In West Africa, speech goes deeper than just communication - the spoken word is imbued with the natural power to create and to give life. For centuries, West African storytellers the griots have been advisors to kings and emperors, village elders and tribal chiefs. They have served as walking libraries, fonts of all knowledge, "the memory of humankind". And whilst the brutal slave trade of the 16th-19th centuries did its best to destroy West African culture, the legacy of the griots lives on in hip-hop, poetry and activism to this very day. This is Part Two in season two of bonus historical and interview series: The Wandering Bard on Stories from the Hearth.
In West Africa, speech goes deeper than just communication - the spoken word is imbued with the natural power to create and to give life. For centuries, West African storytellers have been advisors to kings, emperors, village elders and tribal chiefs. They have served as walking libraries, fonts of all knowledge, "the memory of humankind". And whilst the brutal slave trade of the 16th-19th centuries did its best to destroy West African culture, the legacy of the griots lives on in hip-hop, poetry and activism to this very day.
This is Part Two in the second season of Stories from the Hearth's bonus historical and interview series: The Wandering Bard. Each season of The Wandering Bard examines a different aspect of the history and nature of storytelling, as well as people behind it. In season two of The Wandering Bard, we ask the question “Who are the storytellers?”, and in today's episode, we examine the Griots of West Africa.
The next episode in The Wandering Bard series will take a look at the shadow puppetry of ancient China.
Stories from the Hearth is an experimental storytelling experience ft. truly original fiction and thoughtfully produced soundscapes. The aim of this podcast is to rekindle its listeners' love for the ancient art of storytelling (and story-listening), and to bring some small escapism to the frantic energies of the modern world. Stories from the Hearth is the brainchild of queer punk poet, environmentalist, and anarchist Cal Bannerman. Vive l'art!
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Today's sources: The Culture Trip, Cultures of West Africa, TEDxUnilorin, and Green Global Travel
Sirata by Habib Koité - listen here!
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Welcome to The Wandering Bard, a bonus historical and interview series on Stories from the Hearth. This is episode two in the most recent season asking Who are the storytellers?, and today’s answer is: West African griots. In contrast to the main focus of this podcast – the monthly fiction episodes through which I can experiment with my creativity – The Wandering Bard is the place where I get to indulge my other vice: history. I am a student of history, and think that it may just be one of the most important areas of study out there. After all, everything we do, everything we are, everything we aspire to be as a human species, all of it is contained within the vial of history. Studying history, therefore, is the best means of studying ourselves. In this bonus series, I’ll be presenting short, ten to twenty minute episodes on the history of storytelling in culture, society, religion and art, as well as the history of the people behind it. Occasionally, I’ll even sit down for a chat with another storyteller spinning yarns in the universe today. Episodes of The Wandering Bard will pop-up from time to time. If I can produce one a month, I’ll do so, but you’ll have to forgive me if their publishing schedule is a little more erratic. After all, this is a one woman show, and I’ve got stories to tell! If you’re enjoying this podcast, then please do tell your friends and review it on your favourite podcast app, Spotify, or iTunes. If you’re really enjoying it, then you can support Stories from the Hearth on Patreon and help yourself to early access, behind-the-scenes insights, bonus content, physical copies of the stories, shout-outs and much much more. Just head to patreon.com/storiesfromthehearthpodcast or hit the link down below.
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“In Africa we say, ‘When an old person dies, it’s like a library has burned down.’” So says Mali-based musician Baba Salah, referring to the nearly-millennium old practitioners of storytelling in West Africa, known today as the griots. The story of these intensely musical, instrumentally-minded storytellers is fascinating, as is the role they have always played in society. But to understand them properly we must first understand the importance of the spoken word – of speech – throughout West African cultures.
Different societies around the world find the spiritual power of nature expressed most vividly in sculpture, politics, or war, in painting, craftsmanship and dance (for example, go and listen to last month’s episode on the hula dancers of Hawaii). But for the historic societies of West Africa, it is speech in which this extraordinary natural force presides. It is in speech which the powers of creation, production, and destruction make their home. As one Mande proverb states: “Speech is not in people’s hands. People are in the hands of speech.”
This may not be news to you, but for those like me – raised in rural, white, western European societies – it is a unique concept to try and wrap your head around. As far as I understand it, though, in West African and Mande cultures, the spoken word contains the primal energy of creation itself. It is linked intrinsically to Nyama, a natural and spiritual source of power which might most closely be likened to mana, or earth power, such as we discussed in the Hula episode last month. And this concept – that life, or Nyama, rests on the spoken word, is widely known as Nommo. The Tiv people in Northern Nigeria call it tsav, whilst for the Fon of Benin, it is se. But no matter the name, the meaning remains the same: nommo is “the power to cause to happen.” It is the concept that speech, unlike any other faculty of human life, carries the power to create, and to bring something into being.
Let’s put this into simpler terms. Traditionally, for the peoples of West Africa, a newborn child is not fully present in this world until its name has been spoken aloud and heard by others. Similarly, an incantation, a craft, or a piece of art, is not fully physical, and has not been fully brought into being, until accompanied by speech.
Once we understand the literal creative quality with which speech is imbued in West African cultures, only then can we begin to understand the importance of those storytellers known as griots. For griots are the ambassadors of the spoken word, the protectors of it, but they too, by the very nature of Nyama and Nommo, are also brought into existence by it. These walking libraries, as Baba Salah called them, exist in the hands of speech, even whilst they are depended upon for the spoken word that is their art.
So who are these griots? Today, griot storytellers – who may call themselves jali, jeli, guewel, kevel, or arokin, depending on the language – can be found among the Mandé people of the Malinké, Mandinka and Bambara, or among the Fula, Hausa, Songhai, Tukulóor, Wolof, Serer, Mossi, and Dagomba, among the Mauritian Arabs or among any number of other smaller groups. Their role has evolved and been dramatically reduced over the centuries, their reach spreading worldwide. But for all that, griots have a very specific point of origin.
The role of the griot storyteller originated under the Empire of Mali in the 13th century, an empire which at its height extended from today’s Chad and Niger in Central Africa to Mali and Senegal in the west. A massive domain, the Empire of Mali was controlled by warrior-kings and a strict hierarchy of diplomats, aristocrats, and social castes. In fact, before they were designated the role of storyteller, griots were a distinct social caste. (For those unfamiliar with the caste system, it is similar to the European class system, but generally more entrenched). Griots were, until very recently, a particularly entrenched caste, who practiced endogamy – whereby they could only marry other members of the griot caste. It was a closed system: you were either born a griot, or you were not.
Tradition dictates that the griot caste was first designated their role as storytellers by the Mali Empire’s founder, Sundiata Keita. Sundiata gave griots this role in order to preserve the history of his empire, to spread news throughout the kingdom, and doubtlessly to act as a state propaganda machine at the same time. One of the earliest of these griots, Djeli Mamadou Kouyaté is recorded as saying that: “Without us, the names of kings would be forgotten. We are the memory of humankind. By the spoken word, we give life to the facts and actions of kings in front of the young generation.”
There’s a line in there I’d like to highlight. “We are the memory of humankind.” Now, obviously this is characterised by braggadocio, the same kind of bragging which characterises much of hip-hop today (a comparison which holds more weight than you might imagine – but we’ll get into that later). Nevertheless, for all their posturing, griot Mamadou makes a point. In a time when people were not learned in the arts of reading and writing, the oral history-keeping, record-keeping, and storytelling of West African griots genuinely did act like the collective memory of humankind.
Which brings us to talk about the roles griots fulfilled (and fulfil to this day) in West African cultures.
Griots were the record keepers of their communities: it was their job to memorise centuries of birth and death records, marriages, battles, wars, ceremonies, and other important events in local history. They were the cultural anchors of their communities, knowledgeable as to the stories behind various cultural practices, as well as the rules surrounding them. They were the praise-singers for ceremonies and rites of patronage, religion, and inheritance. Griots were poets, interpreters, translators, composers, teachers, and entertainers. They told stories, sang songs, played music. They were as Baba Salah put it, libraries – thesauruses full of all of the information a community required in order to function. In La Voix du Griot, author Sotigui Kouyaté writes: “It is said that the day you no longer know where you’re going, just remember where you came from.” In other words, the very heart of a community – its past, present, and future – depended upon the memory of the local griot.
And every community had its griot. Every village, every town, every court and king, every royal family, had their griots. Griots were absolutely indispensable resources of information and wisdom. So much so, that from their very conception, griots were advisors and diplomats. These were people whose intricate understanding of the world around them – both its history and its current events – placed them at the ears of kings, queens, and emperors, village elders and tribal chieftains. They were the aristocrats, the upper-middle-classes of their day. Personally, I like to picture Varys from Game of Thrones, when I think of a griot in the royal court of the Mali Empire.
This comparison might sound far-fetched, but it is backed by a quote from Paul Oliver, taken from their book Savannah Syncopators. “Though [the griot] has to know many traditional songs without error… his wit can be devastating and his knowledge of local history formidable… he must also have the ability to extemporize on current events, chance incidents and the passing scene.”
Since griots had to be born into the griot caste, and could only marry other griots, this significantly reduced the pool of potential members, making the role an especially prized one. It was, thanks to this structure, a family affair. Griots – who can be men or women – were born into a family of other storytellers, and were raised to fulfil the same role in their community.
Griot storytelling – whether recounting a family’s lineage, the history of warfare, performing a religious incantation, or just recalling a favourite tale from local folklore – is always accompanied by music. There are many instruments which would traditionally accompany a story: there are string instruments like the khalam, ngoni, or goje, gourd-resonated xylophones like the balafon, or simply the human voice. However, the most popular instrument among griots is the kora. The kora is sometimes called a ‘harp-lute’ because it combines the neck and body of a lute with the playing technique of a harp. It is made by stretching animal skin across a large calabash gourd, strung with 21 strings divided into two parallel rows. You heard a little of the kora in the introduction, but here’s another short sample.
[Kora music from the public domain plays]
If you’re eager to hear more griot-inspired kora music, I’d highly recommend you go and listen to a song called Sirata by Habib Koité after this episode. I’ll put a link in the description.
Typically, a family of griots would specialise in the use of just one of these instruments, with which they would compose their songs, and learn to play the songs of past generations. These families would also specialise in crafting the instruments, the mastery of which was part of the training to become a griot.
Training of the next generation of a griot family began when the children were around eight years old. Mostly, training consisted of the child listening to the older generation play and sing. It was the child’s job to memorise the songs through listening – not just on the surface level, but on a level at which they could fully appreciate the deeper patterns and melodies buried within the compositions. Since griots needed to know as many songs as were necessary to tell all of the histories of everyone in the community, as well as the history of the community itself, there were simply hundreds and hundreds of songs for these young apprentices to memorise. At the same time, they had to learn how to play their family’s chosen instrument, and then how to perfect their technique. They also had to learn how to craft that instrument.
By an apprentice griot’s eighteenth birthday, they would undergo a series of tests to prove that they had memorised and could perform the family’s full arsenal of songs and stories. If they passed, they were gifted the instrument they had been crafting, and were dubbed a fully-independent griot. This new generation of griots could then go out into the world, keeping history, culture and tradition alive through the gift of their speech, and advising community elders as they went.
It would be wonderful to write one of these episodes without having to write about the colonial ambitions of white Europeans. Alas, if such an episode exists, this is not it.
The storytelling art of the griot was to become severely fractured, and forever changed as a result of the brutal Trans-Atlantic slave trade, which took place between the 16th and 19th centuries. Due to its location, West Africa was the region hit hardest by the inhumanity of these years. People of all ages, sexes, and creeds were forcibly removed from their homes, and transported in unimaginably harsh conditions across the Atlantic, to the Americas and Caribbean. If they survived, they were then sold like livestock to white settlers, who would work them to death and disease in the fields of plantations, in industry, and in their homes.
What this meant for the griots was a dislocation of their art and collective memory from the people, communities and land to which they were connected. Suddenly, in a matter of a couple of years, a griot may find themselves in a strange land, surrounded by strangers, full of the knowledge their family had passed down to them through countless generations, and yet with no-one to tell it to. The griots were irreparably separated from the people who needed their information. At best, the record-keeping of the West African storytellers was left drifting anchorless in a strange land. At worst, the records were destroyed. If, in Africa, when an old person dies, it is like a library has burned down, then when the trans-Atlantic slave trade was through, it was as if even the word ‘library’ had been erased from the very face of the earth.
One unintended, yet somewhat happy consequence of this most brutal period in history, was that the art of the griots was suddenly disseminated across the globe, particularly throughout the Americas and the Caribbean. In time, griot storytelling would intermingle with and influence much of the African-inspired cultures which blossomed in the New World. Indeed, we might easily see the influence of griot storytelling in the music of soul, blues, jazz, and hip-hop; genres which continue to preserve the history of African-American and Afro-Caribbean people; music which tells a story, which strives often to comment (politically or otherwise) on the current experiences of the African diaspora.
Today, with increasing access to formal education, writing, and reading, and with the advancements in technology to which we now outsource our faculties of memory, the role of the griot has largely been reduced to that solely of ‘storyteller and entertainer’. No longer is there a need for griots to remember family genealogies or a succession of imperial kings, not when we have Wikipedia in our pocket. However, the art is still very much alive. Modern griots are found throughout West Africa, as well as throughout much of the rest of the world, and are often on the move. Many of these storytellers refer to themselves as ‘modern-day griots’, recognising the heritage of their practice. In hip-hop, too, and in blues, spoken word poetry, and politics, the art of the griot is tangible, vibrant, ever-evolving, and expanding to influence every aspect of our daily lives.
Since the initiation of the griots as storytellers, nearly one thousand years ago, and despite the best efforts of white Europe to dismantle and destroy West African culture, the old stories live on. It has always been of utmost importance to griots – handlers of those natural forces called Namya and Nommo – that these old stories be recalled, remembered, recreated and reinterpreted, not only for the sake of cultural preservation, but in order to literally keep the figures and events in those stories alive. And whether it is through modern griots such as Mory Kanté, Mansour Seck and Youssou N’Dour, or through those activists indirectly influenced by them, such as Tracy Chapman, Tupac Shakur, Louis Armstrong and Malcolm X, the libraries of West Africa have been built anew, and are home to a whole new generation of gatekeepers.
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Thank you for listening to this month’s episode in The Wandering Bard bonus historical and interview series on Stories from the Hearth. This month, we looked at the Griots of West Africa, last month the Hula dancers of Hawaii. Tune in next month to learn all about the shadow puppetry of Ancient China. My sources for this episode include Lize Okoh writing at The Culture Trip, Cultures of West Africa, Abosede Monisola and Ayodimeji Aminah of TEDxUnilorin, and Bret Love at Green Global Travel. My pronunciations of African-language words and names on this episode are most likely not-entirely correct, and for that I am sorry. I can only try my best!
If you liked what you heard, please do subscribe, and share this podcast with friends, family, and anyone you know who could use just a half-hour’s respite from the chaotic energies of the everyday. You can also now rate podcasts on Spotify, so if you’re listening to it there, why not drop us some stars. If you wish to support the podcast, please head to my Patreon by hitting the link in the description down below, or by heading to patreon.com/storiesfromthehearthpodcast. Similarly, you can check out the podcast’s Instagram, Twitter, website and email address via the links below. Story episodes are released on the last Sunday of every month. Further episodes of The Wandering Bard will pop up from time to time. Until next we meet around the fire, I’ve been Calum Bannerman, and you’ve been listening to Stories From The Hearth.