Songs of Senegalese Rain Priestess Aline Sitoé Diatta: Collaborative Musicking for Audible Futures

Aline Sitoé Diatta (1920–1944) was a leader in the indigenous religion of the Jola people based in the Casamance region of Senegal. In 1942, a time of drought and intensified colonial extraction, she founded a new shrine that brought sorely needed rains. She also advocated for religious reforms to counter the influence of Christianity, recenter human relationships with the Jola creator Emite, and promote sustenance rice-farming in place of French-imposed cash-cropping. Music was central to Diatta's revivalist movement, and she composed songs to perform during her shrine rituals, but these were never recorded. Inspired by Nannyonga-Tamusuza and Weintraub's notion of sound repatriation for an “audible future”—yet vexed by an inaudible past for Diatta's songs—I worked with Jola musician Joël Bassene over the course of three years to create new translations and compositions for a collection of lyrics attributed to Diatta published in 1969. We recorded these new settings with a community chorus in Elubalir (an island village that maintains one of Diatta's shrines) and returned three times for playback-feedback sessions. This essay shares perspectives on Diatta's musical life stemming from this collaborative project, including the role of music in (1) enacting human-spiritual-environmental relationships; (2) creating local agency in global political and climatic crises; and (3) transmitting a critical discourse on religion, colonialism, agriculture, and the environment from a Jola perspective. In addition to these conclusions, this project is a case study in collaborative musicking as an experimental methodology to stimulate communal historical and cultural reflection.