Making Manding in the concert hall – Jali Pop in Paris

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis contribution looks at performances of West African musicians in the diaspora in order to find out in which way artists consciously evoke feelings of home and address issues of identity and belonging. Taking as its starting point concerts by Senegambian griots both in the 1990s and in 2015, the article shows the striking continuity of the performance of a Mande and more precisely Mandinka identity. As a contrasting example the article describes how the Senegalese pop star Baaba Maal, not a griot and not a Mandinka, performed to very different audiences in the USA, the Gambia and Germany. The paper compares how he addressed audiences at these concerts and how he addressed continental, regional, national, ethnic, local and other levels of identities. In rereading these and other concerts observed by the author in the late 1990s early 2000s and again recently, the contribution will also argue that in migrants’ liminal life phase of staying abroad, concerts serve as rituals of belonging to a more or less mythical home.