I decided to drop the shotgun for a day and keep the camera in hand, going hunting with Lasso and Go-Seydou. The day was very very hot, small animals can be caught resting in the shadows. But the bush is starting to become green with new leaves, which makes following game increasingly difficult. The experience…

After the annual dankun sacrifice of Brahima Traoré in Samogohiri, masks come from the bush to roam in the village. They are animals, a buffalo, a black monkey, some dagwé (Roan Antelope, Hippotragus Equinus), and an old man. They are each accompanied by a warden, who has the task to “control” and communicate with them….

Today the donsow of Karankasso and neighbouring villages celebrated the big sacrifice to the dankun, which takes place once a year. A goat was killed on our ephemeral altar of leaves and each hunter brought a hen or a cock. The way it dies gives you an indication of how the hunting season will go….

Today, with my friend Nicola Scaldaferri, researcher in Ethnomusicology at the University of Milan, I drove to Banzon to record a performance of donso music by Diakari Traoré and Bakari Ouattara. We set up a room of Bakari’s house in Banzon to record as best we could with two Rode NT55 to Sound Devices 744T. With…

Donso music is usually associated with donson’goni, the six-stringed harp-lute played by the musicians of the brotherhood. Sometimes I saw a few drums being added, but only with a secondary role. The foreground is taken by the bard’s voice, and instrumental music often represents just a background for his praises and epic songs. With surprise I…

Go-Seydou Traoré is a blacksmith, he works iron and wood following the Mande tradition of numu families. He has big, strong hands, and makes chips fly around when he cuts the hard wood he makes mortars from. But he is at the same time a very gentle and sensitive person, who often comes by to…

The more I venture myself into the world of donsoya, the more I am convinced that I could only study it by becoming part of it. Going through all the different stages of initiation and apprenticeship is revealing many interesting things. One of the most striking was to discover how complicated it is for hunters…