Burkina Faso "Singers of Bani" Jay Dunn (15 images)

"The Singers of Bani"

The singers could be heard clearly from the top of the escarpment looking down over the village, their exhausted counterpoint thrilling me still, in muted echoes so far from the small yard with high walls that made their cathedral. Sheltering trees in dusty green stood out against the gold and russet of this place, crafted of mud and straw and hard work from the unforgiving landscape of northern Burkina Faso.

Nothing is over one...
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"The Singers of Bani"

The singers could be heard clearly from the top of the escarpment looking down over the village, their exhausted counterpoint thrilling me still, in muted echoes so far from the small yard with high walls that made their cathedral. Sheltering trees in dusty green stood out against the gold and russet of this place, crafted of mud and straw and hard work from the unforgiving landscape of northern Burkina Faso.

Nothing is over one story high in Bani, which makes the seven mud mosques that were built here so remarkable, minarets like the voices of the singers reaching up to the sky with their brown arms outstretched. One could come here to see these buildings, after catching a fleeting glimpse of the spires from the long hot bus journey to Dori. But it was the sound of the singers that mesmerized - as we approached through the maze of alleys, I couldn't move fast enough.

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Humanitarian Issues & Cultural Tradition Worldwide

Look for the anthologies
"Ritual and Romance in Asia" and "Agadez to Accra: from the deserts of Niger to the Gulf of Guinea" at

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