El Eljido Apartment 2
One of the exotic customs in El Ejido: watching the tele on a Sunday afternoon.
I did notice an interesting difference, though I would not wish to generalize too much. This picture is from an apartment where most of the people are Malians. On the wall I noticed craftwork from Africa, and you can see that the clothes are very much a statement of African identity.
We watched a kind of MTV-Mali. A woman was singing while men danced around her, in more of a matriarchal and respectful way than the kind of male-dancing you might see in a Janet Jackson video. When I asked M. what she was singing about, he answered "poverty."
By comparison...
posted by mr. p @ 7:07 PM
1 Comments:
hey marc,
Nice to hear from you.
Well I´m not really qualified to draw any conclusions, having little background in the cultural histories of Gambia or Mali, nor is culture the substance of my investigation -- I was just struck by the contrast. I wanted to invite ideas and so I´m glad you raised the question.
Do you remember the article about Congolese immigrants to France who emulated and even fetishized the culture of their former colonizers? (I can´t seem to dig up the reference but I think the title was something close to "Dream Voyages") This might serve as a starting point. There are definitely Africans in El Ejido who dress in a more European style, and definitely others who express different types of African identity, including Rastafarian and Islamic identities.
As to the music, I will try to veg out next weekend to more MTV-Mali and report back.
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