ABSTRACT

This chapter considers apprenticeship among Mande hunters’ musicians in Mali. It argues that apprenticeship within hunters’ brotherhoods indicates a “locality” collectively constructed, giving its members access to a crucial network throughout their lives. Apprenticeship among the Mande hunters offers a distinct, institutionalized framework for coexistence. This collectively constructed locality is necessary amid the forces of urbanization and globalization that have contributed to the disintegration of traditional social networks. For Mande hunters’ musicians, the bonds formed in the intersection between locality and musicking offer a means of gaining self-respect as traditional social norms, and normative spaces for daily interaction, are suspended.