Gendered Concerns: Subversion of Patriarchal Order and Empowerment through Ngoyaan Songs
摘要
This chapter examines how ngoyaan singers in traditional and modern Senegal engage with the hectic lives of women who are faced with the dictates of culture and the need for social and economic empowerment. As an important part of the rich Senegalese cultural heritage, ngoyaan is a musical genre of subversion and resistance whose golden age goes back to the pre-colonial era in the Sine Salum region. Accompanied by hand-clapping and traditional instruments, such as calabash, xalam, and Kora, ngoyaan songs unfold diverse themes addressing the condition of Senegalese women at the intersection of cultural and social injustices. While several critics have analyzed women’s verbal arts as transformational narratives aiming to redress patterns of behavior and beliefs governing gender structuration of traditional societies, not much of this scholarship has put into the limelight ngoyaan singers’ castigation of gender-based domination and negotiation of the redistribution of gender roles and the need for equity in social relationships. This chapter then envisions exploring, from an intersectional feminist perspective, the thematic bearing and the esthetic dimension of selected ngoyaan songs from Medina Sabakh Group and the Group Jubboo. While analyzing the structure, movements, and messages in selected ngoyaan songs, the essay argues that the oral texts are a space of enunciation, a platform from which female poets expose their discontent born from the marginal positions ascribed to Senegalese women by the patriarchal system. The study shows in a final analysis that ngoyaan songs, beyond praise poetry, remain a powerful mode for women to challenge socio-cultural norms and move from a marginal location to a central subject position.