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In this paper I will be analysing the phenomenon of
għana (pronounced 'ana') in Maltese society.
Għana is the Maltese word for the
(rather than 'an') indigenous style of singing.
However the word has come to be associated largely
with three highly stylised genres, in particular
with the genre of Spirtu Pront ('quick
spirit'), a ritualised, extemporised song-duel.
 Għana is generally regarded by all sectors of
Maltese society as being 'traditional folk-singing',
a remnant of an aboriginal, folkloric past. I will
be showing, however, that għana is neither
'traditional', for over the years it has changed
both stylistically and in content, nor mere
'singing', for the competitive duelling it entails
draws its impetus from and has repercussions for the
perceived social status of the għannejja
('singers'; pronounced 'anneyya'), who are
practically all urban working class men.
Indeed as I shall try to demonstrate, għana is not
really 'folklore' at all - it is very much a
phenomenon of and a reaction to the contemporary
Maltese political situation (in the broad sense of
the term). If it is to be seen as 'folk' at all it
must be in the sense of 'Volk', a ghostly entity
disembodied from the people who sing it. Whilst the
middle and upper classes tend to regard it as quaint
folk-singing, indicative of the 'sweetness of the
people' in the past, which has been tainted by the
partisan political use made of it by its present
'low' practitioners, its working class practitioners
have seized upon the attention awarded għana
by intellectuals to see it as being somehow
coextensive with Maltese cultural identity, a pure
entity which they are preserving despite the
occasional lapse by an individual għannej
('singer'; pronounced 'annei') which momentarily
stains it. By preserving għana the
għannejja consciously see themselves as
'guardians of folklore' and in this role use
għana as a vehicle for statements about cultural
traits in Maltese society, or rather 'conflicting
identities in Maltese society and culture' (Sant
Cassia 1989: 164). In so doing they subvert the
'official' bourgeois categories of 'outside' and
'inside' and set up their own.
Għana is a particularly suitable object of
study for political anthropologists.(1)
It enables one to study three inter-related topics.
The first is the political significance of certain
rituals and how they integrate both the micro and
macro levels of politics. In most political analyses
the observer has to concentrate on either the local
level or the national one and only after doing that
establish the connections between the two (cf., for
example, Loizos 1975). Unfortunately students of
Maltese politics have rarely given much attention to
drawing the connections between these two levels of
politics: scholars have either concentrated on the
struggles featuring the two main political parties
and the Church (e.g. Koster 1984; and Vassallo
1979), or else restricted their investigations to a
local level (e.g. Boissevain 1965, 1980). In
għana, however, the two levels are
linked--personal, micro and national political
issues are intertwined through the content of the
songs. The singing 'rituals' integrate the
għannejja both on the local level, as they duel
between themselves for honour and prestige, and with
the wider society, as they comment on the
contradictory features of Maltese culture. This
issue is rendered even more interesting because of
the 'deception' involved. Whilst the singers appear
to be utilising a 'traditional' form of culture (and
hence semi-patronised by official ideology), they
are in fact utilising a form which is far from
traditional and which has evolved in form and
content. Hence we are dealing with an inverted form
of politics dealt with by Bloch (1975), in that we
have here a subversive form of political language in
a 'traditional' guise rather than an inherently
traditional form of rhetoric which legitimises
existing structures. We cannot say that we are
dealing with an invented tradition however, because
the origins of għana have not been
established; if anything, earlier traces of it keep
being discovered.
The second topic which għana can illuminate
is the symbolism of Maltese politics. Whereas
Boissevain, the most notable observer of Maltese
politics, tends to merely present symbols as though
their meaning were self-evident, the għannejja
play upon the ambiguities of certain symbols (e.g.
of literacy) in Maltese bourgeois ideology, thus
reaffirming Cohen's point (1974) that symbols are
not self-referential.
Finally the phenomenon of għana, by showing
how 'politics' is expressed and pursued through
discourse, confirms once again the long established
philosophical point that words do things (Austin
1960; Searle 1969). In għana, identities are
staked in a virtuoso performance. This is done in
two ways. The theme of social origins, which is
dominant in għana, establishes identities by
focusing on difference and the 'essence' of
Maltese-ness (cf. Herzfeld 1983: 11-16, 1987:
77-94). However, in relating the categories of
'inside' and 'outside' to class differences,
identities are related to social structure in an
interesting twist to Leach's argument (1954) with
regard to tribal identities. Here, instead of having
identities changing over a historical period of time
(as with the Gumlao and Gurnsa in
Burma) we have a case where, because of the language
(in the sense of both 'tongue' and 'rhetoric') one
uses, one may place oneself (or be placed!)
'outside' or 'inside', 'high' or 'low' in other
words, it may not be just a matter of codeswitching
but one of different folk-models of society -
obviously this is a matter requiring separate
treatment and I will not be examining it here.
What is interesting is that the issues posed by the
singers are in fact faced by the majority of the
Maltese in their everyday life. In a bilingual
country where English has hierarchical connotations
and Maltese egalitarian ones, choosing to speak
English rather than Maltese, sprinkling one's
Maltese with English words, or insisting on speaking
Maltese when English would be more conventional,
affects personal and social relationships. But it
affects the għannej in a particularly acute
way. For in the social drama that is għana,
he is engaging in a presentation of selfhood and
manhood. And as Cohen has pointed out:
'(S)ymbols and power relations, symbols and
selfhood. . . are highly interrelated problems. The
symbolic order and the power order are involved in
the creation and recreation of selfhood . . .'
(1974: 138)
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