Through the years, the latest marchande ritual have increasingly getting a period getting crude and sex direct insults directed at the newest husband, his the partner, as well as their household

Of the numerous cultural performance variations you to definitely enter Hausa and you can Songhoy-Zarma existence, the latest ples of the contestation regarding regional patriarchal societal strategies. The brand new marchande was an effective Songhoy-Zarma mock routine performed of the senior partner in a beneficial polygamous matrimony as the a reaction to the lady partner’s previous otherwise upcoming y are common practice into the Niger). Whenever marrying another type of partner, a man is expected to pay 1st spouse on pain the guy factors her due to his this new relationship. That it cash is tend to used by the elder wife to pay for the latest gatherings of which marchande is performed, events and that involve satirical costume, moving, and you will tune. The next excerpt regarding good marchande tune voices the brand new fury regarding an elderly partner for the this lady partner with his brand new partner:

Tobey tobey, [rabbit] Spray pepper in our attention By the Allah we will jet they right back Tobey tobey, We will rub it on the his testicles Therefore he sets they within his the fresh new wife’s attention, Therefore the guy throws it in his the fresh new wife’s genitals, She will be unable to bed, She’s going to struggle to remain. [:196)

While you are such interpretations are considered provoking, I suggest you to definitely marchande audio show a type of ritual subversion that create the league kupГіny big stress and contestation when inserted toward day to day life

That anger is starting to become manifested in more external and you will lead models off ridicule for the ladies husbands and their this new co-wives (). Sidikou in addition to means that new marchande serves as a means to have older wives so you’re able to voice their discontents which have polygamy whilst asserting their standing out of power in friends product. We could possibly at the same time read this ritualized overall performance compliment of Mikhail Bakhtin’s insight of one’s carnivalesque, wherein the inversion off steps in addition to short term reduction off personal tensions was achieved using satirical dance, mimicry, and you may words from ridicule (Bakhtin 1941). Regarding concerns of empowerment and you can complicity, Victor Turner’s translation of carnivalesque means that while such ritual inversions and transgressions manage subvert public structures temporarily, it sooner or later enable those structures to undergo. The guy suggests that particularly terms off opposition are often consisted of so you can culturally recognized room where in actuality the tensions that might or even produce the change off a personal system is actually legitimated and you will vented (Turner 1982).

People, their own families, in addition to their the brides does not attend marchande performances, neither do it support her or him despite the fact that it is their fee with the elderly partner that loans it. People and highly target to your coarse language that ladies use inside the ily professionals, each of being severe offenses in their Muslim area. Therefore of several marchande performances try enacted for the secluded, but nevertheless personal room. Because texts of those slanderous performances do not slip really to your ears of males, he’s obviously released within the district of females, actually certainly one of women that couldn’t if you don’t generate including derogatory re also:56). Specifically because of the upsurge in direct problem of men and you can polygamy in the marchande songs, I understand this track form given that producing good brand of opposition one to, whilst not preventing polygamy, contests it which have broadening power. In addition, it creates another routine space to have social resistance one to allows female freedom in the deterministic framework from a district male gaze. The aid of if you don’t thoroughly forbidden vocabulary attests compared to that intensity, while the female step most beyond your bounds off acceptable public choices so you’re able to sound that it vital position into polygamy.