Bibliography of Gambian Related Publications

Culture

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Title: Jali Nyama Suso: Kora Player of The Gambia. (video recording reviews)
Date: 1996
Source: Ethnomusicology; Wntr 1996, v40, n1, p. 174-178
Author(s): Charry, Eric
Abstract:
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Title: The South Bank of The Gambia: places, people, and population (A) Kantora and Fuladuu
Date: 1996
Source: Number 30 in the Gambia Studies Series (price=$25.00 + shipping)
Author(s): David P. Gamble
Abstract: Pages: 143. Language:
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Title: The South Bank of The Gambia: places, people, and population (B) Nyaamina, Jaara & Kiyang
Date: 1996
Source: Number 31 in the Gambia Studies Series (price=$25.00 + shipping)
Author(s): David P. Gamble
Abstract: Pages: 163. Language:
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Title: Wolof Ethnography
Date: 1996
Source: Rosen Publishing Group, Inc., 29 East 21st Street, New York, NY 10010
Author(s): Tijan M. Sallah
Abstract: This book covers the Senegambian ethnic group, the Wolof. It covers the people, the land, their social history and structure, colonialism and resistance, literature and arts, customs, the future and glossary and list of books for further reading.
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Title: "Case VIgnette: Child abuse or acceptable cultural norms": Response.
Date: 1995
Source: Ethics & Behavior 1995 Vol 5(3) 290-292
Author(s): Martin, Tony
Abstract: Comments on a hypothetical case (see PA, Vol 83:5998) of a Gambian woman's disclosing to a physician or a mental health professional her uneasiness about her preadolescent daughter's possible female circumcision (FC). T. Martin argues that a person's culture demands the highest respect and that there is nothing inherently superior in Western culture that would warrant Western dictation to the cultures of less powerful people. He argues against invoking the laws pertaining to child abuse as he considers this to be an unwarranted criminalization of parents grappling in good faith with a practice that is legal and customary in their home country. Martin states he would present considerations about the case and that the parents and the adolescent girls involved should make an informed decision. It is suggested that these recommendations do not preclude lobbying in Gambia to have FC reconsidered. (PsycINFO Database Copyright 1996 American Psychological Assn, all rights reserved)
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Title: Case VIgnette: Child abuse or acceptable cultural norms.
Date: 1995
Source: Ethics & Behavior 1995 Vol 5(3) 283-293
Author(s): Brant, Renee; Wyatt, Gail Elizabeth; Martin, Tony
Abstract: Presents a hypothetical case of a Gambian woman whose family and two other Gambian families are considering having their preadolescent daughters circumcised, as is their practice in Gambia. The client has reservations and consults a physician or a mental health professional. She likens the procedure to circumcision of Jewish infant boys. She states that if not done in the US the procedure will probably be done to her daughter when she returns to Gambia for vacation. (0 ref) (PsycINFO Database Copyright 1996 American Psychological Assn, all rights reserved)
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Title: Ethical issues in culturally relevant interventions.
Date: 1995
Source: Ethics & Behavior 1995 Vol 5(3) 288-290
Author(s): Wyatt, Gail Elizabeth
Abstract: Comments on a hypothetical case (see PA, Vol 83:5998) of a Gambian woman's disclosing to a physician or a mental health professional her uneasiness about her preadolescent daughter's possible female circumcision (FC). G. E. Wyatt lists 7 steps she would take to help the client, including examining her own feelings and whether they would interfere with the best interest of the client and obtaining information about the prevalence of FC in Gambia. Wyatt argues that agents of change must come from within the client's culture, and that the greatest source of change is a concerned parent. (PsycINFO Database Copyright 1996 American Psychological Assn, all rights reserved)
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Title: Calloused Hands And A Drummer'S Toolkit: Mandinka Drumming In The Gambia.
Date: 1994
Source: Thesis (PH.D.)--INDIANA UNIVERSITY, 1994. 216 p.; Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-02, Section: A, page: 0612. Chair: MARTHA B. KENDALL.
Author(s): THOMPSON, ROBERT L.
Abstract: Mandinka drummers in The Gambia perform drum rhythms at dance events through the juxtaposition of sound, movement, and social interaction. The present study addresses the problem of understanding the processes whereby drummers use rhythmic structures and musical improvisation to create not only music, but also to facilitate social negotiation and the creation of social life. Through the course of twenty-one months of fieldwork, research methods included participant-observation, intensive instruction in drumming techniques, and drummed performances at dances. This dissertation offers a drummer's view of drum ensemble performances, including aspects of their context, preparatory activities, the interplay between drummers, and dance accompaniment, and acknowledges the importance of drummer -dancer interaction in creating rhythms and in shaping the flow of dance events. Mandinka drumming is multi-layered and textured, which under varied conditions allows drummers many opportunities to strategize for rhythmic effect and maximum economic benefit. Musical improvisation occurs often at dances, within a framework of rhythmic structures, and the lead drummer in an ensemble plays a crucial role in co-ordinating the musical dialogue as he exploits the drum's rhythmic, melodic, and communicative potentials. The lead drummer is also simultaneously a focal point in the contentious yet co-operative social processes that combine sound and behavior in the creation of dance events. This dissertation builds on previous ethnomusicological studies of music in context, and adds a detailed consideration of recent theories of embodiment and social practice. Utilizing a drummer's perspective, this dissertation also contributes to the corpus of works about West African drumming and rhythmic principles. In performance contexts of public displays of gift-giving, intricate drumming, and energetic dancing, this study indicates that Mandinka drumming is an important component in the creation of conviviality and social life.
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Title: Negotiating The Meaning Of Africa: Mandinka Praisesingers In Transnational Contexts (Gambia).
Date: 1993
Source: Thesis (PH.D.)--UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS, 1993. 184 p.; Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 54-06, Section: A, page: 2203. Director: RALPH FAULKINGHAM.
Author(s): EBRON, PAULLA ANGELEAC.
Abstract: The focus of the dissertation is on the performances and activities of praisesingers and the ways in which these activities act as powerful texts of culture and politics in The Gambia and the West. I reexamine ideas about culture and cultural representation through attention to a tradition of Mandinka praisesingers, known as jali. Jaliya is the institutional name of the craft. Jali are important cultural brokers in local and transregional contexts. Though their activities they help negotiate the meaning of Africa for various audiences. The thematic counter-parts explored through ethnographic contexts focus on various meanings of culture. Challenging traditional notions of culture, understood as a moral or bounded system, this dissertation formulates a more expanded notion of the meaning of culture--one that can account for global cultural flows. Throughout the thesis the dichotomy that often exists between metropolitan theories and local contexts is challenged through attention to a complexly intertwined world; theory is not just produced in the West and exported elsewhere. Rather notions of "culture" and "the cultural" are produced in dialogue with and across imaginary geographies. Central to this project is attention to how the categories of analysis are produced. Such themes as performance, music and ideology, formation of national culture, the construction of professional identity, and local/global cultural economies are linked in an exploration of the inventiveness of and contestations over notion of culture and cultural production. I then link these themes to various social and political histories. African and its diaspora helps to construct meaning in global centers and for various communities. Several themes emerge in the dissertation that build from existing studies of Mandinka praisesingers. No longer can anthropologists imagine a world to be "discovered" as some might have previously thought. Indeed jali have become the focus of studies but mainly in terms of their particular practices rather than a focus on meanings and implications of their activities. This dissertation focuses on how their activities help to constitute notions of culture and various subjectivities. By extension I explore how are gender, caste, class intimately linked in their activities?.
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Title: Musical Thought, History, And Practice Among The Mande Of West Africa (Music, Balafon, Kora, Koni).
Date: 1992
Source: Thesis (PH.D.)--PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, 1992. 375 p.; Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 53-09, Section: A, page: 3032.
Author(s): CHARRY, ERIC S.
Abstract: The Mandinka and Maninka (also called Malinke) are the western branch of a larger West African linguistic/ethnic family known as Mande (also called Manding, or Mandingue in French) who all trace their origins to the 13th century Mali empire. In Mande society there is a class of hereditary professional musical/verbal artisans called jeli or jali (known as griot to the French). This study is concerned with the music that is played by jelis on their three traditional melodic instruments: (1) the balafon, a xylophone (typically with 16 to 20 slats) that is associated with the Maninka in the Mande heartland (where the upper Niger river cuts through Guinea and Mali); (2) the kora, a 21-stringed bridge harp (made from a large calabash) that is associated with the Mandinka in The Gambia, southern Senegal, and Guinea-Bissau; and (3) the koni (also called ngoni or kontingo), a 4 or 5-stringed lute associated with the Xasonke and Bambara in Mali. The guitar has recently been integrated into the jeli's tradition and it too will be examined. Three other distinct spheres of Mande music will also be examined; (1) drumming; (2) music associated with ancient hunters' societies played on 6- or 7-stringed calabash spike harps; and (3) music of modern urban electric ensembles. Hunters' music and drumming are probably the oldest traditions, predating the jeli's tradition which goes back to 13th century Mali. All of these traditions call for professional musicians but jelis are the only ones who are hereditary, and they guard their profession through endogamy. They are the "state-sanctioned" guardians of Mande musical and oral traditions. This study is synthetic in that it pulls together early Arabic historical writings and European travel accounts, Mande oral traditions, previous musicological research, and the findings of my own research into Mande traditional and modern music as carried out over the course of twenty-two months in several different regions of the Mande diaspora in West Africa (Senegal, The Gambia, Mali and Guinea).
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Title: Ancient Heart: Mandinka and Fulani Music of The Gambia. (sound recording reviews)
Date: 1991
Source: Down Beat; May 1991, v58, n5, p46(1)
Author(s): Santoro, Gene
Abstract:
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Title: Verbal and VIsual Expressions of Wolof Culture
Date: 1989
Source: Number 22 in the Gambia Studies Series (price=$25.00 + shipping)
Author(s): edited by David P. Gamble
Abstract: Includes source material on the fanaal (lantern boats), English translations of five Wolof stories, Ousman Sembene's films on the Wolof, proverbs, description of a naming ceremony Pages: 160. Language: English/Wolof
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Title: A Gambian Homecoming
Date: 1988
Source: Essence Magazine, Vol. 19 (August 1988), 18-19
Author(s): Taylor, Peggy Ann
Abstract:
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Title: Wolof legends from published sources
Date: 1987 revised
Source: Number 10b in the Gambia Studies Series (price=$25.00 + shipping)
Author(s): David P. Gamble
Abstract: Mainly French sources. English translation provided. Pages: iv + 168. Language: French (with English translation)
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Title: Gambia's People Eager to Share Native Artifacts
Date: 1987
Source: Christian Science Monitor (September 29, 1987)
Author(s): McBride, Bunny
Abstract:
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Title: Chez Les Noirs: A Comparative-Historical Analysis Of Pidgin And Creole Languages.
Date: 1986
Source: Thesis (PH.D.)--UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI, 1986. 223 p.; Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 47-06, Section: A, page: 2142.
Author(s): BATES-MIMS, MERELYN B.
Abstract: The general objectives of this study are to enlarge on the comparative-historical theoretical base which identifies West Africa as the source of origin and development of African Diaspora languages, to comparatively demonstrate the grammatical similarities in features between Cameroon Pidgin and Louisiana Creole languages, to make a case for Louisiana Creole English language, to identify a meta-grammatical "cultural language" or hegemonic language of African civilization, and finally, to discuss the synchronic state of the development and usage of African pidgins and creoles. This work seeks to avoid the pitfalls of relying on primarily social data as substantiating evidence for defining and identifying language. Its major focus is the utilization of structural analyses of the syntax of Cameroon Pidgin English, for example, which imply that it is African language that provides the grammatical framework for Pidgin language competence. Other analyses will show that this competence engenders similarities in structural composition between Francais Populaire of Abidjan and the French Creole of Lousiana; and among African continent Creoles and Pidgins such as Krio of Sierra Leone, Pidgin English of Cameroon, Gambia, Nigeria and Ghana. This study also illustrates that African language is the source for certain elements in African Diaspora speech, elements such as the use of /de(h)/ in an existential sense; the use of /na/ as an indicator of present progressive; the temporal incorporation of the present and past into a single verbal entitiy; the employment of a positive morpheme(s) which agrees with the negative element in discourse, i.e., S(,1): "Hi, I haven't seen you in a long while." S(,2): "Sho have! Sho have!" (shaking the head 'yes' in agreement that we have not seen each other); the sound-meaning correspondences of verbal /be/ in its "invariant" form; the existence of noun and adjective in predicative and modifying functions; and the "absence" of copula in certain constructs. The most innovative aspects of this study are the reporting on the connections between the earliest written language, Ancient Egyptian, and the languages of "Black" Africa, and on the recognition of the existence of a second creole language in Southwest Louisiana, Louisiana Creole English.
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Title: Peoples of The Gambia I: The Wolof
Date: 1985
Source: Number 17 in the Gambia Studies Series (price=$20.00 + shipping)
Author(s): David P. Gamble, Linda K. Salmon, with Alhaji Hassan Njie
Abstract: Pages: viii + 78, illustrated. Language: English
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Title: Folktales from the Gambia Wolof Fictional Narratives
Date: 1984
Source: ISBN: 0894102206 Trade Cloth USD 18.00 R; 0894102214 Trade Paper USD 8.00 R
Author(s): Magel, Emil; Makward, Edris Introduction etc. by
Abstract: 204 p
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Title: Gambian Fula stories told by Mary Umah Baldeh
Date: 1981
Source: Number 13 in the Gambia Studies Series (price=$15.00 + shipping)
Author(s): edited by David P. Gamble
Abstract: Pages: xiv + 104. Language: Fula (Firdu dialect) (with English translations)
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Title: Wolof stories from Senegambia, mainly from old published sources
Date: 1980, revised 1987
Source: Number 10a in the Gambia Studies Series (price=$25.00 + shipping)
Author(s): David P. Gamble
Abstract: Many texts from French sources. English translation provided (only one Wolof text given) Pages: vii + 337 . Language: French/English/Wolof
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Title: Oral Tradition from the Gambia Vol. II: Family Elders
Date: 1980
Source: Series: Papers in International Studies: Africa Ser. No. 38; ISBN: 0896800849 Trade Paper USD 15.00 R
Author(s): Wright, Donald R. Editor
Abstract:
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Title: Oral Traditions from the Gambia Mandinka Griots Vol. 1
Date: 1979
Source: Series: Papers in International Studies: Africa Ser. No. 37; ISBN: 0896800830 Trade Cloth USD 15.00 R
Author(s): Wright, Donald R.
Abstract:
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Title: A Mandinka narrative: "Manding Kuno" by A.K. Rahman
Date: 1977
Source: Number 9 in the Gambia Studies Series (price=$20.00 + shipping (packaged with numbers 3-9))
Author(s): edited and translated by David P. Gamble
Abstract: Pages: i + 17. Language: Mandinka (with English translation)
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Title: Alex Haley in Juffure
Date: 1977
Source: Ebony (July 1977), 31-42
Author(s): Massaquoi, Hans J.
Abstract:
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Title: Mandinka stories - dictated, written or recorded
Date: 1977
Source: Number 8 in the Gambia Studies Series (price=$20.00 + shipping (packaged with numbers 3-9))
Author(s): David P. Gamble
Abstract: twenty-one stories Pages: iii + 39. Language: Mandinka (with English translation)
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Title: Mandinka tales from the Mandinka newspaper Kibaro: 1951-1955
Date: 1977
Source: Number 7 in the Gambia Studies Series (price=$20.00 + shipping (packaged with numbers 3-9))
Author(s): edited and translated by David P. Gamble
Abstract: twenty-four tales from the Mandinka language newspaper. Pages: iv + 49. Language: Mandinka (with English translation)
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Title: Mandinka narratives from Kibaro, with a literal translation
Date: 1976, revised 1986
Source: Number 2 in the Gambia Studies Series (price=$5.00 + shipping)
Author(s): David P. Gamble
Abstract: This was a revised and enlarged edition of a work originally prepared in January 1958. It consists of extracts from the Mandinka language newspaper Kibaro - 19 news items and 2 stories, with a word by word translation, and three pages of notes on words and phrases which link sentences. Pages: ii + 25. Language: Mandinka (with English translation)
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Title: A conversation with Kaba So, an elder of the Roroobe, from Jalakoto, Niani District, The Gambia
Date: 1976, revised 1980
Source: Number 1 in the Gambia Studies Series (price=$5.00 + shipping)
Author(s): David P. Gamble and Marh Umah Baldeh
Abstract: Fula text taken from a tape recording, with English translation. A Cassette of the Fula speech is also available Pages: iv + 30 . Language: Fula, Lorobo dialect (with English translation)
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Title: Mandinka dilemma stories, puzzles, riddles, and proverbs
Date: 1976, revised 1977
Source: Number 3 in the Gambia Studies Series (price=$20.00 (packaged with numbers 3-9))
Author(s): edited and translated by David P. Gamble
Abstract: Material appearing in different publications (Mandinka language newspaper Kibaro, etc.) as well as material collected by the translator himself. Pages: ii + 27. Language: Mandinka (with English translation)
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Title: Accounts of supernatural beings, spirits, witches, werewolves, ninkinanko, etc. from the Mandinka newspaper Kibaro
Date: 1976
Source: Number 4 in the Gambia Studies Series (price=$20.00 + shipping (packaged with numbers 3-9))
Author(s): edited and translated by David P. Gamble
Abstract: Pages: ii + 11. Language: Mandinka (with English translation)
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Title: Mandinka stories from books published prior to 1960
Date: 1976
Source: Number 6 in the Gambia Studies Series (price=$20.00 + shipping (packaged with numbers 3-9))
Author(s): David P. Gamble
Abstract: Mandinka texts, with notes and translations by David P. Gamble Pages: iv + 30. Language: Mandinka (with English translation)
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Title: Mandinka Jaliya: Professional Music Of The Gambia. (Volumes I And II).
Date: 1973
Source: Thesis (PH.D.)--UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES, 1973. 454 p.; Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 34-08, Section: A, page: 5230.
Author(s): KNIGHT, RODERIC COPLEY.
Abstract:
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Title: Plural Marriage Among The Wolof In The Gambia: With A Consideration Of Problems Of Marital Adjustment And Patterned Ways Of Resolving Tensions.
Date: 1953
Source: Thesis (PH.D.)--NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY, 1953. 157 p.; Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 13-05, page: 0622.
Author(s): AMES, DAVID WASON.
Abstract:
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Title: Oral Traditions from the Gambia, Vol. 1 Mandinka Griots Edition: Reprint
Date:
Source: Series: Papers in International Studies: Africa Ser. No. 37; ISBN: 0783713266 Trade Paper USD 56.50 R USD 53.50 R
Author(s): Wright, Donald R.
Abstract: 198 p
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Title: Dying for My Daughter
Source: ISBN 1-932852-06-9
Author(s): Baba G. Jallow
Abstract: Dying For My Daughter is a perceptive, highly engaging and ultimately readable novel. It is a David and Goliath story of right against might, and breathtakingly explores one of those burning issues threatening contemporary African families and societies: female circumcision. It is the lyrical outburst of one man’s defiant battle against what he considers harmful tradition. A rousing true narrative of how a determined father saves his little girl in The Gambia at the dawn of the twenty-first century.
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