Performance and power: Cultural strategies for contesting hierarchy and political authority in Maazou dan Alalo's song Baudot

Abstract

In history and literature, colonial rule is often read correctly in terms of violence, trauma, (super) structural mutations and the undermining by external forces of local endogenous authorities, cultures and ideologies. Incorrectly, however, these effects and mutations are typically considered to be induced unilaterally from the outside hence occluding the role and agency of local actors and the characteristics of internal social dynamics in the colonized space. This paper focuses precisely on aspects of these often forgotten dimensions explored through an analysis of the paradoxal 'Baudot' praise song by Maazou Inoussa alias Dan Alalo and his troupe. The song foregrounds the colonial administrator René Baudot both as hero and anti-hero, the artist as a powerful actor and lucid critic, the local society as reactive, ambivalent and heterogeneous. In this performance of power, panegyric/parody, empathy/satire, insider/outsider, high-status/low-status, private/public, domination/resistance, centrality/liminality power/powerlessness and low status/high status emerge as key concepts in a piece demonstrating artistic virtuosity, humour and lucidity. © Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa, 2009.