Sebiba
Sebiba is the name of a festival and the Tuareg male dance in the Sahara oasis Djanet in the Tassili n'Ajjer region in southern Algeria, which is performed on this occasion and accompanied by female drummers . The dance originated among the descendants of black African slaves and is part of the celebrations for the Islamic Ashura Festival .
Cultural environment
The Tuareg are traditionally divided into classes. The upper class of the aristocrats is called imajeghen or imuhagh in Tamascheq and corresponds to the warriors (hassan) among the Moorish Bidhan . At the lower end of the social class are the iklan , slaves ( Arabic Pl. ʿAbīd among the Bidhan). The slaves kidnapped from the Sudan region are free today and form the majority within Tuareg society. The blacksmiths, which made all tools, weapons and jewelry, formed a separate group that was previously outside of society and was outlawed. They are called inaden, according to the bidhan maʿllemīn. The Sebiba dance and drum music have black African roots. Another male dance of the black Tuareg population, tazenreriht , was accompanied by female singing and whistling; it was hardly ever performed. The noble Tuareg seldom dance, their wives play the single-stringed fiddle imzad or beat the mortar drum tendé to accompany the singing men.
The first through the tenth day of the first Islamic month of Muharram is the time for rites of passage that usher in the new year. The climax is the tenth day, the Ashura day (ʿāšūrāʾ), which has other religious meanings depending on the Islamic denomination . New Year's Day is the following eleventh Muharram. In Djanet, Sebiba is called the dance and the entire city festival at the turn of the year. In Agadez in northern Niger , the Tuareg celebrate the Bianu festival with dances and parades on the same occasion .
At the Bianu and at the Sebiba festival, the course of the event is formed by the contrast between two population groups: for the Bianu, the city of Agadez is divided into an east and west half for the duration of the event, the residents of the Ksar come for the Sebiba festival Azellouaz and des Ksar El Mihan against each other. The festival brings back memories of a long conflict that has now been resolved between the two villages. The place Adjahil does not take part in the celebrations, presumably the religious prohibition by the Sufi brotherhood of the Sanussiya , who maintained a Zawiya in Adjahil at the beginning of the 20th century .
The cultural background of the Sebiba also includes the mythological notion of the end of the year, a new beginning and an interim period in transition and in dissolution during the duration of the festival. This general cosmogonic concept is passed down as Tuareg customs (tagdudt) and is said to have been known to nomadic Tuaregs in the past . The idea of a chaotic transition period relates to the seasonal regeneration of nature, but can also be associated with a mythological reassurance of the power of black African rulers. There the kingship goes through a regularly recurring phase of ritual anarchy, in which the relations of rule are turned upside down and sham battles are carried out, until the ruler has finally been confirmed of his divine origin.
The temporal equation with Ashura makes the rites, which were originally referred to as pre-Islamic, a part of everyday Islamic culture and thus acceptable for a large part of the Muslim Tuareg. Nevertheless, there are Muslim groups who reject the Sebiba as un-Islamic because of their origin and the way they are carried out.
Legend traces the Sebiba back to the pharaoh who drowned in the Red Sea while persecuting the biblical Moses (Sidi Moussa) and the Jews. Back then, good triumphed over evil, which is expressed in the new beginning of nature during the Ashura days. To thank you for the victory, the Sebiba is said to have been invented. To distinguish it from Sebiba dances, which can be performed at weddings and other private celebrations in other villages, the festival on Ashura day is called Sebiba n'Tililin (other spelling Sebeiba ou Tillellin ).
Other dances of the originally black population of the Maghreb are the Stambali , a Tunisian dance that is part of an obsession rite and its Moroccan counterpart, Derdeba . The Algerian dance of the Berber women Abdaoui also has a seasonal reference .
Performance practice
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The entire festival lasts ten days and begins with music and singing exercises. Those responsible determine the participants and leaders of the dance groups, "praises" (Pl. Timulawen, Sg. Tāmule ) are sung daily with increasing intensity until individual participants of the dances fall into a trance (ağellal) on the eighth day . Tililin is a place in the Wadi Tarazit where the actual Sebiba festival takes place. The processions of the two villages (Pl. Ksour ) come here on the eve of Ashura Day , after they have previously passed through the oasis gardens.
The dance performances can be divided into three stages: In the course of the 20th century, the dances took on the character of a competition, in which the beauty of the clothes was initially in the foreground. The dancers are lined up in a line in the first section and present their long, indigo-blue colored frocks with wing-like wide-cut sleeves, which are called tekamsin ( Sg.tekamest ). Their appearance as large birds means a display of power and is one of the symbolic exhibition fights. Aralei n'awatei is a special part of the dances in which the men of both ksour face each other and fight in pairs with long wooden sticks. T-enfer means the climax of the dances, in which the drummers form groups of three and move in fast, wave-like movements.
The two processions come to the fairground in rows of four, with a group of 16 to 20 women playing ganga in front . Ganga (Pl. Gāngatān, also amenini ) is the regional name for the cylinder drum t'bol , which in this case consists of a hollowed out short section of a palm trunk. The wooden frame is covered on both sides with goat skins, which are fastened with cords and beaten with a curved stick (takourbat) . The women hold the deep-sounding drums in front of them with one hand on the frame and beat them with the other hand in a monotonous rhythm. The musicians are led by a singing and dance leader (tames n'amenini) , who sets the pace with a small drum hanging on a shoulder strap. On the square, the spectators have formed a circle into which the musicians, followed by the dancers, march. The groups move apart in opposite directions, turn around and briefly meet in the middle, only to gain distance again afterwards. The watching residents of the two villages face each other on the two halves of the circle. After a while, the dancers begin to move individually in a semicircle of their village. Occasionally they follow the group of female drummers. Overall, the participants of the event move wildly among each other, accompanied by drums, whistles, screams and the loud singing of the women. The sticks used for symbolic battles are supposed to represent lances, swords are also wielded, which otherwise may only be used by noble Tuareg.
For the dance, the men wear dark, wide trousers (serouel) , a shirt, a wide, side-slit cowl (gandoura) made of white linen and over it a second dark blue silk throw with colorful ribbons. Her head is raised by a colorful, frustoconical cap ( takumbut, French spelling takoumbout ). This consists of a cap (chéchia) with cotton pompons on which nine triangular silver jewelry plates (Sg. Terewt , Pl. Tera ) hang in three rows , which are supposed to protect against evil spirits as an amulet . The takumbut is now only worn at the Sebiba festival. The men cover the whole face with a black veil (asenǧed) except for the eye area. In addition to a sword or wooden lance, a wide fabric belt is also included. The women's clothing consists of a wide, dark robe and a long indigo blue cotton veil that is wrapped around the head. They wear triangular leather pendants against the Evil Eye , decorated with five cowrie shells , as well as bracelets and collars.
literature
- Viviane Lièvre: The Dances of the Maghreb. Morocco - Algeria - Tunisia. Translated by Renate Behrens. Otto Lembeck, Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-87476-563-3 , pp. 172-175. (French original edition: Éditions Karthala, Paris 1987)
- Hans Ritter, Karl-G. Prasse: Dictionary on the language and culture of the Twareg: Deutsch-Twareg. Vol. 2. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2009, pp. 218-221. (online at Google books)
Web links
- chats touareg djanet Algerie part 1. Youtube video