click for full-screen slideshow The singers could be heard clearly as I reached the top of the escarpment looking down over the village, their exhausted counterpoint thrilling me still, in muted echoes so far from the small yard with high walls that made their cathedral. The dusty green of sheltering trees stood out against the gold and russet of this place, crafted of mud and straw and hard work from the unforgiving landscape of northern Burkina Faso. Nothing is over one story high in Bani, which makes the seven mud mosques that were built here so remarkable, minarets like the voices of the singers reaching up to the sky with their brown arms outstretched. Imposing walls mark the outer edges of the grand mosquee in the middle of town, its empty courtyards bare to the sun. Six other smaller structures grace the barren plateaus like sentries, each façade elegantly carved and guiding the eye toward heaven. I had come here to see these buildings, after catching a fleeting glimpse of the spires from the long hot bus journey to Dori. But it was the sound of the singers that mesmerized: something about the emotions I could feel in the air really resonated with me. My friend Cisse Souabou assured me they were not going to stop, but as we approached through the maze of alleys, I couldn’t move fast enough. In a small, shady courtyard, two groups of men and boys stood facing each other, arrayed by height so one and all could see. There were perhaps fifteen in each group, their voices ragged already. It was a call and response, each wave flowing back as the other came forth, overlapping in an unearthly harmony my years of music had never prepared me to understand. Everyone had a tall forked stick on which they rested, arms holding up their tired heads, eyes rimmed already with red from six straight hours. No one sat. This was devotion. Across the Muslim world of North Africa, Cisse explained, people sang like this in praise. Later that afternoon, I would go up to the flat terrain above town, to think about the big picture, to watch the distant shepherds, and the boys playing football in the wide expanse below that was flood plain in the wet season. Gardens fed by well water yielded beautiful vegetables, and at dusk, the cows came in of their own accord, plodding steadily along gray tracks worn soft from use. A lone zebu sat by the road, his proud curving horns the longest in the valley. I had only heard singing anything like this once before, in a church half a world away, full of enthusiastic Baptists who raised the roof every Sunday morning. Their heaven was a place of joy, and the back of my neck still can feel the fever pitch of their emotion. And as I walked slowly back along the road at twilight, I could still hear the singers of Bani. I asked Cisse how often they celebrated this way. He said simply “Every day…”
Humanitarian Issues & Cultural Tradition Worldwide
ALL PHOTOGRAPHS AND TEXT COPYRIGHT JAY DUNN 2008
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