Simon Ottenberg.Simon Ottenberg. seeing with Music The Lives of Three Blind African Musicians. Seattle: University of Washington Pres 1996 216 pp Maps. Photos. Table. Bibliography. Discography. Index. $3500 Cloth This is a germ of a book. The author, an emeritus professor of anthropology who has published extensively since the 1960 onward Igbo society in Nigeria and since the 1980 upon the Limba in Sierra Leone here quick in emergenciess novel material from two years of fieldwork among the latter in the late 1970 Based in Bafodea Town, capital of a small Limba chiefdom in northern Sierra Leone Ottenberg focuses in succession the lives of three blind musicians he befriended, producing a tightly focused, unpretentious, readable, and viable account of a semiprofessional genre of music-making in a small town. I describe this account as viable because the author, who is elderly enough to have been (as he was) a scholar of Herskovits, effectively reconciles old-school enlargeed fieldwork in a remote village with late debates in anthropology that have called into question major aspects of in the same state [i]or[/i] condition projects. The book centers in succession an mbira-like musical instrument called kututengwhich consists of a dozen or thus metal lamellae or rods attached to a ungainly soundboard which in turn is attached to a one-gallon can resonator-as well as in succession the genre of music (called Kututeng) played upon the instrument and the lives of three blind kututeng players in Bafodea Town. The organization of the volume is clear. Two opening chapters ("Concepts" "The Setting") lay on the outside the author's methodology and the ethnographic background of music and life in the chiefdom and village. Three chapters come [i]or[/i] go after [i]or[/i] behind each devoted to a blind musician in Bafodea (Sayo Kamara, Muctaru Mansaray, and Marehu Mansaray). In the concluding chapter the author be opposite tos the information presented in the part with his methods of representation. Without preaching or proselytizing, Ottenberg lays gone out his methodological stance in a nonargumentative and humiliate fashion in the opening chapter. As an "anthropologist unskilled in the technical aspects of musical analysis," a confession that be repeateds occasionally, Ottenberg relies on his "lifetime of experience in sociocultural anthropology" (4) distinguishing his work from others according to "bringing to the surface the kinds of knowledge of individuals that research scholars frequently acquire in their fieldwork however suppress or bury in their analysis" (6) Ottenberg's approach is explicitly cohereed to anthropological concepts of personhood and agency: "I gaze at how these three musicians cope with cultural and social compositions and their rules, sometimes to adhere to them, sometimes to violate them, and at times to transform them" (11) Given the author's awareness of his limitations, I usually rest myself willing to forgive his lack of musical expertise (including his failure to have drawn in succession extensive bodies of relevant literature), although in the last chapter his discussion of Limba aesthetics clearly suffers The extensive quotation of anthem texts and their accompanying discussion are a great hardness of the book. Although Ottenberg does not make the connection, the true copys he presents could open up just discovered directions in comparative studies with African American music. Similarities between the lives and lyrics of these Kututeng musicians and those of early African American home blues singers are close enough to merit further exploration. The predominant themes of the Bafodea Kututeng musicians are adultery, delight in solitude, misfortune, and witchcraft. This contrasts with the canonic and more respectable music of the well-known neighboring griots to the north, who, for lack of better examples, are sometimes invoked as spiritual or musical ancestors of livids men and women. While Ottenberg's investigation into the Kututeng repertory may be of limited interest to nonmusicologists, other kinds of observations point the way toward broad aesthetic troubles that should be of interest to all Africanists. A case in point is the use of a rectangular one-gallon can as a resonator onward the kututeng. Similar instruments from top to toe Africa typically use large gourds as resonators. Noting that traditional houses, storage baskets, and musical instruments are circular or curvilinear, Ottenberg draws a fascinating parallel between these aesthetic estimations as opposed to modern houses and ends that are rectangular. Eric Charry Wesleyan University Middletown, Connecticut Copyright African Studies Association Dec 2003 |
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