|
Ghana is sometimes also directly involved in
reifying traditional gender roles, by being a
discourse by men on women. This is especially so
with the Fattijiet, the prewritten songs
which are aimed at the whole family, and which
generally reach it via the radio. A large proportion
of the Fattijiet I have listened to deal with
women, in one role or another. Thus the singer can
rail against new dress fashions and women's loss of
shame in this connection (quite a common theme). Two
fictional stories also dealt with the mother-child
relationship: one told of a young boy who was kicked
out of his home by his single mother so that she
could live with a man; the other concerned the
tragedy of a boy who, disobeying his mother, went to
help make fireworks(18)
and died in an explosion. The songs can also be
humorous where warranted, dealing, for example, with
a gluttonous mother-in-law or with women's
'foibles', such as diet.
 However, għana is not only the province of
the working class male social world, but also one of
the means to enter it. Many men were first
introduced to għana as young boys, having
been taken along to the wine-bar by their father or
uncle. In fact it is significant that many
għannejja were 'apprenticed'(19)
to uncles or godfather figures rather than their
fathers. This is probably because such a
relationship is more akin to the egalitarian
relationship to be found in the wine-bar milieu.
Thus, in a Fatt lamenting the tragic death of
a young cousin of his, one għannej talks of how he
used to teach his cousin to sing in conjunction with
how he used to give him cigarettes secretly. Again,
while spiritual kinship is often invoked during
duels, the older singer is usually called 'teacher'
or 'grandfather', not 'father'.
The għannejja certainly form a community,(20)
the creation of which is undoubtedly helped by the
general use of nicknames to refer to għannejja.
As has been suggested by Pitt-Rivers (1954:
160-177), nicknames serve to define 'insiders'
against 'outsiders'. But although, especially after
a bout, there is much embracing and fond manhandling
as well as drinking together, this community is not
quite like the 'communitas' postulated by Turner
(1969) nor does the joking help to create the
community in quite the same way as suggested by
Douglas (1975:90-114). Rather the community is
created by aggression (cf. Gilmore, 1987) or more
accurately, the għannejja 'joke to make friends', in
a manner analogous to the Glendiots' 'stealing to
make friends' (Herzfeld 1985: 163-203). If an
għannej is known to be a 'good joker' (i.e.
capable of slapping you with a very witty insult),
it is best to remain on his good side. But the
joking and teasing also has the function of creating
'joking relationships', where mock conflicts are
staged in order to avoid real ones (cf. Radcliffe-Brown
1940, 1949).
For since honour is at stake, with the concomitant
duty to defend it if challenged, the għannejja
are very prickly individuals. The notion of honour
is very similar to that typically found throughout
the Mediterranean and which has already been
excellently analysed by anthropologists such as
Bourdieu (1979: 95-132) and Pitt-Rivers (1977). Its
most prominent characteristic, apart from its need
to be defended, is that it can in effect only be
challenged by an equal, and consequently one should
not lower oneself by challenging an inferior. Thus,
First Division għannejja are often reluctant
to sing with singers of a lower calibre, some of
whom sometimes demand to sing opposite them. But
generally the top għannejja relent, privately
saying that they did not want to make the other
singer lose face by refusing to sing with them. Even
then, they feel that they have to restrain
themselves and not 'attack' the weaker singer
head-on. Individual għannejja fall out very
easily with one another, the breach in the
relationship sometimes lasting for several years.
The constant vigilance over one's good name is
indicated by the fact that the phrase 'he sang about
you' can only mean 'he insulted you' (at a session
which was not attended by the victim of the
assault), and if 'he sang about your family' then
the repercussions will be very serious. Then the
reciprocal exchanges of gifts in the form of
insults/compliments (which refract off each other,
for 'insulting' somebody can be a compliment - he is
close enough to the singer to be teased) and drinks,
which serve to create community (Hart 1986: 648),
are replaced by the 'reciprocal exchange' of tapes(21)
which directly (as opposed to the double-entendre
favoured in duels) attack the other's honour by
uncovering 'facts' about his family (both wife and
ancestors).
This type of feuding is frowned upon and called
'dirt'. The għannej who indulged in it might
himself later admit that he stooped 'low', but add
that he couldn't help it - he had to defend his
honour, although in another sense he lost face. It
is striking that most għannejja do not think
of refusing to counter 'dirty' tapes, on the pretext
that it is beneath them (and hence simultaneously
casting a dark shadow on the attacker). This is
probably because they are caught in a tension which
pervades the whole of għana. This is that
amongst themselves the għannejja must defend
their honour at all costs while at the same time
knowing that following this code to the hilt will
give għana a bad name with 'outsiders'. This tension
is also reflected in how among themselves the
għannejja attempt to distance themselves from
their colleagues by becoming virtuosos, while in the
face of 'outsiders' they maintain a facade of unity.
Thus, at the beginning of a session held in my
honour, one singer told the others to restrain
themselves; he did not want a 'war' because this
tape was 'going to England'.
This unity must be kept because they see themselves
as 'guardians' of Maltese folklore. Intellectuals
are interested in what they do, the professional
classes acknowledge that għana is an
indigenous phenomenon while the government
occasionally sends them abroad on a folklore
exchange tour. For them, the phrase 'Maltese
Folklore' is synonymous with 'true Maltese cultural
identity', and it is they who are helping to keep it
alive in the face of cultural importations, and the
slavish imitation of foreigners by some of the
middle class Maltese, most of whom look down upon
għana as being 'low class'. This is why the
predominant metaphors used are images picked from
activities that they construe to have been
constitutive of traditional Maltese life, such as
horse-racing and farming (and some of these
activities are actually constitutive of their own
lives). This is also what prompted one għannej
to tell me that 'school' was useful to teach one
'old (Maltese) words', (i.e. archaic), a striking
inversal of the Maltese middle class attitude to
education which is to facilitate social mobility and
hence to internationalise oneself and one's
vocabulary.
The images used are expressing the recurrent themes
of singing ability, and social origins, both of the
Maltese people and of the għannejja. It is
this last ambiguity, together with the għannejja's
seeing themselves as 'guardians of folklore' which
enables għana to act as a voice of largely
illiterate working class men marginalised in a
highly bureaucratic and centralised society. Through
this voice they express their partisan political
beliefs as well as create a discourse about and
through Maltese cultural identities.
The most obvious way in which they do this is when
they voice their partisan political beliefs. Here
għana, a traditional genre, is used as a song of
reactionary protest. Thus, in the sixties a Fatt was
sung over the radio commenting on the mini-skirt.
However, the song was also about the right-wing
Nationalist government of the time, the principal
message being that the 'chance wind of fate could
ruin its semblance of propriety' (Herndon 1971:
312). Yet although it was a right-wing government
that was being criticised, the protest was still a
reactionary one: members of the Nationalist
government were at the time accused of corruption
and speculation in the sale of land, especially to
foreigners. Thus the għannejja were
representing the 'Nation's interest' in protesting,
especially so since they were the 'guardians of
folklore', representatives of 'true Maltese-ness',
while the upper class elite that was governing the
country was an 'outsider', in connivance with
foreigners, exploiting the 'People'. These populist
sentiments come out very clearly in other
Fattijiet, especially in the Fatt
'Mintoff Story', where the socialist leader's
enemies are explicitly linked with colonial
interests. Analogous allegorical Fattijiet
were also sung about the institutional (Catholic)
Church, which was depicted as taking the side of the
rich against that of the poor.(22)
Although these Fattijiet slipped through the
hands of the radio censors, middle class
professionals who missed the allegorical meanings,(23)
it is clear that an overt position was taken by the
għannejja in these songs.(24)
The interesting feature about their statements on
Maltese cultural identities however, is that no such
overt position is generally taken. The għannejja
are content to wittily expose contradictions in
Maltese society, approaching a subject from many
angles, subverting official categories of high class
literacy and low class illiteracy, outside and
inside, hierarchy and egalitarianism, sometimes
ironically at their own expense.
The principal way in which they achieve this is by
their strategic use of the Maltese and English
languages. Malta is a bilingual society, having
English as its official second language, and it is
well documented that in such societies the different
languages tend to be attributed different statuses
(cf., for example, Tanner 1972). Thus, one
għannej sang about 'The Language of the
Well-Mannered'(25)
in which a middle-class mother (clearly from a
particular area where Maltese is snubbed in favour
of English) talks to her son in 'Anglo-Maltese',
urging him to wake up and go to school so that he
will be able to get a good job later in life and not
a 'low' one. At least half the song is sung in
English, showing how a supposedly 'ignorant' singer
knows the language while simultaneously showing how
the 'educated' massacre both English and Maltese.(26)
Or else, while singing in a wine-bar an għannej
might try and goad another into singing with him by
addressing him with the English version of his name
- 'Michael' instead of 'Kilin' as everybody knows
him. This is easily recognisable as what in
socio-linguistics is known as 'codeswitching', which
as J. B. Pride has suggested, following Barth, is
transactionally determined (1979). Here, being
called 'Michael' is to be made an 'outsider',
middle-class, not an għannej at all. There is
also an implied subtle inversion of usual
hierarchies: the 'low' class of the għannejja
is made to seem superior.
But the barriers are not always raised to exclude:
they can also be lowered to include 'outsiders'
while simultaneously acknowledging the differences
that exist between the 'insiders' and 'outsiders'.
That inclusion is usually achieved through the use
of the Maltese language adds yet another discourse:
that about the Maltese language itself as an
egalitarian language. An example which illustrates
all this is the following advice given by 'Bamboċċu'
to 'Folfol':
|
|
What is subverted here is not the claim of the
bourgeoisie to be educated, but rather that to be
educated is better. For it is in being a true
għannej that one goes beyond reactionary protest
and voices true dissent from bourgeois ideology.
Dissent lies in being 'a genius, a poet', capable of
uttering lofty thoughts while being 'low'. It
overturns the bourgeois idea of literacy = knowledge
because the uneducated għannej, called by
God, might be said to be in one sense the
Incarnation of Knowledge. For this reason, to see a
true għannej sing is to witness an epiphany
of Grace.
All this cannot but recall to mind Gellner's
discussion of Muslim saints and baraka
(e.g.1981:40-41,116). However, while the baraka
of the Muslim saints is 'routinised', inherited, the
'charisma' of the għannejja is unpredictably
distributed. This difference is doubtlessly partly
due to the għannejja's Christianity. But it
probably also has its roots in the fact that while
the Arabic word baraka combines the concepts
of 'Grace' and 'blessing', Maltese distinguishes
between the two. 'Grace' (Grazzja) shines
forth from within and is ever present (though at
times it can shine more luminously than at others);
the 'blessing' (barka), however, is bestowed
upon one from without, 'manumitted' so to speak, and
has to be asked for each time it is needed. The
difference from the Maghrebi example is significant,
for it can be said that by claiming to be the
vessels of Divine Grace, the għannejja are
setting up an opposition between themselves and the
upper classes who have their 'blessings'. These
'blessings' consist of their wealth and their
honour, that comes with their status as their
birth-right (cf. Pitt-Rivers 1977: 38). Indeed, the
opposition set up by the għannejja may be
compared with the Moroccan one, where saints have
baraka while the lay tribes have honour (Jamous
1981).
|
