Songs of spiritual citizenship: Muslim and Christian voices in the Senegalese public sphere
[Thesis]
[Thesis]
[Thesis]
[Thesis]
Christine Thu Nhi Dang
Rommen, Timothy
University of Pennsylvania
2014
217
Committee members: Babou, Cheikh Anta; Jackson, John L.; Powell, Eve Troutt
Place of publication: United States, Ann Arbor; ISBN=978-1-321-16580-7
Ph.D.
Music
University of Pennsylvania
2014
This dissertation explores the public presence and political impact of sacred music in Senegal, a secular nation whose population is over ninety percent Muslim. Synthesizing textual analysis, ethnographic methods, and historical perspectives, it examines the public musical performances of three Senegalese religious communities. Two communities, the Muridiyya and the Tijaniyya, are large Sufi orders following mystical paths of Islam. The third community is the Senegalese Catholic Church, an influential minority. Evaluating musical performances intertextually, this dissertation highlights the ways in which the sung poetry of the Muridiyya, the intoned litanies of the Tijaniyya, and the vernacular hymns of the Catholic Church are used by their respective communities to stake claim on public spaces and to voice their participation in citizenship debates of the public sphere. Linking musical practice to political participation, this dissertation shows that the increasing amplitude of sacred music within the Senegalese public sphere represents grassroots efforts to disseminate a spiritually informed mode of citizenship-one that loudly rejects restrictive models of secularism in which religious signs and sounds are silenced. Based on nineteen months of field research and readings of sources in Arabic, Wolof, French, and Joola, this dissertation represents the first full-length study of sacred music in Senegal and the first sustained and comparative investigation of Muslim and Christian musical traditions in West Africa.
African Studies; Religion; Music
Philosophy, religion and theology;Social sciences;Communication and the arts;Catholicism;Citizenship;Public sphere;Sacred music;Senegal;Sufism