seko ni donko bo

[nothing is better than art and culture]

This morning we traveled to Manyabougou to visit the studio of YaYa Coulibaly, a master puppeteer and one of the most illustrious Malian artists in the world. Michelle, our director, met YaYa in D.C. at an artist folk festival in 2003. I’ve read about YaYa’s work during my time at Brown so it was such a privilege to visit his home and see his work. We were given a tour of his home, which definitely had a museum-feel because of the thousands of puppets stacked in every corner. YaYa spoke about his work, which is rooted in a strong Donso (hunter) tradition and has been passed down his family line since the 6^th century! We sat in the shade and watched an extraordinary hour-length performance given by YaYa’s apprentices. It was apparent that the performers were very skilled dancers and also had a strong connection with their puppets- it was so much fun watching the performance and joining in to dance around at the end.

Apart from getting to see really amazing performers in a performative tradition I’d never seen live, one of the most interesting parts of the visit was seeing a performance of this caliber and of this genre against the backdrop of well, YaYa’s studio- there were no painted scenes, no landscape props, no curtains, and no stage- only the gate to his studio and a crowd of neighborhood children standing in it. We, the audience, were front-and-center but at the same time, sharing the performance space with the performers in a very communal way. I know this is typical for street parties, celebrations, and ceremonies, but since puppetry is known to be such an internationally-practiced genre of art and is so commonly performed with a mini-stage or some kind of performance-backdrop it was really interesting to see an elegant performance almost dislocated from the setting we would normally demand for this genre.

After the performance YaYa spoke about his tradition and also about being an artist, specifically a master puppeteer, in modern post-colonial Mali. He spoke to the general institutional displacement of artists in Bamako, where I noticed that similar to America, there is little financial subsidy for general art practices that are so central to their cultural tradition. The difference however, is that those most skilled and popular artists who would be wealthy celebrities in America, are not given the equivalent societal recognition or fortune in Mali- instead artists like YaYa choose a very modest lifestyle to practice what they love and what is endowed by their familial traditions. I would conjecture that America’s most notable modern musicians and performers of celebrité don’t have as strong of a bearing in American native heritage or colonial tradition yet still our modern cultural values them enough to afford them with fame and fortune. Because of this, many of the best and most talented Malian artists leave Mali seeking recognition elsewhere, leaving no one to carry on their cultural heritage locally. I think the setting of our performance today is a symbol of this displacement between artists and modern Malian society.