Gendered Discourses and Mediated Modernities: Urban and Rural Performances of Tuareg Smith Women

Abstract

The verbal art performances of Tuareg smith women--in praise songs, dance, joking, and, more recently, in media such as radio--are becoming more complex, as their messages and styles articulate with wider audiences and changing social relationships, in particular those involving gender and relations between the sexes. This essay analyzes gendered discourses in female smiths' performances, with particular emphasis on a radio narrative in Agadez, Niger, and a rural wedding praise performance in the Aïr Mountains region. As female smiths perform alongside male smiths at rural rites of passage, they mediate important concerns of not solely their noble patrons but also Tuareg women. In urban, multiethnic settings, smith women's messages and roles are changing, particularly in new technologies, such as radio, deployed by elite feminist organizations to advance their own agendas for gender and socioeconomic change. More broadly, continuities and transformations in smith women's verbal art performances provide new perspectives on cultural mediators and gendered discourses in multiple modernities.