Sigui
Ceremony of the Dogon (Mali), held every sixty years, with masks, dance, and music.
What it means
Sigui designates the most important ceremony of the Dogon in Mali. It is held every sixty years and moves as a long procession from village to village over months and years; it begins and ends in the village of Youga Dogorou. The last cycle began in 1967 and ended in 1973. According to ethnological accounts, the ceremony symbolizes the path from the death of the first ancestor to the moment when humans received spoken language. It includes masks, dance, and music; the men dance masked in long processions, and the most important mask is the Great Mask, several metres long and held in the hand. The ceremony has a secret language of its own, Sigui So, which women are not allowed to learn.
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. On details of the musical form, only limited information is available in European-language literature. An important source is the films Jean Rouch made of the 1967–1973 cycle; the first, Sigui 1967, which shows the opening in Youga Dogorou with the snake dance, he made together with the ethnomusicologist Gilbert Rouget. 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. Check the age and origin of the information, for recordings and descriptions come from different times, and what an older source records need not still hold today. Also check whether an account lets members of the tradition speak before you quote it.