Kunfe ko: Experiencing uncertainty in Malian Wasulu hunters' music performance and hunting

My Ph.D. dissertation provides an ethnomusicological investigation of Mande concepts and experiences of uncertainty in music performance and hunting among hunters' musicians and hunters from southern Mali. Grounding my study in the hunters' philosophy that all things are uncertain, and building on fieldwork in Mali as well as on graduate-level ethnomusicological research at Indiana University concerning uncertainty, performance, and phenomenology, I base the work primarily on participant-observation comprised of attending, documenting, and participating in (a) musical performances, (b) hunts, and (c) conversations with my consultants about those and related activities.;Musicians including Yoro Sidibe---a renowned and now elderly hunters' musician, hunter, and healer to whom I apprenticed myself in 1999 and with whom I worked closely during my dissertation research---hunt in part to improve the quality of their music performance. Within a dual sphere of hunting and music performance, I pursue the following research questions: How does one practice and its accompanying body of knowledge inform the other practice and its accompanying body of knowledge? Given the assertion that all things are uncertain, how does experiencing uncertainty inform processes of hunting and music performance? How do individuals poise themselves to respond to and manage uncertainty within those processes? Making use of my consultants' methodological suggestions, working from a substantial body of our partially shared experiences, and attempting to avoid overstating the significance of my own theoretical knowledge, I explore such questions in a ground-up study of music performance and hunting that privileges local experience and philosophy in an African system of thought.