Black Spirits, White Saints: Music, Spirit Possession, and Sub-Saharans in Tunisia

Author(s): Richard C. Jankowsky

Source: Ethnomusicology , Fall, 2006, Vol. 50, No. 3 (Fall, 2006), pp. 373-410
Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of Society for Ethnomusicology

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20174467

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

University of Illinois Press and Society for Ethnomusicology are collaborating with JSTOR to
digitize, preserve and extend access to Ethnomusicology

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Vol. 50, No. 3 Ethnomusicology Fall 2006

Black Spirits, White Saints: Music, Spirit

Possession, and Sub-Saharans in Tunisia
Richard C. Jankowsky / Tufts University

Y? han?na rani wild ifrlgiya, wall?h berik

Wall?h yarham jdd?y wall?h fl m? khall?lt...
Oh mother, I am a son of Africa, thank God
God bless my ancestors for what they have left me ...
("Song for Busa'diyya," as performed by
Abdul-Majid Barnawijune 2001).

It may be space more than time that hides consequences from us, the "making
of geography" more than the "making of history" that provides the most
revealing tactical and theoretical world (Soja 1989:1).

This article
possession examines
music associatedthe trans-Saharan
with slaves, their descendants,movements
and other of stambeli, the spirit
displaced sub-Saharans in Tunisia. The main purpose of the music is to heal
humans by invoking the aid of a wide variety of individualized, named sub
sanaran Spirits and North African Muslim Saints who make their presence
known through ritualized trance and possession.1 My account of stambeli is
shaped by two related claims: first, stambeli was never only of, and only for,
the sub-Saharan community; rather, there has always been a strong demand
for this ritual music among Arab Tunisians. Secondly, although it is, in part, the
otherness of stambeli that has made it so desired by Tunisians, the structure
of the music ritually negotiates that difference by charting geo-cultural con
nections between sub-Saharan spirit possession practices and North African
Islam. Stambeli is a product of, and a commentary on, the historical encounter
between sub-Saharan and North ?fricas. Its spirit pantheon is broadly divided
into two groups referencing these geographical localities: the Whites (North
African) and the Blacks (sub-Saharan). These, however, are not bounded, dis

? 2006 by the Society for Ethnomusicology

373

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
3 74 Ethnomusicology, Fall 2006

crete categories. Rather, I argue that much of the cultural "work" of stambeli
is concerned with making connections between these two ?fricas rather
than setting them apart.
This paper is based on fieldwork carried out at Dar Barnu (lit., the"Bornu
House"), the last surviving vestige of a network of twenty-one communal
houses (diy?r jam?'a; sing, dar jam?'?) established in Tunis during the
height of the trans-Saharan slave trade (ca. 1700-1850 CE.). There I became
an apprentice toAbdul-Majid Barnawi, the eighty-year-oldyinna, or master of
the gumbr? (three-stringed plucked lute). Abdul-Majid is a\sogaladlma kblr,
or head, of the house. This title, which combines the Hausa term galad?ma
("head" or "chief ") with the Arabic kblr ("great" or "big"), immediately evokes
the encounter between sub-Saharan and North ?fricas and their fusion into
something unique in Tunisia. Throughout my apprenticeship, which began as
a yearlong endeavor in 2001 and has continued through several subsequent
visits to Tunis, I was struck by the way in which stambeli practitioners com
bined sub-Saharan, local Tunisian, and pan-Islamic referents in their daily lives.
As an apprentice, I trained for hours each day on the gumbr?, accompanied
the stambeli troupe to stambeli rituals, and contributed (albeit unwittingly,
as I was merely practicing in another room) to the final diagnosis of a patient
whose reaction to my gumbr? playing confirmed that she was possessed by a
particular type of spirit. Learning the repertoire was the central component
of my training. Many of my initial questions about the spirit world would
be met with the somewhat cryptic response that all of my answers were to
be found "in the music." As I learned more and more of the repertoire, and
became capable of identifying the different songs in rituals that I attended
and eventually performed in, I realized that the spirit world of stambeli was,
as promised, progressively revealing itself to me, and that, indeed, it was only
"in the music" that the members of the stambeli spirit pantheon, their rich
history of trans-Saharan movements, and their continual relevance in modern
Tunisia became manifest publicly. Ritual, as Bruce Kapferer (1991) suggests, is
a cultural hermeneutic; that is, it is a performance whereby culture analyzes
itself. In what follows, I apply this reasoning to the world of stambeli in or
der to convey how that world is musically structured, and how the musical
structuring reflects and shapes the cultural encounters of the stambeli com
munity.
My perspective is from the inside of Dar Barnu, where I, like countless
needy others throughout the centuries, was welcomed into the household.
Although the majority of household members and ritual specialists are of
sub-Saharan descent, such a background is not required in order to enter
onto the path of becoming a stambeli musician. In fact, household members
often bemoaned how some black Tunisians allegedly use their dark skin color
as cultural capital and play stambeli without the proper ritual knowledge.2

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 fankowsky: Black Spirits, White Saints 3 75

What is important to the stambeli elders is that one enters onto the path
(thniyya) of the stambeli apprentice. This path is one that continually brings
sub-Saharan knowledge and the cumulative history of sub-Saharan displace
ment into Tunisia.

Histories
My experience at Dar Barnu also entailed a great deal of downtime,
consisting of chatting, radio listening, and television watching, all supple
mented by copious amounts of sweet mint tea. Our conversations often
turned to the history of Dar Barnu and the activities of the sub-Saharans in
their new home.3 The history of Dar Barnu, as it was conveyed to me over
the past several years, provides a compelling history of culture, society, and
the state in Tunisia through the lens of cultural memory of a minority. It is a
history inseparable from the geo-cultural imagination, both from within and
without.
The network of communal houses offered support for new migrants and
freed slaves by providing an environment in which they could find others
who shared their language, customs, and beliefs. Each house corresponded to
a political, ethnic, or linguistic sodality in sub-Sahara. Dar Barnu, as its name
suggests, congregated people from Bornu, once part of the ancient Kanem
Bornu Empire and today referring to the region that encompasses most of
northeastern Nigeria and the portions of Niger, Chad, and Cameroon border
ing Lake Chad. According to Abdul-Majid, the network of houses in Tunis also
included Dar Askar, Dar Badiy, Dar Baghirmi, Dar Bakaba, Dar Barnufi, Dar
Darfur, Dar Debarin, Dar Gambara, Dar Ghadamsiyya, Dar Guway, Dar Kano,
Dar MaiTakim, Dar Nefis, Dar Shwashna, Dar Songhay, DarTorbega, DarTubu,
Dar Waday, Dar Zgayyat, and Dar Ziriya. Through this network, the diversity of
sub-Saharan geographies and cultures was preserved and mapped onto the
urban landscape of Tunis. While each house had its customs, its own special
Saints and Spirits, and a particular way of performing spirit possession ritu
als, it seems that the high degree of interaction among the houses led to a
gradual consolidation of many related ritual musical traditions into a single
practice, based largely, though not entirely, on the Hausa bori.4
This network flourished through the rule of the Husaynid Ottomans
(1705-1881), which supported the public performance of stambeli by hosting
performances at the court during holidays (the significance of this support
is elaborated below). This relationship continued throughout the period
of the French protectorate (1882-1956), as the French kept intact, at least
symbolically, the ruling apparatus of the Ottoman court. The network, how
ever, suffered greatly at the hands of nationalists immediately following Tuni
sian independence in 1956. Under Tunisia's first president, Habib Bourguiba,

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
3 76 Ethnomusicology, Fall 2006

who was zealously wedded to the ideologies of modernist development and

secularism, Tunisian blacks were targeted for their supposedly primitive,
pre-modern beliefs and practices.5 Had stambeli remained sealed off inside
the network of communal houses, its many critics might not have had the
chance to witness the music, and, if they did, their criticisms most likely
would not have been so scathing. But stambeli did not remain sealed off
from the wider Tunisian society. From at least the early 1700s, stambeli had
been performed at shrines for local saints venerated by both sub-Saharans
and Arab Tunisians.
Under Bourguiba, public performances of stambeli were all but banned,
save a brief tryst in the late 1960s. At that time, public interest in stambeli
took the form of gauging its potential to modernize and turn another "slave"
music into something "great" like American jazz (see Lapassade and Ventura
1966). While some stambeli musicians took advantage of this opportunity
(one even penned a "stambeli for Bourguiba"), others were more reticent.
Abdul-Majid,for instance, was invited by Tunisian national television to record
a program for broadcast. He was surprised, however, to find that the stage
was painted "like a jungle" and that the organizers were insisting that he
wear a sub-Saharan costume. He vehemently opposed performing in such a
setting, and refused to wear the "African" outfit. "I'm Tunisian," he later told
me."My mother was Tunisian. I was born in Tunisia. Why should I wear'Afri
can' clothes? I don't wear those clothes. This [pointing to his gumbr?], this
is [sub-Saharan] African. But / am Tunisian."
An informal ban on the television and radio remained in place through
the 1990s, after Ben Ali took over the presidency with a bloodless coup
d'?tat. While still devoted to an authoritarian method of rule, this current
presidency has also opened up to certain opportunities offered by economic
globalization, and thus has begun to recognize some of the advantages of
acknowledging stambeli's continued presence and allowing its performance
in public. This has situated contemporary stambeli ambiguously within non
practicingTunisian society, which, influenced by the ethos of the world music
market, sees in stambeli an exotic but internal Other.6

Sub-Saharan Identities in Tunisia

The socio-cultural politics of identity in Tunisia, as with the rest of the
Maghreb, are generally framed in religious (e.g., Muslim vs. Jewish) and/or
ethno-linguistic (e.g., Arabic vs. Berber) terms. While these identities are
by no means static (indeed, they are often situational and/or overlapping),
the sub-Saharan presence in Tunisia complicates such divisions in particular
ways. Whereas Berbers and Jews have been considered indigenous Others
to politically dominant Arabic-speaking Muslims, sub-Saharans have been

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 fankowsky:Black Spirits, White Saints 377

understood to be geographical outsiders. However, they could not always

already be categorized as non-Muslim and non-Arabic speaking, as most slaves
were converted to Islam before their arrival in North Africa, and would learn
to speak Arabic once there.7 In Tunisian society, blackness is associated with
a sub-Saharan primitiveness that, in turn, has both positive and negative
connotations. Blacks in Tunisian society, whether or not they are associated
with stambeli, continue to experience racism. Conversations with members
of the stambeli community and close Arab Tunisian friends confirmed the
existence of widespread prejudice limiting the social, marital, and employ
ment options of dark-skinnedTunisians. Even today, the government still uses
a stamp of a "Negro head" to denote the lowest grade of silver in its grading
system of precious metals. The servitude of slavery remains inscribed on
the black body in Tunisia, where the most common term for black people is
ivasf?n ("servants"), and where it is not uncommon to hear a speaker specify
someone's race by designating that person mahr?q (lit.,"burned") or hurr
(lit., "free").
Many Tunisians also ascribe to black people a mysterious and powerful
ability to manipulate the spirit world and to protect against misfortune.8
Traditionally, black female servants known as d?d? would accompany Arab
boys to their circumcision in order to give them courage, and would even be
asked to breastfeed Arab Tunisian boys so that they would grow up "strong
and courageous" (on contemporary colactation practices in the Maghrib,
see Ensel 2002). Black women were almost always present for good luck at
weddings and at childbirth. According to the observations of G. Zawadowski,
in early-twentieth-century Tunisia,
The dark pigmentation of the Blacks also seems to constitute an effective "scare
crow" against the jn?n in Maghrebi popular magic. The presence of a Negro in
a family meeting is regarded as bringing good luck, and, in the Tunisian Sahel,
one invites a Negro to attend marriage ceremonies for the express purpose of
"making the evil eye fly away" (iteyyer el-'ln), according to the picturesque Arabic
expression. Their power to protect them from the jn?n is considered so strong
that it is enough to make an image of a Negro out of cardboard, wood, bronze,
or stone, and place it in a conspicuous place on a wall, for example, to obtain
the same result (1942:151 ; my translation).

In terms of the musico-religious practices of black Tunisians, as a non

black with many ties to non-stambeliTunisian society, I became aware, often
uncomfortably, of the different ways in which stambeli has been viewed
from outside the community. From my conversations with Arab and self-de
scribed Arabicized Berber Tunisians, two broad and interrelated ideological
positions were mobilized in statements critical of stambeli. In the first, the
conservative Islamic perspective, stambeli and other rituals associated with
spirit possession and the "cult of saints" are deemed pagan and therefore un

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
3 78 Ethnomusicology, Fall 2006

Islamic. This, however, was much less a prevalent attitude than the second,
the high modernizing perspective, in which stambeli and other rituals are
seen as primitive, superstitious, and incompatible with the drive towards
modernist development.
There is, however, another side to this coin. The stambeli community, like
many other sub-Saharan diasporic communities around the world, has used
this perceived otherness to its advantage. While there are undeniable societal
and institutional prejudices against black Africans in Tunisia, there also exists
a common belief among Arab Tunisians that sub-Saharans are particularly
efficacious in healing ailments brought on by the agency of spirits.
Stambeli's niche within the wider framework of traditional healing pro
vides the main point of contact for Arab Tunisians. When other modes of heal
ing fail, potential clients may be referred to stambeli practitioners. If stambeli
spirits are believed to be at work, clients will hold a stambeli ceremony at
their home, a major household event that usually involves dozens of friends
and relatives.
Arab Tunisians might also encounter stambeli at the shrine of a local saint,
where it will be performed for a semi-private ritual (for example, when the
client lives in an apartment bloc and does not wish to make her ailment and
its cure known to neighbors) or during the street processions of the three
day annual pilgrimage held each summer. A third and least common point
of contact with wider Tunisian society is the concert stage, where stambeli
is slowly becoming part of the ubiquitous festivalization of cultural perfor
mance in Tunisia.
At this point it is germane to mention stambeli's relationship to the
gn?tva of Morocco. Stambeli has been considered by French and Tunisian
writers as the Tunisian equivalent of Morocco's gn?wa, a similar musical tradi
tion originally performed by sub-Saharan slaves in Morocco. In both gn?wa
and stambeli, sub-Saharan musico-therapeutic practices involving spirit pos
session have entered into an Islamic, and then French (post)colonial, context
via the trans-Saharan slave trade. The musical instruments used are highly
similar, as is the musical structuring of the ceremony, in which even some
of the same Saints and Spirits are invoked. These surface similarities, how
ever, obscure important, if initially subtle, differences; we cannot assume that
because both are "black" and North African that they involve essentially the
same meanings for practitioners, clients, audiences, and society. For starters,
the fact that the Tunisian press, when it does mention stambeli (itself a rare
occurrence), is compelled to define it as the local equivalent of Moroccan
gn?wa, is telling. Simply put, stambeli is not a common component of the
public sphere in Tunisia.
That the connection to sub-Saharan Africa is more palpable and accepted
in Morocco than it is in Tunisia is a common sentiment among Tunisians and

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 fankowsky: Black Spirits, White Saints 3 79

has been point of contention for artists, musicians, and writers across North
Africa.9 Furthermore, as Deborah Kapchan has recently observed, gn?wa
has become a part of the transnational imaginary, signifying for American
jazz artists their African roots, while the same jazz musicians enter into the
gn?wa spiritual lineage (Kapchan 2002). Kapchan's selected discography
includes over twenty recordings (two of which comprise five volumes) of
gn?wa performances, collaborations, and influences.
The fact that we garner most of our information on gn?wa from liner
notes of such recordings is also revealing. With the exception of a single
cassette, locally produced and meagerly distributed in Tunis, there are no
recordings of Tunisian stambeli on the market. Furthermore, while race and
ethnicity are publicly discussed and debated in Morocco, this is not the case
in Tunisia, where early nationalist anti-Berber strategies succeeded in virtually
eradicating (or "assimilating") Berber culture.
Minorities and their musics in Tunisia are rarely studied or even discussed
in such terms. One exception is Jewish music, which Lachmann (1940) and
Davis (1986) identified as employing popular Tunisian melodic modes and
song structures. In stark contrast, the music of stambeli has remained other,
and not syncretic. It has remained emphatically "sub-Saharan" (s?d?nt) and
"non-Arab" ?ajm?) in both popular attitudes and musical form. Moreover, the
trans-Saharan movements of slaves and other displaced sub-Saharans is nar
rated in stambeli through musical reference to certain supernatural characters
who take the form of Spirits and Saints. The identities of these Spirits and Saints,
and the modes through which humans interact with them?namely, trance
and possession?are crucial elements of this alternative historiography.

Stambeli and the Black Sahara

I turn to the song for Busa'diyya whose lyrics comprise the first epigraph
of this article. The lyrics are taken from the song as performed by Abdul
Majid Barnawi, whose father was a slave captured in the Bornu region of
sub-Saharan Africa and sold to the Ottoman court in Tunis, where he rose to
the position of ga'yld, the Ottoman court-appointed overseer or spokesman
of the slave community. While his father always wanted to return home to
Bornu, Abdul-Majid, who was born in Tunis, never expressed any desire to
leave Tunisia. The connection to sub-Saharan Africa, however, as for most
descendants of slaves or other sub-Saharans in Tunis, remains an important
and palpable part of daily life, as this song attests.
In this song, which addresses the predicament of being a black African in
Tunisia, the term ifrigiya n (ifriqiya in standard Arabic) refers to Africa?more
specifically, sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, although Tunisia was once known to
the rest of the world as Ifriqiya, today, in Tunisian Arabic, Ifriqiya refers to

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
380 Etnomusicology, Fall 2006

that which Tunisia emphatically is not: sub-Saharan, or black, Africa. This

anxiety of Africanness has a long history in Tunisian society, dating back at
the very least to the fourteenth-century Tunisian polymath Ibn Khaldun,
who construed the Sahara Desert as a natural barrier between the civilized
and the savage.10 Ever since, socio-linguistic strategies that conflate race and
place have naturalized the incommensurability of sub-Saharan and North
?fricas. During the time of the trans-Saharan slave trade, sub-Saharan Africa
was known in Arabic as both hilad il-'abld ("land of the slaves") and bil?d
il-s?d?n ("land of the blacks"). The latter term is still widely used, and is de
fined in contradistinction to bil?d ?-bldh?n ("land of the whites"), or North
Africa.11
In their emphasis on the Sahara as a barrier, such constructions deny the
historical role of the Sahara as a bridge. From about the year 650 to 1900 CE.,
experts estimate that the number of captured slaves forced to embark on
the trans-Saharan journey surpassed nine million?nearly equal to the sum
total of the four centuries of the trans-Atlantic slave trade (Austen 1979:66).
The trans-Saharan slave caravan, like Paul Gilroy's (1993) trans-Atlantic ship,
foregrounds histories of contact and multiple crossings that challenge the
absolutist territorial logic ascribed to the nation-state by nationalist cultural
policymakers.12 And like Gilroy's Black Atlantic, the routes of the Black Sa
hara were zones of exchange, points of contact, and paths of circulation that
witnessed a continual flow of people, goods, ideas, beliefs, and practices.
Alongside this trade, there also existed a less formalized and continuous entry
of sub-Saharans into North Africa in the form of economic migrants, traders,
and religious pilgrims.

A Guide for the (Dis)Possessed: The Legend of Busa'diyya

In addition to drawing attention to the trans-Saharan movements of dis
placed sub-Saharans, the song of Busa'diyya is also central to keeping alive
the history of the stambeli community's modes of emplacement in Tunis.
During one of our many discussions about this history, Abdul-Majid pointed
to a photograph of Busa'diyya that he keeps on a shelf next to his gumbr?,
and explained:
Who was it that would show them [the Africans] the world here [inTunis]? It
was Busa'diyya. Now, they say you cannot find him anymore, that he has gone
off to Hammam 1-Anf [a town near Tunis]13... [The Africans] were tattooed and
painted in order to tell where they were from, and Busa'diyya knew all of their
markings ... he knew them all. [When they arrived] he would tell them,"You have
people from your country over there [in that communal house], and you have
yours over here [in this communal house] ... Each one had their own markings.
Their tattoos were their ID cards." (p.c.)

Busa'diyya is at once a mythical and historical figure, fraught with com

peting interpretations. The legend of Busa'diyya is about a sub-Saharan man

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 fankowsky: Black Spirits, White Saints 381

who hunted to support his wife and daughter, Sa'diyya. (Busa'diyya, literally,
means "father of Sa'diyya") One day, while her father was out hunting, Sa'diyya
was captured by slave-raiders and brought to Tunis, where she was sold to
a local notable. Upon hearing about the abduction, her father left his village
in search of Sa'diyya, following the trans-Saharan caravan routes to Tunis.
Once he arrived, he would wander the streets, singing of his pain and sorrow,
hoping that someone would show him where his daughter had been taken.
He used music as a means of getting the public's attention. He is often por
trayed, especially in the indigenous literature, as an itinerant, strangely dressed
black foreigner who wanders through the streets singing incomprehensible
songs and playing the shq?shiq (handheld iron castanets). Almost always,
he is portrayed as scaring children. Chadly Ben Abdallah, in his nostalgic
account of Busa'diyya, states, "Little girls and boys used to be fascinated by
the phantasmagorical character of this bizarre being, which they could not
compare to any known creature" (1988:179-80). Early ethnographer A.J.N.
Tremearne depicts him as "a bogey [man]," the only Hausa contribution to
masquerades put on by Arabs, who plays for the donations of the spectators
(1914:71,241).
From within the exiled sub-Saharan community, however, Busa'diyya
was someone quite different. His itinerant music-making was not exotic,
clamorous, or frightening for exiled sub-Saharans. In fact, it was precisely the
recognizability of Busa'diyya's music-making that enabled him to find newly
freed slaves and newly-arrived sub-Saharan migrants. Through scarification,
painted markings, and clothing, geography and ethnicity were inscribed onto
the bodies of sub-Saharans, and Busa'diyya was able to read those inscrip
tions.
Busa'diyya is an interstitial figure, straddling the line between myth and
history, north and sub-Saharan ?fricas, and the longing for a homeland and
the immediacy of helping others who were similarly displaced. Today, the
vestments of Busa'diyya adorn the wall of the performance space at every
annual pilgrimage (ziy?rd) to the shrine (zaiviyd) of Sidi Frej, a black Muslim
saint from Bornu and the "patron" saint of Dar Barnu. He is unique in that he
is the only member of the stambeli pantheon who is neither Spirit nor Saint;
he does not heal, possess, or engender trance. However, his continual pres
ence serves as a regular reminder of the movements of sub-Saharans across
the Sahara Desert. While he performs the experience of migration, his legend
emphasizes not origins and points of arrival, but the experience of movement
itself.

Saints and Spirits

In addition to the trade in humans, there has also been a considerable
amount of traffic in spirits across the Sahara. The distinctive and conten

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Figure 1. Etching of Busa'diyya (courtesy of JPS Editions).

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 fankowsky: Black Spirits, White Saints 383

Figure 2. (r-1): The yinna Abdul-Majid plays gumbri while Hafiz and Belhas
san accompany on shq?shiq.

tious musico-therapeutic spirit possession practices, such as stambeli, that

integrate or interact with Islam, on both sides of the desert, are powerful
signifiers of movement and alterity across?and, indeed, are defining features
of?this Black Sahara. Spirit pantheon membership often reflects histories
of encounter and contact across the Sahara. Sub-Saharan and North African/
Islamic personalities coexist in spirit pantheons among the gn?wa (Chlyeh
1999; Hell 1999) and hamadsha (Crapanzano 1973) in Morocco; dlw?n Sidi
Bl?l (Dermenghem 1954) in Algeria; hauka among the Songhay of Niger
(Stoller 1989); bori in Nigeria (Besmer 1983) and Niger (Masquelier 2001);
and tumbura (Makris 2000) and z?r (Boddy 1990) in the Sudan, to name
but a few. Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, the prevalence of the red fez worn
by Muslim/Arab spirits in numerous spirit possession traditions also attests
to histories of trans-Saharan movement and contact (Kramer 1993). Many
stambeli spirits can also be found in the Hausa bori pantheon, and until re
cently it was not uncommon for stambeli practitioners to use the term bori
in reference to these spirits.14
The spirits (literally) embody the encounter between sub-Sahara and
North Africa. Like humans, the spirits adapt to social and historical change,

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 384 Ethnomusicology, Fall 2006

and may be interpreted differently by different groups. Also like humans,

their interpersonal relationships may be redefined when transplanted to a
foreign social context. Just as displaced sub-Saharans took part in new forms
of alliance, dependency, and genealogy upon landing in North Africa, so too
were the spirits' relationships transformed from a framework analogous to the
Hausa clan system and into kinship terms having currency in North Africa.
Stambeli communicates with two categories of the invisible world: the
Saints (awliy?\ sing, wait), who are Muslim and "white," and the Spirits (s?l
hln, lit. "holy ones"; sing, s?lih), who are either Muslim or Christian, and
"black." The most basic formulation of this relationship is that the Spirits
are black and can possess human hosts, while the Saints are white and can
induce trance in humans, but cannot possess them. The dyadic relationships
between black/white, Spirit/Saint, and possession/trance are of fundamental
importance in understanding stambeli.15 What the stambeli Saints and Spirits
all have in common is that they are named, social beings with human-like
characteristics. They are understood and performed as an expression of
social relationships; spirits are human-like actors with the same power to
disrupt or enrich another's life. Spirit possession is, above all, a performance
and acknowledgment of the complex, often unpredictable actions of social
beings.

Stambeli and Healing

Stambeli is defined by its practitioners quite simply as a "cure" (duw?*).
It interfaces with local healing practices associated with local Islamic praxis.
Clairvoyants (shuiv?ff?t; takk?z?f), while not considered healers, are often
consulted in order to determine what type of healer is appropriate consider
ing the client's symptoms. Traditional healers in Tunisia include makers of
talismans and writers of Qur'anic charms, sorcerers ?azz?md) who exorcise
the jn?n spirits, and musicians of the hadra (Sufi trance ceremony) and st
ambeli. The source of the symptoms is often found to be supernatural and
treatment may involve the placation of a "believing" (Muslim) spirit through
religious offerings or the intercession of a Saint, the one-time exorcism of
a malevolent spirit (such as the jn?n), or the managing of a long-term rela
tionship between named Spirits or Saints and their hosts, as is the case with
stambeli.
The two basic categories of possession by Spirits in stambeli are mask?n
("inhabited") and madr?b ("struck") (cf. Crapanzano 1973:152-56). Being
struck (ma drub) by a Spirit is usually characterized by a loss of certain
physical functions. Symptoms may include paralysis, blindness, deafness, and
muteness. One can also be "inhabited" (mask?n) by a Spirit, which suggests a
more continuous relationship with the Spirit. The afflicted often experiences

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 fankowsky: Black Spirits, White Saints 385

bouts of fainting, convulsions, syncope, tremors, and other uncharacteristic

behavior. The distinction between madr?b and mask?n, however, is of neg
ligible practical importance. As long as the affliction has been diagnosed as
the work of spirits, the same stambeli healing process begins. The first step
in this process is to identify the particular spirit at work. This set of stages
involves (1) a diagnostic rite; (2) a rite of divination; and (3) a contract be
tween patient and stambeli troupe. The latter involves arranging for a private
ceremony by fixing a date and time and, most importantly, the payment of
the 'arb?n, or advance. These pre-ceremony rituals are followed by two col
lective rituals: the sacrificial rite and the rite of celebration or affirmation.
While the majority of stambeli clients are female, there is a noticeable (I
estimate about 25%) number who are male. Also, while many of the clients
could be described as lower-class, there is also a significant minority who
are relatively well off (and who are, in my experience, much more secretive
about their involvement in stambeli). Stambeli ceremonies involve a mixing
of genders that is remarkable in the context of Tunisia, where religious and
therapeutic music performance is almost always gender-segregated.16
The stambeli healing process is one of incremental transformations. The
progression of a patient from illness to Wellness consists of several steps,
each one bringing the patient and medium closer to appeasing the afflicting
spirit. The end goal is not exorcism per se, but rather to build a relationship
of accommodation between human and spirit. This relationship is performed
through music, embodied through sound and dance.
It must be emphasized that neither the music nor the musicians are
understood to be responsible for healing. Abdul-Majid was always quick to
point out that neither he nor his music could heal an affliction; rather, it is
the Saints and Spirits who are responsible. He only facilitates the process by
identifying the afflicting spirit, guiding the patient through the appropriate
ritual offerings, and finally, enticing the spirit through music to descend into
the body of the patient in order to dance.
Music, however, does more than entice the spirits to descend and take
part in healing. It also creates routes and connections among and between
the characters of the pantheon. Although they are categorically differenti
ated (see Tables 1 and 2), I suggest that stambeli legitimizes the sub-Saharan
presence in Tunisia by performing these historical movements and unifying
the Saints and Spirits aesthetically through music.
In what follows, I move from the historical and symbolic terrain of stam
beli just covered in order to elucidate the musical techniques through which
it achieves ritual efficacy I also consider in more detail the unseen characters
whose musical invocation narrates this alternative historiography of geo-cul
tural encounter."Sonorities and Ontologies" lays out the musical-ontological
field and the aesthetic foundations of stambeli, while "The Silsila: Situating the

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
386 Ethnomusicology, Fall 2006

Table 1. The geo-cultural routes of the Whites.

Color Group N?ba Geo-cultural Routes
White
Opening
Triumvirate
slat in-nabi Pan-Islamic
Jerma (Sidi Bilal) sub-Sahara to heart of orthodox Islam

Sidi Salah Bu Hijba ("Lord of the sub-Saharan Spirits"); links

Ras al-Ajmi Islam and sub-Saharan Africa

Mash?yikh
SidiFrej Bornu to Tunis
SidiSa'ad Bornu to Tunis
Sidi Abdul-Qader al-Jilani Baghdad to Africa and beyond
Sidi Abdesalam (al-Asmar) "Dark-skinned" (also "mixed race");
from Tripoli; founder of Sulamiyya
Brotherhood
On demand
Sayyida Manubiyya Local Tunisian female saint; has
all-female possession/trance ceremonies;
Sidi Beihassan Local Tunisian saint; has all-male dhik
ceremony, but women, in adjacent room,
fall into trance and possession based on
men's music

Spirits in Music" gives an account of the members of the stambeli

and how they are connected through musical performance.

Sonorities and Ontologies

Stambeli's ontology is predicated on its Otherness, its "sub-Saharan
in other words, on being 'ajmi. Being 'ajmi, though literally meaning "n
has taken on a much more specific meaning in Tunisian society. A
of exclusion, 'ajm? identifies the black Tunisian as arriving from a pre
and non-North African background, at once geographically and te
Other. This otherness is perceived not only in the foreignness of
sounds, instruments, and lyrics, but also more broadly in its ontologic
about the sources, functions, and nature of music itself.
In Tunisian society, the instruments used in stambeli mark radical
ence in appearance, sound, and function. They are considered to
from within and without, non-Arab and (thus) non-Tunisian. 17The inst
also attest to the multiple musico-religious authorities that com
foundation of stambeli. The gumbr? (three-stringed lute) is believed to

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 fankowsky: Black Spirits, White Saints 387

Table 2. Geo-cultural routes of the Blacks.

Black
Kuri
Dakaki The most Other of the spirit groups;
Kuri references blackness and sub-Saharanness
Migzu directly. Many of the spirits are derived from
Jamarkay bori spirits.This group is the most powerful
Baba Magojay in Tunis, and afflicts many individuals at
Ommi Yenna Dar Barnu (Lake Chad, the largest source of
Babam Zohra water in Bornu, was also known as "Kuri").
Adama
Nikiri
Sa'id
Salama
Bahriyya
Mulay (or Dodo) The Bahriyya ("Water Spirits") are
Ibrahim common to North African Islam and sub
May Saderwa Saharan spirit pantheons.They required
fawayay little or no modification in the Tunisian
Bahriyya context, where fishing and seafaring have
Sidi'Ali Diwan been important vocations and popular
Bakaba Islam associates water with danger.
Sarikin Gari
B?y?t
Yerima The B?y?t ("[Ottoman] Royalty") are the
Guindima most "local", referencing an important
May Nasra historical relationship between the
May Gaigia Ottoman court and the stambeli community.
Miriamu They are recognized by the red tarbush
Nana Aisha (fez) worn by their hosts. In ritual, they are
generous, representing the late Ottoman
rulers who supported stambeli and
outlawed slavery.

sub-Saharan origin and efficacious in communicating with the spirit world.

The shq?shiq (iron clappers) are connected to the history of Islam, which in
turn is connected to sub-Saharan Africans: they are associated with Sidi Bilal,
a black African slave chosen by the Prophet to be Islam's first mu'adhdhin
(muezzin), or caller-to-prayer. The gumbr? and shq?shiq are the definitive
stambeli instruments, and the majority of stambeli ceremonies only employ
these two instruments.
Each Spirit and each Saint is identified with and summoned by its own
specific n?ba (pi. nuw?yib), or tune. N?ba (from the classical Arabic naw
bd) literally means "[one's] turn," and to do things b-nuba is to do them in
succession. The n?ba is the fundamental unit of the stambeli repertoire. It
is a tune whose music, lyrics, and dance movements are identified with a

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
388 Ethnomusicology, Fall 2006

specific Spirit or Saint; the n?ba identifies, and is identified by, that deity. It
corresponds, then, to what Gilbert Rouget calls a "call-sign" or a "musical
motto" (1986:101). A stambeli ritual entails the successive invocation of nu
merous Spirits and Saints through music, involving up to several dozen spirits
in a single performance. The n?ba is how a spirit's potentiality for presence,
and thus its existence, is recognized. This metaphorical relationship is often
verbally manifested; if somebody wishes to know which spirit possesses the
patient, the individual would commonly ask, "What is her n?ba?" (shnlyya
nubit-h??).

The Troupe
The organization of the stambeli troupe also marks it as Other in the
context of ritual Tunisian musics. Unlike the typical Sufi dhikr, music-making
in stambeli is reserved for ritual specialists and performed on instruments
understood as off-limits to non-specialists. The typical stambeli troupe is
hierarchically organized, with the master-apprentice relationship determin
ing the basic relationship among members. As a rule, the master is yinna,
who plays the gumbr?. To become a yinna, however, requires much more
than proficiency on the gumbr?. The yinna is the voice of ritual authority. At
Dar Barnu, he diagnoses the afflicted, selects proper medicines, and deter
mines the appropriate ritual procedures. He performs the "structuring of the
structure" (Kapferer 1986:202) of the ceremony through the selection and
ordering of tunes, marking their beginnings and endings, and responding to
the sometimes unpredictable behavior of spirits and dancers.
In performance, the yinna is flanked on either side by the sun?'a (lit.,
"workers" or "manufacturers"), also referred to as shq?shiqiyya, who play the
shq?shiq (iron castanets) and comprise the vocal chorus. While the yinna
presides over the sun?'a, there is also a hierarchy among the latter. The leader
of the sun?'a usually sits to the yinna's right, and is often the lead singer. At
times the yinna will sing lead, especially if the nuba is not known to the lead
singer. The rest of the sun?'a respond to the lead lines with unison responses.
Often the sun?'a are responsible for preparing many of the components of
the ritual, such as the lighting of appropriate incense (bkh?r).
The sun?'a gain their musical and ritual knowledge from the yinna, who
nurtures their development over a number of years. The sun?'a are expected
to refer to the yinna, who is always elder, as b?b? ("father"), but for those
more distant he may be referred to as khalll ("uncle"). The sun?'a, in turn,
are usually treated as family.
Traditionally, the ritual specialists of the stambeli troupe would also
include the 'artfa (lit.,"she who knows"), who is not a musician but special
izes in rituals of diagnosis and divination. The 'arifa also becomes possessed

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 fankowsky: Black Spirits, White Saints 389

and entranced as a matter of course in the ceremonies. When she is not

dancing, it is her responsibility to look after the other dancers, ensuring that
they do not run into the musicians or the audience. After a therapeutic pass
ing out of the dancer, the 'arifa will also perform the requisite chiropractic
techniques for expelling the spirit from the dancer's body. The last of Dar
Barnu's trusted 'arifas died years ago, and nowAbdul-Majid and his wife Baya
share the diagnostic duties.

The Gumbr?
That music is a means to communicate with the sacred and facilitates the
metaphysical encounter between human and spirit worlds is at the ontologi
cal foundation of stambeli. More specifically, it is the music (m?stq?), defined
as the gumbr? melody, that stambeli musicians and clients alike identified as
the active agent.
The gumbr? is a bass-register plucked lute with three strings (awt?r;
sing.: ivatr) attached to the neck (yidd; lit.,"arm"), which measures about
forty-four inches in length and extends through the body and out the other
side. Its circular body is in fact also a double-headed drum crafted from a tree
trunk. Goatskin is used for the drumhead (/?/i/;lit.,"skin"). It is simultaneously
a chordophone and a membranophone; the performer plays melodic lines on
the strings while also beating rhythms on the drumhead with the strumming
hand.
The communicatory function of the gumbr? is reflected in the promi
nence of the metaphor of the voice in describing its components and playing
technique. The lowest-pitched string, which is situated between the other
two, is called shayb ("old man"), since it "speaks" in a low voice. The sec
ond string, tuned a perfect fourth above the shayb and situated below it, is
called sh?b ("youngster"), for it "speaks" at a higher pitch. The third string,
an octave above the shayb and situated above it, is called k?l?, which, as I
was told, is a term of sub-Saharan origin translated into the Arabic rd?d, or
"the one who answers, replies." In terms of playing technique, it is said that
the right hand "speaks" by strumming the strings, and the left hand "answers"
by stopping the string. The words of the gumbr? emanate from the qamra
(lit.,"moon"), a hole carved into the body of the gumbr? which, in addition
to holding spare parts and various amulets, also holds the monetary offerings
for safe keeping.

Lyrics, Languages, Delivery

The lyrics are all considered du'?\ or invocations; they welcome the
Spirits and Saints, inviting them to make their presence known. This sets them
apart from most Tunisian Sufi songs, which tend to be hagiographie and his

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
390 Ethnomusicology, Fall 2006

toriographic records of the Saints'lives. The words of the stambeli tunes are,
at one level, considered "unimportant," as they can be altered without having
any ritual impact. However, delivery and aesthetics of the singing (ghin?*) are
primary. The language of the songs is a mixture of Tunisian Arabic and'ajmi,
(in the context of language, meaning not only "foreign" and "non-Arabic," but
also "incorrect" and "barbarous"), the latter originating in various languages
of sub-Sahara, but mostly derived from the Hausa and Kanuri languages. The
distinction between Arabic and 'ajmi, however, begins to break down in the
rendering of the words. The delivery of the words, whether Arabic or 'ajmi,
is, ideally, performed in what is called a Sudani ("sub-Saharan") manner. While
this aesthetic is sometimes described by stambeli musicians as "nasal," it is
more often referred to as "not clearly enunciated" (m?sh musarrih), a distinc
tion made in contrast to the ideal Arabic aesthetic of delivery, which prizes
clear diction (see Danielson 1997:138-41). A Sudani manner of delivery is,
in the context of Tunisia, an indexical marker of otherness, and renders all
the words, whether Arabic or non-Arabic in origin, as being 'ajmi.

Shq?shiq
Shq?shiq is the onomatopoetic term for heavy, handheld iron clappers.
Each clapper consists of two domed, cymbal-like discs joined by an iron
trough, which is where they attach, through cord or twine, to the player's
hands. Each player holds a pair in each hand. They have an equivalent in
Hausaland, where they are referred to as sambani, and are virtually identi
cal to the qr?qab played by the gn?wa of Morocco. Subtle differences in
performance practice, however, differentiate the shq?shiq from the qr?qab.
The Moroccan qr?qab are fastened together at one end, which limits the
volume they are capable of producing. In contrast, the Tunisian shq?shiq
is performed in a more open manner in which the clappers vibrate more
freely. Abdul-Majid not infrequently reminds his players to make sure their
shq?shiq are slightly offset so that air does not get trapped between them,
which would muffle their sound.
The shq?shiq's connection to sub-Saharan sambani is but one of their
historical associations that remains salient within the stambeli community.
The shq?shiq are also related, through legend, to Bilal, one of the Prophet
Muhammad's companions and the one chosen by the prophet to become
Islam's first mu'adhdhin. Bilal was of African (most likely Ethiopian) heritage
and born into slavery in Mecca. He was an early convert to Islam (it is thought
that he was the second, after Abu Bakr, to convert). Conversion to Islam at the
time was not widely tolerated, and he was punished for his beliefs. He was
subsequently bought by the Prophet's companion Abu Bakr, and accompanied
the Prophet in various capacities, including steward, servant, and soldier (Ara

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 fankowsky: Black Spirits, White Saints 391

fat 1960:1215). Communities of displaced sub-Saharans across North Africa

claim spiritual descent from Bilal, who not only came to symbolize ideal traits
of Islamic piety, but also came to represent a legitimizing connection between
Africans and Islam extending all the way back to the origins of Islam itself.
As a slave of sub-Saharan origin whose piety and exceptional vocal abilities
were recognized by the Prophet, the figure of Bilal provides a strong historical
link between the sub-Saharan diaspora and Islamic orthodoxy. By situating
the n?ba of Bilal (known as Jerma in stambeli) immediately after that of the
Prophet, stambeli performs an historical relationship musically. The lyrics,
which welcome Jerma, preserve some phrases from the Jerma language:^,
for instance, is a call for someone to come:

Way ay way ay jerma, kakabil?li-ah

faddiy irham kakabil?li
Truly, truly, Jerma, Come, Come, Bilal
Welcome him, grandfather, Come, Come, Bilal

Musical Example 1 is a transcription of the n?ba of Jerma. It features

the typical pentatonic mode of stambeli, call-and-response singing, and is in
the Sudani rhythm. The notes at the bottom of the gumbr? staff represent
the rhythms played on the skin of the gumbr? with the yinna's strumming
hand.
After several cycles, the tempo increases and the notes become closer
to each other and nearly, or fully, equidistant, resulting in a triple-pulse feel,
as seen in Example 2.
Each n?ba undergoes an increase in tempo and a heightening of intensity.
The heightening of intensity is not merely an increase in tempo. It is also a
transformation of the temporal contour of the measured rhythmic units. For
the three-pulse Sudani pattern, the jaggedness of the quarter-eighth-eighth
pattern evens out into equidistant eighth-notes, which could be represented
as a gradual change between the two rhythms shown in Example 3.
This example also highlights another important feature of the stambeli
rhythmic aesthetic: offset accenting. These accents do not occur simultane
ously with the regular accents of the gumbr?; rather, they commonly fall just
after. This results in a metric tension between the gumbr? and the shq?shiq
that only intensifies as the n?ba increases in tempo.

The Silsila: Situating the Spirits in Music

By inducing the arrival of the Saints and Spirits, the music of stambeli
mediates the encounter between human and spirit worlds. When played
skillfully, and in the proper ritual context, the "words" (kl?rn) of the gumbr?
"speak" (yitkallem?) directly to the spirits. This music, however, not only

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 392 Ethnomusicology, Fall 2006

Example 1. Jerma
5 5

J3X&...Hl.
GjUMMl
9V flfl 4 <W ?PPIS? II
OjUMS?I Q?\H n."^. *.*.*

> > > >

SHQ?SHIQ ?.?J?iniL
j53J3u3ix53
?KPOMSE rt*t?
WAY -AH WAY-AH WAY

Hrj, J im l} j r J^InU *
CALL

WAY-AH WAY YA KA KA g| LA LI AH

3 3

^ M*
AB3^
** P^p3f^P^p3iP3p5
$UM8?I S?!M ?.j..j.?.j.i.?.?.?...j.4jl.i....?(.J.?.?Ur-.?i.?
> > >

SHQ4SHI? Jiu3in3id3
-J?SXSJ?3J31J3U33J3IJIS

?TjJ j^j^ij ? -
?ESPOMSE

TEC-MA U - M8l_ LA - U AH

JTV \*Ji -f^n?

WAY-AH WAY YA UUt\lk LI

coaxes the spirits to descend into their hosts, but also renders th
pable and perceptible?and thus able to be manipulated and m
situating them within the structure of ritual.
The n?bas are organized into larger successions (silsil?t, l
also tb?', lit., "styles" or "characters") of songs arranged hiera
formed sequentially, and representing different classes of Bl
White Saints.19 Silsilas are most often organized around fami
and played in sequential order, from the oldest spirit in the
youngest. Although each silsila is theoretically discrete and r
a certain amount of room for improvising the ceremony's struct
song. The musicians must perform for their audience, and th

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 fankowsky: Black Spirits; White Saints 393

Example 2. Jerma at a faster tempo,

ftUM?CI aqpw
ni s
GjUMMI ?W II-tU-tU-ti-ii-f-tU

misun n m ni m mfhfhfhfh
they repeat certain n?bas (if, for example, many people present trance to
the same Saint or are afflicted by the same Spirit), skip certain n?bas, or play
them in a non-normative order. The malleability of the silsila, and indeed of
each n?ba within it, gives the ceremony a heightened sense of spontaneity
and unpredictability. It also, however, is inherently a means of performing
connections between Spirits and Saints. The silsila connects certain n?bas,
both musically and (thus) conceptually. Each is performed and understood
sequentially, but this sequence is prone to manipulation by passing over
certain n?bas, repeating others, or in some instances, even inverting parts
of the sequence. As certain members of the audience are also affiliated with
particular Spirits and Saints, a performance of a n?ba is also a performance
of social relations. In a private stambeli, the host's nuba(s) will be performed
most often. In this way, the host's status is performed musically. This also
often leads to increased amounts of monetary offerings to the musicians. If
the n?bas provide the content of the stambeli ritual performance, then it is
the silsila that provides the larger structural framework.
Thus, music does not merely allude to or represent an abstracted pan
theon of spirits. Stambeli is a system of knowledge that is performed and

Example 3. Rhythmic transformation during tempo increase (s?d?m

rhythm)

rtr
to:

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
394 Ethnomusicology, Fall 2006

embodied. It is not, like textual Islam, abstracted, external, texted knowledge.

There are no formal recited or written texts to represent the structure of
the pantheon, nor are there any social institutions or pedagogical practices
dedicated to the process of transmitting such knowledge as an abstract set
of information. Rather?and this is a crucial point?the stambeli pantheon
only comes into being through its musical performance. Through perfor
mance, the music produces, reproduces, and reworks the organization of the
stambeli pantheon of Saints and Spirits and the interrelationships among
its members. The following sections examine the histories and identities
associated with the different unseen characters of stambeli, each of whom
is a sort of waystation along the routes through the pantheon taken by the
musicians and dancers.

White Saints
The category of al-abyad ("the Whites") is comprised exclusively of
Muslim personalities, most of whom are considered saints. The term "White"
is believed to reflect the white jallibiyya, or robe, worn by many pious Mus
lims. It also references locality: while the Blacks originated in, and live in,
sub-Saharan Africa, the Whites (even those who were of sub-Saharan origin)
lived in North Africa, which, as mentioned above, is also known as the "land
of the whites"(bil?d il-bid?n).
The stambeli ceremony of Dar Barnu invariably opens with three n?bas
representing important personalities in the pantheon, and which are "tied
together" (mur?bit mablnhum)\sl?t in-nabl (Prophet's Prayer),Jerma (Sidi
Bilal), and Bu Hijba. The idea of being "tied together" is an important and
highly symbolic concept in stambeli: musically, it means that the n?bas are
played in succession without stopping, a performance of the idea that they
are tied together not only aesthetically, but conceptually and historically.
Positioning sl?t in-nab? first in the silsila is a performance of the Prophet
Muhammad's importance in stambeli. Immediately following is the n?ba
for Jerma. Jerma (also transcribed as Djerma or Zarma), is a sub-Saharan
ethno-linguistic group situated near the Bornu region. In stambeli, Jerma is
also the 'ajmi name for Sidi Bilal. Bilal is an important figure in many black
North African musico-religious communities. As a slave of sub-Saharan origin
whose piety and exceptional vocal abilities were recognized by the Prophet,
Bilal provides a strong historical link between the sub-Saharan diaspora and
Islamic orthodoxy. Just as importantly, legends of Bilal also attest to his ability
to heal and mediate disputes through music and dance (P?ques 1964:479).
The third personality in this section of the silsila is Bu Hijba, a shortened
appellation of Sidi Salah Bu Hijba Ras al-'Ajmi. Little biographical information
has been transmitted about Bu Hijba,20 but the title ras al-'ajml ("head of

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 fankowsky: Black Spirits, White Saints 395

the non-Arab [spirits]") is appended to his name, which directly connects

the Saints to the pantheon of Spirits.
The Prophet and Jerma are unique among stambeli pantheon members
in that they do not appear in ritual through engendering trance or possessing
a host; like God above, who is invoked in the opening prayer, they are above
engaging in physical interaction with humans. This does not mean, however,
that there is no interaction; performing these n?bas is a means of praising
them in hopes of attaining some of their blessing. After this opening trium
virate, the ceremony typically proceeds to the n?bas for the Mash?yikh.

The Mash?yikh
The Mash?yikh (sing.,shaykh) form an important category of the Saints.
This category is populated solely by the four most active and powerful of
the stambeli saints: Sidi Frej, Sidi Sa'ad, Sidi Abdeslam, and Sidi Abdul-Qader.
Sidi Frej and Sidi Sa'ad are only venerated locally in the Tunis area, while Sidi
Abdeslam and Sidi Abdel-Qader are also recognized far outside of Tunis. The
Mash?yikh are not only the most powerful of the Whites, but are also the
only Whites to demonstrate certain traits that are characteristic of the Black
spirits. They, in my estimation, form a sort of fulcrum between the Whites
and the Blacks, blurring both categories. The Mash?yikh not only engender
trance, but can also possess a human host, and, when inhabiting a host in a
stambeli ceremony, can speak through the host to divine futures of partici
pants and audience members.
Both Sidi Frej and Sidi Abdeslam have a special relationship to Dar Barnu.
Sidi Frej could be considered the "patron" saint of Dar Barnu; Sidi Frej was
Barnawi, and, while all stambeli groups would visit the shrine of Sidi Sa'ad
each year, the Dar Barnu community would also hold an annual pilgrimage
to the shrine of Sidi Frej. The shrine of Sidi Abdeslam is meters from the
entrance of Dar Barnu, which is located in Beb Sidi Abdeslam.
Sidi Abdeslam usually follows Sidi Frej in performance. If a member trances
to Sidi Abdeslam, s/he will perform one of the stock trance movements, and
will wear a tri-colored banner (sunjuq). However, when possessing a human,
Sidi Abdeslam is well known for making his hosts wear a white kashabiyya
cloak and pass lighted stalks of hay over their extremities to demonstrate
his protection over their bodies. He will also often have his host call on the
musicians to stop the music in order to recite the f?tiha (the opening verse
of the Qur'an).

Other Stambeli Saints

The Saints are, for the most part, considered local?having lived or died
in Tunisia or its North African neighbors. They all have shrines in Tunisia,

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
396 Ethnomusicology, Fall 2006

and may be venerated far outside their towns or only very locally. What is
important is their relationship to the displaced sub-Saharan community: the
vast majority of stambeli Saints are of sub-Saharan origin and are venerated
in North Africa. The stambeli at Dar Barnu also accords a prominent place
to Sidi Marz?g, who lived in Nefta (a desert oasis town in the far southwest
ern corner of Tunisia), as well as to Sidi Mans?r, who lived in the coastal
city of Sfax, where a group of black sailors would congregate for stambeli.
These two saints have similar functions to Sidi Sa'ad and Sidi Frej in their
respective locales: the shrines of both Sidi Mans?r and Sidi Marz?g are sites
of group pilgrimages each year. Other saints in this part of the silsila include
Sidi 'Amer, Sidi 'Amer Bu Khatwa, and Sidi Bu Ras al-'Ajmi. Some others, such
as Sidi Bechir and Sidi Hammuda, have disappeared from the ceremonies, as
the last of the members whom they entrance have since passed away.
Still other saints, while not technically part of the White silsila, have been
introduced into this part of the ceremony. Sidi Belhassen and Sayda Manu
biyya are not stambeli Saints per se, yet they have stambeli n?bas that are
only performed "on demand." This means that, unlike the Saints of the silsila,
whose n?bas will be performed whether or not someone present dances,
Sidi Belhassen and Sayyida Manubiyya will only be performed if someone
present requests the n?ba.
Neither Sayyida Manubiyya nor Sidi Beihassan are of sub-Saharan descent
nor have the special status of certain non-sub-Saharans such as Abdel-Qader.
Both of these saints fall outside the stambeli silsila, and thus outside the stam
beli pantheon. What is special about these saints, however, is that they are
both local saints active in treating their followers' ailments through trance
and possession. The z?wiya of Sayyida Manubiyya may be the most regularly
visited shrine in Tunis due to its popular weekly healing ceremonies, geared
mostly toward lower-class women with marital or fertility problems. The
z?wiya of Sidi Belhassen also hosts women's trance and possession ceremo
nies, but of a much different nature. The official followers of this order are eu vi
men, generally from the petit bourgeoisie, who consider their weekly dhikr
ceremony to be the most "orthodox" of activities. What is remarkable is
that in an adjoining room, women become entranced and possessed by the
music of the men's dhikr. By acknowledging these saints and their followers
by performing these n?bas, stambeli triangulates with the practices of the
other two most influential trance and possession practices in the greater
Tunis area.

Black Spirits
It is useful to begin with what the Spirits are not. They are not the spirits
of the "African ancestors." In fact, they are not of human origin. They are not

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 fankowsky:Black Spirits, White Saints 397

the anthropomorphic spirits of objects and places venerated by practitio

ners of animism in E. B. Tylor's theory of primitive religion. Nor are they the
totems of any sub-Saharan "clans," although Tremearne believed this to be
historically true in his 1914 study. While many stambeli Spirits are related to
those of the Hausa bori pantheon, a relationship made explicit by stambeli
participants themselves, they were not simply relocated to Tunisia. Some
spirits disappeared, while others emerged. The latter, as well as those that
remained, were reinterpreted within a new cosmological framework. While
there are certain continuities with the bori ritual system, new functions and
meanings associated with the spirits emerged in the Tunisian context.
Most importantly, in terms of stambeli's interaction with certain sectors
of Tunisian society, the Spirits are also not the jn?n (also jinn) of which the
Qur'an speaks, and which are exorcised in rituals across the Muslim world.
According to stambeli practitioners, the jn?n work for the devil (Shaytan),
and stambeli cannot heal or help in any way those afflicted by the jn?n.
This aligns stambeli with Qur'anic Islam, which prohibits the exorcism of
the jn?n, which it considers magic. The Spirits, in contrast to the jn?n, "all
work for God," and stambeli is a form of veneration of Saints, holy Spirits, and,
above all, God. This distances stambeli from exorcism of the jn?n, a practice
considered sacrilegious in the context of Islam. As it does with Muslim saints,
stambeli acknowledges the existence of categories of spirits that are beyond
its ritual reach.
The stambeli Spirits are referred to in a variety of terms. At Dar Barnu,
the collective terms in use are (1) in-n?s il-ukhr?n, or "the other people"; (2)
is-salhln (sing, s?lih), or "the holy ones";21 and (3) l-khtU (sing, l-akhal), or
"the blacks." While the terms are often used somewhat interchangeably, their
continued coexistence reveals that each one points to a nuance of identity
that no single term alone can encompass. The first term, in-n?s il-ukhr?n, is
the most general of the three, and indicates that the Spirits are human-like
actors. Indeed, they are understood to be like humans in many ways. Each
has a distinct personality with certain tendencies, desires, and idiosyncrasies.
Their behaviors, like those of humans, can be surprising, even to their hosts.
They are gendered, organized into families, and socially differentiated accord
ing to class.
The second term,is-salhin,is slightly more specific, and defines the Spirits
as distinct from both the jn?n and the awliy?' (Saints). With regard to the
latter, however, is-salh?n also situates the Spirits on the same level of power
and respect as the Saints. To be called a s?lih is to be considered a spiritual
power within the socio-religious framework of Tunisian society. The Spirits
are thus on equal footing with the Saints. Both the Spirits and the Saints are
considered to be blessed and, "like ministers working for the President," ac
cording to several musicians, working for God.

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
398 Ethnomusicology, Fall 2006

The third term, 1-kh?l, is more specific still. It marks the Spirits as "black,"
in contradistinction to the "white" Saints. The Spirits, as opposed to the Saints,
are unequivocally sub-Saharan and black. Through this terminology, we see
that the Spirits are holy, they are black, and they are Other.
The stambeli Spirits are organized into three major groups: Ban? Kuri
(Kuri's Children), Bahriyya (Water Spirits), and B?y?t (Royalty). While all
three are understood as originating in sub-Saharan Africa, each of the groups
represents a different set of relations between sub-Saharan and North ?fri
cas. Those of Banu Kuri are black, Christian, and, as they have no parallels in
Tunisian Islam or Tunisian referents, are the most Other of the groups. The
Bahriyya reveal parallels between the sub-Saharan and North African concep
tions of spirits: these "water spirits" of sub-Saharan Africa required little or
no modification to enter into the cosmological framework of North African
Islam, which holds similar assumptions about the presence of potentially
malevolent spirits in and around water. Finally, the B?y?t provide a powerful
commentary on Tunisian history: the arrival of the B?y?t Spirits corresponds
directly to the departure of the Ottoman Beys from Tunis and the subsequent
suppression of the practice under nationalist regimes. It is not my aim to
present an exhaustive inventory of Spirits, but rather to sketch the main
characteristics of the groups and how they are understood geo-culturally.

Banu Kuri: Representing Dar Barnu's Origins in Sub-Sahara

The Banu Kuri family's membership reveals a direct and powerful link
to the Hausa bori traditions in sub-Sahara (and shows an interaction with the
Hausas that took place in both sub-Sahara and in North Africa).22 The Banu
Kuri spirits are also collectively referred to as Br?wna (plural of Barn?wi),
in reference to their Bornu origins.23 The Br?wna spirits are all Christians
(maslhiyyln)24 and must be invoked after sunset, ideally after midnight. Black
is of high symbolic import: something black (ml?khiyya, an okra dish which
is associated with the lower classes) must be eaten, and the dancer must wear
a black cloak (kashabiyya). The Spirits can be violent, and several beat their
hosts with rods, sticks, or knives. Collectively, they are considered the most
powerful of the Spirits at Dar Barnu, and the most likely to afflict individuals
affiliated with the house. Indeed, one room at Dar Barnu features a "temple"
(gidan) dedicated to Kuri.
When an adept of the Banu Kuri group dances, she dances to and is pos
sessed by each member of the Banu Kuri succession. The hosts wears a black
kashabiyya when s/he dances. The Kuri silsila begins with Dakaki, a Hausa
name meaning "the crawler." When he possesses a human host, he dances by
squirming in a prone position on the ground, gradually advancing toward the
gumbri. Once he reaches the gumbr?, it is Kuri's turn to enter. Kuri is known
as a spirit that enjoys drinking wine. In the past, his hosts would often take

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 fankowsky: Black Spirits, White Saints 399

swigs of wine while possessed. At the time of my research, those afflicted

by Kuri would instead make wine part of their sacrifice to him by pouring
a bottle of red wine at a four-way crossroads as an offering. Kuri begins his
dance on his knees, reaching up into the air with each hand, alternately, as
if climbing. After this strenuous episode, he will fall back and request his
wooden pestle, which he uses to beat the head and stomach of his host. Next
comes Migzu, a brother of Kuri, who dances in a similar manner to Kuri but
beats his host with a walking-stick rather than a pestle. Following these are
Jamarkay (Kuri's brother) and Baba Magojay.
The Banu Kuri silsila normally ends with the n?bas for Ommi Yenna
and her sisters. Ommi Yenna is Kuri's wife, and her host sits on the ground,
covered by a white cloth. Four women each take one corner of the cloth and
beat it up and down in time with the music. When the music stops, the host
usually emerges from this speaking as Ommi Yenna, divining the futures of
those present. When the consultations are completed, the silsila begins again,
this time with Ommi Yenna's sisters Babam Zohra and Adama. The remaining
spirits of the silsila include Nikiri (Kuri's brother, who hits his host with a
club with a hooked end), Sa'id, and Salama.

Bafcriyya ("Water Spirits"): Common to North

and Sub-Saharan ?fricas
The Bahriyya are spirits that reside in or around water. This includes
not only seas, rivers, and lakes, but also wells, drains, bathtubs, water closets,
and the like. Bahriyya often afflict those in low-paying and menial jobs that
involve water, such as fishermen, Turkish bath attendants, and maids. When
involved in ritualized possession, a Bahriyya spirit can only be coaxed out
of its host by the 'arifa sprinkling water on the neck and head of the host.
The Bahriyya are led by Mulay Ibrahim (Lord Ibrahim), who is also known as
Dodo Ibrahim, dodo referring, in the Hausa language, to evil spirits in general,
but also to "a chief, a European, or anything feared" (Bargery 1934:262). He
dances in a swimming motion. The Bahriyya also include Mulay Ibrahim's
mother May Saderwa, Jawayay, Bahriyya, Sidi 'Ali Diwan, Bakaba, and Sarkin
Gari.
Water spirits, whether associated with rainfall, streams, rivers, lakes, or
the sea, are ubiquitous in spirit pantheons across West, Central, and East Af
rica. In North Africa, fishermen and other seafarers often make sacrifices to
water spirits or Muslim saints with special connections to water such as Sidi
Mans?r or Sidi Daoud.25Throughout the Islamic world it is commonplace to
utter bismill?h ("in the name of God") upon entering a bathroom in order
to prevent water spirits in sinks and drains from being offended, and sailors
will also utter this mantra to prevent any capricious activity by the spirits of
the sea. Carelessness with water (e.g., disposing of hot water by pouring it

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
400 Ethnomusicology, Fall 2006

on the ground without uttering bismillah) is one of the most common ways
of inviting affliction by spirits.

B?y?t ("Royalty"): From Bori to Stambeli

The category of B?y?t ("the Beys," or rulers of Ottoman Tunisia), given
its historical associations, is unique to North Africa, and perhaps even Tunisia.
Unlike the members of Kuri or the Bahriyya, several of the Hausa Muslim spir
its outlined byTremearne have been reinterpreted and reclassified into this
category, which is an important one at Dar Barnu. At the time ofTremearne's
study in 1914, May Nasra was one of the "Little Spots," so classified due to his
penchant for causing smallpox, sore eyes, and rashes. He was also character
ized by holding a large spear. Today, May Nasra wears a tarbush, carries a
l?ha (schoolchild's chalkboard), and complains of problems in school. Such
a change in identity suggests that stambeli is a dynamic practice that adapts
to changing social circumstances and individual needs.26
The B?y?t include Yerima (also known as Sidi Rima) and Guindema, as
well as Miriamu and Aisha, two of Ommi Yenna's daughters. These two are
always the final two n?bas performed in Dar Barnu ceremonies. Just before
the n?ba of Miriamu, a large, decorated bowl of sweets is brought in front of
the gumbr? and covered with a cloth. Miriamu and 'Aisha arrive in order to
bless the sweets, which are distributed to all attendees by members of the
group, who throw the sweets into the audience. While the distribution of
sweets is a moment that everyone looks forward to, and ends the ceremony
with a sense of celebration, this closing episode has much deeper symbolic
import: by presiding over the sweets (considered "theirs") and distributing
them to all, Miriamu and'Aisha recreate the generosity of the Beys, who would
reward the stambeli community each holiday with food, gifts, and money.
According toAbdul-Majid, what set the B?y?t apart from subsequent regimes
was that "they understood that Tunisia is part of Africa."
The oral history maintained at Dar Barnu refers to this era, the waqt
l- B?y?t ("the time of the Beys"), as the golden age of stambeli. The Beys
supported stambeli. Tremearne (1914:23) notes that one of the cousins of
the Bey had his own private bori temple. It is reported that the ruler Sadiq
Bey gave to Sidi Sa'ad the house that would eventually become the z?wiya
of Sidi Sa'ad. The landlord of the z?wiya was the Bash Agha eunuch, holder
of the highest court position for slaves and adviser to the Bey. He was buried
next to Sidi Sa'ad in the early 1800s (P?ques 1964:628), further evidencing
the connection between stambeli, slavery, and the Ottoman court. According
to the oral history at Dar Barnu, during holidays, stambeli musicians would
gather together and go to the Ottoman court in Tunis to perform for the Bey,
who would reward them with gifts. These performances brought together

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 fankowsky: Black Spirits, White Saints 401

musicians from most, if not all, of the communal houses, who presented
themselves as a single unit.
Such non-ritual performances were significant in symbolically reaffirming
the court's recognition of the black community. Music, therefore, enabled the
community to mark space for itself in the Tunisian state. It is clear from my
experience inside the Dar Barnu community that this historical narrative is
a strategy for implicitly criticizing subsequent Tunisian social changes and
political regimes. Stambeli's counter-histories employ a particular reading
of the past in order to come to terms with a discomfiting present. The Beys
were everything that subsequent ruling regimes were not: supportive of the
black community not only culturally, but also socially, politically, and economi
cally.

Ritual Performance of Musical Routes

Thinking only in terms of these categories, however, does not do justice
to the cultural "work" of stambeli. Despite the categorical differences between
the Saints and the Spirits, they are unified aesthetically, and thus conceptually,
through music. No rhythmic, melodic, or lyrical devices are used to differenti
ate the Saints from the Spirits.
The members of the Whites all have histories that somehow connect
to sub-Saharan Africa. Sub-Saharans did not just "confuse" Saints with Spirits;
they are categorically distinct yet not incompatible. To illustrate this point,
I present three ethnographic moments that I have described in more de
tail elsewhere (Jankowsky 2004). For our present purposes, these examples
simply illustrate the different musical routes through the pantheon taken
by the musicians. The examples progress from a small and private ritual at
Dar Barnu to a larger, but still private ritual at a private home, and finally to a
large, semi-public annual pilgrimage, thus providing an overview that covers
the different contexts of stambeli performance.

At Dar Barnu

Kuri afflicts Abdul-Majid's daughter Emna, who must perform two stam
beli rituals per year to appease the spirit. The stambeli for Emna?a young,
educated Tunisian in her early twenties who had finished first in her high
school class and was "chased" out of the university by the khumaynistes
(radical Muslim students)?was remarkably private, taking place among fewer
than twenty family members and friends in the courtyard of her home at
Dar Barnu. During this relatively short ceremony, Emna became possessed by
members of the Banu Kuri family, the Mash?yikh, and the B?y?t family (see
Table 3).

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
402 Ethnomusicology, Fall 2006

Table 3. Musical routes through the pantheon during the stambeli at Dar
Barnu.

Spirits Saints
Slat in-Nabi
3'
Jerma
Sidi Bu Ras al-Ajmi
Dakaki
Kuri
SidiAbdul-Qader
Sidi Frej
Ommi Yenna
SidiAbdul-Qader
May Nasra

At a Private Home

At a private healing ritual near Tunis I attended in 2001, the patient was
af?licted by Sarkin Gari of the Bahriyya. She required a more elaborate ritual,
consisting of a pre-sunset rite of sacrifice and a post-sunset rite of celebra
tion. As the main goal of the rite of sacrifice is to placate Sarkin Gari, his
n?ba occupies a prominent place in the route followed by the musicians. It
is the only n?ba that is repeated in this ritual episode; it is performed first,
fourth, and last. His spirit family, the Bahriyya, is the only spirit family invoked
in this section, and the Mash?yikh, the most powerful of the stambeli Saints,
are the only Saints invoked. In addition, the n?ba of the legendary character
Busa'diyya, the only n?ba that represents a stambeli personality who is neither
Spirit nor Saint, is played. The musical routes through the pantheon during
this rite of sacrifice were as follows (see Table 4):

Table 4. Musical routes through the pantheon during the sacrifice.

Spirits Saints
3 Sarikin Gari
Sidi Frej
SidiAbdul-Qader
Sarikin Gari
Sidi Marzuq
Sidi Sa'ad
(Busa'diyya)
Mulay Brahim
Sarikin Gari

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 fankowsky: Black Spirits, White Saints 403

At the Annual Pilgrimage

By holding an annual pilgrimage (ziy?ra), the stambeli community in
terfaces with one of the most widespread and familiar practices of Tunisian
popular Islam. This sacred journey to a sacred space makes the stambeli
pilgrimage immediately comprehensible in terms of common practices as
sociated with the veneration of saints in Tunisia. To the outside observer,
however, this pilgrimage is immediately identifiable as Other by its unusual
rhythms, foreign instrumentation, obscure lyrics, and predominance of black
musicians and ritual specialists.
This inseparability of sameness and difference is, as I have been suggest
ing throughout this article, at the heart of stambeli. Here I must mention the
equally simplistic and distorting scholarly claims that "black" and "white" are
incompatible categories (Rahal 2000) and that stambeli practitioners merely
"confused" local Muslim saints for Spirits (P?ques 1964). It is clear from my
experience as a member of Dar Barnu that the Saints and the Spirits are in
separable in performance. Performance of the one makes no cultural sense
without the implicit knowledge of the potential presence of the other.
The musico-spiritual trajectory of the pilgrimage is one in which the
presence of the spirits gradually intensifies over the three days. While there
is a"frontloading"of whites during the first day (which is only sensible, as the
pilgrimage is in honor of one of the whites, Sidi Frej), by the third evening,
the blacks are in full force. At no time, however, are they mutually exclusive
(see Table 5):

Table 5. Musical routes through the pantheon during the third evening
stambeli of the annual pilgrimage to the shrine of Sidi Frej, summer 2005.
Saints Spirits
S* Sidi Frej
rt SidiAbdul-Qader
Sidi 'Amr
Sidi Bu Ras al-'Ajmi
Dodo Brahim
Bahriyya
Bakaba
Sidi Mansur
* Sidi'Amr
Sidi Frej
SidiAbdesallem
Kuri
Migzu
May Gajiya
Sidi Rima

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
404 Ethnomusicology, Fall 2006

Conclusion
Marc Auge (1999) suggests that we have much to gain from studying
precisely those syncretic spaces that challenge the territorial logic of the
nation-state. He interprets cults borne of contact, such as those practiced
by displaced African slaves, as anticipating this era of internationalization in
which we live. In other words, rather than seeing practices such as stambeli
as premodern or non-modern, we could position them as "beyond modernity,"
as predating the modern, remaining relevant throughout it and beyond, and
anticipating this era of the global. Stambeli has survived and adapted itself
to new contexts over hundreds of years. It has survived outright banning
of the practice and frail attempts at co-optation into the folklore machinery
of the state. It has not been replaced by "orthodox" religious practices, nor
have "modern" forms of healing replaced it. It has, and continues, to coexist
with these phenomena. Stambeli was present before the modern moment,
and the fruits of modernity (or at least the modernizing project) have not,
perhaps cannot, address the social, cultural, and religious issues to which
stambeli speaks.
Stambeli is born of, and predicated on, the historical movement of bodies
across the Sahara. While the discourse surrounding stambeli is fraught with
dichotomies (self/other, Tunisian/African, black/white, here/there, depar
ture/arrival, modern/archaic), I argue that the sonic, ritual, and social spaces
of stambeli provide a way of negotiating those dichotomies. In other words,
stambeli itself is a "way to move."
The diasporic sub-Saharan community ofTbnis built a network of support
that was both unique and creative. Consider, for instance, Abdul-Majid's title
of galad?ma kb?r, a term that combines a Hausa noun with an Arabic adjective
in order to denote a position without equivalent in either Hausaland or in
Tunisia. It, like the network within which it functioned, was informed by ele
ments sub-Saharan and Tunisian, but corresponded fully to neither. Stambeli
is a style of being-in-the-world, in which hybridity, in Homi Bhabha's terms,
is not about being "able to trace two original moments from which the third
emerges," but is instead "the 'third space' which enables other positions to
emerge" (1990:211). While its name refers to a specific sub-Saharan empire,
Dar Barnu is more usefully seen as a node in a network, a landing point for a
diversity of dislocated persons. The house is itself a way to move; its courtyard,
a space for performing the rituals of stambeli, allowing sub-Saharan music,
migrants, and spirits to arrive and claim space by taking an active role in
(re)defining the terms of their encounter with their Others.
Dar Barnu (and the black Sahara) could thus be considered what Michel
Foucault calls a "heterotopia," a space "capable of juxtaposing in a single
real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible"

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 fankowsky: Black Spirits, White Saints 405

(1986:25). I find the concept of "heterotopia" useful in imagining space as

performed in, and by, human geographies, for it provides us with a point of
entry into a mode of analysis that is comfortable with the uncertainties of
movements, crossings, and the imagination. It allows us to accept the messi
ness of lived-in places defined not so much by history as by geography?the
juxtaposition of Foucault's incompatible sites. This is not to suggest that Dar
Barnu, Tunis, or the Black Sahara are unique in being heterotopic; quite the
contrary. Heterotopias are defining features of Foucalt's modern world. It is
how these spaces are imagined, how they juxtapose those "incompatible"
sites, and why those sites are considered incompatible in the first place, that
is of interest.
Stambeli recreates its own movement?the movement of the sub-Sa
harans?across the Sahara and its ensuing historical encounters in North
Africa. Significantly, the history of slavery is not emphasized in stambeli (in
contrast to the gn?wa of Morocco, see Fuson 2003). Instead, connections
that legitimize the sub-Saharan presence are emphasized. What my reading
suggests is that stambeli is not just about spiritual encounter, but is more so
about geo-cultural encounter. The Saints and the Spirits perform a sacred
history of geo-cultural movement between sub-Saharan and North ?fricas.
It is through music that these performances are recreated, reworked, and
remembered. Stambeli is an autonomous sphere of cultural creation that
draws on, but is not reducible to, any of its sub-Saharan, Islamic, Tunisian,
or Ottoman referents. This suggests that from within, stambeli is not about
difference per se, but about connections; that is, it is about routes more than
it is about roots.
To return to the legend of Busa'diyya: from without, he is remembered
as a mythical character, a wandering, clamorous clown known for frightening
children. His presence is frightening but fleeting?his movement constant,
demonstrating that he does not belong. He is, in other words, utterly place
less. But from within, Busa'diyya is a real historical figure, one who provided
guidance for the displaced and dispossessed. He led exiles into a community
that served to help others in similar situations. Today the masked costume
of Busa'diyya is an important element in the annual ziy?ra. Hung conspicu
ously on the wall, it is more than d?cor marking the African roots of stambeli;
it represents the movements and placelessness of the sub-Saharan body.
As a symbol of the connections between North and sub-Saharan ?fricas,
Busa'diyya is emblematic of the Black Sahara. As a figure misunderstood and
misrepresented from the outside, yet performing hidden meanings from the
inside, he is emblematic of stambeli. Through the continued performance of
stambeli and the oral history of Dar Barnu, Busa'diyya's agency is reclaimed.
But today, Busa'diyya is gone, perhaps "off to Hammam 1-Anf." This town, on
the Mediterranean coast south of Tunis, is sufficiently far enough away to

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
406 Ethnomusicology, Fall 2006

explain his long absence, but it is also close enough to suggest he may one
day return. It also suggests that he rightfully belongs in Tunisia.

Acknowledgments
This paper is based on fieldwork funded by Fulbright/IIE and the American Institute for Maghrib
Studies. An earlier version was first presented at the Society for Ethnomusicology 2003 Annual
Conference in Miami, FL. I would like to thank Martin Stokes, Owen Wright, and the Journal's
three anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments and suggestions.

Notes
1 .Throughout this article, the stambeli categories of Spirits and Saints are flagged by capital
letters, while their more general counterparts?other spirits and saints that are not explicitly
part of the stambeli system?remain in lowercase.
2.The issue of skin color was discussed often when I first arrived at Dar Barnu. The stambeli
troupe had just returned to Tunis after a performance in France. However, they arrived without
three of the musicians, who took this international opportunity to immigrate illegally to Europe.
These were not Abdul-Majid's first choice of accompanying musicians. However, when the festi
val organizers saw the best musicians perform, they told Abdul-Majid that they were "not black
enough" for a performance of music they were advertising as n?gro-africaine, afro-tunisien,
and performed exclusively by descendants of black slaves (Esber 2001). Abdul-Majid's protests
about replacing seasoned and reliable performers with younger, undisciplined musicians who
just happened to have darker skin were ignored. Abdul-Majid, seeing this as financially benefi
cial, and as a rare opportunity for his family to see France, decided to perform and bought the
musicians their passports, visas, and even new clothing for the performance. Before the concert
series ended, three of the musicians had disappeared. Two of the musicians were eventually
caught by police in France and Italy, and the third returned of his own volition.
3. All conversations were in Tunisian dialectical Arabic. I would later learn that my lack of
proficiency in spoken French had been interpreted as evidence of my good intentions, as Abdul
Majid had endured less than positive experiences with French researchers and journalists, as
well as positive ones with American musicians such as Charlie Byrd in the late 1960s.
4.The musical and linguistic impact of these interactions is also suggested byTremearne
(1914:250), who records an instance of Kanuri words entering a mostly Hausa song due to the
singing of an 'arlfa (priestess) from Bornu.
5. Most prominent among stambeli's critics was influential Tunisian scholar Sadiq Rizgui,
who accuses stambeli practitioners of using Muslim shrines as a smokescreen for their "pagan"
practices that reveal "a clear return to their savage state (tawahhushy (1968:156). Rizgui also
voiced his fears over stambeli's corrosive and contagious effect on Tunisian society. Muslims and
even Jews in Tunisia, he claimed, were being duped into believing in this false magic practiced
by outsiders to Islam.
6. See, for instance, the newspaper articles that began to appear just prior to the "Stambali:
Transe-mission" concert at the Center for Mediterranean and Arab Musics. These articles all had
to explain and define stambeli, and often did so by comparing it to Moroccan gn?wa, which was
presumably more well-known to the readership (Alya 2001; Ben Ammar 1997, 1998; Zouaoui
1998).
7. Further complicating race relations is the fact that sub-Saharans often comprised entire
military regiments and served as guards for the French during their colonial endeavors in the
Maghreb.
8.Tremearne notes that this was also a prevalent belief in Europe, where the word "nec
romancy" was corrupted into"negromancy,"or black magic (1914:453 nl).

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 fankowsky: Black Spirits, White Saints 407

9. See, for instance, the articles and interviews in the special issue "Africanit? du Maghreb"
in Africultures 13 (December 1998), where Tunisian writer Abdelwahab Meddeb, French so
ciologist Georges Lapassade, and Moroccan gn?wa musician Amazigh Kateb, each, in separate
interviews, make this claim.
10. "The Negro nations are, as a rule, submissive to slavery," wrote Ibn Khaldun, because
they "have attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals" (1967:301).
11 .These divisions were further reified in the French colonizers' use o?Afrique noire and
Afrique blanche, terms that are as widely accepted in the upper echelons of Tunisian academia
as they are in daily newspapers and vernacular parlance.
12. In Tunisia, as with many other postcolonial states of the Middle East and North Africa,
matters of culture are inevitably matters of state. Although fervent nationalist cultural policies
led to the invention of the "national" ma'l?f tradition in the mid-twentieth century (see Davis
1997), the debate over defining and celebrating the uniqueness of "Tunisian" culture is still a
hot one, especially with the Libyan and Algerian Islamist "problems" always looming just across
the country's borders.
13.The French transliteration, as found on signposts and the written word, is Hammam
Lif.
14. For an exhaustive listing of North African bori spirits and their northern Nigerian
counterparts, see Tremearne (1914).
15.The categories of black and white are especially common in possession cults in Muslim
Africa, with "black" spirits being pagan and from the bush, while "white" spirits are Muslim and
from the village. This distinction between black and white is common to the Hausa bori, in
which "white" spirits are settled in towns and are believers, and the "black" spirits are under
stood to be from the bush and are non-believers in Islam. In stambeli, however, the black/white
distinction takes on a character that is a unique product of specific historical, geographical, and
socio-cultural confluences, and, just as the "black" bori spirits can appear "white" and vice-versa,
so too can the boundaries between "black" and "white" be blurred in stambeli.
16. Even when ceremonies involve men and women, the genders are physically and spiritu
ally separated while sonically unified. The weekly ceremonies at the z?wiya of Sidi Beihassan
in Tunis involve only men and begin with the chanting of the hizb (a religious chant that in
corporates verses of the Qur'an and praises of God). This is followed by a dhikr, the repetitive
chanting of the name of God, which is performed with increasing intensity and is accompanied
by the regulated swaying of the body What is significant for the present discussion is that, in an
adjacent room is a gathering of women who, sealed off visually from the men, take part in the
same ritual, but become possessed by jn?n (spirits; sing. jinn). The chants performed by the
men order the women's ritual experience, but the women respond by dancing and becoming
possessed. The men create the sonic context of the fully female gathering.
17.Tunisia, unlike its Maghrebi neighbors, has no critical mass of Berber speakers. The
Berber language, considered by linguists to be "nearly dead" in Tunisia, is spoken by less than
one percent of the population and is limited to informal speech between family and friends in
only a few villages in the rural south and among some migrants to the capital, Tunis. This is in
stark contrast to Morocco and Algeria, where the "domains of Berber" include television, radio,
recordings, newspapers, magazines, and are used in the institutes of education and religious
practice (Battenburg 1999). In Tunis and in the deep south, whenever I raised the topic of
Berber music in Tunisia, I met unanimous agreement that the Arabization of Berbers in Tunisia
was complete, and no remnants of Berber culture remained apart from some rural "curiosities"
in tourist villages of the south.
18.This is not to be confused with the n?ba of ma'l?f, the Tunisian classical art music. In
ma'l?f, n?ba refers to an entire cycle of songs in the same melodic mode. The use of the term
n?ba in both genres, however, is not happenstance, as both refer to successive musical entities.
For the n?ba of ma'l?f, see Davis (2004:2-10).
19"Black" and "white" here do not refer to specific melodic modes, as they do in Maurita
nia, where "black,""white," and "mixed" modes are tonally differentiated and must be played in

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 408 Ethnomusicology, Fall 2006

a specific order (Guignard 2005). The deployment of blackness and whiteness in musics of the
Black Sahara?where north and south are often described in terms of color?is intriguing and
begs for comparative research.
20.Though P?ques (1964) suggests he is Bu Hajba, the barber venerated in the interior
town of Gabes.
21. Most North Africans use s?lih/salhin interchangeably with wal?/awliya' to refer to a
Muslim saint. Indeed, the two terms are often combined into the phrase watt s?lih, or holy saint.
The distinction between the two, however, is crucial in the stambeli context.
22.As with other spirit groups, there is some slippage in terminology when categorizing
the Kuri spirits. It appears to me that what is now considered the Kuri group is an amalgamation
of two closely related spirit groups, the Banu Kuri (Kuri's Children) and il-Amawet (Those of
Ami).
23. According toTrimingham,Lake Chad, the great lake of Bornu, was also known as "Kuri."
SeeTrimingham (1962). Tremearne (1914) notes that Kuri was chief of the pagan spirits.
24. Cf. Rahal (2000), who claims that all the spirits are Muslim.
25. In Tunisia, the mattanza sacrifice at the shrine of Sidi Daoud, introduced by Italian
tuna fishermen, continues to be performed annually at the beginning of the tuna fishing season
(seeAmmairia 1996). Like the trans-Saharan movement described in the present essay, this trans
Mediterranean movement demonstrates the compatibility of certain rituals and beliefs, though
between southern Europe and North Africa in this case.
26.This is not to suggest that the spirits are open to any interpretation, or that these in
terpretations are not contested. In an interview filmed in the documentary Stambali: Un rite
Africain en Tunisie, a. male 'arifa, possessed by May Gajiya, describes her effect on him:"She
is a lunatic woman. She makes me act crazy." The Dar Barnu folks see this as indication of the
illegitimacy of this 'arifa's work."May Gajiya cannot act like that," I was told,"because she is one
of the Beyet. They are good and proper."

References
Alya. 2001."Le retour du stambali." La Presse 7 June 2001:12.
Amma?ria, Hafnaoui. 1996. "La Mattanza: f?te et sacrifice." Cahiers des arts et traditions popu
laires 11:101-08.
Arafat, W. 1960."Bilal B. Rabah." In Encyclopedia of Islam, 1215. Leiden: Brill.
Auge, Marc. 1999. An Anthropology for Contemporaneous Worlds, translated by Amy Jacobs.
Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Austen, Ralph. 1979. "The Trans-Saharan Slave Trade: A Tentative Census." In The Uncommon
Market: Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic Slave Trade, edited by Henry A
Germery and Jan S. Hogendon, 23-76. New York: Academic Press.
Bargery, G. R1934. A Hausa-English Dictionary and English-Hausa Vocabulary. London: Oxford
University Press/Humphrey Milford.
Battenburgjohn. 1999. "The Gradual Death of the Berber Language in Tunisia " International
fournal of the Sociology of Language 137:147-61.
Ben Abdallah, Chadly. 1988. F?tes religieuses et rythmes de Tunisie. Tunis: JPS Editions.
BenAmmar, Mustapha. 1997."L'interrogation de la m?moire culturelle:'Stambali, Transe-mission.'"
Le Renouveau, 28 December.
-. 1998. "Synth?se de la culture africaine: Derdeba au maroc?stambali en Tunisie." le Re
nouveau, 28 January.
Besmer, Fremont E. 1983. Horses, Musicians, and Gods: The Hausa Cult of Possession Trance.
South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey.
Bhabha, Homi, ed. 1990. Nation and Narration. London and New York: Routledge.
Boddy, Janice. 1990. Wombs and Alien Spirits: Women, Men, and the Z?r Cult in Northern
Sudan. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Jankowsky: Black Spirits, White Saints 409

Chlyeh, Abdelhafid. 1999. Les Gnaoua du Maroc: Itin?raires, initiatiques, transe et possession.
Paris: Editions la pens?e sauvage.
Crapanzano,Vincent. 1973. The Hamadsha: A Study in Moroccan Ethnopsychiatry. Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Danielson,Virginia. 1997. The Voice of Egypt: Umm Kulthum, Arabic Song, and Egyptian Society
in the Twentieth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Davis, Ruth. 2004. Ma'l?f:Reflections on the Arab Andalusian Music of Tunisia. Lanham, Mary
land: Scarecrow Press.
-. 1997."Cultural Policy and the Tunisian Ma'l?f: Redefining aTradition." Ethnomusicology
41(1):1-21.
-.1986. "Some Relations between Three Piyyutim from Djerba and Three Arabic Songs."
Maghreb Review 11(5-6): 134-44.
Dermenghem, Emile. 1954. Le culte des saints dans l'Islam maghr?bin. Paris: Gamillard.
Ensel, Remco. 2002."Colactation and Fictive Kinship as Rites of Incorporation and Reversal in
Morocco."Journal of North African Studies 7 (4):83-96.
Esber, Arward. 2001. "Le stambali de Dar Barnou: Rite de possession." Program notes, Festival
de l'imaginaire, Paris, France.
Foucault, Michel. 1986."Of Other Spaces."Diacritics 16:22-27.
Fuson, Tim Abdellah. 2003. "Slavery's Past in the Musical Present: Ritual and Memory in the
Moroccan Gn?wa Lila"Paper Presented to the Society for Ethnomusicology Annual Con
ference, Miami, FL.
Gilroy, Paul. 1993. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Guignard, Michel. 2005. "Mauritania." In Grove Music Online, edited by L. Macy http://www.
grovemusic.com (accessed 26 October 2005).
Hell, Bertrand. 1999. Possession et chamanisme: Les ma?tres du d?sordre. Paris: Flammarion.
Ibn Khaldun. 1967. The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, translated by Franz Rosen
thal. Princeton: Bollingen.
Jankowsky, Richard C. 2004." 'The Other People' : Music, Race, and Rituals of Possession inTunisian
Stambeli" Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago.
Kapchan, Deborah. 2002."Possessing Gnawa Culture: Displaying Sound, Creating History in an Un
official Museum." Music & Anthropology .Journal of Musical Anthropology of the Mediter
ranean. http://www.muspe.unibo.it/period/ma/index/number7/kapchanAap_00.htm.
Kapferer, Bruce. 1986. "Performance and the Structuring of Meaning and Experience." In The
Anthropology of Experience, edited by Victor W. Turner and Edward M. Bruner, 188-203.
Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
-. 1991. A Celebration of Demons: Exorcism and the Aesthetics of Healing in Sri Lanka,
2d ed. Oxford and Washington, D.C.: Berg and the Smithsonian Institution.
Kramer, Fritz. 1993. The Red Fez: Art and Spirit Possession in Africa, translated by Malcolm R.
Green. London: Verso.
Lachmann, Robert. 1940. Jewish Cantillation and Song on the Island of Djerba. Jerusalem:
Hebrew University.
Lapassade, Georges, and Flavio Ventura. 1966."Les dieux africains ont rendez-vous aujourd'hui
? Sidi-Saad." La Presse 18 February, 1966:3.
Makris,G.R 2000. Changing Masters:Spirit Possession and Identity Construction among Slave
Descendants and Other Subordinates in the Sudan. Evanston, IL: Northwestern Univer
sity Press.
Masquelier, Adeline Marie. 2001. Prayer Has Spoiled Every thing: Possession, Power, and Identity
in an Islamic Town of Niger. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
P?ques, Viviana. 1964. L'arbre cosmique dans la pens?e populaire et dans la vie quotidienne
du nord-ouest Africain. Paris: Institut d'Ethnologie.
Ranal, Ahmed. 2000. La communaut? noire de Tunis: Th?rapie initiatique et rite de possession.
Paris: L'Harmattan.

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
410 Ethnomusicology, Fall 2006

Rizgui, Sadiq. 1989. Al-agh?n? al-t?nisiyah, repr. ed. Tunis: Dar al-Tunisiya Lil-Nashr.
Rouget, Gilbert. 1986. Music and Trance: A Theory of the Relations between Music and Posses
sion, translated by Brunhilde Biebuyck. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Soja, Edward W. 1989. Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Theory.
London and New York: Verso.
Stoller, Paul. 1989. Fusion of Worlds: An Ethnography of Possession among the Songhay of
Niger. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Tremearne, Arthur John Newman. 1914. The Ban of the Bori: Demons and Demon-dancing
in West and North Africa. London: Heath, Cranton & Ouseley Ltd.
Trimingham, J. Spencer. 1962. A History of Islam in West Africa. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Zawadowski, G. 1942."Le r?le des N?gres parmi la population tunisienne." Terre d'Islam 2:146
52.
Zouaoui, Ze?neb. 1998. "Transe-mission:'Stambali ? Ennajma Ezzahra.'"Ze Renouveau 25 Janu
ary, 1998.

This content downloaded from

145.236.6.79 on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 01:27:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms