From the LA Times
Showing posts with label tradition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tradition. Show all posts
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Friday, July 29, 2011
Cameroon's breast ironing tradition
Breast ironing tradition targeted in Cameroon
From Nkepile Mabuse, CNN
(CNN) -- Every morning before school, nine-year-old Terisia Techu would undergo a painful procedure. Her mother would take a burning hot pestle straight out of a fire and use it to press her breasts.
With tears in her eyes as she recalls what it was like, Terisia tells CNN that one day the pestle was so hot, it burned her, leaving a mark. Now 18, she is still traumatized.
Her mother, Grace, denies the incident. But she proudly demonstrates the method she used on her daughter for several weeks, saying the goal was to make her less desirable to boys -- and stave off pregnancy.
A study found that one in four girls in Cameroon have been affected by the practice.
The U.S. State Department, in its 2010 human rights report on Cameroon, cited news reports and said breast ironing "victimized numerous girls in the country" and in some cases "resulted in burns, deformities, and psychological problems."
There are more than 200 ethnic groups in Cameroon with different norms and customs. Breast ironing is practiced by all of them.
....
In 2006, a German nongovernmental organization exposed the practice, which at the time was done mainly in secret.
Now, charities have embarked on campaigns to educate mothers in Cameroon that sex education -- not breast ironing -- is the solution to ending teenage pregnancy.
Dr Sinou Tchana, a gynecologist in Cameroon, has seen breast glands that were destroyed. She also saw one case of cancer, though she says it couldn't be established whether the ironing caused or only exacerbated the cancer.
....
The full story with video report is HERE.
From Nkepile Mabuse, CNN
(CNN) -- Every morning before school, nine-year-old Terisia Techu would undergo a painful procedure. Her mother would take a burning hot pestle straight out of a fire and use it to press her breasts.
With tears in her eyes as she recalls what it was like, Terisia tells CNN that one day the pestle was so hot, it burned her, leaving a mark. Now 18, she is still traumatized.
Her mother, Grace, denies the incident. But she proudly demonstrates the method she used on her daughter for several weeks, saying the goal was to make her less desirable to boys -- and stave off pregnancy.
A study found that one in four girls in Cameroon have been affected by the practice.
The U.S. State Department, in its 2010 human rights report on Cameroon, cited news reports and said breast ironing "victimized numerous girls in the country" and in some cases "resulted in burns, deformities, and psychological problems."
There are more than 200 ethnic groups in Cameroon with different norms and customs. Breast ironing is practiced by all of them.
....
In 2006, a German nongovernmental organization exposed the practice, which at the time was done mainly in secret.
Now, charities have embarked on campaigns to educate mothers in Cameroon that sex education -- not breast ironing -- is the solution to ending teenage pregnancy.
Dr Sinou Tchana, a gynecologist in Cameroon, has seen breast glands that were destroyed. She also saw one case of cancer, though she says it couldn't be established whether the ironing caused or only exacerbated the cancer.
....
The full story with video report is HERE.
Wednesday, March 09, 2011
NYT on Commercialism and Conflict in the Carnival of Trinidad
NYT
March 9, 2011
Carnival’s Louder Commercial Beat Adds Dissonance
By JOHN ELIGON
PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad and Tobago — To some people here, Dean Ackin, 38, with his boyish face, is an inspiration of entrepreneurship, a bearer of this country’s evolving culture. To others, he is a threat to this nation’s most beloved social and cultural treasure: Carnival.
Mr. Ackin runs one of the country’s most popular Carnival bands, the groups of people who don costumes and masquerade — or play Mas, as locals call it — in the raucous annual two-day street parade. The roughly 5,000 spots available in Mr. Ackin’s band, Tribe, sell out every year almost as fast as they go on sale. Demand has been so high since he started Tribe in 2005 that Mr. Ackin just started a second band.
But some say Mr. Ackin and others like him, who have in recent years spun profitable, year-round businesses out of organizing these bands, threaten the existence of Carnival as Trinidadians know it.
By shunning the conservative, traditional costumes for cheaper, skimpier outfits that are sometimes produced outside of Trinidad, these new bands, critics say, are distorting their forebears’ creation and sending work elsewhere at a time when the government and others are trying to turn Trinidadian-style Carnival into a more profitable and exportable industry.
“We call it two-piece and fries, the bikini and the bras,” said Stephen Derek, a traditional costume maker, referring to the skimpy costumes that have become a staple of the new bands. “The costume comes like a fast food. To them, the bottom line is profit. It has nothing to do about country or culture anymore.”
The entrepreneurial bandleaders counter that they are part of a natural evolution, merely offering what people want.
“If you really look at those people who play Mas with the younger bands, or if you talk to a visitor abroad and say: ‘Hey, have you ever heard of Trinidad Carnival? What band would you play with?’ they would call Tribe or they would call one of the younger bands,” Mr. Ackin said. “That says we are reaching out further than the traditional bands. We are reaching out to the international market.”
With few exceptions, the 1.3 million people living on these twin West Indian islands believe that they do Carnival better than anyone in the world. But the generational clash has raised questions over how today’s Carnival is shaping the country.
Is the reliance on mass-produced bikinis — a far cry from the elaborate, hand-crafted costumes Trinidadians had grown accustomed to — stifling the creative works that have been the hallmark of traditional Carnival, which the government of Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has been pressing to revive since she took office last year?
Or does it reflect the country’s new energy, representative of a push beyond Trinidad’s reputation for complacency in developing revenue streams beyond oil production?
Read the full post, including photos and video, HERE.
March 9, 2011
Carnival’s Louder Commercial Beat Adds Dissonance
By JOHN ELIGON
PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad and Tobago — To some people here, Dean Ackin, 38, with his boyish face, is an inspiration of entrepreneurship, a bearer of this country’s evolving culture. To others, he is a threat to this nation’s most beloved social and cultural treasure: Carnival.
Mr. Ackin runs one of the country’s most popular Carnival bands, the groups of people who don costumes and masquerade — or play Mas, as locals call it — in the raucous annual two-day street parade. The roughly 5,000 spots available in Mr. Ackin’s band, Tribe, sell out every year almost as fast as they go on sale. Demand has been so high since he started Tribe in 2005 that Mr. Ackin just started a second band.
But some say Mr. Ackin and others like him, who have in recent years spun profitable, year-round businesses out of organizing these bands, threaten the existence of Carnival as Trinidadians know it.
By shunning the conservative, traditional costumes for cheaper, skimpier outfits that are sometimes produced outside of Trinidad, these new bands, critics say, are distorting their forebears’ creation and sending work elsewhere at a time when the government and others are trying to turn Trinidadian-style Carnival into a more profitable and exportable industry.
“We call it two-piece and fries, the bikini and the bras,” said Stephen Derek, a traditional costume maker, referring to the skimpy costumes that have become a staple of the new bands. “The costume comes like a fast food. To them, the bottom line is profit. It has nothing to do about country or culture anymore.”
The entrepreneurial bandleaders counter that they are part of a natural evolution, merely offering what people want.
“If you really look at those people who play Mas with the younger bands, or if you talk to a visitor abroad and say: ‘Hey, have you ever heard of Trinidad Carnival? What band would you play with?’ they would call Tribe or they would call one of the younger bands,” Mr. Ackin said. “That says we are reaching out further than the traditional bands. We are reaching out to the international market.”
With few exceptions, the 1.3 million people living on these twin West Indian islands believe that they do Carnival better than anyone in the world. But the generational clash has raised questions over how today’s Carnival is shaping the country.
Is the reliance on mass-produced bikinis — a far cry from the elaborate, hand-crafted costumes Trinidadians had grown accustomed to — stifling the creative works that have been the hallmark of traditional Carnival, which the government of Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has been pressing to revive since she took office last year?
Or does it reflect the country’s new energy, representative of a push beyond Trinidad’s reputation for complacency in developing revenue streams beyond oil production?
Read the full post, including photos and video, HERE.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Yoruba tribal marks a fading tradition
CNN
Tribal scars custom drying up in Nigeria
By Christian Purefoy, CNN
July 20, 2010 12:10 p.m. EDT
Osogbo, Nigeria (CNN) -- In a dark room, the High Priestess used her ceremonial knife to cut two teardrop scars beneath her baby grandson's eyes. As baby Enitan cried out, the marks ran red with blood.
It took only a few moments, but scarred him for life.
In her small mud-brick home in southwest Nigeria, priestess Ifaponle Ogunjinmi performed the Yoruba tradition of giving tribal marks to the youngest member of her family.
"The tribal mark is to identify the family," Ifaponle said. "Everyone in the family must have it."
Ifaponle rubbed the secretion of a snail on Enitan's cheeks and then pressed dark charcoal dust into the open wounds to stop the bleeding. To finish the ceremony, a chicken was brushed across Enitan's head.
"The snail is for cooling the wounds, like water on fire," Ifaponle said. "And the chicken is to clear the body of all illness. It will be sacrificed in two days."
Yoruba tribal scars have a variety of patterns and meanings.
Most obviously, they appear as a series of cuts and lines across the face to identify a person's family and regional heritage. Others, appearing as lizards or scorpions anywhere below the face, are a form of body art.
But they all have spiritual significance.
Meta Ogunjimni, the child's father, led us into another dark, musty room at the back of his home. Sunlight from a small window cast an eerie light on a dark-red costume in the corner of the room, a shrine to the local goddess of Ifa, surrounded by a variety of bottles and blood-stained ornaments.
The costume consists of a large ornamental mask used in local religious ceremonies. It is decorated with three small wooden faces, each adorned with scars across their cheeks.
"I have inherited these facial marks from my grandfather," said Meta, pointing at the scarred wooden faces on the masquerade, "they help protect me."
Though facial scars can be found across Africa, they are becoming increasingly restricted to people in the rural regions.
The Nigerian government has moved to outlaw the practice, but many states have yet to approve the law. Many human rights organizations argue that the scarring of children is abuse and have often associated the practice with female genital mutilation.
However, regardless of their efforts, facial scars are becoming harder to find for a different reason -- displacement of old ways by Western influence.
"Our grandfathers, who made tribal marks compulsory for everyone have died," Ifaponle said. "In the modern world, many fathers don't allow any marks on their children."
In her arms, Enitan suckled on a bottle of warm milk. He will carry his Yoruba traditions with him for life, but he may well be one of the last.
Read the story and view photographs HERE.
Tribal scars custom drying up in Nigeria
By Christian Purefoy, CNN
July 20, 2010 12:10 p.m. EDT
Osogbo, Nigeria (CNN) -- In a dark room, the High Priestess used her ceremonial knife to cut two teardrop scars beneath her baby grandson's eyes. As baby Enitan cried out, the marks ran red with blood.
It took only a few moments, but scarred him for life.
In her small mud-brick home in southwest Nigeria, priestess Ifaponle Ogunjinmi performed the Yoruba tradition of giving tribal marks to the youngest member of her family.
"The tribal mark is to identify the family," Ifaponle said. "Everyone in the family must have it."
Ifaponle rubbed the secretion of a snail on Enitan's cheeks and then pressed dark charcoal dust into the open wounds to stop the bleeding. To finish the ceremony, a chicken was brushed across Enitan's head.
"The snail is for cooling the wounds, like water on fire," Ifaponle said. "And the chicken is to clear the body of all illness. It will be sacrificed in two days."
Yoruba tribal scars have a variety of patterns and meanings.
Most obviously, they appear as a series of cuts and lines across the face to identify a person's family and regional heritage. Others, appearing as lizards or scorpions anywhere below the face, are a form of body art.
But they all have spiritual significance.
Meta Ogunjimni, the child's father, led us into another dark, musty room at the back of his home. Sunlight from a small window cast an eerie light on a dark-red costume in the corner of the room, a shrine to the local goddess of Ifa, surrounded by a variety of bottles and blood-stained ornaments.
The costume consists of a large ornamental mask used in local religious ceremonies. It is decorated with three small wooden faces, each adorned with scars across their cheeks.
"I have inherited these facial marks from my grandfather," said Meta, pointing at the scarred wooden faces on the masquerade, "they help protect me."
Though facial scars can be found across Africa, they are becoming increasingly restricted to people in the rural regions.
The Nigerian government has moved to outlaw the practice, but many states have yet to approve the law. Many human rights organizations argue that the scarring of children is abuse and have often associated the practice with female genital mutilation.
However, regardless of their efforts, facial scars are becoming harder to find for a different reason -- displacement of old ways by Western influence.
"Our grandfathers, who made tribal marks compulsory for everyone have died," Ifaponle said. "In the modern world, many fathers don't allow any marks on their children."
In her arms, Enitan suckled on a bottle of warm milk. He will carry his Yoruba traditions with him for life, but he may well be one of the last.
Read the story and view photographs HERE.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Saudis break taboo of opposing royals after soccer row
CSM
Saudis break taboo of opposing royals after soccer row
The incident highlights a shift from unquestioned deference toward the royal family.
By Caryle Murphy | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
from the February 20, 2009 edition
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - It had been a bad day for the kingdom, and three soccer commentators were trying to make sense of the national tragedy on a live TV talk show.
Saudi Arabia's national team had lost the 19th Arabian Gulf Cup to Oman, 6-5, because the players were underperforming. There was discord on the team. The coach had made bad moves. Their complaints went on and on. And no one could say that the three – a coach and two former national team players – were unqualified to assess the damage.
Suddenly, word came that a VIP was calling in, demanding to talk with the critics. Prince Sultan bin Fahd, son of the late king, and head of the Saudi Arabian Football Federation, had vowed to bring this year's Cup back from Oman.
What happened over the next few minutes, and in the days that followed, became a chart-topper when Saudis gathered to chat. For the episode is one of those moments when a nation instantly recognizes how it has changed. And in this case, that involves the slipping away of unconditional deference to royals.
Most royal family members are still held in high esteem. But economic, political, and demographic forces, as well as new forms of communication, are contributing to changing perceptions about how much unquestioning submission is due the royal sector.
Not least among these forces of change are those issuing from the head of the royal family itself, King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz. Just days ago, the king announced an overhaul of the country's religious and political leadership aimed at speeding up implementation of reforms, particularly in education and the legal system. The king's agenda also includes a slow expansion of responsibilities for the Shura Council, an appointed advisory body.
As the reforms proceed, they will affect the relationship between rulers and ruled, forcing royal family members to increasingly contend with the verdicts of public opinion – as last month's soccer commentary show demonstrated.
Prince Sultan started out calmly, but grew increasingly agitated. Addressing each of the three commentators in turn, he chastised them for being disrespectful and not knowing what they were talking about. "You are all ignorant!" he shouted.
He accused former coach Jassim al-Harbi of saying "awful things" about the team manager, asking sarcastically: "You're evaluating managerial competencies now too, Jasim, you and your likes?"
Unable to get a word in edgewise, the three squirmed in their chairs – a scene viewed thousands of times on YouTube.
Then the prince turned to former player Faisal Abu Thnain. "We work day and night and you just sit here blabbering away on television ... I do not want to hear this talk again. I have tolerated you long enough. You must exercise self-restraint. And you must behave... If you have not been raised properly, we can certainly raise you ourselves."
It was this last sentence that shocked the viewing audience, for to accuse someone of not being well brought up is a deep insult in Saudi culture, on par with shoe-throwing in Iraq.
Mr. Abu Thnain did not let the prince's comment pass. "No, thank God, we have all been raised well and we know our limits and the repercussions of our actions," he retorted before the prince hung up.
Now, the audience was cheering – or at least it would a few days later.
"Faisal Abu Thnain made history by being the first Saudi citizen to talk back to a prince ... live and on the air and for this, we celebrate him," reads a Facebook page honoring the player. Created shortly after the Jan. 17 incident, it has collected 2,927 fans.
Someone else started a Facebook group – with 2,085 members so far – calling for the prince's dismissal. His picture is prominently displayed with the international 'No' sign over it.
Then the Saudi newspaper Al Medinah ran a cartoon showing the prince telling a microphone to "ignore these 'babbling' guys talking about things they know nothing about." The bubble over the silenced men reads: "Criticism. Opinions. The Truth. Points of View. Demands. Logical Analysis."
One long-time foreign resident here called the affair "unprecedented."
And Saudi sports columnist Abdulaziz A. Alghiama said that it underscored new attitudes toward a top official who belongs to the ruling family.
"It's completely changed because 10 years back, people were not doing that," says Mr. Alghiama, who writes for the Asharq al Awsat newspaper. While Alghiama conceded that Prince Sultan, who also serves as the country's sports minister, should not have used "insulting" words, he stood up for him.
"It was the first time that Saudi lost to Oman and for this reason, he was so devastated," he says. "Everyone makes mistakes and so there was so much pressure around. He's just a human being."
Abu Thnain said that he realized the prince was disappointed. But he was still "surprised" at his language, which "hurt my feelings, and my mother and father's feelings. They are very angry about that."
But "people are talking about this incident [because] sometimes there are not people who can say to a prince, 'you are wrong.' We are in 2009 and everyone has to accept the other's opinions," he adds. "Now, most of the population in Saudi are under 20 years and each one has a different opinion. If you don't accept them you will have problems in the future."
Some royals want to be more accessible to the public, even if this may dilute the deference once accorded the family.
For example, Princess Loulwa al-Faisal, daughter of late King Faisal, broke the taboo that princesses are not seen with uncovered faces in public and do not appear on television or in newspapers when she was interviewed on "Good Morning America" in 2007. She covered her hair, but not her face.
Another princess recently created an even bigger stir. Amira al-Taweel, wife of Prince Waleed bin Talal, one of the family's most progressive members, was photographed without face veil, headscarf, or abaya – the black cloak worn by women in public – by Al Watan newspaper, which carried an extensive interview with the princess about all aspects of her life.
Unlike in the past, the paper was not sanctioned by the government.
Prince Sultan did not respond to questions and a request for comment faxed to his office. He did talk about the incident four days after it happened on the privately owned Saudi news channel Al Arabiya. He was in a calm mood, but did not apologize, saying that everyone makes mistakes and "may Allah guide us all."
Saudis break taboo of opposing royals after soccer row
The incident highlights a shift from unquestioned deference toward the royal family.
By Caryle Murphy | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
from the February 20, 2009 edition
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - It had been a bad day for the kingdom, and three soccer commentators were trying to make sense of the national tragedy on a live TV talk show.
Saudi Arabia's national team had lost the 19th Arabian Gulf Cup to Oman, 6-5, because the players were underperforming. There was discord on the team. The coach had made bad moves. Their complaints went on and on. And no one could say that the three – a coach and two former national team players – were unqualified to assess the damage.
Suddenly, word came that a VIP was calling in, demanding to talk with the critics. Prince Sultan bin Fahd, son of the late king, and head of the Saudi Arabian Football Federation, had vowed to bring this year's Cup back from Oman.
What happened over the next few minutes, and in the days that followed, became a chart-topper when Saudis gathered to chat. For the episode is one of those moments when a nation instantly recognizes how it has changed. And in this case, that involves the slipping away of unconditional deference to royals.
Most royal family members are still held in high esteem. But economic, political, and demographic forces, as well as new forms of communication, are contributing to changing perceptions about how much unquestioning submission is due the royal sector.
Not least among these forces of change are those issuing from the head of the royal family itself, King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz. Just days ago, the king announced an overhaul of the country's religious and political leadership aimed at speeding up implementation of reforms, particularly in education and the legal system. The king's agenda also includes a slow expansion of responsibilities for the Shura Council, an appointed advisory body.
As the reforms proceed, they will affect the relationship between rulers and ruled, forcing royal family members to increasingly contend with the verdicts of public opinion – as last month's soccer commentary show demonstrated.
Prince Sultan started out calmly, but grew increasingly agitated. Addressing each of the three commentators in turn, he chastised them for being disrespectful and not knowing what they were talking about. "You are all ignorant!" he shouted.
He accused former coach Jassim al-Harbi of saying "awful things" about the team manager, asking sarcastically: "You're evaluating managerial competencies now too, Jasim, you and your likes?"
Unable to get a word in edgewise, the three squirmed in their chairs – a scene viewed thousands of times on YouTube.
Then the prince turned to former player Faisal Abu Thnain. "We work day and night and you just sit here blabbering away on television ... I do not want to hear this talk again. I have tolerated you long enough. You must exercise self-restraint. And you must behave... If you have not been raised properly, we can certainly raise you ourselves."
It was this last sentence that shocked the viewing audience, for to accuse someone of not being well brought up is a deep insult in Saudi culture, on par with shoe-throwing in Iraq.
Mr. Abu Thnain did not let the prince's comment pass. "No, thank God, we have all been raised well and we know our limits and the repercussions of our actions," he retorted before the prince hung up.
Now, the audience was cheering – or at least it would a few days later.
"Faisal Abu Thnain made history by being the first Saudi citizen to talk back to a prince ... live and on the air and for this, we celebrate him," reads a Facebook page honoring the player. Created shortly after the Jan. 17 incident, it has collected 2,927 fans.
Someone else started a Facebook group – with 2,085 members so far – calling for the prince's dismissal. His picture is prominently displayed with the international 'No' sign over it.
Then the Saudi newspaper Al Medinah ran a cartoon showing the prince telling a microphone to "ignore these 'babbling' guys talking about things they know nothing about." The bubble over the silenced men reads: "Criticism. Opinions. The Truth. Points of View. Demands. Logical Analysis."
One long-time foreign resident here called the affair "unprecedented."
And Saudi sports columnist Abdulaziz A. Alghiama said that it underscored new attitudes toward a top official who belongs to the ruling family.
"It's completely changed because 10 years back, people were not doing that," says Mr. Alghiama, who writes for the Asharq al Awsat newspaper. While Alghiama conceded that Prince Sultan, who also serves as the country's sports minister, should not have used "insulting" words, he stood up for him.
"It was the first time that Saudi lost to Oman and for this reason, he was so devastated," he says. "Everyone makes mistakes and so there was so much pressure around. He's just a human being."
Abu Thnain said that he realized the prince was disappointed. But he was still "surprised" at his language, which "hurt my feelings, and my mother and father's feelings. They are very angry about that."
But "people are talking about this incident [because] sometimes there are not people who can say to a prince, 'you are wrong.' We are in 2009 and everyone has to accept the other's opinions," he adds. "Now, most of the population in Saudi are under 20 years and each one has a different opinion. If you don't accept them you will have problems in the future."
Some royals want to be more accessible to the public, even if this may dilute the deference once accorded the family.
For example, Princess Loulwa al-Faisal, daughter of late King Faisal, broke the taboo that princesses are not seen with uncovered faces in public and do not appear on television or in newspapers when she was interviewed on "Good Morning America" in 2007. She covered her hair, but not her face.
Another princess recently created an even bigger stir. Amira al-Taweel, wife of Prince Waleed bin Talal, one of the family's most progressive members, was photographed without face veil, headscarf, or abaya – the black cloak worn by women in public – by Al Watan newspaper, which carried an extensive interview with the princess about all aspects of her life.
Unlike in the past, the paper was not sanctioned by the government.
Prince Sultan did not respond to questions and a request for comment faxed to his office. He did talk about the incident four days after it happened on the privately owned Saudi news channel Al Arabiya. He was in a calm mood, but did not apologize, saying that everyone makes mistakes and "may Allah guide us all."
Saturday, December 13, 2008
A Voice in the Ear Proclaims Change (Prompting Opera Singers)
NYT
December 14, 2008
Music
A Voice in the Ear Proclaims Change
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI
WHAT do the New York Jets quarterback Brett Favre and the Tristan-singing tenor Peter Seiffert have in common?
They both rely on electronic signals to get cues from coaches on the sidelines.
There is no mystery about the speaker in Mr. Favre’s helmet. Over the last 15 years or so it has become standard in the National Football League for quarterbacks to be equipped with devices through which instructions can be relayed before each offensive play. This practice is universally regarded as a major improvement over the days when quarterbacks had to interpret the distant hand signals of gesticulating coaches or take messages from other players shuttling in and out of the game, and now the device has been extended to defensive play callers as well.
But remote electronic cues in opera?
For the Metropolitan Opera’s first performance this season of Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde,” conducted by Daniel Barenboim on Nov. 28, Mr. Seiffert, 54, a German singer acclaimed for his portrayals of several leading Wagner roles, had an electronic device in one ear that allowed him to hear cues from his own prompter. He used the device only for Acts II and III of the work, which runs five hours with two intermissions.
This was the first time in Met history that a singer had used an earpiece for assistance rather than relying on the house prompter in the box at the front of the stage. And the news rippled through the opera world, stirring debate and casting doubt on Mr. Seiffert’s readiness to sing Tristan, one of the most daunting tenor roles in the repertory.
The controversy raises a larger issue. It has long been standard practice for an operatic artist who has prepared a role thoroughly to take cues from a house prompter. But does a singer cross a line by putting an electronic gizmo in his ear?
Julien Salemkour, a veteran coach and conductor and the prompter who assisted Mr. Seiffert during the rehearsals and performance of “Tristan und Isolde” at the Met, strongly defends the electronic earpiece, made by Sennheiser. Speaking on behalf of Mr. Seiffert, who was fighting a cold and under doctor’s orders not to talk, Mr. Salemkour said during a telephone interview that using earpieces is “not new at all.”
“Just watch the U.N. General Assembly,” he said. True, delegates to the United Nations have long used earpieces to hear translations of one another’s comments. But none of them are trying to sing Tristan.
Mr. Salemkour, a musical assistant to Mr. Barenboim at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin, came up with the idea to use earpieces for prompting two years ago, during a production there of “Tristan und Isolde.” It was Mr. Seiffert’s first Tristan, and he was struggling to learn the role. Its difficulties, combined with the challenges of the staging, made him insecure. The high-concept modern production raised the level of the stage floor two feet and covered the prompter’s box. To compensate, up to three coaches at a time, including Mr. Salemkour, stood in the wings practically shouting cues to the singers.
Mr. Salemkour thought that an electronic aid would be more efficient and less distracting to Mr. Seiffert, allowing him to relax and empowering him to give his best performance, which is the whole point of prompting. Mr. Barenboim, who conducted the Berlin production, gave his blessing.
A plugged-in Tristan has one disadvantage, Mr. Salemkour conceded. “The singer has one ear half blocked,” he said, and while that does not prevent the performer from hearing the orchestra and other singers, “it is uncomfortable physically.” Otherwise, Mr. Salemkour added, the device works extremely well.
So what’s the harm?
It depends on the results. Many opera roles are long, complex and difficult. For a singer in the midst of an impassioned scene, with the orchestra blaring and the chorus soaring, remembering the words or finding the first notes of a vocal line can be extremely hard. And given the expansiveness of a stage like the Met’s, a singer at any moment can be positioned too far from the orchestra pit for the conductor to be any help. The Met’s current production of “Tristan und Isolde,” by the director Dieter Dorn, uses a deep and spacious unit set.
At the Met the musicians who perform the prompting are officially titled assistant conductors, and when things go well, that is exactly the function they fulfill. The prompter’s box is aptly named. To enter the one at the Met, you must climb a steep metal ladder and squeeze into a narrow chair with a hydraulic lift. Small video monitors on either side allow the prompter to see the conductor, and speakers pipe in the performance from the pit. The box hides the prompter from audience members, who seldom hear the cues.
Many companies, especially those with smaller houses, dispense with prompters entirely: the New York City Opera, for one. (Remember the good old City Opera, nearly dormant and badly struggling right now?) There is no prompter’s box at the David H. Koch Theater. So when singers in a City Opera production get in trouble or draw a blank on a line, they resort to the time-tested solution of actors in the theater: just wing it and move on. Some opera buffs would argue that it is worth trading off occasional flubs from singers for the enhanced spontaneity that comes from performing without a prompter. But it is hard to imagine a performance of an opera like “Tristan” that would not require prompting.
Just as some opera houses use prompting and others don’t, some sports allow coaching during competition while others, curiously, forbid it. Tennis, for example. For whatever reason, tennis players are not allowed to communicate with coaches during matches, though many have worked out cagey systems of secret cues. As a fan of the sport, I’ve never understood why it is considered almost cheating for a player to get input from a coach during the throes of a match.
No opera buff objects to the use of prompters per se, as long as it does not become an enabling device for unprepared singers. On the first night of the Met’s run of “Tristan und Isolde,” which was also Mr. Barenboim’s long-awaited company debut, Mr. Seiffert, despite using his earpiece for the final two acts, seemed to be glancing rather often at the prompter’s box.
The complicated logistics that night explained this, in part. During Act I Mr. Seiffert relied only on the house prompter, Carrie-Ann Matheson. During Act II, with his earpiece in place, he received cues from Mr. Salemkour, who stood in the wings wearing a headset so he could hear the orchestra clearly. For Act III, dominated by Tristan, Mr. Salemkour occupied the box, with Ms. Matheson off to the side.
Mr. Salemkour said that Mr. Seiffert was understandably nervous about singing this touchstone role at the Met. In addition Mr. Seiffert, who sounded congested in his lower register that night, was already battling a cold. He pulled out of the following two performances of “Tristan.” (Gary Lehman took over. At press time it was not known which tenor would sing in the fourth performance, on Friday.)
Vocally and dramatically Mr. Seiffert was at his best that night when it counted the most, during the notoriously difficult and endless scene in which the wounded, delirious Tristan works himself into frenzied states, erupting with anguish and longing for his beloved Isolde, then turning half-crazed as he thinks he sees the ship bringing Isolde to the shore of his castle in Brittany. Perhaps having an earpiece during this scene accounted for the confidence he projected, even when his voice faltered.
Still, many longtime opera lovers will see the introduction of earpieces as at best distracting and at worst cheating.
Compare, for a moment, prompting in opera with the protocols of a voice recital. A pianist accompanying a singer typically performs from printed music, often with a page turner seated nearby. But because a singer in recital is presenting a musical-dramatic performance, a recitation of poetry set to music, the ideal is for the singer to perform from memory. Though singing without a score is not always possible or even wise, especially in challenging contemporary music, it remains the goal.
But suppose a singer in recital had an earpiece through which an offstage prompter could provide needed cues. The idea might seem dreadful in concept. But if the device liberated that singer to give a strong performance, well, why not?
I am not ready to condemn the use of earpieces right off, especially since there appears to be scant interest among other singers, so far, in following Mr. Seiffert’s lead. A singer wearing an earpiece bothers me less than a sound-enhancement system, like the one the City Opera has been using since 1999. This leap has introduced amplification into an art form that for centuries cherished natural sound.
But in coming up with increasingly sophisticated technological methods to assist singers in opera, coaches and conductors should be careful not to complicate things. The basic issue with this performance of “Tristan und Isolde” was pretty elementary: Mr. Seiffert, it seemed, did not know the role well enough to sing it. Neither an old-fashioned prompter nor a newfangled earpiece can compensate for that.
December 14, 2008
Music
A Voice in the Ear Proclaims Change
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI
WHAT do the New York Jets quarterback Brett Favre and the Tristan-singing tenor Peter Seiffert have in common?
They both rely on electronic signals to get cues from coaches on the sidelines.
There is no mystery about the speaker in Mr. Favre’s helmet. Over the last 15 years or so it has become standard in the National Football League for quarterbacks to be equipped with devices through which instructions can be relayed before each offensive play. This practice is universally regarded as a major improvement over the days when quarterbacks had to interpret the distant hand signals of gesticulating coaches or take messages from other players shuttling in and out of the game, and now the device has been extended to defensive play callers as well.
But remote electronic cues in opera?
For the Metropolitan Opera’s first performance this season of Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde,” conducted by Daniel Barenboim on Nov. 28, Mr. Seiffert, 54, a German singer acclaimed for his portrayals of several leading Wagner roles, had an electronic device in one ear that allowed him to hear cues from his own prompter. He used the device only for Acts II and III of the work, which runs five hours with two intermissions.
This was the first time in Met history that a singer had used an earpiece for assistance rather than relying on the house prompter in the box at the front of the stage. And the news rippled through the opera world, stirring debate and casting doubt on Mr. Seiffert’s readiness to sing Tristan, one of the most daunting tenor roles in the repertory.
The controversy raises a larger issue. It has long been standard practice for an operatic artist who has prepared a role thoroughly to take cues from a house prompter. But does a singer cross a line by putting an electronic gizmo in his ear?
Julien Salemkour, a veteran coach and conductor and the prompter who assisted Mr. Seiffert during the rehearsals and performance of “Tristan und Isolde” at the Met, strongly defends the electronic earpiece, made by Sennheiser. Speaking on behalf of Mr. Seiffert, who was fighting a cold and under doctor’s orders not to talk, Mr. Salemkour said during a telephone interview that using earpieces is “not new at all.”
“Just watch the U.N. General Assembly,” he said. True, delegates to the United Nations have long used earpieces to hear translations of one another’s comments. But none of them are trying to sing Tristan.
Mr. Salemkour, a musical assistant to Mr. Barenboim at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin, came up with the idea to use earpieces for prompting two years ago, during a production there of “Tristan und Isolde.” It was Mr. Seiffert’s first Tristan, and he was struggling to learn the role. Its difficulties, combined with the challenges of the staging, made him insecure. The high-concept modern production raised the level of the stage floor two feet and covered the prompter’s box. To compensate, up to three coaches at a time, including Mr. Salemkour, stood in the wings practically shouting cues to the singers.
Mr. Salemkour thought that an electronic aid would be more efficient and less distracting to Mr. Seiffert, allowing him to relax and empowering him to give his best performance, which is the whole point of prompting. Mr. Barenboim, who conducted the Berlin production, gave his blessing.
A plugged-in Tristan has one disadvantage, Mr. Salemkour conceded. “The singer has one ear half blocked,” he said, and while that does not prevent the performer from hearing the orchestra and other singers, “it is uncomfortable physically.” Otherwise, Mr. Salemkour added, the device works extremely well.
So what’s the harm?
It depends on the results. Many opera roles are long, complex and difficult. For a singer in the midst of an impassioned scene, with the orchestra blaring and the chorus soaring, remembering the words or finding the first notes of a vocal line can be extremely hard. And given the expansiveness of a stage like the Met’s, a singer at any moment can be positioned too far from the orchestra pit for the conductor to be any help. The Met’s current production of “Tristan und Isolde,” by the director Dieter Dorn, uses a deep and spacious unit set.
At the Met the musicians who perform the prompting are officially titled assistant conductors, and when things go well, that is exactly the function they fulfill. The prompter’s box is aptly named. To enter the one at the Met, you must climb a steep metal ladder and squeeze into a narrow chair with a hydraulic lift. Small video monitors on either side allow the prompter to see the conductor, and speakers pipe in the performance from the pit. The box hides the prompter from audience members, who seldom hear the cues.
Many companies, especially those with smaller houses, dispense with prompters entirely: the New York City Opera, for one. (Remember the good old City Opera, nearly dormant and badly struggling right now?) There is no prompter’s box at the David H. Koch Theater. So when singers in a City Opera production get in trouble or draw a blank on a line, they resort to the time-tested solution of actors in the theater: just wing it and move on. Some opera buffs would argue that it is worth trading off occasional flubs from singers for the enhanced spontaneity that comes from performing without a prompter. But it is hard to imagine a performance of an opera like “Tristan” that would not require prompting.
Just as some opera houses use prompting and others don’t, some sports allow coaching during competition while others, curiously, forbid it. Tennis, for example. For whatever reason, tennis players are not allowed to communicate with coaches during matches, though many have worked out cagey systems of secret cues. As a fan of the sport, I’ve never understood why it is considered almost cheating for a player to get input from a coach during the throes of a match.
No opera buff objects to the use of prompters per se, as long as it does not become an enabling device for unprepared singers. On the first night of the Met’s run of “Tristan und Isolde,” which was also Mr. Barenboim’s long-awaited company debut, Mr. Seiffert, despite using his earpiece for the final two acts, seemed to be glancing rather often at the prompter’s box.
The complicated logistics that night explained this, in part. During Act I Mr. Seiffert relied only on the house prompter, Carrie-Ann Matheson. During Act II, with his earpiece in place, he received cues from Mr. Salemkour, who stood in the wings wearing a headset so he could hear the orchestra clearly. For Act III, dominated by Tristan, Mr. Salemkour occupied the box, with Ms. Matheson off to the side.
Mr. Salemkour said that Mr. Seiffert was understandably nervous about singing this touchstone role at the Met. In addition Mr. Seiffert, who sounded congested in his lower register that night, was already battling a cold. He pulled out of the following two performances of “Tristan.” (Gary Lehman took over. At press time it was not known which tenor would sing in the fourth performance, on Friday.)
Vocally and dramatically Mr. Seiffert was at his best that night when it counted the most, during the notoriously difficult and endless scene in which the wounded, delirious Tristan works himself into frenzied states, erupting with anguish and longing for his beloved Isolde, then turning half-crazed as he thinks he sees the ship bringing Isolde to the shore of his castle in Brittany. Perhaps having an earpiece during this scene accounted for the confidence he projected, even when his voice faltered.
Still, many longtime opera lovers will see the introduction of earpieces as at best distracting and at worst cheating.
Compare, for a moment, prompting in opera with the protocols of a voice recital. A pianist accompanying a singer typically performs from printed music, often with a page turner seated nearby. But because a singer in recital is presenting a musical-dramatic performance, a recitation of poetry set to music, the ideal is for the singer to perform from memory. Though singing without a score is not always possible or even wise, especially in challenging contemporary music, it remains the goal.
But suppose a singer in recital had an earpiece through which an offstage prompter could provide needed cues. The idea might seem dreadful in concept. But if the device liberated that singer to give a strong performance, well, why not?
I am not ready to condemn the use of earpieces right off, especially since there appears to be scant interest among other singers, so far, in following Mr. Seiffert’s lead. A singer wearing an earpiece bothers me less than a sound-enhancement system, like the one the City Opera has been using since 1999. This leap has introduced amplification into an art form that for centuries cherished natural sound.
But in coming up with increasingly sophisticated technological methods to assist singers in opera, coaches and conductors should be careful not to complicate things. The basic issue with this performance of “Tristan und Isolde” was pretty elementary: Mr. Seiffert, it seemed, did not know the role well enough to sing it. Neither an old-fashioned prompter nor a newfangled earpiece can compensate for that.
Friday, November 14, 2008
In modern Cameroon polygamy doesn’t pay
CSM
In modern Cameroon polygamy doesn’t pay
When life is more complex than just fields to tend, a passel of wives is more a financial strain than a status symbol.
By Alexis Grant | Contributor / November 13, 2008 edition
Fongo-Ndeng, Cameroon
Benoit Ndi Wamba didn’t know exactly how many children were in his family. Like most Cameroonians born into large polygamous families, he never had a reason to count.
But with money tight after the death of his father, the 23-year-old was partly responsible for finding money to pay this year’s public school fees for his siblings. So he ticked off their names, one by one. There was lanky Jean, 21. Sylvain, 18, a top student. Janvier, an 11-year-old who wears, in this French-speaking province, a T-shirt that reads “Fabulous.” And Mr. Ndi Wamba himself was entering his first year of university.
Those were just his mother’s children. Then there were his other brothers and sisters, born to his late father’s other three wives. A handful of grandchildren and cousins also lived with the family, complicating the count. All referred to one another as brother and sister, explaining only after much prodding who, as Cameroonians say, has the “same mother, same father.”
Yet one thing was clear: With more than a dozen children who hoped to attend school this year, the Ndi Wamba family faced a pile of fees.
It was a problem Ndi Wamba swore his own children would never face; he would marry just one woman, he said, and have significantly fewer children than his father.
“If it was just my three brothers and me, we would not be having this problem,” Ndi Wamba said sternly, a folder of university enrollment forms tucked under his arm.
An increasing number of men in this central African nation are coming to the same conclusion, rejecting the polygamous lifestyles of their fathers and opting for monogamy instead. With the rising costs of school, healthcare, and food, it’s simply too expensive to have a large family, they say.
• • •
I met the Ndi Wamba family six years ago, when I was a college student studying polygamy. They were supposed to serve as a case study, but instead became my second family during the three weeks I lived with them in the village of Fongo-Ndeng, in western Cameroon.
When I returned this September for a visit, their lives had much changed. Nearly a year after the death of their 78-year-old husband, the four wives still donned all black, mourning not only his spirit but also the loss of his government pension. With the help of friends and family back home, I paid tuition for the women’s children and others who live on the compound, 18 in all.
Again I chatted with the women as they cooked over open fires on the ground in their kitches, alternating among the four dirt-floor houses that, along with their husband’s empty house, created a semicircle around an often-muddy yard. When he was alive, the husband, too, split his time among his wives, spending one night with one woman, the next with another.
Traditionally, polygamy has been a symbol of wealth and status, particularly in rural areas. Village chiefs until recently married as many as 25 women, while other men typically wed between two and eight wives.
The lifestyle has its advantages, mainly the production of a labor force to cultivate fields of corn, beans, and root crops like manioc. But modernity has taken its toll, even on families like the Ndi Wambas who have shunned other changes such as electricity and running water. Crops can feed many mouths, but only hard currency pays school fees, which start in secondary school around the equivalent of $45 annually and mount for higher grades.
“Before, maybe polygamy was good,” explains Charlotte Nguimfack, who has four children with her monogamous husband. “Life wasn’t difficult like it is now.”
While those economic difficulties are driving polygamy’s decline, other factors also are at play, including the spread of Christianity, which prohibits polygamy. And as more women become college-educated, some have begun to demand monogamy.
In the early 1990s, a quarter of married men in Cameroon had more than one wife, according to the country’s National Institute of Statistics. By 2004, just 11 percent were polygamous.
Likewise, the percentage of women who had at least one co-wife dropped to 30 percent in 2004 compared with 39 percent in 1991, institute data show.
Similar decreases are occurring in other countries across central and western Africa, says Savage Njikam, who oversees the University of Douala’s anthropology department.
“The more educated people are, the less likely they are to have the same household as their grandfather,” says Mrs. Njikam, a social anthropologist. “But you still will find educated women who will accept being second wives.”
Monogamous men and women cite another reason to avoid polygamy, one their polygamous counterparts are reluctant to discuss. Some multiwife households suffer from jealousy and conflict.
Sallahou Aboubakar, who grew up in Cameroon’s Muslim north in a two-wife home, says his mother’s disputes with her co-wife influenced him to choose monogamy.
“The wives don’t stay peaceful,” says Mr.. Aboubakar, who lives with his wife and their newborn baby in Yaounde, the capital. “It always causes problems.”
His wife’s aunt, Adamou Patou, overhearing the conversation speaks up to illustrate the point, telling a tale that has her family, all sitting on mats on the floor, roaring with laughter.
When her husband was alive, she says, she and her co-wife fought endlessly, mostly over where the husband would sleep. One morning, after the husband had spent too many nights with Patou, her co-wife entered the bedroom to find the husband freshly showered and back in bed. She threw a bucket of charcoal dust into the room, covering the bed and her husband in gray powder.
Despite such stories, some young Cameroonians continue to keep polygamy alive. Bertrand Folepe, who married his girlfriend when she became pregnant six years ago, took a second wife two years later at the urging of his parents. His father, who had eight wives, wanted him to marry a woman from his village.
Mr. Folepe didn’t protest; he is proud to carry on the tradition. On display in his family’s sitting room, which he shares with both wives, are portraits of each couple, side by side.
“If in the future I have a lot of money, I’ll take more [wives],” says Folepe, who makes a living selling small livestock.
Folepe, who lives with his wives and seven children in the small city of Dschang, has urbanized the polygamous lifestyle. Instead of dwelling in separate, adjacent homes like his family in the village where he grew up, his entire family shares one house. Each wife has her own bedroom, but the two share an outdoor kitchen, swapping cooking duties each week.
Other city-dwelling men have modernized polygamy differently, by creating separate households of independent families that share a father.
Even as traditional polygamy declines, it’s still common for men and women to have multiple partners, by either going outside their marriage or divorcing one spouse before marrying another.
Martha Ngum, head of the sociology and anthropology department at the University of Buea in southwest Cameroon, calls the latter trend “serial monogamy.” Women are driving the shift, she says, because they now attend university, work outside the home and are financially independent more than ever before.
But outside Cameroon’s cities, it’s still a man’s decision whether to take more than one wife and a woman’s responsibility to accept his choice.
Decades after accepting their husband’s decision to engage in polygamy, the Ndi Wamba wives now face another duty: providing for their many children without his financial support.
On the few days when the women aren’t cultivating the fields, they earn petty cash selling snacks at local markets. The wives hope their eldest sons, like Benoit, contribute small income. They also look to relatives for help; several of the children already have left the village compound to live with an uncle or grandmother.
For this family, the years ahead will not be easy. But as the Ndi Wamba women often say, “We must endure.”
In modern Cameroon polygamy doesn’t pay
When life is more complex than just fields to tend, a passel of wives is more a financial strain than a status symbol.
By Alexis Grant | Contributor / November 13, 2008 edition
Fongo-Ndeng, Cameroon
Benoit Ndi Wamba didn’t know exactly how many children were in his family. Like most Cameroonians born into large polygamous families, he never had a reason to count.
But with money tight after the death of his father, the 23-year-old was partly responsible for finding money to pay this year’s public school fees for his siblings. So he ticked off their names, one by one. There was lanky Jean, 21. Sylvain, 18, a top student. Janvier, an 11-year-old who wears, in this French-speaking province, a T-shirt that reads “Fabulous.” And Mr. Ndi Wamba himself was entering his first year of university.
Those were just his mother’s children. Then there were his other brothers and sisters, born to his late father’s other three wives. A handful of grandchildren and cousins also lived with the family, complicating the count. All referred to one another as brother and sister, explaining only after much prodding who, as Cameroonians say, has the “same mother, same father.”
Yet one thing was clear: With more than a dozen children who hoped to attend school this year, the Ndi Wamba family faced a pile of fees.
It was a problem Ndi Wamba swore his own children would never face; he would marry just one woman, he said, and have significantly fewer children than his father.
“If it was just my three brothers and me, we would not be having this problem,” Ndi Wamba said sternly, a folder of university enrollment forms tucked under his arm.
An increasing number of men in this central African nation are coming to the same conclusion, rejecting the polygamous lifestyles of their fathers and opting for monogamy instead. With the rising costs of school, healthcare, and food, it’s simply too expensive to have a large family, they say.
• • •
I met the Ndi Wamba family six years ago, when I was a college student studying polygamy. They were supposed to serve as a case study, but instead became my second family during the three weeks I lived with them in the village of Fongo-Ndeng, in western Cameroon.
When I returned this September for a visit, their lives had much changed. Nearly a year after the death of their 78-year-old husband, the four wives still donned all black, mourning not only his spirit but also the loss of his government pension. With the help of friends and family back home, I paid tuition for the women’s children and others who live on the compound, 18 in all.
Again I chatted with the women as they cooked over open fires on the ground in their kitches, alternating among the four dirt-floor houses that, along with their husband’s empty house, created a semicircle around an often-muddy yard. When he was alive, the husband, too, split his time among his wives, spending one night with one woman, the next with another.
Traditionally, polygamy has been a symbol of wealth and status, particularly in rural areas. Village chiefs until recently married as many as 25 women, while other men typically wed between two and eight wives.
The lifestyle has its advantages, mainly the production of a labor force to cultivate fields of corn, beans, and root crops like manioc. But modernity has taken its toll, even on families like the Ndi Wambas who have shunned other changes such as electricity and running water. Crops can feed many mouths, but only hard currency pays school fees, which start in secondary school around the equivalent of $45 annually and mount for higher grades.
“Before, maybe polygamy was good,” explains Charlotte Nguimfack, who has four children with her monogamous husband. “Life wasn’t difficult like it is now.”
While those economic difficulties are driving polygamy’s decline, other factors also are at play, including the spread of Christianity, which prohibits polygamy. And as more women become college-educated, some have begun to demand monogamy.
In the early 1990s, a quarter of married men in Cameroon had more than one wife, according to the country’s National Institute of Statistics. By 2004, just 11 percent were polygamous.
Likewise, the percentage of women who had at least one co-wife dropped to 30 percent in 2004 compared with 39 percent in 1991, institute data show.
Similar decreases are occurring in other countries across central and western Africa, says Savage Njikam, who oversees the University of Douala’s anthropology department.
“The more educated people are, the less likely they are to have the same household as their grandfather,” says Mrs. Njikam, a social anthropologist. “But you still will find educated women who will accept being second wives.”
Monogamous men and women cite another reason to avoid polygamy, one their polygamous counterparts are reluctant to discuss. Some multiwife households suffer from jealousy and conflict.
Sallahou Aboubakar, who grew up in Cameroon’s Muslim north in a two-wife home, says his mother’s disputes with her co-wife influenced him to choose monogamy.
“The wives don’t stay peaceful,” says Mr.. Aboubakar, who lives with his wife and their newborn baby in Yaounde, the capital. “It always causes problems.”
His wife’s aunt, Adamou Patou, overhearing the conversation speaks up to illustrate the point, telling a tale that has her family, all sitting on mats on the floor, roaring with laughter.
When her husband was alive, she says, she and her co-wife fought endlessly, mostly over where the husband would sleep. One morning, after the husband had spent too many nights with Patou, her co-wife entered the bedroom to find the husband freshly showered and back in bed. She threw a bucket of charcoal dust into the room, covering the bed and her husband in gray powder.
Despite such stories, some young Cameroonians continue to keep polygamy alive. Bertrand Folepe, who married his girlfriend when she became pregnant six years ago, took a second wife two years later at the urging of his parents. His father, who had eight wives, wanted him to marry a woman from his village.
Mr. Folepe didn’t protest; he is proud to carry on the tradition. On display in his family’s sitting room, which he shares with both wives, are portraits of each couple, side by side.
“If in the future I have a lot of money, I’ll take more [wives],” says Folepe, who makes a living selling small livestock.
Folepe, who lives with his wives and seven children in the small city of Dschang, has urbanized the polygamous lifestyle. Instead of dwelling in separate, adjacent homes like his family in the village where he grew up, his entire family shares one house. Each wife has her own bedroom, but the two share an outdoor kitchen, swapping cooking duties each week.
Other city-dwelling men have modernized polygamy differently, by creating separate households of independent families that share a father.
Even as traditional polygamy declines, it’s still common for men and women to have multiple partners, by either going outside their marriage or divorcing one spouse before marrying another.
Martha Ngum, head of the sociology and anthropology department at the University of Buea in southwest Cameroon, calls the latter trend “serial monogamy.” Women are driving the shift, she says, because they now attend university, work outside the home and are financially independent more than ever before.
But outside Cameroon’s cities, it’s still a man’s decision whether to take more than one wife and a woman’s responsibility to accept his choice.
Decades after accepting their husband’s decision to engage in polygamy, the Ndi Wamba wives now face another duty: providing for their many children without his financial support.
On the few days when the women aren’t cultivating the fields, they earn petty cash selling snacks at local markets. The wives hope their eldest sons, like Benoit, contribute small income. They also look to relatives for help; several of the children already have left the village compound to live with an uncle or grandmother.
For this family, the years ahead will not be easy. But as the Ndi Wamba women often say, “We must endure.”
Sunday, November 09, 2008
Don't let them eat cake, Saudi cleric says: Birthdays in Saudi Arabia
LAT
Don't let them eat cake, Saudi cleric says
Birthday celebrations are banned as un-Islamic. But that doesn't stop people from throwing parties.
The Associated Press
November 9, 2008
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia — When Hala Masaad invited her girlfriends over to celebrate her 18th birthday with cake and juice, the high school student was stepping into an unusual public debate. Is celebrating birthdays un-Islamic?
Saudi Arabia's most senior Muslim cleric recently denounced birthday parties as an unwanted foreign influence, but another prominent cleric declared they were OK.
That has left Masaad with mixed feelings about her low-key celebration last month. She loves birthday parties, she says, because they make her feel that she has "moved from one stage of life to another."
"But I sometimes feel I'm doing something haram," she said sheepishly, using the Arabic word for "banned."
The Saudi ban on birthdays is in line with the strict interpretation of Islam followed by the conservative Wahhabi sect adhered to in the kingdom. All Christian and even most Muslim feasts are also prohibited because they are considered alien customs the Saudi clerics don't sanction.
Only the Muslim feasts of Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan, and Eid al-Adha, which follows the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, are permitted.
Elsewhere in the Muslim world, including in Egypt, Dubai, Lebanon and Iran, people routinely celebrate birthdays, especially for children. Among middle-class and affluent families, parties can be elaborate, with cakes, toys, clowns, ponies and many presents. In Egypt, the prophet Muhammad's birthday is celebrated by handing out special sweets -- in the shape of a doll for girls and a horse for boys.
Even in Saudi Arabia, it's not hard to find Saudis who celebrate birthdays or stores that cater to putting on parties, despite the ban.
What makes the latest controversy notable is that it started when a prominent cleric, Salman Awdah, said on a popular satellite TV program in August that it was OK to mark birthdays and wedding anniversaries with parties as long as the Arabic word that describes the events -- eid, or "feast" -- is not used.
That prompted a quick denunciation by Saudi Arabia's grand mufti and top religious authority, Sheik Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah al Sheik, who said such celebrations had no place in Islam and gave a list of foreign customs he suggested were unacceptable.
"Christians have Mother's Day, an eid for trees and an eid for every occasion," said Al Sheik, who also heads the Presidency for Scientific Research and Religious Edicts, speaking to Al Madina newspaper. "And on every birthday, candles are lit and food is given out."
There is no question that the television remarks by Awdah, who is not employed by the country's religious establishment, contradicted several fatwas, or religious edicts, issued by senior Saudi clerics over the years.
One such ruling, by the previous mufti, Sheik Abdul Aziz bin Baz, said Muslims should not emulate the West by celebrating birthdays -- even that of Muhammad, which is marked in most other Middle Eastern countries as a holiday.
"It's not permissible to take part in them," he said. "Birthday parties are an innovation . . . and people are in no need of innovations."
Still, some Saudis welcomed a loosening of the prohibition.
"Allowing such celebrations can be an element that can strengthen ties among people and contribute to an increase in the happy occasions in our society," wrote Ibrahim Dawood in a column in the newspaper Al Eqtisadiah.
Others, including several prominent Muslim scholars, issued statements backing the ban and denouncing Awdah.
Sheik Abdullah Manie, a member of the Council of Senior Scholars, said Awdah's remarks were a "slip of the tongue that he should retract."
"We Muslims should have our identity that sets us apart and makes us proud," he said in a statement.
Some Saudis worry the controversy will be used by conservative members of the religious establishment, including the religious police, as a green light to crack down on all celebrations.
Despite the continuous fatwas against them, it's not hard to find merchandise for celebrating birthdays, anniversaries or even Western holidays like Valentine's Day. But importing the items can be tricky for shop owners.
One store owner said it's hard to say when shipments will be intercepted. A month ago, an order of balloons, hats and banners was confiscated, said the owner, who did not want to be identified.
Still, business was brisk at one gift store recently, where parties might cost from $4,000 to $32,000, depending on the decorations, giveaways and number of guests.
Customers can browse albums of wall decorations, table settings and cakes, and order party bags with coloring books and school supplies.
But one Jidda resident, Riham Ahmed, 20, said she didn't like birthdays. "It's enough to have two eids," said the economics major. "My birthday is a normal day. Even my parents don't congratulate me."
Her sister Arwa agreed.
"I missed my 25th birthday by two days [in August] and only remembered it when I checked the calendar for prayer times," she said. "I don't like it when someone tells me, 'Happy birthday.' It's like a reminder that I'm getting closer to death."
Don't let them eat cake, Saudi cleric says
Birthday celebrations are banned as un-Islamic. But that doesn't stop people from throwing parties.
The Associated Press
November 9, 2008
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia — When Hala Masaad invited her girlfriends over to celebrate her 18th birthday with cake and juice, the high school student was stepping into an unusual public debate. Is celebrating birthdays un-Islamic?
Saudi Arabia's most senior Muslim cleric recently denounced birthday parties as an unwanted foreign influence, but another prominent cleric declared they were OK.
That has left Masaad with mixed feelings about her low-key celebration last month. She loves birthday parties, she says, because they make her feel that she has "moved from one stage of life to another."
"But I sometimes feel I'm doing something haram," she said sheepishly, using the Arabic word for "banned."
The Saudi ban on birthdays is in line with the strict interpretation of Islam followed by the conservative Wahhabi sect adhered to in the kingdom. All Christian and even most Muslim feasts are also prohibited because they are considered alien customs the Saudi clerics don't sanction.
Only the Muslim feasts of Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan, and Eid al-Adha, which follows the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, are permitted.
Elsewhere in the Muslim world, including in Egypt, Dubai, Lebanon and Iran, people routinely celebrate birthdays, especially for children. Among middle-class and affluent families, parties can be elaborate, with cakes, toys, clowns, ponies and many presents. In Egypt, the prophet Muhammad's birthday is celebrated by handing out special sweets -- in the shape of a doll for girls and a horse for boys.
Even in Saudi Arabia, it's not hard to find Saudis who celebrate birthdays or stores that cater to putting on parties, despite the ban.
What makes the latest controversy notable is that it started when a prominent cleric, Salman Awdah, said on a popular satellite TV program in August that it was OK to mark birthdays and wedding anniversaries with parties as long as the Arabic word that describes the events -- eid, or "feast" -- is not used.
That prompted a quick denunciation by Saudi Arabia's grand mufti and top religious authority, Sheik Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah al Sheik, who said such celebrations had no place in Islam and gave a list of foreign customs he suggested were unacceptable.
"Christians have Mother's Day, an eid for trees and an eid for every occasion," said Al Sheik, who also heads the Presidency for Scientific Research and Religious Edicts, speaking to Al Madina newspaper. "And on every birthday, candles are lit and food is given out."
There is no question that the television remarks by Awdah, who is not employed by the country's religious establishment, contradicted several fatwas, or religious edicts, issued by senior Saudi clerics over the years.
One such ruling, by the previous mufti, Sheik Abdul Aziz bin Baz, said Muslims should not emulate the West by celebrating birthdays -- even that of Muhammad, which is marked in most other Middle Eastern countries as a holiday.
"It's not permissible to take part in them," he said. "Birthday parties are an innovation . . . and people are in no need of innovations."
Still, some Saudis welcomed a loosening of the prohibition.
"Allowing such celebrations can be an element that can strengthen ties among people and contribute to an increase in the happy occasions in our society," wrote Ibrahim Dawood in a column in the newspaper Al Eqtisadiah.
Others, including several prominent Muslim scholars, issued statements backing the ban and denouncing Awdah.
Sheik Abdullah Manie, a member of the Council of Senior Scholars, said Awdah's remarks were a "slip of the tongue that he should retract."
"We Muslims should have our identity that sets us apart and makes us proud," he said in a statement.
Some Saudis worry the controversy will be used by conservative members of the religious establishment, including the religious police, as a green light to crack down on all celebrations.
Despite the continuous fatwas against them, it's not hard to find merchandise for celebrating birthdays, anniversaries or even Western holidays like Valentine's Day. But importing the items can be tricky for shop owners.
One store owner said it's hard to say when shipments will be intercepted. A month ago, an order of balloons, hats and banners was confiscated, said the owner, who did not want to be identified.
Still, business was brisk at one gift store recently, where parties might cost from $4,000 to $32,000, depending on the decorations, giveaways and number of guests.
Customers can browse albums of wall decorations, table settings and cakes, and order party bags with coloring books and school supplies.
But one Jidda resident, Riham Ahmed, 20, said she didn't like birthdays. "It's enough to have two eids," said the economics major. "My birthday is a normal day. Even my parents don't congratulate me."
Her sister Arwa agreed.
"I missed my 25th birthday by two days [in August] and only remembered it when I checked the calendar for prayer times," she said. "I don't like it when someone tells me, 'Happy birthday.' It's like a reminder that I'm getting closer to death."
"The Singing Revolution": How Estonians sang their way to freedom
CS Monitor
How Estonians sang their way to freedom
A new documentary tells story of how the national tradition of singing helped unite the masses against the Soviet occupation.
By Gloria Goodale | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the October 24, 2008 edition
Walk around the verdant green amphitheater known as the Lauluvaljak, or song ground, here on the outskirts of Tallin, Estonia, and it's easy to imagine the air alive with music, reverberating up the grassy slopes from the half-domed, vaulted stage at the bottom of this natural theatrical setting.
But to grasp what it feels like to be amid an audience 300,000-strong, singing in Von Trapp family-like harmony with sub rosa political purpose, you'll just have to pick up the DVD of "The Singing Revolution," a passion project by documentarians Jim and Maureen Tusty. Released this week, it is the story of how a tiny country (population: 1 million) with a 5,000-year-old culture, perched on the western edge of the Russian giant, used its tradition of song to finally free itself of foreign occupation, in this case the Soviet state, in 1991.
This tale of how peaceful crowds managed to fend off Soviet tanks as they attempted to take over the local television station is operatic in its drama, says the married couple. "This is the story of the power of nonviolent resistance to succeed where guns and rock-throwing would have resulted in death and more political oppression," says Jim Tusty. The nation was trying to throw off the Soviet yoke, which ensnared it in 1939, when Hitler and Stalin secretly signed a pact to divide up the Baltic countries. But, says Jim Tusty, it is also the story of a relationship between art and politics.
"We wanted to tell this remarkable story ... before the generation that lived it is no longer around," he says. He adds that a number of the older Estonians he interviewed say they are grateful to have the narrative preserved. They see that the next generation – a global, externally focused cohort in a nation that is now part of the European Union and NATO – has little awareness of the struggles of an earlier generation, he says.
The story began for the filmmakers when they taught a cinema class in Estonia during the summer of 1999 and began to hear about the song festival and the revolution it had inspired. In the festival, founded in 1869 and held every five years, choirs from all over the nation audition to be part of the 20,000 to 30,000-member chorus that takes the stage and leads the huge crowds that attend.
The music is a mix of modern and traditional folk songs, many of which have what the team calls the kind of oral traditions that are full of hidden, deeply patriotic meaning that sustained Estonians through centuries of oppression. As they investigated the festival itself, they discovered the role that the traditional songs played during the critical years leading up to the fall of the Soviet Union, 1987 through 1991. Rather than engage the Soviets directly, as Hungary, Latvia, and Lithuania did, all with disastrous results, the various political groups united in song.
"They never wanted to give the Soviets a reason to arrest or hurt anyone," says Maureen Tusty. Paraphrasing one of the Estonians who survived the brutal years of Soviet gulags, her husband adds, "Art used to be serious when real political participation was not possible," but now, with meaningful political activity allowed, the arts have become trivial and the next generation is not interested in the power of this culture to make a difference.
Beyond that, the filmmakers say the film has a role to play in a world that is getting increasingly violent, particularly a Russia with more aggressive foreign policies. They have assembled a three-disc educational DVD version (available at www.singingrevolution.com), complete with maps and historical data. But, Jim Tusty hastens to add, they are not advocacy filmmakers. "We just believe in this story, which has its own message."
• Los Angeles-based writer Gloria Goodale toured the Tallinn festival grounds in 2007.
How Estonians sang their way to freedom
A new documentary tells story of how the national tradition of singing helped unite the masses against the Soviet occupation.
By Gloria Goodale | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the October 24, 2008 edition
Walk around the verdant green amphitheater known as the Lauluvaljak, or song ground, here on the outskirts of Tallin, Estonia, and it's easy to imagine the air alive with music, reverberating up the grassy slopes from the half-domed, vaulted stage at the bottom of this natural theatrical setting.
But to grasp what it feels like to be amid an audience 300,000-strong, singing in Von Trapp family-like harmony with sub rosa political purpose, you'll just have to pick up the DVD of "The Singing Revolution," a passion project by documentarians Jim and Maureen Tusty. Released this week, it is the story of how a tiny country (population: 1 million) with a 5,000-year-old culture, perched on the western edge of the Russian giant, used its tradition of song to finally free itself of foreign occupation, in this case the Soviet state, in 1991.
This tale of how peaceful crowds managed to fend off Soviet tanks as they attempted to take over the local television station is operatic in its drama, says the married couple. "This is the story of the power of nonviolent resistance to succeed where guns and rock-throwing would have resulted in death and more political oppression," says Jim Tusty. The nation was trying to throw off the Soviet yoke, which ensnared it in 1939, when Hitler and Stalin secretly signed a pact to divide up the Baltic countries. But, says Jim Tusty, it is also the story of a relationship between art and politics.
"We wanted to tell this remarkable story ... before the generation that lived it is no longer around," he says. He adds that a number of the older Estonians he interviewed say they are grateful to have the narrative preserved. They see that the next generation – a global, externally focused cohort in a nation that is now part of the European Union and NATO – has little awareness of the struggles of an earlier generation, he says.
The story began for the filmmakers when they taught a cinema class in Estonia during the summer of 1999 and began to hear about the song festival and the revolution it had inspired. In the festival, founded in 1869 and held every five years, choirs from all over the nation audition to be part of the 20,000 to 30,000-member chorus that takes the stage and leads the huge crowds that attend.
The music is a mix of modern and traditional folk songs, many of which have what the team calls the kind of oral traditions that are full of hidden, deeply patriotic meaning that sustained Estonians through centuries of oppression. As they investigated the festival itself, they discovered the role that the traditional songs played during the critical years leading up to the fall of the Soviet Union, 1987 through 1991. Rather than engage the Soviets directly, as Hungary, Latvia, and Lithuania did, all with disastrous results, the various political groups united in song.
"They never wanted to give the Soviets a reason to arrest or hurt anyone," says Maureen Tusty. Paraphrasing one of the Estonians who survived the brutal years of Soviet gulags, her husband adds, "Art used to be serious when real political participation was not possible," but now, with meaningful political activity allowed, the arts have become trivial and the next generation is not interested in the power of this culture to make a difference.
Beyond that, the filmmakers say the film has a role to play in a world that is getting increasingly violent, particularly a Russia with more aggressive foreign policies. They have assembled a three-disc educational DVD version (available at www.singingrevolution.com), complete with maps and historical data. But, Jim Tusty hastens to add, they are not advocacy filmmakers. "We just believe in this story, which has its own message."
• Los Angeles-based writer Gloria Goodale toured the Tallinn festival grounds in 2007.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Saudi Women Find an Unlikely Role Model: Oprah
NYT
September 19, 2008
Dammam Journal
Saudi Women Find an Unlikely Role Model: Oprah
By KATHERINE ZOEPF
DAMMAM, Saudi Arabia—Once a month, Nayla says, she writes a letter to Oprah Winfrey.
A young Saudi homemaker who covers her face in public might not seem to have much in common with an American talk show host whose image is known to millions. Like many women in this conservative desert kingdom, Nayla does not usually socialize with people outside her extended family, and she never leaves her house unless chaperoned by her husband.
Ms. Winfrey has not answered the letters. But Nayla says she is still hoping.
“I feel that Oprah truly understands me,” said Nayla, who, like many of the women interviewed, would not let her full name be used. “She gives me energy and hope for my life. Sometimes I think that she is the only person in the world who knows how I feel.”
Nayla is not the only Saudi woman to feel a special connection to the American media mogul. When “The Oprah Winfrey Show” was first broadcast in Saudi Arabia in November 2004 on a Dubai-based satellite channel, it became an immediate sensation among young Saudi women. Within months, it had become the highest-rated English-language program among women 25 and younger, an age group that makes up about a third of Saudi Arabia’s population.
In a country where the sexes are rigorously separated, where topics like sex and race are rarely discussed openly and where a strict code of public morality is enforced by religious police called hai’a, Ms. Winfrey provides many young Saudi women with new ways of thinking about the way local taboos affect their lives — as well as about a variety of issues including childhood sexual abuse and coping with marital strife — without striking them, or Saudi Arabia’s ruling authorities, as subversive.
Some women here say Ms. Winfrey’s assurances to her viewers — that no matter how restricted or even abusive their circumstances may be, they can take control in small ways and create lives of value — help them find meaning in their cramped, veiled existence.
“Oprah dresses conservatively,” explained Princess Reema bint Bandar al-Saud, a co-owner of a women’s spa in Riyadh called Yibreen and a daughter of Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the former Saudi ambassador to the United States. “She struggles with her weight. She overcame depression. She rose from poverty and from abuse. On all these levels she appeals to a Saudi woman. People really idolize her here.”
Today, “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” with Arabic subtitles, is broadcast twice each weekday on MBC4, a three-year-old channel developed by the MBC Group with the Arab woman in mind. The show’s guests, self-improvement tips, and advice on family relationships — as well as Ms. Winfrey’s clothes and changing hairstyles — are eagerly analyzed by Saudi women from a wide range of social backgrounds and income levels.
The largest-circulation Saudi women’s magazine, Sayidaty, devotes a regular page to Ms. Winfrey, and dog-eared copies of her official magazine, O, which is not sold in the kingdom, are passed around by women who collect them during trips abroad.
The particulars of Ms. Winfrey’s personal story have resonated with a broad audience of Saudi women in a way that few other Western imports have, explained Mazen Hayek, a spokesman for the MBC Group.
Saudi Arabia was an impoverished desert country before it was transformed by oil money and, in just a couple of generations, into a wealthy consumer society. Saudi women readily identify with “this glamorous woman from very modest beginnings,” Mr. Hayek said, in a phone interview from Dubai.
Maha al-Faleh, 23, of Riyadh, said, “Oprah talks about issues that haven’t really been spoken about here openly before.
“She talks about racism, for example,” she said. “This is something that Saudis are very concerned about, because many of us feel that we’re judged for the way we veil or for our skin color. I have a friend whose driver touched her in an inappropriate way. She was very young at the time, but she felt very guilty about it — and Oprah helped her to speak about this abuse with her mother.”
MBC edits some “Oprah” episodes to remove content banned by censors in the region, officials at the channel say. It does not broadcast segments on homosexuality, for example. But the officials say they make most episodes available to their regional viewers uncensored, including some about relations between Arabs and Westerners and about living with the threat of Islamic terrorism.
Saudi women say they are drawn to Ms. Winfrey not only because she openly addresses subjects considered taboo locally, but also because she speaks of self-empowerment and change.
Wafa Muhammad, 38, a mother of five from Riyadh, said she believed that, in their adoration of Ms. Winfrey, Saudi women are expressing a hesitant sense of longing for real change in their country.
“Many of us feel that the solutions for our problems have to come from outside,” Ms. Muhammad said. When President Bush visited Saudi Arabia in January, she continued, as an example, his presence briefly became a locus of hope for Saudi women. “A lot of women were saying that they wished they could talk to Bush about problems like forced marriage, about how our children are taken away if our husbands divorce us.”
In a country where women are forbidden to vote, or to travel without the permission of a male guardian, a sense of powerlessness can lead women to look for unlikely sources of rescue, Ms. Muhammad explained. “If women here have problems with their fathers or their brothers, what can they do but look to Oprah?” she asked. “The idea that she will come and help them is a dream for them.”
Nayla, the homemaker in Dammam, a Persian Gulf port city, says Ms. Winfrey helps her cope with a society that does not encourage her to have interests. “The life of a woman here in Saudi — it makes you tired and it makes you boring,” she said, sighing.
Like many Saudi women, Nayla struggles with obesity, a major issue in the kingdom because many women are largely confined to their homes and local custom often prevents them from participating in sports or even walking around their neighborhoods.
She says that Ms. Winfrey has inspired her to lose weight and to pursue her education through an online degree course, a method acceptable to her husband since she will not have to leave home.
As she spoke, Nayla sat on the floor of the women’s sitting room of her mother-in-law’s house. A battered wooden bureau, its top littered with hairbrushes, plastic figurines, and perfume bottles, was the only piece of furniture.
Several female relatives sat with Nayla, and the door was kept slightly ajar so that their small children, chasing one another in the hall outside, could enter. But at the sound of heavier, male footfalls approaching, the women all jumped to their feet and scurried to hide their faces behind the bureau. It would be shameful if a brother-in-law accidentally caught a glimpse of their uncovered faces, Nayla explained.
“Oprah is the magic word for women here who want to scream out loud, who want to be heard,” Ms. Muhammad said. “Look at what happened to the girl from Qatif,” she said, referring to the infamous case of a young woman who was gang-raped, then sentenced to flogging because she had been in a car with an unrelated man.
The young woman from Qatif received a royal pardon last year after her case became an international media cause célèbre.
“The Qatif girl was heard outside the country, and she was helped,” Ms. Muhammad said. “But we need to have Saudi women who help women here. We need to have women social workers, women judges.”
“We have a very male-dominated society, and it’s very hard sometimes,” Ms. Muhammad said. “But for now I have my coffee, and sit, and I watch Oprah.
It’s my favorite time of day.”
September 19, 2008
Dammam Journal
Saudi Women Find an Unlikely Role Model: Oprah
By KATHERINE ZOEPF
DAMMAM, Saudi Arabia—Once a month, Nayla says, she writes a letter to Oprah Winfrey.
A young Saudi homemaker who covers her face in public might not seem to have much in common with an American talk show host whose image is known to millions. Like many women in this conservative desert kingdom, Nayla does not usually socialize with people outside her extended family, and she never leaves her house unless chaperoned by her husband.
Ms. Winfrey has not answered the letters. But Nayla says she is still hoping.
“I feel that Oprah truly understands me,” said Nayla, who, like many of the women interviewed, would not let her full name be used. “She gives me energy and hope for my life. Sometimes I think that she is the only person in the world who knows how I feel.”
Nayla is not the only Saudi woman to feel a special connection to the American media mogul. When “The Oprah Winfrey Show” was first broadcast in Saudi Arabia in November 2004 on a Dubai-based satellite channel, it became an immediate sensation among young Saudi women. Within months, it had become the highest-rated English-language program among women 25 and younger, an age group that makes up about a third of Saudi Arabia’s population.
In a country where the sexes are rigorously separated, where topics like sex and race are rarely discussed openly and where a strict code of public morality is enforced by religious police called hai’a, Ms. Winfrey provides many young Saudi women with new ways of thinking about the way local taboos affect their lives — as well as about a variety of issues including childhood sexual abuse and coping with marital strife — without striking them, or Saudi Arabia’s ruling authorities, as subversive.
Some women here say Ms. Winfrey’s assurances to her viewers — that no matter how restricted or even abusive their circumstances may be, they can take control in small ways and create lives of value — help them find meaning in their cramped, veiled existence.
“Oprah dresses conservatively,” explained Princess Reema bint Bandar al-Saud, a co-owner of a women’s spa in Riyadh called Yibreen and a daughter of Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the former Saudi ambassador to the United States. “She struggles with her weight. She overcame depression. She rose from poverty and from abuse. On all these levels she appeals to a Saudi woman. People really idolize her here.”
Today, “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” with Arabic subtitles, is broadcast twice each weekday on MBC4, a three-year-old channel developed by the MBC Group with the Arab woman in mind. The show’s guests, self-improvement tips, and advice on family relationships — as well as Ms. Winfrey’s clothes and changing hairstyles — are eagerly analyzed by Saudi women from a wide range of social backgrounds and income levels.
The largest-circulation Saudi women’s magazine, Sayidaty, devotes a regular page to Ms. Winfrey, and dog-eared copies of her official magazine, O, which is not sold in the kingdom, are passed around by women who collect them during trips abroad.
The particulars of Ms. Winfrey’s personal story have resonated with a broad audience of Saudi women in a way that few other Western imports have, explained Mazen Hayek, a spokesman for the MBC Group.
Saudi Arabia was an impoverished desert country before it was transformed by oil money and, in just a couple of generations, into a wealthy consumer society. Saudi women readily identify with “this glamorous woman from very modest beginnings,” Mr. Hayek said, in a phone interview from Dubai.
Maha al-Faleh, 23, of Riyadh, said, “Oprah talks about issues that haven’t really been spoken about here openly before.
“She talks about racism, for example,” she said. “This is something that Saudis are very concerned about, because many of us feel that we’re judged for the way we veil or for our skin color. I have a friend whose driver touched her in an inappropriate way. She was very young at the time, but she felt very guilty about it — and Oprah helped her to speak about this abuse with her mother.”
MBC edits some “Oprah” episodes to remove content banned by censors in the region, officials at the channel say. It does not broadcast segments on homosexuality, for example. But the officials say they make most episodes available to their regional viewers uncensored, including some about relations between Arabs and Westerners and about living with the threat of Islamic terrorism.
Saudi women say they are drawn to Ms. Winfrey not only because she openly addresses subjects considered taboo locally, but also because she speaks of self-empowerment and change.
Wafa Muhammad, 38, a mother of five from Riyadh, said she believed that, in their adoration of Ms. Winfrey, Saudi women are expressing a hesitant sense of longing for real change in their country.
“Many of us feel that the solutions for our problems have to come from outside,” Ms. Muhammad said. When President Bush visited Saudi Arabia in January, she continued, as an example, his presence briefly became a locus of hope for Saudi women. “A lot of women were saying that they wished they could talk to Bush about problems like forced marriage, about how our children are taken away if our husbands divorce us.”
In a country where women are forbidden to vote, or to travel without the permission of a male guardian, a sense of powerlessness can lead women to look for unlikely sources of rescue, Ms. Muhammad explained. “If women here have problems with their fathers or their brothers, what can they do but look to Oprah?” she asked. “The idea that she will come and help them is a dream for them.”
Nayla, the homemaker in Dammam, a Persian Gulf port city, says Ms. Winfrey helps her cope with a society that does not encourage her to have interests. “The life of a woman here in Saudi — it makes you tired and it makes you boring,” she said, sighing.
Like many Saudi women, Nayla struggles with obesity, a major issue in the kingdom because many women are largely confined to their homes and local custom often prevents them from participating in sports or even walking around their neighborhoods.
She says that Ms. Winfrey has inspired her to lose weight and to pursue her education through an online degree course, a method acceptable to her husband since she will not have to leave home.
As she spoke, Nayla sat on the floor of the women’s sitting room of her mother-in-law’s house. A battered wooden bureau, its top littered with hairbrushes, plastic figurines, and perfume bottles, was the only piece of furniture.
Several female relatives sat with Nayla, and the door was kept slightly ajar so that their small children, chasing one another in the hall outside, could enter. But at the sound of heavier, male footfalls approaching, the women all jumped to their feet and scurried to hide their faces behind the bureau. It would be shameful if a brother-in-law accidentally caught a glimpse of their uncovered faces, Nayla explained.
“Oprah is the magic word for women here who want to scream out loud, who want to be heard,” Ms. Muhammad said. “Look at what happened to the girl from Qatif,” she said, referring to the infamous case of a young woman who was gang-raped, then sentenced to flogging because she had been in a car with an unrelated man.
The young woman from Qatif received a royal pardon last year after her case became an international media cause célèbre.
“The Qatif girl was heard outside the country, and she was helped,” Ms. Muhammad said. “But we need to have Saudi women who help women here. We need to have women social workers, women judges.”
“We have a very male-dominated society, and it’s very hard sometimes,” Ms. Muhammad said. “But for now I have my coffee, and sit, and I watch Oprah.
It’s my favorite time of day.”
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
The Torajans of Sulawesi (Indonesia) live to die
LA Times
The Torajans of Sulawesi live to die
After decades of planning for their funerals, the dead wait months, even years, for their last rites while relatives negotiate arrangements for the perfect send-off.
By Paul Watson
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
6:44 PM PDT, August 13, 2008
BUNTU KALANDO, INDONESIA — The last king of Toraja was 93 when he took his final breath in July 2003. Five years later, he's still part of the family, quietly residing in a small room in his former palace, shaded by two red parasols decorated with colored beads and gold fringe.
By Torajan tradition, he isn't really dead. He's just sick. The late monarch won't be gone for good until he has been laid to rest with traditional rites featuring the slaughter of scores of water buffaloes, at least one of them a rare spotted specimen.
The unhurried passage from this world to the next isn't reserved for former rulers. It is central to the culture of Torajans, an ethnic group in southern Sulawesi island whose customs are a hybrid of ancient tribal traditions and Protestant Christianity.
The dead wait months, even years, for their last rites while relatives negotiate funeral arrangements, everything from the right timing to allow mourners to travel long distances, to where they will stay and who will feed them.
Corpses used to be dried with herbal elixirs and smoldering fires, but the old ways have largely died out, replaced by washtub embalming fluid made with formaldehyde.
A village mortician schooled in the old ways gave the late king's body the royal treatment with natural preservatives. It took more than 320 yards of cloth to wrap his mummy, a simple task compared with the long negotiations and complex preparations for his funeral.
"Torajans are very sensitive about this because the funeral is our last honor," said Eddy Sambolinggi, the youngest son of the last king, Puang Sambolinggi. "Everything has to be carefully planned."
In many ways, Torajans spend a lifetime preparing for their demise, saving for the essentials, such as their burial clothes and bamboo shelters for guests. They also have to budget for funeral donations to other families, while pampering and fattening up water buffaloes for sacrifice.
"Torajans," Sambolinggi, 56, said cheerfully, "they live to die."
It has taken his family five years to agree on a send-off befitting Puang Sambolinggi, which is now planned for October. The farewell is shaping up to be the last grand funeral in Torajan history, the final chapter of a royal history that dates back centuries.
Sambolinggi's reign saw the death of an ancient dynasty in Tana Toraja, or the Land of Toraja. He held the throne for only a year until, just days after Japan surrendered in August 1945, Indonesia declared independence from the Dutch and abolished tribal monarchies. But tribal tradition lives on.
Anthropologists believe Torajans are descended from voyagers who sailed from southern China as early as 3,000 BC. Though Christianity and the modern world have worn away at tradition, ancient beliefs called aluk to dolo, or the way of the ancestors, still guide many Torajans, especially when someone dies.
Legend says the design of their homes, called tongkonan, came from heaven. The wood-framed buildings face north, toward the land of the creator. The dead are always placed in a room at the back so they can face south, where the ancestors live in heaven.
The houses' bamboo roofs are shaped like boats, with a high bow and stern, which some believe honor the vessels their ancestors sailed to Sulawesi. The homes' central pillars are decorated with a row of horns from water buffaloes slaughtered at family funerals.
A good buffalo is a Torajan status symbol, and people go through life pleased that their burials won't be rushed, leaving mourners time to find the cash for fine specimens to slaughter. The donations required for a royal funeral give Torajans more than the usual pause.
"We have to wait until the whole family is ready," Sambolinggi said. "For instance, there's me and my siblings. Perhaps I am able to contribute a number of buffaloes, while my siblings still have to wait and save some money. We all have to agree, because for this funeral the number we're talking about isn't small."
Up to 80 buffaloes will be sacrificed in front of tens of thousands of mourners. Just counting relatives, Sambolinggi said, there will be 100,000 guests, many of whom will journey hundreds of miles.
Family members have also dickered over whether the body will be buried next to the late king's father or mother, Sambolinggi added.
Until the plans are settled, and relatives bid their final farewells, the late king, wrapped in cloth and encased in a wooden coffin, lies in repose just up the stairs from his youngest son's private museum of old spears, beaded dresses and other tribal artifacts. Sambolinggi regularly talks to his father, not in a way anyone else could hear, he said, but silently, from his heart.
"For the past five years, he's been with us, sleeping upstairs," Sambolinggi said. "We still prepare his place at the dining table. And for instance, if we go to the capital city, we have a big feast, and we save some for him."
When the king died, in the normal sense of the word, his son called in an undertaker to make a mummy of him the old-fashioned way, without embalming fluid.
The mortician died soon after, taking some of the secrets of Torajan mummification to his grave. But Sambolinggi watched him closely at work, and his memory preserves a vivid remnant of a centuries-old ritual.
His father's corpse was cleansed with tea mixed with warm water and soap chopped into little pieces. Then the mortician poured about three bottles of vinegar, a little at a time, down the late king's throat.
A small rope, used to tie a water buffalo by the nose, was retrieved from the ground where it had fallen in the animal's pen, cut into pieces and sprinkled on the body so that the tether could go with him to heaven. Then the corpse was wrapped in cloth, tightly bound in three places with coconut fronds.
"After that, there was a little magic," Sambolinggi said. "The man who performed the ritual put a black stone pot, like a cooking pot, in the corner of the room. He told us not to touch it, and warned that if we did, the body would be damaged."
A week later, Sambolinggi smelled a foul odor, which he suspected was wafting from his father's body. He quickly summoned the undertaker.
"He checked and said that it was not the body that smelled bad, but there were many other dead persons' spirits around," Sambolinggi recalled. "He asked me if I'd heard any banging sounds on the door lately, and I said yes. "
Spirits had come knocking, the mortician said, and his magic chased them off. The smell, and apparently the ghosts, never came back. Any lingering doubts Sambolinggi had about the wisdom of Torajan tradition vanished with them.
His father's remains probably will be sealed in a royal tomb carved out of the nearby Suaya cliff, where his brother-in-law's coffin was laid to rest July 15, just as dozens of royals have been through the centuries, including the late king's ancestors.
Like wide-eyed marionettes gathering dust on a puppeteer's shelf, life-size wooden dolls representing the dead stare down from balconies outside their tombs. Relatives look up to greet them when they bring offerings, such as cigarettes, palm wine or bottled water, that they carefully set on small tables at the bottom of the cliff.
Because Torajans take their obligations to the dead so seriously, parents who can't afford to donate a pig, let alone a buffalo, for sacrifice at a funeral often pledge a kind of IOU, which their children must fulfill to maintain the family honor.
With the funeral season running from June to October, the driest months of the year, sacrificial debts can quickly add up. An ordinary black water buffalo costs at least $5,500, a heavy price for Torajans, most of whom are rice farmers. (A shortage of the finest spotted buffaloes has driven the price up 25% over last year, to almost $14,000.)
And then there are taxes they must pay on each head of livestock delivered for sacrifice: $16 for a buffalo, $9 for a pig. Custom demands a minimum of six buffaloes be slaughtered at each funeral, but competition for status usually pushes the number higher.
Funerals have become so expensive that many young Torajans are moving away to cities, or even other countries such as Malaysia, in search of better jobs so they can keep up with the demands as relatives die. An estimated 450,000 people live in Tana Toraja, and 200,000 others have left the region.
A Torajan funeral doesn't have to be fit for a king to be costly. More than 7,000 mourners attended a three-day ceremony last month for Augustina Tambing, the wife of a primary school principal. Half a year after her death, they gathered to see her off to heaven with the sacrifice of eight water buffaloes and more than 150 squealing pigs.
Yohanes Rumeri, chief of Buntu Masakke village, sat behind a plywood counter at the entrance to the funeral, with a ledger and a bottle of correction fluid, recording each donor's name, the animal they delivered and the tax they paid.
The money would be shared among the regional government, the local church and the village administration, the chief said.
"Honestly, it is a burden," said Tambing's daughter Yatti Parassa, 45. "But this is our family. We are still close because we've been attending funerals for ages. So we're not going to lose the family ties. Our families live far apart, but for this event, they all come together."
Tambing, 68, died Jan. 13 after 49 years of marriage to her husband, Izak Rigu Parassa. She bore him seven children, who watched along with 20 grandchildren and a great-grandchild as butchers led buffaloes by their tethers into the funeral, and with a theatrical slash of a long knife, slit each animal's throat.
Just across from the skinned carcasses lying in coagulating pools of blood, Tambing's family formed a choir. As a gentle rain fell, they wept and sang, "Jesus comes into the world, Jesus comes to help the sick."
Her 71-year-old husband sat nearby, pinching the bridge of his nose in silent prayer, exhausted after a long goodbye to the love of his life. He took comfort in the thought that she was still with him, watching her own funeral.
"I think she is pleased," he said, with a broad, toothless smile.
paul.watson@latimes.com
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Soap Opera Upends Traditional Arab Gender Roles
MSNBC Worldblog
SOAP OPERA UPENDS TRADITIONAL ARAB GENDER ROLES
Posted: Thursday, July 31, 2008 9:48 AM
Filed Under: Cairo, Egypt
By Charlene Gubash, NBC News Producer
CAIRO, Egypt – A relative newcomer to Arab TV, the Turkish soap opera "Noor" has helped narrow the gender gap between men and women across the Middle East.
Women see the lead female character – the independent, aspiring fashion designer Noor -- as a role model. Meantime, her husband on the show -- the blue-eyed former model and athlete Mohannad -- has become the region’s first pin-up boy.
The nightly soap opera has mainly female viewers glued to their TV sets not only because Mohannad is a cuter version of Justin Timberlake, but because he offers something many lack in their lives: romance, tenderness and a supportive partner to his independent wife. Mohannad has become the standard against which many Arab men are being judged, much to their chagrin.
Too much to live up to
According to Arab newspapers, marriages in Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia have dissolved because wives insisted on putting Mohannad's picture on their mobile phone display, or on their bedroom wall. In Bahrain, a woman allegedly begged her husband to have plastic surgery to look like the actor. Another recent divorcee allegedly told her husband "I want to sleep with Mohannad one night and then die."
In Saudi Arabia, where about one in seven people tunes in each night, men circulated the rumor that Kivanc Tatlitug, the actor who plays Mohannad, is gay, which left female viewers distraught until the rumor was dispelled.
Saudi society abounds with Mohannad jokes such as this one: A Saudi woman was touring Turkey with her husband and son when her husband went missing. As she described him to the police, her son shouted, "But that's not what Daddy looks like." "Be quiet," she whispers, "They might just give me Mohannad."
"Mohannad" and "Noor" are now the hottest babies' names in Saudi – even though the religious establishment has condemned the show. A top Saudi cleric forbade viewers from watching the "malicious" soap operas that "corrupt and spread vice" and has also declared that any TV station airing them is against God. This has put Saudi-owned Middle East Broadcasting Company (MBC), which airs the show three times a day, at loggerheads with Saudi religious leaders.
Saudi clerics may have an uphill battle: The Turkish serial has so wooed Saudis with its scenic backdrops of the Bosporus, and green, clean vistas of Istanbul that Turkish tourism officials say it has caused Saudi tourism to the country to more than double.
The series has not only made Saudi women aware of the failings of their partners, but the advantages engendered by a more liberal, tolerant Islamic society such as Turkey.
"It is eye opening for Saudi women. They haven't seen such a sensitive, passionate, giving personality," explained Dr. Fawzaya Abu Khalid, a writer and women's activist based in Riyadh.
For many women, the show has opened a whole new world and a lot of men aren’t happy about it. "Men feel threatened. It is the first time women have a role model for male beauty and passion and can compare him with their husbands," said Abu Khalid. "It is the first time they found out their husbands are not nice, that they are not being treated the way they should be, and that there is an option outside."
Glued to TV across the region
Filled with scheming relatives, corny romantic scenes, melodramatic acting and amateurish effects, the sequence bombed in its native Turkey, but found new life among Arab women of all ages from Riyadh to the West Bank, when MBC began airing a dubbed Arabic version four months ago.
Reem, a young Saudi businesswoman who prefers to use her first name only, was introduced to the show by her nieces, ages seven and eight. Reem explained the show’s allure. "Romance is not here, living in a dry desert. Saudi women are missing something in their lives, in the treatment in the family, the wife with her husband and the husband with his wife. What I see from my female customers is that they are attracted by the love and romance and the way the man is treating the woman."
And in east Jerusalem, every night at 10 p.m., the streets are suddenly empty – everyone is glued to the TV watching "Noor" there, too.
Bakiza, the matriarch of a large household in Jerusalem’s Old City, surrounds herself every night with her children, grandchildren, nieces, and nephews. They each take something different from the show. "I admire the story of Mohannad and Noor because of what it shows about how a family should be," said Bakiza. "The grandfather, Fikhry, is the one who takes care of the whole family, decides everything, and solves all the problems. Everyone respects him."
Malouk, a 15-year-old niece of Bakiza, has her own reason for watching the show. "I can only watch it because of Mohannad. He is handsome, romantic, and takes care of his wife. In fact, he is better than his wife."
The popularity of the series goes beyond the family room. It is also a business success story in the local communities. Restaurants, coffee shops, and clothing stores, proudly display posters of the couple in their windows to attract business. In Ramallah, nargila cafes (where water pipes are smoked), have their TV sets tuned for the channel of the series, to keep the customers there.
Even small children are onto the show and are making purchases based on the series’ merchandising. Haitham al-Halak, 45, a grocer in the Old City, says, "I was surprised how children from 6 to 15 years old, are buying from me only the potato chips with their pictures on it!" said Haitham al-Halak, 45, a grocer in the Jerusalem’s Old City.
A positive role model for women
To some young women, the aspiring fashion designer Noor, provides a positive female role model and encourages them to raise the bar not only on future spouses but on themselves.
In Cairo, Na'ama Hegazy, a single 25-year-old, watches "Noor" three times a day and says it has influenced the way she sees her future.
"I want a romantic [man] who treats me like how Mohannad treats his wife. Every day he brings her flowers and tells her romantic words," said Hegazy. "The life will be very good when a husband treats his wife [like that]."
But Hegazy also wants to emulate Noor who is a both a good wife and mother, and a self-reliant professional. "When she has troubles with Mohannad, she wants to him to leave her alone. She wants to work and doesn't want anything from him. This means any woman who falls out with her husband can work and depend on herself."
NBC News’ Lawahez Jabari contributed to this report from Jerusalem.
SOAP OPERA UPENDS TRADITIONAL ARAB GENDER ROLES
Posted: Thursday, July 31, 2008 9:48 AM
Filed Under: Cairo, Egypt
By Charlene Gubash, NBC News Producer
CAIRO, Egypt – A relative newcomer to Arab TV, the Turkish soap opera "Noor" has helped narrow the gender gap between men and women across the Middle East.
Women see the lead female character – the independent, aspiring fashion designer Noor -- as a role model. Meantime, her husband on the show -- the blue-eyed former model and athlete Mohannad -- has become the region’s first pin-up boy.
The nightly soap opera has mainly female viewers glued to their TV sets not only because Mohannad is a cuter version of Justin Timberlake, but because he offers something many lack in their lives: romance, tenderness and a supportive partner to his independent wife. Mohannad has become the standard against which many Arab men are being judged, much to their chagrin.
Too much to live up to
According to Arab newspapers, marriages in Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia have dissolved because wives insisted on putting Mohannad's picture on their mobile phone display, or on their bedroom wall. In Bahrain, a woman allegedly begged her husband to have plastic surgery to look like the actor. Another recent divorcee allegedly told her husband "I want to sleep with Mohannad one night and then die."
In Saudi Arabia, where about one in seven people tunes in each night, men circulated the rumor that Kivanc Tatlitug, the actor who plays Mohannad, is gay, which left female viewers distraught until the rumor was dispelled.
Saudi society abounds with Mohannad jokes such as this one: A Saudi woman was touring Turkey with her husband and son when her husband went missing. As she described him to the police, her son shouted, "But that's not what Daddy looks like." "Be quiet," she whispers, "They might just give me Mohannad."
"Mohannad" and "Noor" are now the hottest babies' names in Saudi – even though the religious establishment has condemned the show. A top Saudi cleric forbade viewers from watching the "malicious" soap operas that "corrupt and spread vice" and has also declared that any TV station airing them is against God. This has put Saudi-owned Middle East Broadcasting Company (MBC), which airs the show three times a day, at loggerheads with Saudi religious leaders.
Saudi clerics may have an uphill battle: The Turkish serial has so wooed Saudis with its scenic backdrops of the Bosporus, and green, clean vistas of Istanbul that Turkish tourism officials say it has caused Saudi tourism to the country to more than double.
The series has not only made Saudi women aware of the failings of their partners, but the advantages engendered by a more liberal, tolerant Islamic society such as Turkey.
"It is eye opening for Saudi women. They haven't seen such a sensitive, passionate, giving personality," explained Dr. Fawzaya Abu Khalid, a writer and women's activist based in Riyadh.
For many women, the show has opened a whole new world and a lot of men aren’t happy about it. "Men feel threatened. It is the first time women have a role model for male beauty and passion and can compare him with their husbands," said Abu Khalid. "It is the first time they found out their husbands are not nice, that they are not being treated the way they should be, and that there is an option outside."
Glued to TV across the region
Filled with scheming relatives, corny romantic scenes, melodramatic acting and amateurish effects, the sequence bombed in its native Turkey, but found new life among Arab women of all ages from Riyadh to the West Bank, when MBC began airing a dubbed Arabic version four months ago.
Reem, a young Saudi businesswoman who prefers to use her first name only, was introduced to the show by her nieces, ages seven and eight. Reem explained the show’s allure. "Romance is not here, living in a dry desert. Saudi women are missing something in their lives, in the treatment in the family, the wife with her husband and the husband with his wife. What I see from my female customers is that they are attracted by the love and romance and the way the man is treating the woman."
And in east Jerusalem, every night at 10 p.m., the streets are suddenly empty – everyone is glued to the TV watching "Noor" there, too.
Bakiza, the matriarch of a large household in Jerusalem’s Old City, surrounds herself every night with her children, grandchildren, nieces, and nephews. They each take something different from the show. "I admire the story of Mohannad and Noor because of what it shows about how a family should be," said Bakiza. "The grandfather, Fikhry, is the one who takes care of the whole family, decides everything, and solves all the problems. Everyone respects him."
Malouk, a 15-year-old niece of Bakiza, has her own reason for watching the show. "I can only watch it because of Mohannad. He is handsome, romantic, and takes care of his wife. In fact, he is better than his wife."
The popularity of the series goes beyond the family room. It is also a business success story in the local communities. Restaurants, coffee shops, and clothing stores, proudly display posters of the couple in their windows to attract business. In Ramallah, nargila cafes (where water pipes are smoked), have their TV sets tuned for the channel of the series, to keep the customers there.
Even small children are onto the show and are making purchases based on the series’ merchandising. Haitham al-Halak, 45, a grocer in the Old City, says, "I was surprised how children from 6 to 15 years old, are buying from me only the potato chips with their pictures on it!" said Haitham al-Halak, 45, a grocer in the Jerusalem’s Old City.
A positive role model for women
To some young women, the aspiring fashion designer Noor, provides a positive female role model and encourages them to raise the bar not only on future spouses but on themselves.
In Cairo, Na'ama Hegazy, a single 25-year-old, watches "Noor" three times a day and says it has influenced the way she sees her future.
"I want a romantic [man] who treats me like how Mohannad treats his wife. Every day he brings her flowers and tells her romantic words," said Hegazy. "The life will be very good when a husband treats his wife [like that]."
But Hegazy also wants to emulate Noor who is a both a good wife and mother, and a self-reliant professional. "When she has troubles with Mohannad, she wants to him to leave her alone. She wants to work and doesn't want anything from him. This means any woman who falls out with her husband can work and depend on herself."
NBC News’ Lawahez Jabari contributed to this report from Jerusalem.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Film on Mobile's Segregated Mardi Gras: The Order of Myths
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Police halt 'mooning' of trains in Laguna Niguel after a crowd of 8,000 gathers
LA Times
Police halt 'mooning' of trains in Laguna Niguel after a crowd of 8,000 gathers
Some bared more than their bottoms, the Orange County Sheriff's Department says.
By David Haldane
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
7:58 PM PDT, July 12, 2008
Police were called out to break up the annual "mooning" of Amtrak trains in Laguna Niguel this afternoon when the crowd grew to 8,000 and many began baring more than just their behinds.
"We had some mooners and some female flashers and some people who were nude altogether," said Jim Amormino, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff's Department. "There was also lots of drinking. We felt that it was in the public's interest to shut it down."
Mooners, flashers and others dispersed peacefully about 3 p.m. and there were no arrests, Amormino said. More than 50 officers, backed up by helicopters from several police agencies, responded.
Some participants were angered by the police response.
"What was the point of stopping people from enjoying themselves when they were under control?" asked Robert Zoellner, 47, a first-time mooner from Mission Viejo. "Everybody was getting along."
Some participants returned to a mile-long stretch of festivities after police left and newcomers arrived throughout the afternoon. Into the evening, revelers continued to moon the trains that passed about every 20 minutes.
Participants -- who included children with their parents as well as middle-aged adults -- stood on a shoulder of the road parallel to the tracks to show themselves. The sideshow included barbecues, T-shirts sales and RV parties.
"It's so liberating it's contagious," said Steve Bartolo, 39, of Costa Mesa. "You just wait until that next train goes by . . . I can't stop."
The 29-year-old event is said to have started when a patron at the nearby Mugs Away Saloon in the 27000 block of Camino Capistrano offered to buy drinks for any of his buddies who would run out to the tracks and bare their bottoms for the next passing train. Many did, and the tradition was born.
Usually held the second Saturday in July, the event begins early in the morning and continues into the night. Though it has no official sponsors and free beer is no longer provided, it does have a web site..
"The truth is I never heard of it until today," Amormino said. "This is probably the first time it's gotten out of hand."
"It's a good thing they were mooning trains," Amormino said, "because if it were cars I'm sure it would cause" an accident. "I guess a few people wrecked it for everybody."
Police halt 'mooning' of trains in Laguna Niguel after a crowd of 8,000 gathers
Some bared more than their bottoms, the Orange County Sheriff's Department says.
By David Haldane
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
7:58 PM PDT, July 12, 2008
Police were called out to break up the annual "mooning" of Amtrak trains in Laguna Niguel this afternoon when the crowd grew to 8,000 and many began baring more than just their behinds.
"We had some mooners and some female flashers and some people who were nude altogether," said Jim Amormino, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff's Department. "There was also lots of drinking. We felt that it was in the public's interest to shut it down."
Mooners, flashers and others dispersed peacefully about 3 p.m. and there were no arrests, Amormino said. More than 50 officers, backed up by helicopters from several police agencies, responded.
Some participants were angered by the police response.
"What was the point of stopping people from enjoying themselves when they were under control?" asked Robert Zoellner, 47, a first-time mooner from Mission Viejo. "Everybody was getting along."
Some participants returned to a mile-long stretch of festivities after police left and newcomers arrived throughout the afternoon. Into the evening, revelers continued to moon the trains that passed about every 20 minutes.
Participants -- who included children with their parents as well as middle-aged adults -- stood on a shoulder of the road parallel to the tracks to show themselves. The sideshow included barbecues, T-shirts sales and RV parties.
"It's so liberating it's contagious," said Steve Bartolo, 39, of Costa Mesa. "You just wait until that next train goes by . . . I can't stop."
The 29-year-old event is said to have started when a patron at the nearby Mugs Away Saloon in the 27000 block of Camino Capistrano offered to buy drinks for any of his buddies who would run out to the tracks and bare their bottoms for the next passing train. Many did, and the tradition was born.
Usually held the second Saturday in July, the event begins early in the morning and continues into the night. Though it has no official sponsors and free beer is no longer provided, it does have a web site..
"The truth is I never heard of it until today," Amormino said. "This is probably the first time it's gotten out of hand."
"It's a good thing they were mooning trains," Amormino said, "because if it were cars I'm sure it would cause" an accident. "I guess a few people wrecked it for everybody."
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Albanian Custom Fades: Woman as Family Man
New York Times
June 25, 2008
Albanian Custom Fades: Woman as Family Man
By DAN BILEFSKY
KRUJE, Albania — Pashe Keqi recalled the day nearly 60 years ago when she decided to become a man. She chopped off her long black curls, traded in her dress for her father’s baggy trousers, armed herself with a hunting rifle and vowed to forsake marriage, children and sex.
For centuries, in the closed-off and conservative society of rural northern Albania, swapping genders was considered a practical solution for a family with a shortage of men. Her father was killed in a blood feud, and there was no male heir. By custom, Ms. Keqi, now 78, took a vow of lifetime virginity. She lived as a man, the new patriarch, with all the swagger and trappings of male authority — including the obligation to avenge her father’s death.
She says she would not do it today, now that sexual equality and modernity have come even to Albania, with Internet dating and MTV invading after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Girls here do not want to be boys anymore. With only Ms. Keqi and some 40 others remaining, the sworn virgin is dying off.
“Back then, it was better to be a man because before a woman and an animal were considered the same thing,” said Ms. Keqi, who has a bellowing baritone voice, sits with her legs open wide like a man and relishes downing shots of raki. “Now, Albanian women have equal rights with men, and are even more powerful. I think today it would be fun to be a woman.”
The tradition of the sworn virgin can be traced to the Kanun of Leke Dukagjini, a code of conduct passed on orally among the clans of northern Albania for more than 500 years. Under the Kanun, the role of a woman is severely circumscribed: take care of children and maintain the home. While a woman’s life is worth half that of a man, a virgin’s value is the same: 12 oxen.
The sworn virgin was born of social necessity in an agrarian region plagued by war and death. If the family patriarch died with no male heirs, unmarried women in the family could find themselves alone and powerless. By taking an oath of virginity, women could take on the role of men as head of the family, carry a weapon, own property and move freely.
They dressed like men and spent their lives in the company of other men, even though most kept their female given names. They were not ridiculed, but accepted in public life, even adulated. For some the choice was a way for a woman to assert her autonomy or to avoid an arranged marriage.
“Stripping off their sexuality by pledging to remain virgins was a way for these women in a male-dominated, segregated society to engage in public life,” said Linda Gusia, a professor of gender studies at the University of Pristina, in Kosovo. “It was about surviving in a world where men rule.”
Taking an oath to become a sworn virgin should not, sociologists say, be equated with homosexuality, long taboo in rural Albania. Nor do the women have sex-change operations.
Known in her household as the “pasha,” Ms. Keqi said she decided to become the man of the house at age 20 when her father was murdered. Her four brothers opposed the Communist government of Enver Hoxha, the ruler for 40 years until his death in 1985, and they were either imprisoned or killed. Becoming a man, she said, was the only way to support her mother, her four sisters-in-law and their five children.
Ms. Keqi lorded over her large family in her modest house in Tirana, where her nieces served her brandy while she barked out orders. She said living as a man had allowed her freedom denied other women. She worked construction jobs and prayed at the mosque with men. Even today, her nephews and nieces said, they would not dare marry without their “uncle’s” permission.
When she stepped outside the village, she enjoyed being taken for a man. “I was totally free as a man because no one knew I was a woman,” Ms. Keqi said. “I could go wherever I wanted to and no one would dare swear at me because I could beat them up. I was only with men. I don’t know how to do women’s talk. I am never scared.”
When she was recently hospitalized for surgery, the other woman in her room was horrified to be sharing close quarters with someone she assumed was male.
Being the man of the house also made her responsible for avenging her father’s death, she said. When her father’s killer, by then 80, was released from prison five years ago, Ms. Keqi said, her 15-year-old nephew shot him dead. Then the man’s family took revenge and killed her nephew. “I always dreamed of avenging my father’s death,” she said. “Of course, I have regrets; my nephew was killed. But if you kill me, I have to kill you.”
In Albania, a majority Muslim country in the western Balkans, the Kanun is adhered to by Muslims and Christians. Albanian cultural historians said the adherence to medieval customs long discarded elsewhere was a byproduct of the country’s previous isolation. But they stressed that the traditional role of the Albanian woman was changing.
“The Albanian woman today is a sort of minister of economics, a minister of affection and a minister of interior who controls who does what,” said Ilir Yzeiri, who writes about Albanian folklore. “Today, women in Albania are behind everything.”
Some sworn virgins bemoan the changes. Diana Rakipi, 54, a security guard in the seaside city of Durres, in west Albania, who became a sworn virgin to take care of her nine sisters, said she looked back with nostalgia on the Hoxha era. During Communist times, she was a senior army officer, training women as combat soldiers. Now, she lamented, women do not know their place.
“Today women go out half naked to the disco,” said Ms. Rakipi, who wears a military beret. “I was always treated my whole life as a man, always with respect. I can’t clean, I can’t iron, I can’t cook. That is a woman’s work.”
But even in the remote mountains of Kruje, about 30 miles north of Tirana, residents say the Kanun’s influence on gender roles is disappearing. They said erosion of the traditional family, in which everyone once lived under the same roof, had altered women’s position in society.
“Women and men are now almost the same,” said Caca Fiqiri, whose aunt Qamile Stema, 88, is his village’s last sworn virgin. “We respect sworn virgins very much and consider them as men because of their great sacrifice. But there is no longer a stigma not to have a man of the house.”
Yet there is no doubt who wears the trousers in Ms. Stema’s one-room stone house in Barganesh, the family’s ancestral village. There, on a recent day, “Uncle” Qamile was surrounded by her clan, dressed in a qeleshe, the traditional white cap of an Albanian man. Pink flip-flops were her only concession to femininity.
After becoming a man at the age of 20, Ms. Stema said, she carried a gun. At wedding parties, she sat with the men. When she talked to women, she recalled, they recoiled in shyness.
She said becoming a sworn virgin was a necessity and a sacrifice. “I feel lonely sometime, all my sisters have died, and I live alone,” she said. “But I never wanted to marry. Some in my family tried to get me to change my clothes and wear dresses, but when they saw I had become a man, they left me alone.”
Ms. Stema said she would die a virgin. Had she married, she joked, it would have been to a traditional Albanian woman. “I guess you could say I was partly a woman and partly a man,” she said. “I liked my life as a man. I have no regrets.”
June 25, 2008
Albanian Custom Fades: Woman as Family Man
By DAN BILEFSKY
KRUJE, Albania — Pashe Keqi recalled the day nearly 60 years ago when she decided to become a man. She chopped off her long black curls, traded in her dress for her father’s baggy trousers, armed herself with a hunting rifle and vowed to forsake marriage, children and sex.
For centuries, in the closed-off and conservative society of rural northern Albania, swapping genders was considered a practical solution for a family with a shortage of men. Her father was killed in a blood feud, and there was no male heir. By custom, Ms. Keqi, now 78, took a vow of lifetime virginity. She lived as a man, the new patriarch, with all the swagger and trappings of male authority — including the obligation to avenge her father’s death.
She says she would not do it today, now that sexual equality and modernity have come even to Albania, with Internet dating and MTV invading after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Girls here do not want to be boys anymore. With only Ms. Keqi and some 40 others remaining, the sworn virgin is dying off.
“Back then, it was better to be a man because before a woman and an animal were considered the same thing,” said Ms. Keqi, who has a bellowing baritone voice, sits with her legs open wide like a man and relishes downing shots of raki. “Now, Albanian women have equal rights with men, and are even more powerful. I think today it would be fun to be a woman.”
The tradition of the sworn virgin can be traced to the Kanun of Leke Dukagjini, a code of conduct passed on orally among the clans of northern Albania for more than 500 years. Under the Kanun, the role of a woman is severely circumscribed: take care of children and maintain the home. While a woman’s life is worth half that of a man, a virgin’s value is the same: 12 oxen.
The sworn virgin was born of social necessity in an agrarian region plagued by war and death. If the family patriarch died with no male heirs, unmarried women in the family could find themselves alone and powerless. By taking an oath of virginity, women could take on the role of men as head of the family, carry a weapon, own property and move freely.
They dressed like men and spent their lives in the company of other men, even though most kept their female given names. They were not ridiculed, but accepted in public life, even adulated. For some the choice was a way for a woman to assert her autonomy or to avoid an arranged marriage.
“Stripping off their sexuality by pledging to remain virgins was a way for these women in a male-dominated, segregated society to engage in public life,” said Linda Gusia, a professor of gender studies at the University of Pristina, in Kosovo. “It was about surviving in a world where men rule.”
Taking an oath to become a sworn virgin should not, sociologists say, be equated with homosexuality, long taboo in rural Albania. Nor do the women have sex-change operations.
Known in her household as the “pasha,” Ms. Keqi said she decided to become the man of the house at age 20 when her father was murdered. Her four brothers opposed the Communist government of Enver Hoxha, the ruler for 40 years until his death in 1985, and they were either imprisoned or killed. Becoming a man, she said, was the only way to support her mother, her four sisters-in-law and their five children.
Ms. Keqi lorded over her large family in her modest house in Tirana, where her nieces served her brandy while she barked out orders. She said living as a man had allowed her freedom denied other women. She worked construction jobs and prayed at the mosque with men. Even today, her nephews and nieces said, they would not dare marry without their “uncle’s” permission.
When she stepped outside the village, she enjoyed being taken for a man. “I was totally free as a man because no one knew I was a woman,” Ms. Keqi said. “I could go wherever I wanted to and no one would dare swear at me because I could beat them up. I was only with men. I don’t know how to do women’s talk. I am never scared.”
When she was recently hospitalized for surgery, the other woman in her room was horrified to be sharing close quarters with someone she assumed was male.
Being the man of the house also made her responsible for avenging her father’s death, she said. When her father’s killer, by then 80, was released from prison five years ago, Ms. Keqi said, her 15-year-old nephew shot him dead. Then the man’s family took revenge and killed her nephew. “I always dreamed of avenging my father’s death,” she said. “Of course, I have regrets; my nephew was killed. But if you kill me, I have to kill you.”
In Albania, a majority Muslim country in the western Balkans, the Kanun is adhered to by Muslims and Christians. Albanian cultural historians said the adherence to medieval customs long discarded elsewhere was a byproduct of the country’s previous isolation. But they stressed that the traditional role of the Albanian woman was changing.
“The Albanian woman today is a sort of minister of economics, a minister of affection and a minister of interior who controls who does what,” said Ilir Yzeiri, who writes about Albanian folklore. “Today, women in Albania are behind everything.”
Some sworn virgins bemoan the changes. Diana Rakipi, 54, a security guard in the seaside city of Durres, in west Albania, who became a sworn virgin to take care of her nine sisters, said she looked back with nostalgia on the Hoxha era. During Communist times, she was a senior army officer, training women as combat soldiers. Now, she lamented, women do not know their place.
“Today women go out half naked to the disco,” said Ms. Rakipi, who wears a military beret. “I was always treated my whole life as a man, always with respect. I can’t clean, I can’t iron, I can’t cook. That is a woman’s work.”
But even in the remote mountains of Kruje, about 30 miles north of Tirana, residents say the Kanun’s influence on gender roles is disappearing. They said erosion of the traditional family, in which everyone once lived under the same roof, had altered women’s position in society.
“Women and men are now almost the same,” said Caca Fiqiri, whose aunt Qamile Stema, 88, is his village’s last sworn virgin. “We respect sworn virgins very much and consider them as men because of their great sacrifice. But there is no longer a stigma not to have a man of the house.”
Yet there is no doubt who wears the trousers in Ms. Stema’s one-room stone house in Barganesh, the family’s ancestral village. There, on a recent day, “Uncle” Qamile was surrounded by her clan, dressed in a qeleshe, the traditional white cap of an Albanian man. Pink flip-flops were her only concession to femininity.
After becoming a man at the age of 20, Ms. Stema said, she carried a gun. At wedding parties, she sat with the men. When she talked to women, she recalled, they recoiled in shyness.
She said becoming a sworn virgin was a necessity and a sacrifice. “I feel lonely sometime, all my sisters have died, and I live alone,” she said. “But I never wanted to marry. Some in my family tried to get me to change my clothes and wear dresses, but when they saw I had become a man, they left me alone.”
Ms. Stema said she would die a virgin. Had she married, she joked, it would have been to a traditional Albanian woman. “I guess you could say I was partly a woman and partly a man,” she said. “I liked my life as a man. I have no regrets.”
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
2008 NEA National Heritage Fellowship Recipients
NEA
National Endowment for the Arts Announces 2008 NEA National Heritage Fellowship Recipients
Award is nation's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts
May 21, 2008
Media Contact:
Victoria Hutter, NEA
202-682-5692
hutterv@arts.gov
Program Contact
Barry Bergey
202-682-5726
bergeyb@arts.gov
Washington, DC – The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) today announced the 2008 recipients of the NEA National Heritage Fellowships, the country's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. Eleven fellowships, which include a one-time award of $20,000 each, are presented to honorees from eight states and Puerto Rico. The NEA National Heritage Fellowships program is made possible through the support of the Darden Restaurants Foundation and family of Red Lobster, Olive Garden, LongHorn Steakhouse, The Capital Grille, Bahama Breeze, and Seasons 52 restaurants.
These awardees were chosen for their artistic excellence and contributions to our nation's cultural heritage. They represent a cross-section of ethnic cultures and traditions including Native American, Peruvian, Ethiopian, Brazilian, and Korean and art forms ranging from saddlemaking and dance to bluegrass music and drum making.
National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Dana Gioia said, "It is important to recognize the diverse traditional arts that enrich America's cultural landscape and to award those whose dedication and artistry are so integral to the continuation of these art forms."
The 2008 NEA National Heritage Fellowship recipients are:
Name/Tradition
City, State
Horace P. Axtell/Nez Perce drum maker, singer, tradition-bearer
Lewiston, ID
Dale Harwood/Saddlemaker
Shelley, ID
Bettye Kimbrell/Quilter
Mt. Olive, AL
Jeronimo E. Lozano/Peruvian retablo (portable altar boxes) maker
Salt Lake City, UT
Oneida Singers of Wisconsin/Oneida hymn singers
Oneida, WI
Sue Yeon Park/Korean dancer and musician
New York, NY
Moges Seyoum/Ethiopian liturgical musician/scholar
Alexandria, VA
Jelon Vieira/Capoeira (Afro-Brazilian art form) master
New York, NY
Dr. Michael White/Traditional jazz musician/bandleader
New Orleans, LA
Mac Wiseman/Bluegrass musician
Nashville, TN
The 2008 Bess Lomax Hawes Award goes to traditional arts specialist and advocate Walter Murray Chiesa of Bayamón, Puerto Rico.
Profiles of the artists are available in the Lifetime Honors section of the NEA's Web site.
Another feature of this year's fellows is the role ritual plays in their art forms: Horace P. Axtell makes drums as part of the traditional religion of the tribes of the plateau; Sue Yeon Park is a master of the salpuri-chum (Shaman ritual dance) and seungmu (Buddhist ritual dance); the Oneida Singers perform at funerals and tribal ceremonies; and Moges Seyoum is the only practitioner living in the United States of an elaborate style of movement of the Ethiopian Orthodox prayer staff (takla).
These honorees join the ranks of previous Heritage Fellows, including bluesman B.B. King, Cajun fiddler and composer Michael Doucet, cowboy poet Wally McRae, gospel singer Shirley Caesar, and bluegrass musician Bill Monroe. Since 1982, the Endowment has awarded 338 NEA National Heritage Fellowships.
Fellowship recipients are nominated by the public, often by members of their own communities, and then judged by a panel of experts in folk and traditional arts on the basis of their continuing artistic accomplishments and contributions as practitioners and teachers. This year a nine-member panel reviewed 235 nominations for the 11 fellowships. The ratio of winners to nominees indicates the extraordinary level of competition for this national honor.
The 2008 awardees will come to Washington, D.C. in September for a series of events including a banquet at the Library of Congress and an awards presentation on Capitol Hill as well as a concert scheduled for Friday, September 19, at the Music Center at Strathmore in Bethesda, Maryland.
The National Endowment for the Arts is a public agency dedicated to supporting excellence in the arts, both new and established; bringing the arts to all Americans; and providing leadership in arts education. Established by Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government, the Arts Endowment is the largest annual national funder of the arts, bringing great art to all 50 states, including rural areas, inner cities, and military bases.
National Endowment for the Arts Announces 2008 NEA National Heritage Fellowship Recipients
Award is nation's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts
May 21, 2008
Media Contact:
Victoria Hutter, NEA
202-682-5692
hutterv@arts.gov
Program Contact
Barry Bergey
202-682-5726
bergeyb@arts.gov
Washington, DC – The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) today announced the 2008 recipients of the NEA National Heritage Fellowships, the country's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. Eleven fellowships, which include a one-time award of $20,000 each, are presented to honorees from eight states and Puerto Rico. The NEA National Heritage Fellowships program is made possible through the support of the Darden Restaurants Foundation and family of Red Lobster, Olive Garden, LongHorn Steakhouse, The Capital Grille, Bahama Breeze, and Seasons 52 restaurants.
These awardees were chosen for their artistic excellence and contributions to our nation's cultural heritage. They represent a cross-section of ethnic cultures and traditions including Native American, Peruvian, Ethiopian, Brazilian, and Korean and art forms ranging from saddlemaking and dance to bluegrass music and drum making.
National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Dana Gioia said, "It is important to recognize the diverse traditional arts that enrich America's cultural landscape and to award those whose dedication and artistry are so integral to the continuation of these art forms."
The 2008 NEA National Heritage Fellowship recipients are:
Name/Tradition
City, State
Horace P. Axtell/Nez Perce drum maker, singer, tradition-bearer
Lewiston, ID
Dale Harwood/Saddlemaker
Shelley, ID
Bettye Kimbrell/Quilter
Mt. Olive, AL
Jeronimo E. Lozano/Peruvian retablo (portable altar boxes) maker
Salt Lake City, UT
Oneida Singers of Wisconsin/Oneida hymn singers
Oneida, WI
Sue Yeon Park/Korean dancer and musician
New York, NY
Moges Seyoum/Ethiopian liturgical musician/scholar
Alexandria, VA
Jelon Vieira/Capoeira (Afro-Brazilian art form) master
New York, NY
Dr. Michael White/Traditional jazz musician/bandleader
New Orleans, LA
Mac Wiseman/Bluegrass musician
Nashville, TN
The 2008 Bess Lomax Hawes Award goes to traditional arts specialist and advocate Walter Murray Chiesa of Bayamón, Puerto Rico.
Profiles of the artists are available in the Lifetime Honors section of the NEA's Web site.
Another feature of this year's fellows is the role ritual plays in their art forms: Horace P. Axtell makes drums as part of the traditional religion of the tribes of the plateau; Sue Yeon Park is a master of the salpuri-chum (Shaman ritual dance) and seungmu (Buddhist ritual dance); the Oneida Singers perform at funerals and tribal ceremonies; and Moges Seyoum is the only practitioner living in the United States of an elaborate style of movement of the Ethiopian Orthodox prayer staff (takla).
These honorees join the ranks of previous Heritage Fellows, including bluesman B.B. King, Cajun fiddler and composer Michael Doucet, cowboy poet Wally McRae, gospel singer Shirley Caesar, and bluegrass musician Bill Monroe. Since 1982, the Endowment has awarded 338 NEA National Heritage Fellowships.
Fellowship recipients are nominated by the public, often by members of their own communities, and then judged by a panel of experts in folk and traditional arts on the basis of their continuing artistic accomplishments and contributions as practitioners and teachers. This year a nine-member panel reviewed 235 nominations for the 11 fellowships. The ratio of winners to nominees indicates the extraordinary level of competition for this national honor.
The 2008 awardees will come to Washington, D.C. in September for a series of events including a banquet at the Library of Congress and an awards presentation on Capitol Hill as well as a concert scheduled for Friday, September 19, at the Music Center at Strathmore in Bethesda, Maryland.
The National Endowment for the Arts is a public agency dedicated to supporting excellence in the arts, both new and established; bringing the arts to all Americans; and providing leadership in arts education. Established by Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government, the Arts Endowment is the largest annual national funder of the arts, bringing great art to all 50 states, including rural areas, inner cities, and military bases.
Friday, April 25, 2008
China: Amy Tan Reveals Stories of Dong Folk Songs
NPR All Things Considered
All Things Considered, April 25, 2008 - In the Southwest China village of Dimen, song takes the place of the written word. People in Dimen learn to read and write in the official national language — Mandarin Chinese — but they speak in their own tongue: the language of the Dong people.
Their voices imitate cicadas in the fields above the village. Dimen is isolated, but like most places in modern China, it's learning the greater world is not so far away. With the recently released collection, Dong Folk Songs: People and Nature in Harmony, people everywhere can now hear this unique song style.
American author Amy Tan has been a repeated visitor to Dimen. She wrote about her experience in National Geographic Magazine — the May 2008 issue is devoted solely to the country of China.
Before All Things Considered staff members left for Chengdu for a China series, Tan sat down with Robert Siegel to recall the first time she set foot in Dimen.
"Entering into the village I had little girls singing those songs — those dong songs, the welcoming songs — one at each elbow," Tan says. "However, the singing isn't just to welcome tourists, it's how the culture communicates with each other."
While these "gate-barring songs" are reserved mainly for tourists and official guests, the Dong song-style is a form of communication every child learns from the age of 5. "And they sing on key, on rhythm, perfectly a capella, in tune with one another," Tan says.
Young children not only sing to greet but also talk about community and the changing of seasons. The song "Spring Is Here, Swallows Fly" talks about the shortness of childhood, using birds as a metaphor:
After winter we get spring / Swallows fly amidst green leaves / Cicadas sing on top of berry trees / High and low sounds fill the mountains / Cicadas' songs are so beautiful, let's stop and listen / You can hear the mountains and forests resounding / Even the birds would stop and listen / There is music, there is love / All four seasons are filled with happiness / We are happy in our hearts
Across the Dong culture, most of the songs celebrate the natural world.
"Many of the songs are about nature, listening to nature," Tan says. "There's a lot about being out in the field working and realizing that even though your life is very hard and you're working constantly and it never stops, no matter what the season or the weather, there is this beauty."
But Dimen's rich oral history is at risk. Only one woman can sing the hours-long story that recounts the entire story of the Dimen people and the younger generation doesn't seem interested in learning it.
"There was a couple, two couples, on a bridge — Lover's Lane — smooching," Tan says. "And I asked them what they like to sing. 'Karaoke.' I asked them about their other songs. Yes, they do sing the Cicada songs, they love those songs. How about the song about the history of their village? 'That song is boring.' 'Would you ever learn it?' 'No, I don't think so.'
"So it was a very sad feeling, as I listened to this woman sing this song over dinner, that she would probably be the last person to know this song."
All Things Considered, April 25, 2008 - In the Southwest China village of Dimen, song takes the place of the written word. People in Dimen learn to read and write in the official national language — Mandarin Chinese — but they speak in their own tongue: the language of the Dong people.
Their voices imitate cicadas in the fields above the village. Dimen is isolated, but like most places in modern China, it's learning the greater world is not so far away. With the recently released collection, Dong Folk Songs: People and Nature in Harmony, people everywhere can now hear this unique song style.
American author Amy Tan has been a repeated visitor to Dimen. She wrote about her experience in National Geographic Magazine — the May 2008 issue is devoted solely to the country of China.
Before All Things Considered staff members left for Chengdu for a China series, Tan sat down with Robert Siegel to recall the first time she set foot in Dimen.
"Entering into the village I had little girls singing those songs — those dong songs, the welcoming songs — one at each elbow," Tan says. "However, the singing isn't just to welcome tourists, it's how the culture communicates with each other."
While these "gate-barring songs" are reserved mainly for tourists and official guests, the Dong song-style is a form of communication every child learns from the age of 5. "And they sing on key, on rhythm, perfectly a capella, in tune with one another," Tan says.
Young children not only sing to greet but also talk about community and the changing of seasons. The song "Spring Is Here, Swallows Fly" talks about the shortness of childhood, using birds as a metaphor:
After winter we get spring / Swallows fly amidst green leaves / Cicadas sing on top of berry trees / High and low sounds fill the mountains / Cicadas' songs are so beautiful, let's stop and listen / You can hear the mountains and forests resounding / Even the birds would stop and listen / There is music, there is love / All four seasons are filled with happiness / We are happy in our hearts
Across the Dong culture, most of the songs celebrate the natural world.
"Many of the songs are about nature, listening to nature," Tan says. "There's a lot about being out in the field working and realizing that even though your life is very hard and you're working constantly and it never stops, no matter what the season or the weather, there is this beauty."
But Dimen's rich oral history is at risk. Only one woman can sing the hours-long story that recounts the entire story of the Dimen people and the younger generation doesn't seem interested in learning it.
"There was a couple, two couples, on a bridge — Lover's Lane — smooching," Tan says. "And I asked them what they like to sing. 'Karaoke.' I asked them about their other songs. Yes, they do sing the Cicada songs, they love those songs. How about the song about the history of their village? 'That song is boring.' 'Would you ever learn it?' 'No, I don't think so.'
"So it was a very sad feeling, as I listened to this woman sing this song over dinner, that she would probably be the last person to know this song."
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Women and the Cuban Batá Drums
[This is a significant article on the topic that was formerly available online but is now hard to find]
Center for Black Music Research Digest Spring 2000, 13 (1)
Cuban Batá Drumming and Women Musicians: An Open Question
by Elizabeth Sayre
This article is a follow-up to Andrea Pryor's interview with Nagybe Madariaga Pouymiró, which appeared in the last issue of CBMR Digest (Fall 1999) and continues to explore the role of women in batá drumming.
Cuban batá drumming, with its attendant song and dance styles, is the best known among several African-derived sacred performance traditions reconstructed and reinvented in nineteenth-century Havana and Matanzas—and perhaps also outside these urban centers (see Vélez 1996, parallel text, 1–12). The batá ensemble of three hourglass-shaped, double-headed drums-the iyá, or mother drum, flanked by the small okónkolo and the medium-sized itótele—plays a large repertoire of tightly interlocked melody-rhythms derived from praise poetry for the orishas, Cuban-Yoruba deified forces of nature. Many of the literal meanings of the Cuban toques (batá pieces) have been lost, yet contemporary bataleros can translate the meanings of some drum phrases, which include insults to provoke and praise names to soothe the orishas when they possess devotees. The batá generally are learned through apprenticeship with a master drummer, and the music is maintained relatively strictly, although some improvisation—based on musical rather than verbal ideas—does occur, increasingly so in more modern styles of playing. Still passed down within religious lineages in Cuba and elsewhere, batá drumming is also taught in Cuban music schools to both natives and foreigners, men and women, while would-be batá drummers in the United States and Europe learn from increasingly available transcriptions and recordings, as well as from immigrant master drummers. Now more than ever, the batá are becoming widely known outside the religious context.
Some of the most compelling and beautiful percussion music in the Americas, batá drumming has been the subject of a number of ethnomusicological studies in the past twenty years (see References); however, many musical, liturgical, and historical questions remain to be investigated. These include the question of the prohibition against women and gay men playing consecrated drums in the religious context. This prohibition extends to ceremonies that are played on aberikula (unconsecrated) drums—a type of ceremony that is more common in the United States than in Cuba because of the relative scarcity of consecrated drums here—as well as to many informal, secular settings such as drum and dance classes where unconsecrated drums are used (see Cornelius 1991 for changing dynamics in New York City in the 1970s and 1980s). This exclusion by gender or sexuality immediately affects women and gay men who wish to play or research the batá, precluding certain types of participation or participant-observation. As a woman percussionist and scholar (I play batá and other drums) and as a relative outsider to Lucumí communities, I am obviously far from unbiased, and I am personally implicated in these issues. Even so, the question of women and batá drumming goes beyond mere sexist exclusion, as seen from one perspective, or aggressive intrusion of Western feminism into Afro-Caribbean belief systems, as seen from another.
Explanations about the gender prohibition typically are given as follows.
· Women cleanse themselves through menstruation and therefore do not need to play batá, because playing is itself a cleansing.
· Añá (the orisha of the drums) is a feminine force, therefore a woman playing the drum creates an improper imbalance of gendered energies.
· The batá drums belong to the orisha Changó, the epitome of virility, and a woman player cannot enact the masculinity appropriate to this situation.
· Women are too susceptible to spirit possession to be given the responsibility of playing (men who possess easily are also forbidden to play).
· Feminine energy is of the earth, while masculine energy is of the heavens. Since the drums are used to call heavenly energy (orisha) to earth, men are the appropriate ones to do the calling.
· Because women menstruate, it is dangerous for them to approach the consecrated drums, because their menstrual blood may be mistaken as an offering to Añá.
· Because the menstrual cycle is associated with the Aje, or “witches”—antisocial, feminine spiritual forces—female contact with Añá will void the consecration of the drums (Marcuzzi 1995).
Religious practitioners readily admit that some of the explanations are inconsistent, even within Lucumí (Cuban-Yoruba) theological terms. For example, the batá are sometimes said to be owned by one of the aspects of the orisha Ochún, who represents the river and feminine beauty and sensuality. Also, in ceremony, women practitioners are permitted to touch their foreheads to the drums (foribale) as a sign of respect, just as men do. There is evidence that the tradition is not entirely closed to women players: batá drummers in Nigeria and Matanzas, Cuba, have been known to teach their daughters how to play in the interest of passing on knowledge to subsequent generations (Amira and Cornelius 1992; Fiol 1999; Drysdale 1999). It has been suggested to me that the rigid prohibition against women and gay men playing batá is a result of the influence of Spanish Catholicism on Yoruba beliefs. Whatever the religious or historical reasons for the practice, it continues today in all known contexts; however, the particular dynamics of the gender prohibition differ from place to place and from community to community.
The practice of Yoruba religion, like its music, is becoming more widespread and varied. Several excellent ethnographies document different regional developments in the United States (for example, Brown 1989; Daniels 1998; Hucks 1998). Many contemporary scholars of Yoruba religion, like earlier scholars such as William Bascom and Pierre Verger, have become religious practitioners. Conversely, practitioners are coming into the academy in ever greater numbers. As a result of these cultural developments, the distinguishing of “insiders” from “outsiders” is increasingly complicated, particularly as Yoruba religion now more than ever is a territory from which different, and often conflicting, cultural and political banners are flown (Matory 1998).
As a result, the question of women musicians and batá drumming cannot be reduced to the question of “outsiders” imposing their gender or sexual values on “insiders” or straight men discriminating against women and gay men. Wherever religious communities are active, it is still unusual and often controversial for women—whether insiders or outsiders—to play batá, even in nonreligious contexts.(1) Nonetheless, today there are at least four folkloric women's batá groups active in Cuba: Obini Batá and Ibbu Okun in Havana, Obini Aberíkula in Matanzas, and Obini Irawo in Santiago (Boggs 1992, 306–307; Strubbe 1999; Perkins 1995; Porter 1999; Drake 1999). There also are many women players in Europe, Japan, and Canada, as well as in the United States, where a few women's percussion groups are actively playing batá in traditional styles.
Given the increasing proliferation and differentiation of Yoruba religion and the widely varying dynamics of gender, religious and cultural affiliation, race, and class in the different cities and countries where it flourishes, the question of women and gay men playing batá drums deserves some ethnographic and scholarly attention. The following highly condensed history of batá drumming provides a context for contemporary debates on cultural and gender ownership of the drums.
During the Cuban sugar boom of the 1830s, enslaved and freed Africans from different ethnic groups pieced together, readapted, and added to local traditions from home to fit a brutal new context. For example, the drums in the Oyo (Nigeria) area that had saluted only ancestor spirits and Changó, the tutelary deity of music and dance, were redirected in Cuba to speak praises to an entire pantheon of forces, as people from different regions pooled their resources and memories to create a partly old, partly new spirituality that could address everyday problems in a familiar manner. Until they were banned by the government in 1884, the cabildos de nación, urban mutual aid societies organized by ethnic groups under the auspices of the Catholic church, were probably the most important sites for the maintenance of the Cuban-Yoruba and other African-based traditions (Brandon 1993). Drums and drumming were part of public and private celebrations centered around the cabildos (Brown 1989). At the turn of the century in Cuba, the Lucumí religion was forced to retreat from more public expressions and became centered in private homes, which still are the most important places of worship in Cuba and elsewhere (Brown 1989).
In the early twentieth century, Cubans began to claim their African heritage as part of their national identity, albeit with ambivalence (Moore 1997). Cuban scholar Fernando Ortiz was a major intellectual player in the early valorization of Afro-Cuban expressions. In 1936, he commissioned the first set of aberikula drums ever made and presented master drummer Pablo Roche (also known as Okilakpá or “Strong Arm”) and his drummers in public performance on the batá. Since then, the batá tradition has had a secular as well as a sacred existence—in the streets, on the stage, and in the global marketplace (2)—although batá music remains more obscure than other famous African and Afro-Caribbean percussion such as the jembe and the steel pan (Charry 1996). Musical experiments blending batá with other genres began quite early. Ortiz (1952, 324–325), for example, reports his colleague Gilberto Valdes' attempts at composing for batá and symphony orchestra in the 1930s. Many jazz fans are familiar with Mongo Santamaria, Francisco Aguabella (selected as an NEA National Heritage Fellow in 1992), Julito Collazo, and other Cuban sacred drummers who contributed to Latin jazz in the 1950s and later. In the past fifty years, batá drumming has achieved a significant presence in the United States, where knowledgeable bataleros, whether Cubans or their first, second, or third generation students, are now found in all large metropolitan areas.
The Cuban Revolutionary promotion of Afro-Cuban traditions since the early 1960s, including the formation of professional folkloric ballets at the regional and national levels, has affected the batá drumming tradition profoundly. For certain highly skilled musicians in Cuba, batá performance and teaching have been professionalized (see Hagedorn 1995; Vélez 1996). Meanwhile, Cuban folkloric performance has become a model for drummers outside Cuba (Vélez 1994), especially since the early 1990s, when Cuban folkloric groups began to appear in the United States, and organized music and dance study trips to Cuba have become popular among many North American and European enthusiasts. Although frequently raised as a question or problem that requires more research (see Cornelius 1991; Amira and Cornelius 1992; Hagedorn 1995; Vélez 1996; Delgado 1997), the prohibition against women and gay men playing consecrated batá drums, and its relationship to religious, social, and political systems inside and outside Cuba, has never been directly explored in either academic or popular literatures. Andrea Pryor's (1999) all-too-brief interview with Nagybe Madariaga Pouymiró is therefore an important contribution. First, it is the only instance in any of the literature on Afro-Cuban sacred music where a Cuban woman musician's voice is heard. That she is from Santiago, and not Havana or Matanzas, also is unusual and valuable. There are some fine ethnographies and musical biographies on Afro-Cuban sacred drummers, but no one has written about any of the outstanding Cuban women musicians, such as Merceditas Valdes (who died in June 1996) or Amelia Pedroso, who have contributed much to Cuban orisha music.
Second, Pouymiró's theologically based arguments for women playing batá in ceremony are worth noting since women players in Cuba and abroad typically have justified their activities by carefully delineating them as secular or folkloric. Examining issues of gender and sexuality in relation to the batá tradition very well may shed new light on the “folklorization” of Afro-Cuban ritual music.
Third, the interview highlights the dual, and sometimes conflicted, position of batá drumming as both a profession and religious vocation in Cuba.
Fourth, Pryor's introduction reminds us that women's struggles for recognition and success play out differently in different contexts.
Socialist egalitarian feminism in Cuba and liberal democratic feminism in North America and Europe have met Lucumí values (which are far from uniform themselves) on different grounds and have produced very different situations for women musicians. One hopes that Pryor and other musicians and scholars will be inspired to do more work that explores these issues and adds to knowledge and debates about Afro-Cuban traditions.
Discography
Aguabella, Francisco. Francisco Aguabella y sus tambores batá: Oriki ara oko. Olm Records 10038 (1994).
Barreto, Emilio. Emilio Barreto presents Santísimo. Luz Productions CD001 (1996).
Cardona, Milton. Bembe. American Clave 1004 (1986).
Conjunto Folklórico Nacional de Cuba. Música Yoruba. Bembé Records 2010 (reissued 1995).
Grupo Afrocuba de Matanzas. Rituales Afrocubanos. EGREM 58 (1993).
———. Raíces Africanas/African roots. Shanachie 66009 (1998).
Grupo Ilu Aña. Sacred rhythms. Fundamento Productions 6120 (1995).
Iluyenkori. Percussions cubaines. Playasound 65084 (1992).
———. CubaTambours Batá: Hommage à Yemaya et Ochún. Playasound 65138 (1995).
Iroko (Bill Summers, Lázaro Galarraga). Iroko. VTL 010 (1992).
———. Ilu orisha. Interworld 924 (1996).
Los Muñequitos de Matanzas. Ito iban echu: Sacred Yoruba music of Cuba. Qbadisc 9022 (1996).
Quinto, Pancho. En el solar, la cueva del humo. RW/Tonga 9704 (1997).
Ros, Lázaro. Olorun I. Xenophile/Green Linnet 4022 (1994).
Ros, Lázaro, and Olorun. Songs for Eleguá. Ashé Records 2001 (1996).
Sacred Rhythms of Cuban Santería. Smithsonian Folkways 40419 (1995).
Santos, John, and the Coro Folklórico Kindembo. Hacie el amor. Xenophile/Green Linnet 4034 (1996).
Spiro, Michael, and Mark Lamson. Bata ketu: A musical interplay of Cuba and Brazil. Bembé Records 2011 (1996).
Filmography
Blank, Les. 1995. Sworn to the drum: A tribute to Francisco Aguabella. El Cerrito, Calif.: Flower Films.
Santana, Alfred. 1986. Voices of the gods. New York: Third World Newsreel.
References
Amira, John, and Steven Cornelius. 1992. The music of Santería: Traditional rhythms of the batá drums. Crown Point, Ind.: White Cliffs.
Boggs, Vernon. 1992. Salsiology: Afro-Cuban music and the evolution of salsa in New York City. New York: Greenwood Press.
Brandon, George. 1993. Santería from Africa to the New World: The dead sell memories. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Brown, David. 1989. Garden in the machine: Afro-Cuban sacred art and performance in urban New Jersey and New York. Ph.D. diss., Yale University.
Charry, Eric. 1996. A guide to the jembe. Percussive Notes 34, no. 2:66.
Cornelius, Steven. 1991. Drumming for the orishas: Reconstruction of tradition in New York City. In Essays on Cuban music: North American and Cuban perspectives, edited by Peter Manuel, 137156. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America.
Daniels, Donna. 1998. When the living is the prayer: African-based religious reverence in everyday life among women of color devotees in the San Francisco Bay Area. Ph.D. diss., Stanford University.
Delgado, Kevin. 1997. Negotiating the demands of culture: Batá drumming in San Diego. Master's thesis, University of California, Los Angeles.
Drake, Dawn. 1999. Personal communication with the author, February 5.
Drysdale, Michele. 1999. Personal communication with the author, March 21.
Fiol, Orlando. 1999. Personal communication with the author, March 26.
Hagedorn, Katherine. 1995. Anatomía del proceso folklórico: The “folkloricization” of Afro-Cuban religious performance in Cuba. Ph.D. diss., Brown University.
Hucks, Tracey. 1998. Approaching the god: An historical narrative of African Americans and Yoruba religion in the United States, 1959 to the present. Ph.D. diss., Harvard University.
Matory, J. Lorand. 1998. Yoruba imperialism and the Americanization of Africa: On the rhizomatic roots of the contemporary “Yoruba Revival” in the United States. Paper presented at Symposium: Religion outside the Institution, Center for the Study of Religion, Princeton University, June 5–7, Princeton, New Jersey.
Moore, Robin. 1997. Nationalizing blackness: Afrocubanismo and artistic revolution in Havana, 19201940. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Marcuzzi, Michael. 1995. Personal communication with the author, October.
Ortiz, Fernando. 1952. Los tambores bimembrafonos-los batá. In Los instrumentos de la música Afrocubana 4: 205342. Havana: Ministerio de Educación.
Perkins, William Eric. 1995. The women of Ibbu Okun. CUBA Update April/June.
Porter, Don. 1999. Personal communication with the author, April 24.
Pryor, Andrea. 1999. The House of Añá: Women and Batá. CBMR Digest 12, no. 2.: 6–8.
Strubbe, Bill. 1999. Calling down the gods: Spiritual drums in the hands of women. Blue: The New Adventure Lifestyle 2, no. 1:47–48.
Vélez, Maria Teresa. 1994. Eya aranla: Overlapping perspectives on a Santería group. Diaspora 3, no. 3:289304.
———. 1996. The trade of an Afro-Cuban religious drummer: Felipe Garcia Villamil. Ph.D. diss., Wesleyan University.
Center for Black Music Research Digest Spring 2000, 13 (1)
Cuban Batá Drumming and Women Musicians: An Open Question
by Elizabeth Sayre
This article is a follow-up to Andrea Pryor's interview with Nagybe Madariaga Pouymiró, which appeared in the last issue of CBMR Digest (Fall 1999) and continues to explore the role of women in batá drumming.
Cuban batá drumming, with its attendant song and dance styles, is the best known among several African-derived sacred performance traditions reconstructed and reinvented in nineteenth-century Havana and Matanzas—and perhaps also outside these urban centers (see Vélez 1996, parallel text, 1–12). The batá ensemble of three hourglass-shaped, double-headed drums-the iyá, or mother drum, flanked by the small okónkolo and the medium-sized itótele—plays a large repertoire of tightly interlocked melody-rhythms derived from praise poetry for the orishas, Cuban-Yoruba deified forces of nature. Many of the literal meanings of the Cuban toques (batá pieces) have been lost, yet contemporary bataleros can translate the meanings of some drum phrases, which include insults to provoke and praise names to soothe the orishas when they possess devotees. The batá generally are learned through apprenticeship with a master drummer, and the music is maintained relatively strictly, although some improvisation—based on musical rather than verbal ideas—does occur, increasingly so in more modern styles of playing. Still passed down within religious lineages in Cuba and elsewhere, batá drumming is also taught in Cuban music schools to both natives and foreigners, men and women, while would-be batá drummers in the United States and Europe learn from increasingly available transcriptions and recordings, as well as from immigrant master drummers. Now more than ever, the batá are becoming widely known outside the religious context.
Some of the most compelling and beautiful percussion music in the Americas, batá drumming has been the subject of a number of ethnomusicological studies in the past twenty years (see References); however, many musical, liturgical, and historical questions remain to be investigated. These include the question of the prohibition against women and gay men playing consecrated drums in the religious context. This prohibition extends to ceremonies that are played on aberikula (unconsecrated) drums—a type of ceremony that is more common in the United States than in Cuba because of the relative scarcity of consecrated drums here—as well as to many informal, secular settings such as drum and dance classes where unconsecrated drums are used (see Cornelius 1991 for changing dynamics in New York City in the 1970s and 1980s). This exclusion by gender or sexuality immediately affects women and gay men who wish to play or research the batá, precluding certain types of participation or participant-observation. As a woman percussionist and scholar (I play batá and other drums) and as a relative outsider to Lucumí communities, I am obviously far from unbiased, and I am personally implicated in these issues. Even so, the question of women and batá drumming goes beyond mere sexist exclusion, as seen from one perspective, or aggressive intrusion of Western feminism into Afro-Caribbean belief systems, as seen from another.
Explanations about the gender prohibition typically are given as follows.
· Women cleanse themselves through menstruation and therefore do not need to play batá, because playing is itself a cleansing.
· Añá (the orisha of the drums) is a feminine force, therefore a woman playing the drum creates an improper imbalance of gendered energies.
· The batá drums belong to the orisha Changó, the epitome of virility, and a woman player cannot enact the masculinity appropriate to this situation.
· Women are too susceptible to spirit possession to be given the responsibility of playing (men who possess easily are also forbidden to play).
· Feminine energy is of the earth, while masculine energy is of the heavens. Since the drums are used to call heavenly energy (orisha) to earth, men are the appropriate ones to do the calling.
· Because women menstruate, it is dangerous for them to approach the consecrated drums, because their menstrual blood may be mistaken as an offering to Añá.
· Because the menstrual cycle is associated with the Aje, or “witches”—antisocial, feminine spiritual forces—female contact with Añá will void the consecration of the drums (Marcuzzi 1995).
Religious practitioners readily admit that some of the explanations are inconsistent, even within Lucumí (Cuban-Yoruba) theological terms. For example, the batá are sometimes said to be owned by one of the aspects of the orisha Ochún, who represents the river and feminine beauty and sensuality. Also, in ceremony, women practitioners are permitted to touch their foreheads to the drums (foribale) as a sign of respect, just as men do. There is evidence that the tradition is not entirely closed to women players: batá drummers in Nigeria and Matanzas, Cuba, have been known to teach their daughters how to play in the interest of passing on knowledge to subsequent generations (Amira and Cornelius 1992; Fiol 1999; Drysdale 1999). It has been suggested to me that the rigid prohibition against women and gay men playing batá is a result of the influence of Spanish Catholicism on Yoruba beliefs. Whatever the religious or historical reasons for the practice, it continues today in all known contexts; however, the particular dynamics of the gender prohibition differ from place to place and from community to community.
The practice of Yoruba religion, like its music, is becoming more widespread and varied. Several excellent ethnographies document different regional developments in the United States (for example, Brown 1989; Daniels 1998; Hucks 1998). Many contemporary scholars of Yoruba religion, like earlier scholars such as William Bascom and Pierre Verger, have become religious practitioners. Conversely, practitioners are coming into the academy in ever greater numbers. As a result of these cultural developments, the distinguishing of “insiders” from “outsiders” is increasingly complicated, particularly as Yoruba religion now more than ever is a territory from which different, and often conflicting, cultural and political banners are flown (Matory 1998).
As a result, the question of women musicians and batá drumming cannot be reduced to the question of “outsiders” imposing their gender or sexual values on “insiders” or straight men discriminating against women and gay men. Wherever religious communities are active, it is still unusual and often controversial for women—whether insiders or outsiders—to play batá, even in nonreligious contexts.(1) Nonetheless, today there are at least four folkloric women's batá groups active in Cuba: Obini Batá and Ibbu Okun in Havana, Obini Aberíkula in Matanzas, and Obini Irawo in Santiago (Boggs 1992, 306–307; Strubbe 1999; Perkins 1995; Porter 1999; Drake 1999). There also are many women players in Europe, Japan, and Canada, as well as in the United States, where a few women's percussion groups are actively playing batá in traditional styles.
Given the increasing proliferation and differentiation of Yoruba religion and the widely varying dynamics of gender, religious and cultural affiliation, race, and class in the different cities and countries where it flourishes, the question of women and gay men playing batá drums deserves some ethnographic and scholarly attention. The following highly condensed history of batá drumming provides a context for contemporary debates on cultural and gender ownership of the drums.
During the Cuban sugar boom of the 1830s, enslaved and freed Africans from different ethnic groups pieced together, readapted, and added to local traditions from home to fit a brutal new context. For example, the drums in the Oyo (Nigeria) area that had saluted only ancestor spirits and Changó, the tutelary deity of music and dance, were redirected in Cuba to speak praises to an entire pantheon of forces, as people from different regions pooled their resources and memories to create a partly old, partly new spirituality that could address everyday problems in a familiar manner. Until they were banned by the government in 1884, the cabildos de nación, urban mutual aid societies organized by ethnic groups under the auspices of the Catholic church, were probably the most important sites for the maintenance of the Cuban-Yoruba and other African-based traditions (Brandon 1993). Drums and drumming were part of public and private celebrations centered around the cabildos (Brown 1989). At the turn of the century in Cuba, the Lucumí religion was forced to retreat from more public expressions and became centered in private homes, which still are the most important places of worship in Cuba and elsewhere (Brown 1989).
In the early twentieth century, Cubans began to claim their African heritage as part of their national identity, albeit with ambivalence (Moore 1997). Cuban scholar Fernando Ortiz was a major intellectual player in the early valorization of Afro-Cuban expressions. In 1936, he commissioned the first set of aberikula drums ever made and presented master drummer Pablo Roche (also known as Okilakpá or “Strong Arm”) and his drummers in public performance on the batá. Since then, the batá tradition has had a secular as well as a sacred existence—in the streets, on the stage, and in the global marketplace (2)—although batá music remains more obscure than other famous African and Afro-Caribbean percussion such as the jembe and the steel pan (Charry 1996). Musical experiments blending batá with other genres began quite early. Ortiz (1952, 324–325), for example, reports his colleague Gilberto Valdes' attempts at composing for batá and symphony orchestra in the 1930s. Many jazz fans are familiar with Mongo Santamaria, Francisco Aguabella (selected as an NEA National Heritage Fellow in 1992), Julito Collazo, and other Cuban sacred drummers who contributed to Latin jazz in the 1950s and later. In the past fifty years, batá drumming has achieved a significant presence in the United States, where knowledgeable bataleros, whether Cubans or their first, second, or third generation students, are now found in all large metropolitan areas.
The Cuban Revolutionary promotion of Afro-Cuban traditions since the early 1960s, including the formation of professional folkloric ballets at the regional and national levels, has affected the batá drumming tradition profoundly. For certain highly skilled musicians in Cuba, batá performance and teaching have been professionalized (see Hagedorn 1995; Vélez 1996). Meanwhile, Cuban folkloric performance has become a model for drummers outside Cuba (Vélez 1994), especially since the early 1990s, when Cuban folkloric groups began to appear in the United States, and organized music and dance study trips to Cuba have become popular among many North American and European enthusiasts. Although frequently raised as a question or problem that requires more research (see Cornelius 1991; Amira and Cornelius 1992; Hagedorn 1995; Vélez 1996; Delgado 1997), the prohibition against women and gay men playing consecrated batá drums, and its relationship to religious, social, and political systems inside and outside Cuba, has never been directly explored in either academic or popular literatures. Andrea Pryor's (1999) all-too-brief interview with Nagybe Madariaga Pouymiró is therefore an important contribution. First, it is the only instance in any of the literature on Afro-Cuban sacred music where a Cuban woman musician's voice is heard. That she is from Santiago, and not Havana or Matanzas, also is unusual and valuable. There are some fine ethnographies and musical biographies on Afro-Cuban sacred drummers, but no one has written about any of the outstanding Cuban women musicians, such as Merceditas Valdes (who died in June 1996) or Amelia Pedroso, who have contributed much to Cuban orisha music.
Second, Pouymiró's theologically based arguments for women playing batá in ceremony are worth noting since women players in Cuba and abroad typically have justified their activities by carefully delineating them as secular or folkloric. Examining issues of gender and sexuality in relation to the batá tradition very well may shed new light on the “folklorization” of Afro-Cuban ritual music.
Third, the interview highlights the dual, and sometimes conflicted, position of batá drumming as both a profession and religious vocation in Cuba.
Fourth, Pryor's introduction reminds us that women's struggles for recognition and success play out differently in different contexts.
Socialist egalitarian feminism in Cuba and liberal democratic feminism in North America and Europe have met Lucumí values (which are far from uniform themselves) on different grounds and have produced very different situations for women musicians. One hopes that Pryor and other musicians and scholars will be inspired to do more work that explores these issues and adds to knowledge and debates about Afro-Cuban traditions.
Discography
Aguabella, Francisco. Francisco Aguabella y sus tambores batá: Oriki ara oko. Olm Records 10038 (1994).
Barreto, Emilio. Emilio Barreto presents Santísimo. Luz Productions CD001 (1996).
Cardona, Milton. Bembe. American Clave 1004 (1986).
Conjunto Folklórico Nacional de Cuba. Música Yoruba. Bembé Records 2010 (reissued 1995).
Grupo Afrocuba de Matanzas. Rituales Afrocubanos. EGREM 58 (1993).
———. Raíces Africanas/African roots. Shanachie 66009 (1998).
Grupo Ilu Aña. Sacred rhythms. Fundamento Productions 6120 (1995).
Iluyenkori. Percussions cubaines. Playasound 65084 (1992).
———. CubaTambours Batá: Hommage à Yemaya et Ochún. Playasound 65138 (1995).
Iroko (Bill Summers, Lázaro Galarraga). Iroko. VTL 010 (1992).
———. Ilu orisha. Interworld 924 (1996).
Los Muñequitos de Matanzas. Ito iban echu: Sacred Yoruba music of Cuba. Qbadisc 9022 (1996).
Quinto, Pancho. En el solar, la cueva del humo. RW/Tonga 9704 (1997).
Ros, Lázaro. Olorun I. Xenophile/Green Linnet 4022 (1994).
Ros, Lázaro, and Olorun. Songs for Eleguá. Ashé Records 2001 (1996).
Sacred Rhythms of Cuban Santería. Smithsonian Folkways 40419 (1995).
Santos, John, and the Coro Folklórico Kindembo. Hacie el amor. Xenophile/Green Linnet 4034 (1996).
Spiro, Michael, and Mark Lamson. Bata ketu: A musical interplay of Cuba and Brazil. Bembé Records 2011 (1996).
Filmography
Blank, Les. 1995. Sworn to the drum: A tribute to Francisco Aguabella. El Cerrito, Calif.: Flower Films.
Santana, Alfred. 1986. Voices of the gods. New York: Third World Newsreel.
References
Amira, John, and Steven Cornelius. 1992. The music of Santería: Traditional rhythms of the batá drums. Crown Point, Ind.: White Cliffs.
Boggs, Vernon. 1992. Salsiology: Afro-Cuban music and the evolution of salsa in New York City. New York: Greenwood Press.
Brandon, George. 1993. Santería from Africa to the New World: The dead sell memories. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Brown, David. 1989. Garden in the machine: Afro-Cuban sacred art and performance in urban New Jersey and New York. Ph.D. diss., Yale University.
Charry, Eric. 1996. A guide to the jembe. Percussive Notes 34, no. 2:66.
Cornelius, Steven. 1991. Drumming for the orishas: Reconstruction of tradition in New York City. In Essays on Cuban music: North American and Cuban perspectives, edited by Peter Manuel, 137156. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America.
Daniels, Donna. 1998. When the living is the prayer: African-based religious reverence in everyday life among women of color devotees in the San Francisco Bay Area. Ph.D. diss., Stanford University.
Delgado, Kevin. 1997. Negotiating the demands of culture: Batá drumming in San Diego. Master's thesis, University of California, Los Angeles.
Drake, Dawn. 1999. Personal communication with the author, February 5.
Drysdale, Michele. 1999. Personal communication with the author, March 21.
Fiol, Orlando. 1999. Personal communication with the author, March 26.
Hagedorn, Katherine. 1995. Anatomía del proceso folklórico: The “folkloricization” of Afro-Cuban religious performance in Cuba. Ph.D. diss., Brown University.
Hucks, Tracey. 1998. Approaching the god: An historical narrative of African Americans and Yoruba religion in the United States, 1959 to the present. Ph.D. diss., Harvard University.
Matory, J. Lorand. 1998. Yoruba imperialism and the Americanization of Africa: On the rhizomatic roots of the contemporary “Yoruba Revival” in the United States. Paper presented at Symposium: Religion outside the Institution, Center for the Study of Religion, Princeton University, June 5–7, Princeton, New Jersey.
Moore, Robin. 1997. Nationalizing blackness: Afrocubanismo and artistic revolution in Havana, 19201940. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Marcuzzi, Michael. 1995. Personal communication with the author, October.
Ortiz, Fernando. 1952. Los tambores bimembrafonos-los batá. In Los instrumentos de la música Afrocubana 4: 205342. Havana: Ministerio de Educación.
Perkins, William Eric. 1995. The women of Ibbu Okun. CUBA Update April/June.
Porter, Don. 1999. Personal communication with the author, April 24.
Pryor, Andrea. 1999. The House of Añá: Women and Batá. CBMR Digest 12, no. 2.: 6–8.
Strubbe, Bill. 1999. Calling down the gods: Spiritual drums in the hands of women. Blue: The New Adventure Lifestyle 2, no. 1:47–48.
Vélez, Maria Teresa. 1994. Eya aranla: Overlapping perspectives on a Santería group. Diaspora 3, no. 3:289304.
———. 1996. The trade of an Afro-Cuban religious drummer: Felipe Garcia Villamil. Ph.D. diss., Wesleyan University.
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