Dagara bagr: ritualising myth of social foundation

Abstract

AbstractThe article explores the ritualising processes of a myth of social foundation, the bagr myth, among the Dagara of north-west Ghana and south-west Burkina Faso. It describes how rituals form part of the daily life of the Dagara and shows how bagr rituals form a series of private and public events lasting the whole year or the bagr season. The article describes the social life in the neighbourhood within which most ritual activities take place and outlines the historical events which are possibly responsible for the creation of the bagr myth itself as a narrative text. The rest of the article is devoted to the ritualising processes of the bagr myth. Much of the article, particularly this section, is structured around the author's own experiences and participant observation of ritual activities. The aim is to show why the public rituals of bagr are not about initiating particular individuals into a secret society or lodges but are about how Dagara society constitutes itself. The day and night ritual narration of the bagr myth involving different segments of society and described in detail in the second half of the article seems to justify this claim. The article includes excerpts from bagr narratives recorded by the author to illustrate how the text is being constructed and the sort of information it is intended to communicate.