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Bògòlanfini: Cultural Significance and Commercialization

Kendall Countryman

Arts of Africa ARTH:1040

Prof. Christopher Roy

Wendy Parker

November 7, 2015

To the Bamana, a group of about two million people predominantly living in the country of Mali, the Bògòlanfini is an extremely powerful item.[footnoteRef:1] This sacred cloth plays an important role in young girls’ transition into womanhood, when they go through female “circumcision.” While this practice is losing popularity, the significance of the textile remains. However, as often happens, outsiders have come to want this beautiful spiritual art for their own uses, from personal decorative art to use in fashion. This led to the designs and patterns on this traditional Bamana fabric to be adapted for use in the modern consumer market. This commercialization of the Bògòlanfini style of textile diminishes the importance of the original item and trivializes its significance in Bamana culture. [1: “Bamana,” https://africa.uima.uiowa.edu/peoples/show/Bamana, (accessed November 15, 2015).]

The Bògòlanfini is a type of mud cloth with various uses, from use as garments to symbolic use in traditional practices. It begins its life as strips of white cloth that are sewn together and then dyed a yellow color. Once dry, women paint the fabric with fermented mud to create the designs. The designs, however, are not made out of the mud, which is instead used as “the background, outlining the intended designs, which stand out in yellow against the mud.”[footnoteRef:2] The mud is washed out once dried, leaving the dark color behind that is the Bògòlanfini background. Finally, the yellow coloring left exposed is removed through a bleaching technique, creating the black and white finished product with striking geometric patterns and designs.[footnoteRef:3] [2: J. B. Donne, “Bogolanfini: A Mud-painted Cloth from Mali.” Man 8, no. 1 (1973): 104.] [3: Ibid. ]

The markings made on the fabric tend to be repeating geometric shapes and lines. Zigzag lines and hooked cross shapes such as the ones seen in the Bògòlanfini illustrated here (fig. 1) are commonly used layouts. These carefully created designs are not simply for aesthetic purposes. In traditional textiles, the patterns created by the Bamana women have specific meanings to those who know how to read them. They bear markings that “may refer to objects, to historical events, to mythological subjects, to proverbs”[footnoteRef:4] that carry significance for Bamana peoples. For example, the hooked cross shape may refer to the human form.[footnoteRef:5] This ties them into the powerful spiritual uses for the cloth and the cultural significance it has. [4: Victoria Rovine, "Bogolanfini in Bamako: The Biography of a Malian Textile," African Arts 30, no. 1 (1997): 42. ] [5: Pascal James Imperato and Marli Shamir, “Bokolanfini: Mud Cloth of the Bamana of Mali,” African Arts 3, no. 4 (1970): 40. ]

Figure 1. Bogolanfini, woven mud cloth, made by the Bamana people of Mali, located in the University of Iowa Museum of Art, Source: University of Iowa Museum of Art Digital Collection, Bogolanfini, http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/uima/id/16989/rec/5.

In Bamana culture, they recognize an energy of wildness called nyama. Sarah Brett Smith, associate professor of the art of West Africa at Rutgers, defines this energy as “the energy released by any act, whether positive or negative.”[footnoteRef:6] The Malians believe this intangible energy is found everywhere, and their beliefs tend to show that nyama is more malevolent than beneficial. It is often thought to be the cause of bad events, from car accidents to diseases in the community. Children are seen to have an extremely large amount of nyama, as they are thought to come from the world of the spirits.[footnoteRef:7] In order to become adults, children must shed these huge amounts of nyama they contain. This is done through the act of male circumcision and female excision. Circumcision and excision are also seen to correct and solidify the child’s behavior and character.[footnoteRef:8] [6: Sarah Brett-Smith, The Making of Bamana Sculpture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 112.] [7: Sarah Brett-Smith, “Symbolic blood: cloths for excised women.” RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 3 (1982): 16.] [8: Ibid., 20.]

One of the uses of Bògòlanfini is as a hunter’s garment, usually a sleeveless tunic. Its purpose then is to offer protection in the dangerous wilderness. The cloth’s most prominent use, though, is during the female transition to adulthood. The Bamana view the shedding of blood to be an event that releases a harmful amount of nyama and thus, during and after a girl’s excision, she releases large amounts of this dangerous energy. This could potentially be a danger to others and to her community. In order to protect those around her, she is wrapped in a Bògòlanfini. The fabric is able to absorb the nyama she is releasing. Meanwhile, it also acts in protecting the girl from outside nyama, as she is in an incredibly vulnerable state after her excision.[footnoteRef:9] Many weeks after the girl’s excision, she goes through a final coming out rite. Her Bògòlanfini is then given to her sponsor, a close female relative who attended to her during the weeks between her excision and final rite, who will wear it.[footnoteRef:10] This partially symbolizes the bond that has formed between the girl and her sponsor, who will continue to support her and help her through marriage and into family life.[footnoteRef:11] The sponsor is also then charged with guarding the powerful textile against those who may want to take it and use it for malevolent purposes.[footnoteRef:12] When the girl’s sponsor dies, she may be buried in the Bògòlanfini “in order to protect the mourners from the extraordinary amounts of nyama released at her death.”[footnoteRef:13] All throughout the cloth’s existence and use it carries with it exceptional spiritual power and significance for the Bamana people. [9: Ibid., 29.] [10: Ibid., 25, 28.] [11: Ibid., 28.] [12: Ibid., 28.] [13: Monica Blackmun Visona and Robin Poynor and Herbert M. Cole, A History of Art in Africa 2nd ed. (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc., 2007), 118.]

Relatively recently in history, this beautiful fabric has gained popularity throughout the world. With first western colonization and then the ever-expanding and diversifying global trade market, the patterns and style of Bògòlanfini has increased its prominence in the world. Similar designs are now used on anything from pillows to shoes to articles of clothing. Many artists have begun creating “tourist art” versions of the Bògòlanfini, commonly referred to as bogolan cloth, which “indicates their connection to the cloth that is their inspiration.”[footnoteRef:14] These versions can be made using cardboard stencils and may have yellows and oranges in addition to or instead of the traditional white designs.[footnoteRef:15] With the commercial demand of the Bògòlanfini-reminiscent pattern rising, craftspeople began to simplify the designs on the textile, making them less complex and busy in order to suit the preference of the Western consumer. Today, the geometric shapes and layout of the bogolan cloth carries no meaning further than visual aesthetics and are now no more than gibberish, as one traditional artist stated.[footnoteRef:16] [14: Rovine, “Bogolanfini in Bamako," 40. ] [15: Elsje S. Toerien, “Mud cloth of Mali: its making and use,” Journal of Family Ecology and Consumer Sciences 31 (2003): 54.] [16: Rovine, "Bogolanfini in Bamako," 42.]

This increase in popularity for the traditional Bamana design could be seen as beneficial to the Bamana peoples. It provides a source of income for many, creating artistic works for either tourists or art collectors and creates a greater appreciation for a portion of the underappreciated African art world. On the other hand, it has detrimental cultural and economic costs. A recent trend has grown in what many consider to be cultural appropriation. People pick and choose parts of others’ cultures that they find “cool” and use those parts as they please. While on one hand this could lead to appreciation and greater understanding of cultures other than one’s own, it can also lead to the devaluation of traditions and historical practices. If pieces of a culture are simply extracted without being examined, those pieces are more prone to lose their value and cultural significance.

Victoria Rovine recounts in her article Bogolanfini in Bamana about the consumer market for bogolan cloth:

Shops in the Grand Marche, Bamako's large central market that houses many of the city's tourist-oriented shops and stalls, are filled with bogolan. The cloth is also sold in the gift shops of the few large hotels and at the occasional bazaars sponsored by various organizations, such as the French, American, and Canadian embassies. This bogolan appears in a wide variety of styles, from complete abstraction to various degrees of realism. The palette—black or brown designs on white, yellow, or red cloth—is that of bogolanfini. Motifs are simple, often applied with little attention to detail; fuzzy edges and splatters of mud are common, as artists work to produce cloth as quickly as possible.[footnoteRef:17] [17: Ibid., 43-44.]

She speaks of a distortion of the original design of the Bògòlanfini for the sake of quantity and marketability. How can the spiritual significance of the original cloth be recognized if the patterns are simply “dumbed down” in order to be more pleasing for the Western consumer? In Bamana culture, the fabric carries such power and deep meaning. Reducing it to a pretty pattern reduces the importance of its significance to the Bamana people. Consumers worldwide can purchase a lampshade with bogolan pattern off crafting sites without even knowing the country of origin of the design, let alone its place in traditional Bamana life. With this simplification and stripping of the cloth’s cultural significance, it loses its ties back to its homeland and gains the mindlessness of the consumer world.

Many of these items also are not being sold by native Malians. Items are created out of the bogolan cloth and put them up for sale in stores and on various websites. Products are made with printed versions of the traditional Bògòlanfini layout. Instead of Bamana people benefiting from bogolan production, others are receiving a majority of the economic profit from a textile they have no connection to.

With its deeply rooted traditional cultural ties, the Bògòlanfini is a sacred and powerful cloth. Its ability to absorb Nyama is revered by the Bamana, as seen in how they treat the fabric all throughout its life. With the Bògòlanfini’s beautiful designs, it has recently found a place in the consumer environment globally. Though its fame provides a platform for international sharing of the knowledge of traditional practices of the Bamana people, such is not always the case. The reproduction of Bògòlanfini design without the awareness of the cultural significance of it reduces it simply to a pretty design for a coaster or pillow, which devalues the culture of the Bamana people.

Bibliography

Brett-Smith, Sarah. The Making of Bamana Sculpture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

———. “Symbolic Blood: Cloths for Excised Women.” RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 3, (1982): 15-31.

Donne, J. B. “Bogolanfini: A Mud-Painted Cloth from Mali.” Man 8, no. 1 (1973): 104-107.

Imperato, Pascal James, and Marli Shamir. “Bokolanfini: Mud Cloth of the Bamana of Mali.” African Arts 3, no. 4 (1970): 32-41.

Rovine, Victoria. “Bogolanfini in Bamako: The Biography of a Malian Textile.” African Arts 30, no.1 (1997): 40-51.

Toerien, Elsje S. “Mud cloth of Mali: Its Making and Use.” Journal of Family Ecology and Consumer Sciences 31 (2003): 52-57.

Visona, Monica., Robin Poynor, and Herbert M. Cole. A History of Art in Africa. 2nd ed. New Jersey: Prentice Hall Inc., 2007.