Yaya's Story by Paul Stoller

Author:Paul Stoller [Stoller, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2014-04-04T04:00:00+00:00

6

NEW YORK CITY, IMMIGRATION, AND THE WAREHOUSE

As I slowly recovered from “the sickness that wasn’t a sickness” I thought a great deal about my mentor, Jean Rouch. Following our first meeting in August 1976, we remained in regular contact. He always had encouraging words for my research on Songhay religion and tried to convince me to study film with him in Paris. I would stubbornly tell him that my path was writing, and that I had no “eye” for film. Despite my stubborn streak, he asked me to visit him in Paris and, when possible, in Niger. Through our association I developed a critical eye for documentary film and learned a great deal about doing ethnographic fieldwork. In Niger he introduced me to his friends and co-conspirators, Damoure Zika and Lam Ibrahim. In Paris he invited me to screenings of some of his least-known films, asked me into his editing suite, presented me to his Paris associates, and introduced me to one of his mentors, Germaine Dieterlen.

Thinking about the rich experience of being a small part of chez Rouch in Paris and Niger, I decided to write a book about him. Most of the critical assessments of Rouch’s oeuvre had focused on his work in documentary ethnographic film. In so doing critics had overlooked the depth and quality of Rouch’s written ethnographic work, which, in my view, had been extraordinary. My rationale for writing The Cinematic Griot was not simply to publish a work about Jean Rouch’s ethnographic work. Because my path, as the Songhay would say, had been blocked, I was too frightened to return to Niger to resume my work on Songhay sorcery. Having come to the end of one path, I moved forward in a different direction and spent two years reading and writing about Rouch’s work.1

Toward the end of that project, I received a phone call from Dr. Wendy Wilson Fall, a fellow anthropologist and a veteran fieldworker in Niger, Nigeria, and Senegal. Wendy told me that Nigeriens had come to New York City and could be found on 125th Street, a major thoroughfare in Harlem.

So in the spring of 1992 I traveled to Harlem for the first time. Not knowing what to expect, I was nervous. On a Saturday afternoon, I stepped off the bus at the corner of 125th Street and Lenox Avenue and entered a veritable African market—in America! The din of melodic African languages from the Sahel, the Savannah, and the equatorial forest hummed in the urban air. Clouds of aromatic incense rose above the incessant traffic on 125th Street. People selling, buying, negotiating, and hawking goods streamed along the sidewalks, sometimes spilling over into the street. Amid this sensuous kaleidoscope of activity, I noticed a man selling trade beads from a card table he had set up on the corner.

“Are there men from Niger here?” I asked in French.

He pointed down the street. “Over there.”

After walking a few paces in that direction, a man stopped me.

“Who are you looking for?” he asked me in Songhay.

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