HOW LATITUDES BECOME FORMS : Ensemble Tartit

Hamoye, from Ichichila (audio clip)
Ensemble Tartit
Photo courtesy the artists

Ensemble Tartit

Ensemble Tartit
lives and works in Northern Mali, Africa

The men and women of Ensemble Tartit are Tuaregs residing in the Timbuctoo and Goundam region of the Niger River basin in Northern Mali. The nomadic people of which they make up a part has been present in the vast territories of the Sahara and the Sahel in Africa for thousands of years. They are related to the great Berber community that dominated Northern Africa until the arrival of the Arab conquerors in the seventh century. They share the basis of their culture and language with the Berbers, although they alone have preserved the use of the ancient rifinagh alphabet that was once employed by all the Berber peoples. It is thanks to the Tuareg that the different Berber races can therefore once more use this alphabet to transcribe their language.

Political events pertinent to the formation of Tartit occurred in the 1960s when the Tuareg society was divided and absorbed into the five new states of Algeria, Libya, Niger, Mali, and Upper Volta (now known as Burkina Faso). The Tuaregs rebelled, once in 1963 and again in 1991. These rebellions were in response to the fact that the Tuaregs were deprived of their traditional economic bases, circumscribed by new frontiers, oppressed and bullied by neighbors to the north and south, and racked by terrible droughts. The Tuaregs seemed condemned to a slow decline and to an irreversible settling process. Their nomadic way of life now became a pathway into exile. The Moorish and Tuareg peoples of the Timbuctoo and Gao regions fled and took shelter in camps in Mauritania, Algeria and Burkina Faso, where their survival was dependent on international aid. Events took an even more tragic turn in 1994, when the Mali an army encouraged militias to exterminate all whites, Tuaregs and Moors in the region. Today peace seems to reign once more, the Tuareg and Moorish movements have laid down their arms and been integrated with the Malian army and administration.

Many Tuaregs fled the repression of the Malian army to various refugee camps. It was at the refugee camp in Bassikounou, in far eastern Mauritania, where Tartit was formed. Originally numbering more than twenty people, the touring ensemble now numbers 8 musicians and one tour manager. The word Tartit means union; it symbolizes the link that exists among these musicians, and because these musicians represent different confederations that make up the Tuareg society.

Tartit is committed to performing, recording, and presenting their music, to as wide and diverse an audience as possible. Their first European performance took place in Belgium in 1995. Since then they have continued to build their audiences in Europe, and are now prepared to bring this music to North America. They are eager to respond to the requests from these several Canadian presenters who are committed to presenting them since the MASA conference in Abidjan three years ago.

Music, song and poetry occupy an extremely large and fundamental place in Tuareg society. Their music is characterized by the importance given to the voices and by the reduced number of instruments. Their social structure has traditionally had a great influence on their music: only women of the noble or the vassal tribes were once permitted to play the imzad, the small one stringed fiddle that is the symbol of Tuareg society. Good players of the imzad are today becoming ever rarer and its repertoire is inexorably becoming smaller.

The other instrument that is played exclusively by the women is the tinde, made from a small wooden mortar that the women use to grind grains, and which is covered with a goatskin. Until recently only women from the servant tribes were allowed to play the tinde; now, any woman may play it. The percussive sounds of the tinde and the soloist's song are generally accompanied by a female chorus and by hand-clapping on the off-beat. The imzad and the tinde are both instruments that are made from every day objects, a gourd and a mortar respectively, and they can once again be used for their normal functions after they have been used as musical instruments.

The Kel Antessar (confederation of Tuaregs to which several members of Tartit belong) were among the first Tuaregs to use the teharden, the three stringed lute that resemble instruments used by other Africans. The teharden consists of a canoe-shaped wooden resonance chamber covered with a goatskin. A neck supports three strings that were once horsehair but are now synthetic. The teharden is only allowed to be played by men.

Tartit is unique in that it is bringing the music from the Tuaregs to an international audience. The group's repertoire consists of both traditional pieces (some more than a century old, respecting the forms of both words and music) and more recent compositions (created by improvising and taking inspiration from contemporary events to pay homage to men and women who serve their community). The music from the Tuaregs is very earthy, yet embodies a sense of ritual through spare yet haunting melodies and rhythms. The music emphasizes the voice (as soloist or chorus), with the occasional addition of instruments: the imzad (violin), teharden (lute) and tinde (percussion). Certain pieces played by the Tartit group mingle the sound of the teharden and the tinde with the voice of the male or female soloist, with a singer's commentaries, and with a female chorus. These are pieces which might be heard on festive occasions such as marriages, children's ceremonies, various tributes, and also in honor of a woman just divorced. The material submitted on the accompanying CD represent only a small portion of the repertoire Tartit may perform. Members of Tartit are well-versed on their instruments, and in the musical traditions of their culture. Issa Amanou is one member of the group who was first trained on the teharden by his uncle Khama ag Akouka, one of the greatest experts on the instrument. Issa sees himself both as musician and raconteur. His words are cast in the present tense, yet evoke a glorious past recalling the heroes who opposed the French in order to encourage the listener's honour, bravery, and spirit of resistance. It is perhaps interesting to note here that the role of music in Tuareg society is, like much of Africa, as normal to them as breathing, and not separated into "performance" as is often the case in the western world. One very much appreciates that integration when witnessing Tartit make music.

http://www.aliaagency.com/artists/ensemble_tartit/index.asp

Musings on Globalism and Institutional Change
Vishakha N. Desai, Kathy Halbreich

useful, and all of the curators took notice and began to inculcate sensitivities and knowledge, if not exquisitely detailed expertise, into their daily practice. As that project, and others, evolved, the thinking that was put on the table and the arguments we had and the questions we posed to one another became part of our daily practice. That questioning--the process of testing our daily assumptions--spilled into every other area. And, I confess, it can be exhausting.

But to get back to your question, no, I didn't have a precise tableau in my mind of what this institution would look like in ten years. Sometimes, I think that's a weakness because I really am profoundly interested in the discussion and I can't imagine where the process is going to take me until I'm at least partly on the way.

VND: The reason I asked is because if you had asked me the same question in 1991-1992, I could not have imagined the answer either. One thing I was clear about from the start was not wanting, ten years later, for the effort to be seen as "Vishakha's project." I wanted this to be the Asia Society's mandate. That's all I could imagine, just that much, in whatever way I could get there. It was not just about me. Even as late as 1996, I might not have been able to tell you that we were there yet. Today, I can.

KH: My experience has been similar, at least partially, in that I realized early on that my approach in trying to frame these larger questions was aimed at eventually shaping an institutional mission. That's really what we're talking about: institutional missions, institutional commitments. Maybe the three adjectives that appeared in our mission statement when we first rewrote it about a year after I came here are useful in the sense that they pointed the way: multidisciplinary, diverse, and international.

Even though we collectively, as staff and board, arrived at those three words by kind of intellectually duking it out, the struggle was fairly contained within theoretical arguments. I've come to realize that theory can be very scary to people because they miss the pleasure of seeing what the change looks like and feels like. Theoretical discussions of why we should become a more diverse institution or why, in fact, we needed to shift from using the word international to using the term global--a word we're now equally struggling with--always felt to some as a construct that embodied loss rather than opening up a bigger picture of the world. Once they began to see the rewards of the actions--the new audiences, artists, colleagues, conversations--they began to rest easier. It became exhilarating, full of openings rather than closure. But both trustees and staff need to be willing, and curious enough, to accept some diminution of their own authority.

VND: I want to come back to the multidisciplinary part of your mission. When you first started talking about the multidisciplinary imperative, was it out of a sense that all of these diverse creative endeavors needed to be represented, or was it that you wanted them to interconnect in ways that they hadn't before? Increasingly I'm much more interested in finding ways of connecting these worlds. It's not enough that all of them exist, but how do they coexist? What is the greater goal? Why should an institution have all the disciplines? And I'm taking about not only creative disciplines, but also policy-making, administrative, and educational responsibilities. Are there ways to articulate something that actually is much bigger than any one of these parts and to truly interconnect them?

KH: I've always watched artists very closely, maybe because I know how difficult it is, at least how difficult it was for me, to think and act as an artist, a practice that I found extremely lonely and gave up many, many years ago. But I never gave up the extraordinary revelations I found working with artists and being in artists' studios. Part of why I wanted to recalibrate the balance among multiple disciplines, which have been housed at the Walker for decades, had to do with watching how artists themselves were working. Artists increasingly became less interested in defining themselves as visual artists, moving-picture artists, or performing artists. They were interested in areas of convergence, which seems to me another way of looking at notions of hybrid-ity. Even though I wanted to provide a fertile laboratory setting for artists, I was equally interested in creating opportunities for audiences, which still, by and large, define their interests by discipline. I wanted to encourage them to move out of those disciplinary silos toward a larger set of ideas about what the work means, where it comes from, how it is framed, and how the disciplinary boundaries are shifting in the twenty-first century. So it had to do with my commitment to both artists and audiences.

Content, Context, and Cultural Commitment: Curating the Performing Arts
Philip Bither, Baraka Sele

PB: That approach to traveling is also connected to the emotional experience of performance, of seeing live artists performing in the same space in real time. We often talk about the essential need for contextualization, but there is something about being in the moment of a live performance, an appreciation for the work that transcends all the historical background, all the critical performance theory that you might gather. In fact, you appreciate it on a completely different level. That may be something that differentiates our work, perhaps, from the visual arts. There is that fine line between contextualizing and overpreparing an audience.

BS: It's completely experiential. Sometimes I love just experiencing the work and not having the burden of trying to tell someone what it means.

PB: Or why they should like it.

BS: What does it mean? Where does it come from? What is its history?

PB: There are times when too much information undercuts the power of the live theatrical experience. There's a balance that curators need to strike in terms of when the information is best delivered and in what format.

BS: And when that contextual information weighs the performance down.

PB: Sometimes we choose not to have anything happen in the performance space itself right after the event. There's a magic, a sacredness to that space, which the didacticism of a quick informational exchange or a question-and-answer session immediately following a performance can sometimes destroy.

BS: We often talk about the afterlife of a performance. How can it live on and not become ephemeral? In my opinion, that is more of a concern from the visual arts perspective; I don't have a problem with the performing arts being ephemeral art forms.

PB: It lives in the spirit and in memory.

BS: In the here and now. There is an appropriate time for archiving and documentation, or seeing that the work tours and has an ongoing life. But nothing compares to being in the moment; it's like meditation.

PB: It's perhaps part of what drove avant-garde visual artists to start performative practice in the first place. There was such a focus on the object and, often, the commercial value of the object. The Dada and Fluxus movements, Joseph Beuys and the tradition that he spawned, Happenings, and many other early performance art practices were attempting, in part, to create the spontaneous moment, were realizing that art didn't need to have permanence. It could be of the moment and about our lives and our everyday ephemeral existence. But it's still challenging for institutions that have been, for much of their histories, built around the collection of objects and the permanence of those objects. There certainly are some interesting ways to combine the practices--creating art exhibitions out of the sets, scores, videos, costumes, writings, and sound of time-based performances.[3] Also, digital documentation and performing arts projects translated onto the Web offer new bridges between worlds.

The Walker's framework for presenting work is quite specific. It's about contemporary and experimental work, work that in some way is challenging the norm. How you define those terms becomes very complex when you are operating in a global context. What is the avant-garde? Is there an avant-garde? What are the distinctly different forms of modernism? As we have discussed many times during this initiative, there is not just one story of modernism.

BS: And sometimes, modernism is not even the story at all.

3 For example, the Walker presented in 1998 the exhibition Art Performs Life: Merce Cunningham, Bill T. Jones, and Meredith Monk, co-curated by Philippe Vergne, Siri Engberg, and Kellie Jones.

Revolt, Dysfunction, Dementia: Toward the Body of “Empire”
Otori Hidenaga

If we continue to engage ourselves in such an endeavor--to awaken a "not-conscious knowledge"--we may be able to acquire the possibility of connecting to otherness, even in this drastic transition toward total homogeneity that is the process of globalization. In order for us to start engaging in such an endeavor, the analysis of what is currently happening is indispensable. And if we are to participate in such a project, speaking here specifically in terms of theater and dance practices, which situate the body in its representational center, the notion of dementia must become our shared theme. We must soberly accept the situation and articulate it clearly. We must live the state of dementia in our own selves.

The fact that, after 1995, artists such as Pina Bausch and Sasha Waltz started to express a sense of jouissance and "the body of dementia" in their work shows that they had anticipated, and now certainly fully understand, the coming of a new phase. In Japanese performing arts, collectives such as Gekidan Kaitaisha, through the negotiation of bodies in a state of war on stage, were able to present us with images of "war bodies," and they are now trying to connect with the notion of "the body of dementia." If we go back to the origins of theater and think in terms of Greek tragedy, it is worth noting that heroes of Greek tragedy who tried to revolt against the order of the gods invariably lost the battle because of their sheer powerlessness. Perhaps the same fate awaits Kaitaisha's actors in their battle against globalization and Empire. But at least, like the heroes of Greek tragedy, they resist the order of the gods and seek new ways of resisting, all of which is continuously enacted on the stage. We might do well to remember that in ancient Greece genius (meaning linguistic spirit as opposed to mythology) was inscribed within Greek tragedy. As we begin to witness the first attempts at negotiating with the body of dementia, we should remain hopeful.

In theater, where still very few attempts are being made to create a new kind of representation, critics such as Uchino (I would also include Unakami Hiromi, a theater director, who attempts to analyze contemporary Japanese culture through a critical lens) are starting to develop a detailed discussion of what is going on, referring to wider contexts of contemporary visual art and literary practices. This shows, however feeble it may be at the moment, that there is a connected response to globalization between performative and discursive practices. To move from the proliferation of noncritical J-theater practices to serious responses to globalization means to negotiate with the world, to move from a self-inflictive, self-affirmative practice to a realistic art practice. To support such a movement is my motivation to keep working as a critic. Rather than continuing to ignore the issue of globalization, we need to collapse the mythological order of Empire from within and inscribe a new antimythological genius, a linguistic spirit, within our culture. Active criticism may at least be able to open up avenues to lead us there.

Translated from the Japanese by Uchino Tadashi

Ensemble Tartit

Artists increasingly became less interested in defining themselves as visual artists, moving-picture artists, or performing artists. They were interested in areas of convergence, . . .

I don’t have a problem with the performing arts being ephemeral art forms.

. . . there is a connected response to globalization between performative and discursive practices. To move from the proliferation of noncritical J-theater practices to serious responses to globalization means to negotiate with the world, to move from a self-inflictive, self-affirmative practice to a realistic art practice.