Music and rock art: a Saharan note

Rock Art Research, May, 2006 by Ahmed Achrati

Abstract. The relationship between rock art and music is complex and has been studied from many angles. Competing interpretations of this relationship include shamanism, animism, art-for-art's sake (l'art pour l'art) and ethnographic parallelism. The study of the Saharan rock art establishes that the authorship of rock art relates to a purely aesthetic activity that articulates local beliefs and sensibilities, independent of any shamanism or animism.

KEYWORDS: Petroglyph--Sahara--Shamanism--Epistemology--Music--Drumming

1. Trance-vested rock art

A. Prelude: shamans, art, and the story of the 'other half'

Shamanism has had its share of detractors and defenders (Narby and Huxley 2001), but as a phenomenon, shamanism can no more explain art than art can explain shamanism. Regarding the nature of the relationship between shamans and art, any serious study should begin with an examination of the historical record. Remarkably, one of the earliest and most unlikely sources is the work of Siyah Qalam, whose work is in the Topkapi collections in Turkey. This 15th-century Muslim artist, who is of Uyghur origin, gave us paintings of Mongolian shamans, as well as scenes of the Qalandar mystics, including their ecstatic dances (Esin 1981: Figs 309, 310 and 353). Shamans are also the subject of early American painters such as George Catlin (1796-1872) and his Blue Medicine Man, and Old Bear, a Medicine Man (Truettner 1978: Figs 19 and 73), or Karl Bodmer (1809-1893) and his Cree Medicine Man. Better yet, there is the artwork of the Native Americans themselves, which, though rare, is still valuable both for its content and for the background information that comes with it. Examples of this artwork include the paintings of the Mandan Mato-Tope ('Four Bears'), and Sih-Chada ('Yellow Feather'). A painting on robe by Mato-Tope, for instance, is beautifully reproduced in Mandan Buffalo Robe, which his friend Bodmer executed (Joslyn Art Museum 1984: Fig. 341, see also Fig. 340, and related comment on p. 326). To his other friend, G. Catlin, Mato-Tope gave his own interpretation of the symbols of the scenes on that robe. Bodmer also reproduced a drum that Mato-Tope had decorated and owned (ibid.: Fig. 358). As to the work of Sih-Chada, Marsha V. Gallagher informs us, it included paintings of the traveller Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied, Bodmer, himself, and his comrades (Joslyn Art Museum 1984: 322; also Fig. 316). Some of these works were taken by Prince Maximilian to Germany and are now in museums (ibid.; for later Indian artworks, see Brody 1971)

Important are also the reports of these artists. For example, when Catlin invited the chiefs to have their portraits made, his request was met with fear and resistance. He quickly discovered that the medicine men were warning their tribesmen not to submit to any magic, and to let the strange painter 'take away' their faces. And even when they yielded to their vanity and the persuasive power of Catlin, the chiefs who posed for him would not tolerate any attempt to draw them in profile. As Larry McMurtry put it, the chiefs and the medicine men wanted to know, 'where was the other half of them' (McMurtry 2001: 169). Karl Bodmer, who came after Catlin, also met similar resistance. But it was not long before Catlin was being called a great 'Ee-chazoo-kah-ga-wa-kon', the Sioux term for 'medicine man' (Haverstock 1973: 57). The American Indians even referred to the room that Catlin used for work at Fort Union on the Yellowstone River as the 'medicine room' (ibid.: 62).

But, while the apprehension and interdictions of the medicine men were easily removed, fear of the human ability to produce likeness of people, animals and objects lingered among the ordinary Native Indians. Thus, for example, we learn that James Kipp, the superintendent of Fort Clark, had to retrieve a portrait of his Indian wife from Catlin after the artist had left the fort. This, Kipp did, and at the cost of twenty dollars, because his wife experienced a nosebleed sometime after Catlin had made a portrait of her (Orr, in Joslyn Art Museum 1984: 359). Another Native Indian subject, Ahschupsa Masilhichsi ('Chief of the Pointed Horn'), objected to Bodmer's retaining his portrait for fear that this might hamper his raiding plans (ibid.: 316; Pl. 327).

That the shamans were so easily swayable in this encounter between a new art and ancient traditions is most likely due the fact that they were aware of the practical side of art and its value as a craft. After all, much of what the shamans do vocationally is guided by practical needs (food, health and safety for themselves and their people). The skill of the shamans in matters of control and their 'calculative' thinking also avail them with the ability to suspend their aesthetic emotions, be they religious or artistic. By contrast, the aesthetic experience of the ordinary individuals in the presence of art, a creative force, is less susceptible to suspension or any distinction between the artistic and the religious. The awareness of existence in these ordinary people is too authentic, stemming from their inner moods, and operating at a pre-theoretical, prepredicative, level.