It serves as well as a practical strategy for influencing the forces ruling over human destiny.

Sahelian society is structured upon a fascinating network of marabouts, Sufi brotherhoods, traditional priests and healers, village chiefs, Islamic leaders, and modern politicians and functionaries competing at times and uniting at times for legitimacy, power, and their stake in the future of this hard-scrabble but starkly beautiful environment. In the heart of this system of societal negotiation for authority and in the life cycles of individuals and communities, especially the naming ceremonies, weddings, and funerals that are ubiquitous and of central importance in secluded villages and churning cities alike, one can always find the griots and musicians to give praise, to give knowledge, and to give color, joy, and life to the desert and its people.

Like most modern African states, and indeed most modern nations that emerged from European colonialism in the 20th century, Niger is more a product of arbitrary colonial borders than longstanding historical and cultural boundaries. Niger's numerous ethnic and sub-ethnic groups, which include Hausa, Zarma, Songhay, Fulani, Wodaabe, Kanuri, Beri-Beri, Gourmantche, Tuareg, Toubou, Boudouma, and Arab, possess unique cultural and linguistic traditions, historical memories, and social systems. The great Songhay Empire in the west, the Hausa city-states in the south, the Tuareg Sultanates in the north, and the Kingdoms of Kanem and Bornu in the east are examples of the rich social history of this land that stretches from the Niger river to Lake Chad and from the southern Savanna belt to deep into the Sahara. However, they are not histories that all ethnic groups share. For this reason, it is helpful to view Nigerien history in a broader spectrum of African history. The history of the Zarma and Songhay peoples takes place along the Niger River in the present-day nations of Mali and Burkina Faso in addition to Niger. The Hausa, the most populous ethnic and linguistic group in Niger, are part of a large and influential Hausa civilization centered in Northern Nigeria but extending well into southern Niger. The Kanuri, Toubou, and Boudouma in the eastern desert areas and around Lake Chad, whose historical experience is in the realm of the Kingdoms of Kanem and Bornu, share a common historical legacy with their ethnic counterparts in modern Chad. The Tuareg, a Berber group, have a long history traversing the Sahara desert and bridging the vast sandy divide between Arab and Berber North Africa and Sub-Saharan West Africa. The Fulani and Wodaabe (a sub-group amongst the Fulani) are historically pastoralists found throughout West Africa, from Senegal to Nigeria.

However, despite their unique identities and histories, all these groups have always moved around and merged with each other on the vast Sahelian canvas. Modern Niger's polyglot cities and towns are a natural product of its peoples' hybrid histories. The layers of speech overheard on the Nigerien street from Agadez to Zinder are simultaneously archaeological echoes and sonic glimpses of the future. Reflecting its Europeanization under the colonial rule of France, French is the official language of government, business, and public education. In other words, French is the language used in the highly Westernized spheres of modern Niger. Nigeriens use French to speak to the Western world. Reflecting its heavy Islamization, Arabic can be heard from the megaphones of street corner muezzins calling the neighborhood to assemble and on the lips of individuals in prayer. Nigeriens use Arabic to speak to God first and foremost but also to the whole Islamic world. But despite these central foreign influences on the Sahel, European colonialism and Islam, the sounds of French and Arabic do not dominate the sonic landscape of modern Niger. Instead, they are incorporated into the local environment and reinvented on a daily basis by Nigeriens communicating amongst themselves in Hausa, Zarma, Songhay, Fulfulde, Tamashek, Toubou, Kanuri, and so on, mixing in French phrases and Arabic greetings and blessings all the while. The sounds, sights, and smells of modern Niger reveal a nation influenced by and engaged with Western and Islamic civilizations but firmly rooted in its own unique sense of life.



Hamani, Djibo-URL for this interesting interview (in French): http://www.republicain-niger.com/Index.asp?affiche=News_display.asp&ArticleID=4089&rub=Rencontre

Levtzion, Nehemia, 2000. "Islam in the Bilad al-Sudan to 1800." In The History of Islam in Africa. Athens: Ohio University Press.

Stoller, Paul, 1989. Fusion of the Worlds: An Ethnography of Possession among the Songhay of Niger. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Stoller, Paul A., and Cheryl Olkes. 1987. In Sorcery's Shadow: A Memoir of Apprenticeship among the Songhay of Niger. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.