Sigui
Ceremonial music of the Dogon (Mali), part of the sixty-year recurring Sigui festival.
What it means
Sigui designates a festival of the Dogon in Mali, celebrated at long intervals and moving over several years through the places involved. It includes music, dance, masks, and particular objects; music is here no accessory but a component of the ceremonial course. On details of the musical form, only limited and partly older information is available in European-language literature.
Musical use
What can be said in general: the music is bound to the course of the ceremony, is passed on orally, and follows its own rules that hold within the community. A transfer of European genre concepts — piece, movement, form — captures the matter only inadequately, because here not a work is performed but a process is carried out. For the same reason, restraint is called for when such music is transferred into concert or teaching contexts; parts of it are bound to particular people, times, and places.
Performance practice
A performance practice in the sense of instructions cannot be described here, nor would it be appropriate. Whoever engages with this music should consult specialist ethnomusicological literature, speak with members of the tradition, and refrain from generalizations. For programme texts it holds: use designations correctly, name the ceremonial context, and do not invent sound descriptions that are not attested. Research in this field is in flux; current specialist literature reflects the latest state.
Bear in mind that recordings and descriptions of such music come from very different times and may not be generalized without further ado: what an older source records need not still hold today. Check the age and origin of the information. The ceremony is connected with a secret language of its own, the Sigi so. Whoever wants to include such music should speak with specialists and with members of the tradition.
Check, in programme texts, the age and origin of the information used, because older accounts can be outdated.
Also check whether an account lets members of the tradition speak, before quoting it.