In his article, Frederick Lamp expounds with great detail upon the Temne tradition of the “coming-out”, or initiation tradition for women, called Bondo. While the actual ceremony takes place over the course of a few days, in preparation, the girls to be initiated are isolated in a secret forest grove for a year, where they prepare spiritually for their coming out.
Upon beginning to read this article, I immediately linked the Bondo tradition to coming out traditions in the western culture, particularly Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, and confirmation. While these coming-of-age rituals certainly are significant, they are neither as elaborate nor as widely practiced within the culture as the Bondo is within the Temne culture. When it begins, the Bondo consumes the whole town, and every member is both part of the audience and a participant. I found this particularly interesting to consider in relation to the Bondo as an opera. In western opera, the audience takes no part in the action on stage. In this ritualistic opera, however, there is an interplay between the initiates, the initiated Bondo women, and the men of the town. There are moments of call and response, group chaos, and solemn procession.
I was also interested in the notion that the Bondo is simultaneously a birth and death for the initiates. Their life as a child ends as their new life as a woman begins, but there is also death in that the serpent’s belly bursts and the girls must emerge from a death-like “under water” state. Furthermore, before children are initiated, they are considered “half-formed”, and then one they have been initiated they are immediately in their “full state of being”. I found this intriguing as it is contrary to what I am inclined to conceptualize growth from a child to an adult as. In my mind, which has been shaped by my development in western culture, I have always viewed childhood and adolescence as an ongoing process of development, so it was interesting to think about this in a different way.
No comments:
Post a Comment