Jirikurun men o men ji la, a te ke bama ye.
No matter how long a log stays in the water, it doesn't become a crocodile.
This proverb, which emphasizes that “you can't be something that you're not”, brings up one of the main issues of my research project about Mande music, and the teaching of Mande music, in America. To what extent can we become a part of a culture that we were not born into? More broadly, how do cultures interact in the increasingly globalized world in which we live?
Although issues of identity—being and not being—are complex, the act of identifying with a culture can be even more so. We generally think of culture and ethnicity as something a person is born into, something that is in one's blood, and because of this, they are widely perceived as something indisputable and largely physical—often dependent on the color of one's skin. However, culture and ethnicity are concepts too convoluted to be defined solely by appearance or simple binaries—rather, they are more commonly “characterized by smooth shades and transitions” (Kubik 1994:25). How, then, are the boundaries of a culture defined? Who decides what is authentic and what is not? How are cultures created, shared, combined, and reconfigured?
These are all issues that I have been struggling with during the past semester, but that I have been trying to delve deeper into within the context of a class that I took called TSDA0330: Mande Dance, Music, and Culture. This class has allowed me to look more closely at the benefits and problems of studying a culture in an academic setting, and has spurred me to think more extensively about cultural tourism and the purpose of the world music ensemble in America. Not only that, it has challenged my own beliefs and previous assumptions about tradition and Africa, fueling internal conflicts regarding orientalism and my own notions of “worldliness” and cultural identity. It has been a truly enlightening but nonetheless perplexing journey exploring the effects and different venues of cross-cultural exchange.
Indeed, I am glad that I chose to use my Mande class as “the field”, for it allowed me to view the Mande diaspora from a variety of different perspectives. Talking to my professor Michelle, who is an American, I was able to gain the perspective of the ethnomusicologist or foreign practitioner (she counts as both because she studied the context of and learned how to perform Mande music and dance). Talking to students, I was able to gain some ideas about why the “superculture” is so receptive to Mande music and dance (or at least African dance in general). As a student myself, I was able to participate in the music and dance for five to six hours each week, experiencing first-hand the class's unique dynamics while observing other people's reactions to the class and culture as well.
This project also helped me to think more critically about the class, what I was learning, and how the Mande culture was being portrayed. It can be difficult to think more broadly about the purpose of a class itself, how information is disseminated, and the nature of the knowledge being shared. How often does one reflect on the assumptions of academia, or how the university setting might affect a course's content and goals? The classroom setting, so integral to the lifestyle here in the U.S., turned out to be the perfect place in which to experience the meeting of two cultures, and to evaluate the way that cultures interact and are portrayed/received.
The course description on the syllabus for the class reads as following:
As a research to performance course we will examine the vast contributions made by Mande culture in West Africa and upon the contemporary art stage. With an equal emphasis on theory and praxis we will examine embodied Mande performance practices, and the cultural aesthetics which have shaped those practices. The study of relevant musical genres, songs, art objects, textiles, ceremonies, proverbs, and oral epic traditions will facilitate your understanding of how these practices are placed in a contemporized expression. You will be learning three/four dances with accompanying songs, proverbs and choreographic concepts that are displayed in life-cycle ceremonies of the Bambara, Khassonke and Maraka (descendants of Soninke) groups of Mali, West Africa. Our work is to engage you in the rigorous and detailed physical decoding of this vibrant tradition that emphasizes concepts of youthfulness, brightness, luminosity, coolness, stability, flexibility, strength, balance and communal healing. These traditions demand that we build the necessary strength, flexibility, and endurance needed to efficiently work in the style and vitality of West African Dance, Music and Performance. Collaborative research, travel to concerts in Boston and beyond and participation in familial ceremonies/presentations will facilitate a heightened sense of communal learning, Mande pedagogy, and cultural meaning.
As I mentioned in my second field notes, a typical day in class involves “family time” (a time when each assigned group of 10-12 students can chat, sing, or massage each other), a warm-up, learning anywhere from two to four new Mande dance moves, and practicing those dance moves one family at a time. As we struggle to step-touch, circumduct, and swing our heads up and down simultaneously, we are accompanied by two, sometimes three drummers—one or two playing the Djembe, a goblet-shaped, higher-pitched, hand-played drum, and one playing the Dundun, a deeper-toned drum played with a stick. The two main drummers, Esau and Sidy, are both originally from Mali, and they often switch from class to class between the Djembe, which is the lead drum and can "improvise" more, and the Dundun, which keeps a consistent beat (often, two dunduns with different pitches are played by one person at the same time). Here is a short video of our class drummers, Esau and Sidy--Esau is playing Djembe, and Sidy is playing a double Dundun. The rhythm they are playing is called Maraka/N'gui, which is played at many life-cycle ceremonies in Mali.
As you can see, there are a variety of sounds that can be produced from this one drum: a deeper and more resonant "bass" sound, which is produced by hitting the center of the drum with a flat hand, a more caustic, "slap" sound, made by hitting closer to the side of the drum-head, and a duller "tone" sound, made by hitting the drum-head towards the side but with slightly less vigor/power than the "slap". These are the three most basic sounds produced by a Djembe, but they are by no means the only ones: there are all kinds of other taps, flicks, and hits that a more advanced player would do. But from the few Djembe lessons I was able to attend, the teacher (who is also one of the drummers for the Mande class) taught us only the basic "bass-tone-slaps" of a rhythm. Each of the three sounds must also be played with a specific hand at a specific time, though this depends mostly on the rhythm.
A couple days during the semester, we held class outside on the main green. While this made class feel sort of like an impromptu-performance, class went on as usual, with Michelle (the professor) teaching us new moves and then us practicing the moves in front of the drummers. Here is a very short video I took of my "family" (Konate) practicing a new move from the dance Maraka/N'gui (a popular dance done at all life-cycle ceremonies, according to the class's syllabus). There are more drummers than usual, as a few students who I often see drumming on the main green just for fun joined the class for the day.
You might not be able to tell from this video, but our class is actually quite large. There are 140 students in the class, which is pretty huge for any kind of participatory class, especially a dance class. As Michelle told me in my interview with her, from the start of the class back in 1989, there was this "overall amazing enthusiasm" for the class and the subject matter. Originally it was supposed to be a one-time deal course on the dance music and culture of Africa and the Caribbean (a huge topic, Michelle now admits), but because so many students showed an interest in the class (600 students showed up the first day), Michelle conceded to teach it every other year, and went Mali to study in more depth the traditions and culture of the West African people (she had been to Senegal about five times before that, but people there kept telling her, when she asked where the dances were from, that they were all originally from Mali, so she thought,“Mmmmhh—maybe I better go to Mali”).
At the time, though, her main interests were still in theater, and though she had taken many West African dance classes over the years and had even taught a few master classes during her time at Brown, she still had much to learn. Unexpectedly, however, she fell in love with more than just the dance on her first trip to Mali:
So I was like wow, this is amazing, this is unlike anywhere else I've ever been. So it was just like, you know, I fell in love with Mali, the Malian people, the integrity, the generosity, the—ughhh—it was just really great. So I just had to keep going back to get a dose of humanity, a dose of compassion. You know, the people, they were all like that. I remember walking down the street with my friends and seeing this woman in this beautiful boubou, you know, beautiful. And I just said, “Oh my gosh, that's so pretty.” Well she goes into her house, takes it off and gives it to me. I'm like, “I don't—I don't want your boubou.” And she goes “No no no, you really appreciate this and it's for you.” So I mean things like that were happening to me all the time and I'm like--I'm so like humbled by this amazing--way. Anyway, so I fell in love with the country and the people and the dances—actually the dances were incredibly complex— I mean, more complex than any ballet routine I've ever done—any. I mean, I just could not—I was just blown away by it. It was really so challenging.
As she constantly reminded us in class, she has spent twenty years learning Mande dance and she still is nowhere near mastering it, to emphasize how little we really could accomplish in one semester, although it seems like we have accomplished a lot nonetheless (but of course we have barely even dipped a toe into the deep waters of Mande dance, music, and culture).
The question still remains, however, of why the class is so popular—what about it is so appealing to students, to the extent that many even come back for more (there are more than a couple people in the class who have taken the class before)?
Here are a few pictures that give a slightly better idea of the class's size:
Based on my own varied reasons for taking the class and the reasons of other students who I have talked to, I have a few ideas about why this dance/culture class in particular is so popular. First of all, the attitude towards African dance in the U.S., at least from my experience, is much more laid back than the attitude towards other types of dance, such as ballet or jazz or tap. Most people don't see it as a long term commitment (perhaps because there are less opportunities to take classes in it), and so it is taken much more light-heartedly, as something that is supposed to be fun above all else (I have heard this belief voiced by many students in the class, especially when other students start taking things "too seriously"). However, this could be more or less true of any dance class at Brown, since dance is not an available concentration (and so dance may be taken less seriously as a whole than other more "academic" subjects). Also, I don't really have a true measure of comparison, since I have never taken another dance class at Brown, so I am just hypothesizing. I certainly have expected that the class be more fun than my other classes, though I would expect that of any dance class. It is interesting, though, how our culture prioritizes a certain type of knowledge, privileging the intellectual over the physical (and often the practical), though I suppose that at a university like Brown, this could be a self-selecting outcome (most people come here for the intellectual, that is).
Another reason why I think the class may be so popular is that the type of dance is something new to everyone, and because of this, it seems like anyone could do it, regardless of previous dance experience. I, for one, have very little dance experience, but I didn't feel intimidated or scared about taking the class, because I knew that most other people, though they might have experience in other dance forms, probably would not have much experience in Mande dance. Although it was true that most people had never done Mande dance before, or had experience with the specific movement methods and motifs, it was an advantage to have experience with dance in general, as those with experience tended to learn the moves quicker and generally had an easier time moving their bodies in the right way.
As Ted Solis wrote in his essay, "Teaching What Cannot Be Taught", most world music ensembles (which he defines as any ensemble that focuses on a specific region's music) are what he calls "experience ensembles", because "students here embrace a second (cultural) childhood, akin to the sort of entirely new musical experience most musicians underwent as children with their first piano lessons or sixth-grade band" (Solis, 2004 :7). On the other hand, groups like choir, orchestra, and concert band can be thought of as "realization ensembles", for "students enroll in them not primarily for mind-opening cultural experiences, but rather to realize preexisting musical skills" (Solis, 2004:6). In a class like Mande Dance, a large part of the time is thus spent introducing students to basic cultural concepts, both abstract and tangible, without which the dances would be quite difficult to do, much less understand.
Learning the dance and music of another culture, then, is like learning a second language: in order to effectively express oneself and communicate with other people, one must first learn the basic vocabulary. Much of the knowledge and skills required by Mande dance can be connected to underlying cultural tenets: for example, “getting low” (or squatting down more than normal so that the butt is sticking out and the “core muscles are activated”) shows the emphasis that Malians place on balance and “displaying one's coolness” (or “hot on the inside and cool on the outside”). However, this concept has seemed to be one of the most difficult for people to grasp, as they are not used to being in this position, and so the TA's must constantly remind people to “get lower”.
Many people try to learn a second language, after all, not just to communicate with other people, but to see the world from a different perspective: with different words and ways of saying things, this is inevitable. Culture and language (in this case, in one of language's many forms as music and dance) are inseparably intertwined, and thus the world music ensemble is just another lens through which to experience another culture's outlook on life. Sometimes I feel unsatisfied with my own culture, often just because it seems so undefined: though my family has traditions as descendants of Eastern European Jews, and though there are certainly basic values that as an American I adhere to and believe, for the most part, I still feel ultimately like a hybrid, lost at the threshold of many different cultures and thus unable to identify with any of them.
The funny thing is, I feel like I have no culture because I am told that I have no culture, just as I am told that I am colorless because my skin is "white", even though it is not. Yet this narrow view of culture and tradition as something exotic, not my own--dare I say "colored"--is the current state of "multiculturalism" in the U.S.: essentializing and orientalizing. As an American in the "land of opportunity", and as a supposedly cultureless, colorless person, I am allowed to pick and choose, to participate in a "cultural tourism" of sorts. Using food as an example, because I have no set rules to follow about what to eat, I enjoy a variety of cuisines including Chinese, Indian, Italian, and Mexican food. I have what Michael Pollan calls the "Omnivore's Dilemma" of culture instead of food--though I like having the choice to "experience" a variety of different cultures, I must suffer the agony of having to choose, of not having specific guidelines that tell me what to do or who to identify with (though in reality this is not entirely true, as I am told to identify with the "cultureless", or the consumers of other cultures). As I mentioned earlier, culture is in a way an inherently essentializing concept, but it is also an important identifier, something that Gilroy would argue that, like race, is real only because we believe and desire it to be that way (and so we make it real through both our acts and beliefs).
But if culture is in some ways false (at least our notion that cultures are static, homogeneous entities), what, then, is the good of the world music ensemble, which studies a culture and its musical practices in depth? In what ways does a world music ensemble serve to perpetuate or dispel orientalism and cultural essentializing? As Solis concedes, "both experience and simple logic teach us that without at least some ecapsulization and abstraction we cannot transmit cultural information." (Solis, 2004:10). That said, many professors of world music ensembles emphasize traditions and cultural practices that have been replaced in modern times in order to give students a more alternative, different experience. Trimillos admits:
In retrospect I realize that my construction of Japanese traditionalism was selective and biased toward Otherness, that is, that which was different from the students' normal experience. For example, the class was conducted in seiza, with the students kneeling on the floor, even though in Japan today koto lessons frequently occur with the students seated in chairs and the instruments raised on stands. (Trimillos, 2004:34)Gage Averill criticizes the "meticulously imitative nature of most world music ensembles" (Averill, 2004:100), which has caused a shift away from seeing the world music ensemble as a place to learn a second musical language to a place where an "authentic" culture is reproduced. In order to escape this trap, Averill proposes taking a "dialogical approach to intercultural studies" that "privileges the space of the encounter rather than the mastery of codes." (Averill, 2004:101). After all, "real cultures" are plural, not single, and they have "varied domains of thought and activity" as well as a present and future and past (Trimillos, 2004: 49). However, these concepts tend to be ignored in many world music ensembles, perhaps because of time constraints and the focus on cultural representation rather confrontation that Averill so harshly critiques.
Depending on the context and the way in which the culture is taught, world music ensembles can also reinforce certain cultural or racial stereotypes. As many authors, including David Locke, Ricardo Trimillos, and Gage Averill have recognized, ethics become especially tricky when it comes to performing with a world music ensemble. With more and more universities trying to do community outreach to improve their public image, performance has become an increasingly common function of world music ensembles, which have slowly moved away from an emphasis on understanding to an emphasis on public presentation. This focus on preparing students for performance, even when they have only been studying the tradition for a semester or two, can lead to much confusion for both the students, professor, and audience. This "Beginner's Concert", as Trimillos calls it, can send mixed signals to all involved:
On the one hand it suggests that the Other is simple. On the other it suggests that the nature of the American student or the Western academy enables a faster learning curve. Both raise uncomfortable images of musical ethnocentrism: notions of superiority, domestication of a foreign Other, or both. (Trimillos, 2004:44)Despite these criticisms, world music ensembles have been largely confirmed as a beneficial addition to both the academic and ethnomusicological world, as well as to the cultures that they represent. While they often perpetuate certain stereotypes, they can also dispel them, providing a space for intercultural dialogue and an encounter with "the other". Stereotypes that might otherwise be suppressed can be realized in this space for cross-cultural dialogue. Learning the music of another culture also forces one to confront the limits of one's own knowledge and fluency, similar to learning a whole new language, as one must relearn how to "speak" and even think before one can understand and effectively communicate in the foreign tongue. The humbling effect of struggling with a language or music puts a damper on the urge to jump to conclusions about a culture and its practices ("No linguist would dare take a tape of an unknown language and try to analyze it.", Solis quotes Leonard B. Meyer on page 4).
Though there are a variety of different reasons/rationales for these ensembles, including "concerns of multiculturalism, alternative modes of knowledge acquisition, cultural and ethnic advocacy, aesthetic and artistic pluralism, and community outreach, to name a few" (Trimillos, 2004:25), Trimillos admits that he feels that “a principal pedagogical value is the presentation and valorization of alternative systems and approaches to creativity." (Trimillos, 2004:47). One of the main benefits of this, he argues, is that "the availability of culturally identified alternatives in the institution gives students choice and agency" in a university system that continues to "foreground the hegemonic" (Trimillos, 2004:48). I have certainly found this to be true in my Mande class, which has provided an alternative class structure that privileges (and practices, rather than just preaches) aspects of life that are often ignored by academia, such as community, physicality, and having fun while learning.
There is also the benefit of "area studies", or organizing the class not by methodology (like philosophy, for example), but by region (like Africana studies). This encourages a radical transformation in the way knowledge is gathered and disseminated--class might actually be about learning to think differently, rather than just learning to support the same sorts of ideas and knowledge through different examples (see my blog post called "African Dance is the New Yoga!" for a more in depth discussion of this).
Classes like Mande dance which emphasize seeing a culture on its own terms (to the extent that this is possible) also help to avoid what Trimillos calls "descriptive chauvinism", or reading another culture using the paradigm of our own. As Agawu notes, the domination of "intellectual space defined by Euro-American traditions of ordering knowledge" leads to misrepresentation and essentialization (Agawu, 1995:383). For one, the very idea of "Africa", he argues, is itself a construction of European discourse, since it seems ridiculous to lump 400 million people spread across 42 countries speaking some thousand languages into one pan-African category. He also notes an "ongoing resistance to knowing about Africa" that helps to perpetuate the stereotypes people hold of it. "Why should we bother to learn the strange and often unpronounceable names of people in remote places practicing weird customs when we can simply invoke the all-purpose "Africa"?" he challenges (Agawu, 1995:84). The Mande class, by focusing on a specific African region and refusing to invoke "the all-purpose "Africa", certainly combats stereotypes such as these.
However, one stereotype that I have found the Mande class to have perpetuated is the idea that Africans are a rhythmic, drum-oriented people. This is evident in my first set of field notes where I wrote, "For one, it is very different from Western music and culture in that a percussive concept of performance dominates. Unlike in many Western cultures where melody and harmony reign over percussiveness, in Mande culture even the dances are percussive in nature, with intricate stamping patterns and ways of striking oneself." While this is certainly an aspect of Mande culture, it is by no means the totality of it. And even though I wrote this towards the beginning of the semester, I never really saw this stereotype dispelled or disproved during the rest of the semester. I myself only realized the fallacy of this assumption when I talked to another girl in my class who had been to Mali, who admitted that she barely even saw anyone dancing or drumming during the 9 months she was there. Also, reading parts of Eric Charry's book about Mande Music opened my eyes to the real diversity of Mande music, which includes other traditions besides just dancing and drumming (though in class Michelle often mentioned the Malian Griot, I didn't really understand how they differed from the drumming and dancing-oriented traditions that we were learning).
Despite some of the class's shortcomings, I have also learned, from talking to Professor Michelle and seeing the discrepancies between what we have accomplished in class and the ambitious goals stated on the syllabus, that world music ensembles are difficult to teach, to be in, and to think about. There are so many different aspects of a culture that must be addressed, so many stereotypes to be confronted, so many things to be learned from a way of life different than our own. How also does one leave room for showing both sameness and difference, as Gilroy argues we must do in order not to essentialize (by saying that everything is different about our culture and theirs) or anti-essentialize (by saying that nothing is ultimately different between any culture)?
After reading so much about world music ensemble professors (who were cultural "outsiders" like Michelle) who focused too much on mimicking a culture's traditions and representing their beliefs, thus portraying the culture as static and simple, I was impressed to learn that Michelle also runs a contemporary Mande performance group called New Works/World Traditions, which, as its name suggests, not only serves to share and preserve traditions, but to communicate modern ideas and concepts through innovation and modifying those traditions. As Michelle told me during her interview:New Works we develop new theater performances that are rooted in Mande tradition, I use concepts of Mande performance, ritual, the notion of healing, but the main idea in Mande performance is that performance is there to perform, to educate, to raise up both spiritual and intellectual pursuits, so, all of my pieces—and they were always like this, but I just found a house in Mande tradition—their first function is to educate, and to teach lessons about how to be a better person, how to be a better community person, how to take care of the nation, yourself and the nation.
For the performance that the Mande Dance, Music, and Culture class is putting on at the end of the semester (despite the warnings of various ethnomusicologists), each "family" is doing a short presentation on an aspect of Malian culture that they researched in order to make the performance more balanced and less orientalizing: my family researched Malian agriculture, another looked at the practice of female circumcision, and other families reinterpreted the Sunjata Epic, an important story about how the Mande Kingdom came to be among other things. However, a large part of the performance is still dance and drumming, and I will be interested in hearing the audiences' reactions afterwards. Here are two videos of the final rehearsals before the show:
This one is a dance called Didadi. According to the syllabus, "The Didadi is a popularized dance of rejoicing. It is a symbol of friendship, of brotherhood between people and their society. This dance comes from the Sikasso region and is executed in a circle inviting actors and audiences to fully participate in the show of the dance. It means “sweet as honey, my love is sweet as honey”."
The following video is of the dance Maraka/N'gui, which as I mentioned earlier, is a popular dance done at many Malian life-cycle ceremonies.
In the end, the Mande dance, music, and culture class has served as a interesting place in which to delve deeper into aspects of diaspora cultures and cross-cultural interaction and exchange. Although I am only loosely defining West African artists who have come to the United States as a diaspora (I think they do have a certain diaspora consciousness and may come for economic reasons, although they often sojourn back to Africa if they are successful enough), I think that viewing things as a diaspora helps to take a less dualistic approach to studying a culture, as you are looking not only at a culture's traditions, but how those traditions have changed from one place to another and how the culture is portrayed in a variety of different places and situations.
Looking at Mande culture as it is portrayed in a world music ensemble helped me to think about and overcome false binaries of comparison that I saw being used all over the internet, in scholarly articles, etc: that of comparing African traditions of drumming and dancing to Western classical music. As I learned in class and from particular readings, drumming and dance in Africa serves a social as well as an aesthetic function and are largely participatory. For some reason, many people contrast this with the Western classical tradition, which I think is not only essentializing, but just plain wrong. There are plenty of musical traditions in the U.S. which serve a social function and are participatory, depending of course on what context you are in (the more visible, commercialized realm of music often dominates the popular imagination when it comes to this): folk music and hip hop often convey political messages, and there is a certain type of dance/party music that one could compare to the Mande music played at special celebratory events.
It is also interesting to see the good and the bad of cultural tourism--on the one hand, it provides a source of income, motivation for revitalizing traditions, and a learning context for both the culture-bearers and receivers, on the other hand, it often leads to the commercialization of a culture, as well as a static, one-sided portrayal that can lead to orientalism and essentializing (click here for a trailer of a new movie about an American man who rediscovers life through the Djembe drum, and a good example of how the superculture often coopts appealing subcultures). Do both sides of the exchange gain something? Though Michelle has gone to Mali countless times by now, not only to learn the dances but to bring mosquito netting and to work with NGOs such as Save the Children, Crisis of Mothers, and Nothing but Nets, she concedes: "Well, it's sort of an egalitarian and, maybe not quite so, egalitarian exchange of ideas, resources, but basically--actually we're the ones that get the most out of it, because what we learn are life's bigger lessons."
There are still many questions that I am unable to answer about the purpose and benefits/shortcomings of world music ensembles and cross-cultural exchange, and many issues that I would like to think more about. Unfortunately, language (and the language of culture) are inherently limiting, for all things must be defined according to pre-existing, external concepts and vocabulary. It may not be possible to ever escape the binaries and boundaries created by humans to make the world just a little less confusing. Nonetheless, although the Mande Dance, Music, and Culture class can never substitute for the real culture itself (no matter how long the log stays in the water, it doesn't become a crocodile), we can take the advice of another Malian proverb:
Ni i sigi fali fe san cyaman, i te se ka fali kan fo, nga i be na fali tamisira don.Although this could mean a variety of things (we should all follow around donkeys!), I will leave it to the reader's interpretation.But if you travel with donkeys for many years, you wont be able to speak like a donkey, but you will know all their paths.
Related Web Materials:
African. Dance. Drum. Life! blog by Malena
West African Dance in Boston (WaDaBo)
National Geographic Mande Traditional Music Overview – also includes many traditional Mande artist profiles:
A list of dances and their significance that African Rhythm, an African Drum and Dance Troupe at the University of Pennsylvania, has done:
Djembefola - website about West African Djembe and Dun Dun Drumming
WAP-Pages – West African Percussion rhythms from Guinea and surrounding countries
Rootsy Records – preservation and promotion of traditional djembe culture
Djembe-L FAQ – List of hundreds of web resources on drumming issues ranging from rhythm basics to drum and health issues
Agawu, Kofi. The Invention of "African Rhythm". Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 48, No. 3, Music Anthropologies and Music Histories. (Autumn, 1995), pp. 380-395.
Averill, Gage. "Where's 'One'?": Musical Encounters of the Ensemble Kind. Performing Ethnomusicology : Teaching and Representation in World Music Ensembles. Ewing, NJ, USA: University of California Press, 2004.
Charry, Eric. Mande music : traditional and modern music of the Maninka and Mandinka of Western Africa. University of Chicago Press. 2000.
Kubik, 1994.
Solis, Ted. Performing Ethnomusicology : Teaching and Representation in World Music Ensembles. Ewing, NJ, USA: University of California Press, 2004.
Trimillos, Ricardo. Subject, Object, and the Enthomusicology Ensemble: The Ethnomusicological "We" and "Them". Performing Ethnomusicology : Teaching and Representation in World Music Ensembles. Ewing, NJ, USA: University of California Press, 2004.
