Fiddling in West Africa: Touching the spirit in Fulbe, Hausa, and Dagbamba cultures [Book Review]

Fiddling in West Africa is a multi-sited ethnography comparing fiddling in three major West African regions and culture clusters: Senegambia (home to the Fulbe), northern Nigeria (home to the Hausa), and northern Ghana (home to the Dagbamba). Beyond examining fiddling in “discrete units,” DjeDje presents these and other West African fiddling traditions “as a whole with interconnected parts” (p. 8). Her cross-cultural study examines four recurring issues in a parallel structure: place, ethnicity, religion, and status. This impressive book is both ambitious in its scope and meticulously detailed