By Emmanuel Mihiingo Kaija
In Alkebu-lan, the griot is more than a storyteller. They are living archives, historians, genealogists, ethicists, and educators. For centuries, these oral historians have preserved the memory of kingdoms, clans, ecological practices, and societal norms, serving as the intellectual backbone of societies from the Sahel to the Great Lakes. Unlike written histories imposed by colonial regimes, griot narratives are multilayered systems of knowledge, integrating history, ethics, law, and practical skills into mnemonic and performative forms.
The Role of the Griot
Griots—known as jeli in Mande regions, abakopi among the Baganda, and griot families like Kouyaté, Diabaté, and Camara in Mali, Guinea, and Senegal—are custodians of genealogical knowledge spanning 700 years or more. They preserve oral epics that recount the rise and fall of empires, such as Mali, Songhai, Oyo, and Buganda, alongside historical migrations, alliances, and conflicts. These epics are embedded with social, political, and ecological intelligence.
For example, the Kouyaté family of Kita, Mali, has preserved the Sunjata Epic across generations, detailing not only the life of the Mali Empire’s founder but also information about riverine ecosystems, caravan trade routes between Timbuktu, Gao, and Djenne, and agricultural cycles tied to the Niger floodplains. Similarly, in Uganda, the abakopi of the Lubiri palace in Mengo, Buganda, narrate clan histories, succession protocols, and ritual obligations, linking them to practical knowledge in banana cultivation, cattle herding, and conflict resolution.
Objects, Places, and Practices
Griots operate within a complex material and performative culture. Drums like the dùndún (talking drum), ngoma, and kpanlogo, as well as instruments such as the balafon, kora, and calabash, encode language and memory through tonality, rhythm, and pitch variation, allowing the transmission of messages across distances of up to several kilometers. Ceremonial spaces—from the courtyards of Niani and Koulikoro to marketplaces in Bamako, Ouagadougou, and Kisoro—function as sites of knowledge dissemination, teaching ethics, governance, and survival strategies.
Griots are trained through decades-long apprenticeships in memory, rhythm, genealogy, and symbolic interpretation. Apprentices often memorize hundreds of hours of narratives, learning to associate stories with historical events, ecological cycles, ritual sequences, and astronomical observations. In Guinea, the Diabaté lineage of Kita and Kankan trains members to recite genealogies that extend over fifteen generations, ensuring continuity of knowledge across centuries.
Historical Disruption
Colonial regimes systematically undermined griot knowledge systems. French administrators in Mali and Senegal attempted to replace oral archives with written documents, dismissing oral traditions as “primitive” and “unreliable.” British colonial authorities in Uganda similarly devalued the abakopi, imposing English-language education and formalized legal systems. Missionaries often destroyed ceremonial instruments or restricted the performance of ancestral narratives. Despite these pressures, griots preserved knowledge through private performances, clandestine apprenticeships, and adaptation of narratives to new contexts, ensuring that genealogical, political, and ecological intelligence survived.
Modern Uncovering and Retelling
Contemporary scholars, archivists, and communities are actively documenting, analyzing, and retelling griot narratives. In Mali, UNESCO-supported projects have recorded over 400 hours of Sunjata Epic performances, transcribed in Bambara, French, and English. In Senegal, griot families collaborate with ethnomusicologists at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, producing digital archives of Mande epics.
In Uganda, Makerere University’s Institute of African Studies works with the Bakiga and Baganda griots to preserve clan epics, linking narrative knowledge to cultural artifacts, royal drums, and sacred sites such as the Lubiri palace and the Rwenzori highlands’ ritual groves. Linguists and anthropologists analyze tone, rhythm, and metaphor to reconstruct knowledge embedded in narratives, ensuring fidelity to historical and cultural contexts.
Educational initiatives are now incorporating these oral histories into curricula in Mali, Guinea, Senegal, and Uganda, teaching children history, ethics, ecological management, and mathematics through rhythm and story. Digital storytelling platforms allow diaspora communities in Paris, London, New York, and Johannesburg to access griot epics, expanding the reach and relevance of African knowledge systems.
Griot Epics as Functional Knowledge Systems
Griot narratives are multi-dimensional repositories of knowledge. They encode:
Historical and genealogical data: detailed chronicles of empires, clans, and migrations.
Political intelligence: succession laws, conflict resolution strategies, governance structures.
Ecological wisdom: planting and harvesting cycles, climate adaptation, resource management.
Medicinal knowledge: herbal remedies, ritualized health practices.
Ethical and philosophical teachings: codes of conduct, moral exemplars, social norms.
Technological knowledge: references to metalworking, architecture, weaving, and riverine navigation.
These narratives are thus living archives, enabling societies to function with sophisticated understanding across generations.
Conclusion: Reclaiming the Past for the Present
Retelling griot narratives today is an act of reclamation, scholarship, and pedagogy. It restores African agency in knowledge production, corrects colonial erasures, and makes ancestral wisdom accessible to contemporary communities. By uncovering and retelling these epics, scholars and communities create a bridge between past and present, ensuring that ethical frameworks, ecological intelligence, and historical memory continue to inform governance, education, and cultural identity.
The griot, in essence, rewrites history—not for the past, but for today. These oral historians ensure that the memory of Alkebu-lan lives on in rhythms, voices, and stories, providing a living knowledge system essential for cultural continuity and intellectual sovereignty.
References
Books and Edited Volumes
Connah, G. (2001). African civilizations: Precolonial cities and states in tropical Africa. Cambridge University Press.
Diouf, S. (2013). The griot’s craft: An anthology of West African literature. University of Nebraska Press.
Niane, D. T. (1965). Sunjata: The epic of Mali. Longman.
Nketia, J. H. K. (1974). The music of Africa. W. W. Norton & Company.
Schneider, J. (2005). Oral literature and historical reconstruction in Africa: Griots and kings. Cambridge University Press.
Journal Articles
Hale, T. A. (1998). Griot traditions: Oral history, literature, and music in West Africa. Indiana University Press.
Hobart, A. (1993). The talking drum as knowledge system: Timbuktu, Mali. Journal of African Cultural Studies, 6(2), 25–47. https://doi.org/10.1080/13696829308716403
Hale, T. A., & Kone, B. (2012). Griot epics in contemporary West Africa: Preservation, adaptation, and pedagogy. African Studies Review, 55(3), 45–67. https://doi.org/10.1353/arw.2012.0035
Archival and Digital Resources
UNESCO. (2010). Masterpieces of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity: Mali and West Africa. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
Endangered Languages Project. (2023). Digital archive of African oral traditions. https://www.endangeredlanguages.com/projects
Makerere University Institute of African Studies. (2022). Bakiga and Baganda oral epics project report. Kampala, Uganda: Makerere University Press.
Government and Institutional Reports
Uganda Bureau of Statistics. (2020). Cultural heritage and oral traditions survey. Government of Uganda Publications.
Levtzion, N., & Hopkins, J. F. P. (2000). Corpus of early Arabic sources for West African history. Markus Wiener Publishers.
Ethnographic Studies and Fieldwork
Chernoff, J. M. (1979). African rhythm and African sensibility: Aesthetics and social action in African musical idioms. University of Chicago Press.
Matory, J. L. (1994). African religion, oral traditions, and performance: Yoruba and Bantu examples. University of Chicago Press.
Mudimbe, V. Y. (1988). The invention of Africa: Gnosis, philosophy, and the order of knowledge. Indiana University Press.
Contemporary Scholarship
Soyinka, W. (2010). Myth, memory, and history in African oral tradition. Oxford University Press.
Vansina, J. (1985). Oral tradition as history. University of Wisconsin Press.