Patricia Tang, Masters of the Sabar: Wolof percussionists of Senegal. Philadelphia PA: Temple University Press (pb $27.95 – 978 1 59213 420 5; hb $79.50 – 978 1 59213 419 9). 2007, 209 pp.

Tang's first book is based on the research she conducted for her PhD in ethnomusicology. As such the text profits from a substantial period of fieldwork and a focus on a subject that has not previously been given significant attention: Wolof griot percussionists performing the Sabar repertoire in Senegal. As she says in her introduction, the lack of academic attention accorded Wolof percussionists means there is ‘a widespread notion that the phrase “griot percussionist” is an oxymoron’. It has been Mande griots who sing and play the kora, balafon and ngoni who have come to stand for what it means to be a griot amongst those non-Senegalese in the West interested in African music. This misconception is one she attempts to rectify. Sabar refers both to the drum itself and the event at which it is played, whether that is a Sabar in a nightclub or at a community event in the street.

Tang begins her work by addressing the effect of the strands of her own identity as a female Asian American ethnomusicologist on her research. In particular she reflects on the extent to which any ‘reverse exoticization’ she experienced helped or hindered in her research. She is open in giving her principal research assistant his due. She is also open about how she gave or withheld money in exchange for interviews and lessons, and discusses her participation in the Senegalese practice of rewarding musicians with money during performances. Tang based her research on participant observation in the capital Dakar, with one particular griot family – the Mbaye family – who agreed to teach her. This family is one of three that dominate the performance of Sabar in Dakar, whether for life cycle events, wrestling matches, meetings of social associations or in popular music. In addition to learning the Sabar repertoire with the Mbaye family, Tang used her training as a classical violinist to gain the respect of Senegalese musicians as a musician in her own right, through both recording and performing.

As in most recent ethnomusicology change is an important theme in Tang's work, whether she is dealing with the music of Sabar percussionists or with their role in society. Tang goes back to the earliest references to the music from the fourteenth century and follows it through to the oral histories told by older members of the principal griot families concerning changes in the twentieth century. There has been an increase in the number of different drums and the number of drummers in ensembles, though the centrality of the drumming technique, using one stick and one hand, has remained constant and distinctive to the form. Six of the drums now used are the nder, the tungune, lamb, the talmbat and the mbëng mbëng ball, and a smaller version of this drum that plays the accompaniment (mbalax). Both these last two were invented in the second half of the twentieth century. In the 1990s, one of the most famous of Sabar drummers, Doudou Ndiaye Rose, invented a seventh member of the Sabar drum ensemble called the gorong yeguel. The description given of these drums would benefit from pictures of each drum next to the descriptions.

The context for the performance of Sabar, at the level of the community, is typically at life cycle events, wrestling matches and women's association meetings (tur), with performances specific to each event. Dancers interact and improvise with a lead drummer in the ensemble. With the mediaization of music in the twentieth century, Tang describes how Sabar music has also been integrated into Senegalese popular urban dance music, especially by Youssou N'dour. Its use in the performance of Senegalese nationhood is something Tang does not make central to her work, as she is more concerned with the music itself and its role in community events. Tang discusses the applicability of the concept caste as a concept to the place of griots in Senegalese society. Griots form a sub-category called géwël of a general category, composed of artisans who work with their hands, called ñeeño. This category is below that of ‘nobles’ and freeborn, called géer, who do not engage in the occupations of the ñeeño and historically have been landowners and farmers. This is changing with the urbanization of Senegal. Griots act as historians of family lineage for specific géer families with whom they have established relationships as clients, through poetry, song and musical compositions that record and glorify the lineage of the géer family. Drum patterns follow the tonality and rhythm of the spoken word and thus can act like oral history. Tang attempts to qualify the caste-like nature of this relationship. Although these are ranked social and occupational groupings, that remain distinct through endogamy, Tang is keen to point to those aspects of the relationship between them that are more ambiguous. For instance the géwël can insult and embarrass a géer patron deemed ungenerous and so diminish his status. They can also form close lifelong bonds of friendship and reciprocal gift giving, despite the formal hierarchy between them.

To address the issue of change and continuity in the twentieth century directly, Tang uses interviews that give the life stories of the principal members of three generations of the Mbaye family – Macheikh Mbaye, Thio Mbaye and Lamine Touré. All have learnt their craft through the harsh discipline of their elders and the strict judgement of their peers. They have developed the specific compositions that distinguish the family while perfecting the standard repertoire. The domestic architecture of the family compound, with its many rooms surrounding an open space in which the extended family meet, has continued to provide the social space in which the skills and heritage are passed on to children by constant exposure as much as any formal teaching. This continuity with past practice has not ended with the changes seen in the twentieth century – the move of the Mbaye family from Kaolack to Dakar, the loosening of caste-based patronage ties, the development of popular dance bands, the loosening of the ties of the music to language and the expression of specific meanings, and the development of a greater role for improvisation and composition no longer tied to language through tone. This is a creative response to what Tang sees as the challenges of maintaining their status in a ‘modern’ context. The Sabar repertoire is made up of compositions (called rythme) played by all the griot families. Tang gives excellent descriptions, as well as transcriptions and recordings of the major rythme that form this standard repertoire of drum patterns and dances, namely ardin, farwu jar, ceebu jën, baar mbaye, kaolack (mbalax) and lëmbël. These rythme are broken down into their constituent parts on the accompanying CD and in transcription for teaching and learning purposes, as well as recorded whole. This part of the book is a fantastic resource for anybody interested in learning the form. The other and more varied constituent of the Sabar repertoire, called bàkk, serve as the musical signatures of the major drumming families and as the vehicle for individual composition and improvisation. This is the realm that has grown in the late twentieth century and broken free from the representation through tone of the spoken word.

The most common social event for Sabar drumming also goes by the same name of sabar. A sabar is generally organized by women for women on a Dakar street. The street is closed to vehicular traffic by a horseshoe of chairs, occasionally with a police permit, and is lit by strings of light bulbs put up on trees for a night-time sabar. When held at night a sabar is called a tànnibéer. Sabar events of this sort, according to Tang, are more popular amongst the non-géer lower castes, especially the géwël. For those who organize and pay for the events they provide an opportunity to gain status as women who possess the virtue of hospitality (teranga) and for those who are invited the opportunity to socialize, dress in the finery for which the Senegalese are rightly famous and to dance the dances associated with the repertoire of familiar rythme the drummers always play. They also provide crowds of onlookers the pleasure of listening and watching. There is a set sequence of signature bàkk that introduce the sabar before the first of the rythme, ardin, is performed and the dancing is started by the hostess with the second rythme, farwu jar. Dancing occurs in short energetic bursts of around twenty seconds. One hand is used to dance while the other is used to hold up outer clothing (ser) and expose sexy undergarments (bééco). Dancers and drummers goad each other on to more intense levels of performance, leading to drummers getting up from their seats and surrounding a good dancer and the dashing of drummer soloists with CFA notes by fellow drummers or audience members. Good dancers synchronize their final pelvic movements with the phrase (danel) that is used to indicate the end of their twenty seconds. At the time of writing the event is drawn to a close by the performance of lembel, for which a fashionable and sexy dance called the ventilateur, has been developed. Women swirl their buttocks in a circular motion in the faces of the drummers with their bééco fully exposed, occasionally forming couples to amplify the sexually charged effect of the final thrusting of their hips before they run from the dance circle into the arms of their friends. Women's mutual savings association meetings (tur) are held in the privacy of the family compound and as such allow for even greater levels of sexually charged dancing to be used for the entertainment of the women's friends away from the eyes of uninvited male onlookers. For marriages and baptisms a tent is used to extend the private sphere of the compound into the street. The drumming repertoire is more restricted to rythme for dancing at these events, with less room for virtuosic displays of bàkk and more expressions of praise for those concerned (woyang). Men tend to attend in the morning and women in the afternoon when the sabar proper is held. Drumming forms an integral part of the rituals in addition to animating the dancing in the afternoon. Géwël drummers also celebrate Muslim feast days. They go to the houses of upper-middle-class géer patrons to gather money to the sound of their drums.

Wrestling matches have been a part of Senegalese social life for as long as the written record exists and have always been accompanied by Sabar drumming. There is one particular rythme associated with wrestling called tuus, performed by a stadium troupe. Wrestling remains the most popular Senegalese sport. Wrestlers also have their own drumming troupes that accompany them to the arena and perform bàkk composed for and associated with their man. This is drumming to command attention and respect rather than animate dancing. It is predominantly men who attend these events. Politicians use drummers in a similar way before and after speeches, though usually on the basis of a fee for a particular performance and without the long-standing relationship wrestlers build up with Sabar groups. Politicians also pay for women to organize tànnibéer as political rallies. The final historic social event at which Sabar is performed that Tang discusses is a form of ticketed street theatre on a section of cordoned-off road, called a simb, organized by whoever wants to do so. Griots dress as and take on the spirit of three lions appear before the male audience to the sound of the drums, and proceed to hunt down and chase those without tickets for some ritual humiliation. Those caught must do whatever the lions command, much to the delight of the rest of the crowd. A new context in which Sabar has taken hold is the Soirée Sénégalaise started by Thio Mbaye and his group Rimbax in 1993 after the release of their cassette of the same name. These take the musical form of tànnibéer but take place in nightclubs late at night for an admission fee and are attended by men and women. The women are encouraged to wear Senegalese clothes rather than Western clubbing outfits, with the offer of free entry, as these clothes are an integral part of the dancing. Dance competitions often form part of the entertainment.

Parallel to the independent evolution of Sabar drumming proper has been its synthesis and adaptation to instrumental dance bands. Tang gives a potted history of the post-war arrival of Afro-Cuban music in Senegal and the bands that started playing this music to accompany singing in Spanish – most notably the Star Band formed at the dawn of independence in 1960. This was followed by the evolution of what has come to be known as mbalax by the three bands that formed out of the break-up the Star Band – Star Band No. 1, Étoile 2000 and Étoile de Dakar and two others – Orchestre Baobab, formed in 1970, and Super Diamono. It was Aziz Seck of Super Diamono who took the separate parts of the kaolack/mbalax rythme in 1977 and made the inspired move to use them as the basis of an urban dance band by taking the parts played by each drum for the dance-band line-up – the lead vocal as nder drum, the rhythm guitar as mbèng-mbèng drum, the keyboard as talmbat and the bass guitar as tulli. Youssou N'dour and his band Super Étoile have become the best-known exponents of the genre. Youssou N'dour added the tama talking drum to his line-up. Tang speculates that the reason the kaolack/mbalax rythme has remained the basis of the genre, known as Mbalax, without much use of the other major rythme, is that it lends itself to fast and slow tempos and the layering of bàkks on top of it. Nonetheless, the complexity of the rhythm has led Senegalese musicians to simplify recordings of it for international export. Other popular forms have evolved that appeal to specific Senegalese constituencies, such as Wolof Hip-Hop for the youth, but it is Mbalax the pop music that continues to appeal across the Senegalese social spectrum. This new musical context has provided another avenue for the perpetuation of Sabar and of the integrity of the dominant géwël families. These families continue to pass on their musical heritage to their male kin through training in the family compound, just as it remains predominantly women who dance to the music.

Tang manages to give the reader a strong grasp of a highly complex musical form, of the many and varied contexts of its performance, as well as its centrality to the popular music that has provided one of the major success stories of international export outside Africa of an African music. Until now, at least for those outside Senegal, the international success of this popular music has thrown a shadow over the drumming tradition from which it has originated. Tang pulls that tradition into the light it deserves. She is also admirably concise in achieving this.