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Type:
Articles
Place:
Mali
Bandiagara Region
Date:
1988
Notes:
To deplore the impact of tourism on Dogon indigenous values and "traditional" art, or to ascribe modernizing changes within the community solely to westernization, is to misread Dogon strategies to adapt and ignores their capacity to choose and act. We impose yet again our attitudes and views. The Dogon country is a popular tourist destination, and the Dogon themselves have adapted their rites and dances to exigencies of tour groups in several ways, which Lane describes using Griaule (1938) as a base line and Imperato's (1972) later description as points of comparison. Lane questions whether the ritual and theatrical genres of dances are not in fact different; he argues that the theatrical version is really a new genre and that the Dogon themselves experience no dissonance making this distinction. Based on fieldwork in the Sanga area 1981-1983.
Color illustration.
Reprinted in The performance arts in Africa: a reader / edited by Frances Harding (London: Routledge, 2002), pages 304-319 (PN2979.P47 2002 AFA).
