The music of the FulBe (Fulɓe), nomadic cattle-owners of West Africa. Although they call themselves FulBe, they are known by a number of different names as a result of their dissemination and of colonial influences. For instance, they were called Fellata in early travel literature, Peul by the French and Fulani (a Hausa term) in the anglophone literature of Nigeria. In the Gambia and in Sierra leone, they are known as Fula.
The origins of the FulBe are obscure, but their early habitat in West Africa seems to have been around the border areas of modern Mali and Senegal. Various migrations and conquests have produced a gradual, mainly easterly movement over many centuries, resulting in distribution over a wide band of West Africa (fig.1). Their search for grazing led some as far west as southern Mauritania, others as far east as the Sudan (where they are also referred to as Fellata).
Some FulBe still live a traditional nomadic life, with annual movements from dry-season to wet-season grazing grounds and back, and are found as minority groups scattered over the rural areas of many West African territories. Others have gradually adopted a more settled way of life, combining agriculture with the care of cattle. Occasionally the processes of settlement, concentration and military conquest have, over the centuries, led to the existence of long-established, fully organized FulBe communities, varying in size from small villages to towns as large as Labé and Dalaba in Guinea, Kaédi in Mauritania and Matam and Podor in Senegal in the west; Djenne and Bandiagara in Mali, Dori and Djibo in Burkina Faso in the bend of the Niger; and Birnin Kebbi, Gombe, Yola and Jalingo in Nigeria and in Cameroon Maroua and Garoua in the east. The settled Tukulor (Toucouleur) of Fouta Toro in northern Senegal are often treated as a distinct group. But their speech is a dialect of Fulfulde, and, although strongly Islamic, their culture has much in common with that of other FulBe. They are probably best regarded as a particular and distinctive group of FulBe.
Some leading FulBe have left their mark on history, especially in the 19th century: they include Usman ’bii Foo’duye (Usman ’dan Fo’diyo in the Hausa form), the Islamic reformer whose jihād led to the establishment of FulBe dynasties in the Hausa emirates of northern Nigeria (although as they were in a minority their FulBe culture was submerged); Saikou Ahmadu, who curbed the power of the Bambara empire and in 1815 founded Hamdallaye as the headquarters of the FulBe empire of Masina; and al-Hajj Umar, the Tukulor from Fouta Toro whose conquests in the middle of the century extended to Masina in Mali and Fouta Djallon in Guinea.
In most areas of concentration, as among the nomadic herdsmen, Fulfulde is still the principal language, and in Adamawa and northern Cameroon it has become a lingua franca for the many smaller ethnic groups there; but in other places, such as the northern Nigerian emirates, Fulfulde has tended to give place to Hausa, except among the nomads. While the FulBe were originally animists, many were converted to Islam several centuries ago; Islam has played a large part in their history and most of them regard themselves as Muslims, although vestiges of animism persist, especially where their cattle are concerned.
With such a wide geographical distribution and such variations in the mode of life, as well as certain cultural differences between distinct groups of nomadic FulBe, it is difficult to generalize about FulBe music. Nevertheless two important general distinctions can be made: firstly between the music in which the FulBe themselves take part and that of the professional musicians who sing and play for them; and secondly between the hymns and songs (both religious and secular) that have developed from the Arabic Islamic tradition and the everyday songs that are integral to the traditions of FulBe herders.
While some professional musicians are regarded as FulBe – at least by outsiders – most professional musicians associated with the FulBe seem to be descendants of non-FulBe who have in many areas lived for centuries in symbiosis with them. This relationship originates in the caste system, which survives to some extent in the western part of the FulBe zone. As described by H. Gaden for Senegambia in 1911, most craftsmen and artisans in a FulBe entourage were not pure FulBe (rim’be, sing. dimo), but belonged to one of the castes – ranked in order of precedence but generalized under the term nyeeny(u)’be (sing. nyeenyo). Three of these groups were musicians – maabu’be (sing. maabo), who were weavers as well as singers, wammbaa’be (sing. bammbaa’do) and awlu’be (sing. gawlo) – the wammbaa’be being those with the longest and closest association with the FulBe, while the others were of Sarakolle (Sarakole or Soninke), Mandinka or Wolof origin. The French term griot, in the FulBe context, refers to singers in any of these three categories.
Both wammbaa’be and maabu’be were, and to some extent still are, basically court musicians, singing the praises of chiefs and other wealthy patrons, their genealogies and their ancestors’ exploits, and epics of the FulBe past. While some of them may still be attached to individual patrons, others are peripatetic, moving from one chief’s court to another. Tinguidji is a modern maabo of Burkina Faso, whose version of the Silāmaka and Poullōri epic has been transcribed and translated by Christiane Seydou; he still regards himself as essentially a court musician, singing for the FulBe nobility. The awlu’be, on the other hand, are traditionally less closely associated with the ‘court’ circles, praising and entertaining the FulBe people in general and using a wider range of instruments. While wammbaa’be and maabu’be are essentially solo singers, awlu’be sometimes perform in groups.
The typical instrument used by both wammbaa’be and maabu’be is the hoddu (lute, usually with three strings), on which they accompany their own singing and also play evocative solo interludes; some wammbaa’be, however, play the nyaanyooru (single-string bowed lute or fiddle; see Goge). While the main instrument of the awlu’be is a drum, they are sometimes supported by such percussion instruments as: gourd rattles containing pebbles or covered with a network of cowries; hemispherical gourds (horde, ‘calabash’) held against the chest and struck with finger rings; or sistra consisting of gourd sherds threaded on a stick, which are called laala (and other names based on laalawal or laalagal, ‘piece of broken gourd’).
In such easterly states as Niger, Nigeria and Cameroon, the roles of the various professional musicians are less clearly differentiated, and bammbaa’do is a general term for a professional musician. In Cameroon the instruments used by the court musicians of the settled FulBe chiefs, like those of the FulBe dynasties in the Hausa emirates of Nigeria, seem to be those associated more with the Hausa and other local peoples. In Nigeria professional drummers have a specialized role in accompanying children’s dance-songs, and at the traditional ‘castigation’ contests known as soro (borrowed into Hausa as sharo), which are a test of manhood; here they sing the praise of the young men taking part and provide the instrumental music that helps to build up the individuals’ morale and the general tension. Certain drums, such as the kootsoo or kotso (small hourglass drum), are regarded by the Hausa as typically FulBe instruments.
Apart from the music of the professionals, Muslim FulBe enjoy the many poems (gime, sing. yimre, from the root yim-, ‘sing’), primarily on religious themes, but later also on more secular topics, which have been composed in Fulfulde since the end of the 18th century or the beginning of the 19th. The earliest of these came from Fouta Djallon in Guinea and Sokoto in Nigeria. Originally based on Arabic models, these are mostly in regular quantitative metres of Arabic type, in stanzaic form with end-rhyme or internal rhyme, or both. They are sung or chanted, without accompaniment, to tunes that often involve melisma. Usually written down in Arabic script, these poems are disseminated either orally or by copying from a teacher’s or a friend’s manuscript. They are sung in private or in small groups for the pleasure and edification of the singer or his friends, and on special religious occasions. They have also become a speciality of blind beggars.
In addition to these older and mainly religious poems, new compositions continue to appear at all levels of society. The modern adaptation of this genre to secular subjects is found as far apart as Guinea and Cameroon, but still sung solo without accompaniment. Apart from these specialized songs, the FulBe, particularly those who still herd cattle, have the same range of songs as many other peoples of Africa, including work-songs (for example women’s pounding songs, sung with or without refrain to the rhythmic sound of pestle on mortar); lullabies and love songs; herders’ songs (often in praise of cattle, sung while the cattle are being grazed); children’s dance-songs; and songs associated with various traditional dances, mainly for youths and girls. All such secular songs are called gimi (sing. gimol, also from the root yim-), as distinct from the gime mentioned above.
In such dances as the ruume, yake and geerewol of the Wo’daa’be (Wodaabe) of Niger and some groups in northern Nigeria (some dances being circular, some linear, some for youths, some for girls and some for both), the restrained leisurely movements are accompanied by choral unison singing and percussive rhythms provided by any of the following: clapping (by dancers or by girl spectators), the thumping of the dancers’ staffs on the ground and occasionally the jingle of men’s metal anklets. Other musical accompaniment is rare.
The instruments of the cattle-raising FulBe are mainly played solo for their own enjoyment, particularly while herding; they consist mainly of flutes, two-string lutes, single-string bowed lutes and a type of jew’s harp. The flutes are usually end-blown, made of wood, bamboo or guinea-corn stalk adorned and strengthened with leather bands, and they have up to four holes (fig.2). A two-string spike bowl-lute seen in southern Niger was similar to a Hausa gurmi, having a wooden neck, a gourd resonator covered with a leather sound-table, and a bridge of guinea-corn stalk (fig.3); while a jew’s harp played in interludes between songs by a youth from Maroua (north-west Cameroon) was fashioned from pieces of wood, palm frond, guinea-corn stalk and tough grass.
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E.A. Brackenbury: ‘Notes on the “Bororo Fulbe” or Nomad “Cattle Fulani”’, Journal of the African Society, xxiii (1923–4), 271–7
H. Gaden: Proverbes et maximes peuls et toucouleurs (Paris, 1931), 11
L.N. Reed: ‘Notes on Some Fulani Tribes and Customs’, Africa, v (1932), 422–54, esp. 436, 438
L. Tauxier: Moeurs et histoire des peuls (Paris, 1937)
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D.W. ARNOTT