“professional” would be a more suitable designation than
“learned”. It is, in fact, the appanage of the people belonging
to one of the castes or corporations of intellectual workers that
we generally include under the term of “griots”. There are all
categories of griots: some are musicians, singers, poets, story-
tellers, mimes, dancers, mountebanks; others have the task of
learning by memory the genealogies of noble families, the
important facts relating to great personages, the annals of
States or of tribes, political, juridical, or social customs,
religious beliefs, and their transmission to the next generation.
This is the oral literature in its learned form.
Each one of these men is a veritable living dictionary whom
the prince, the magistrate, or the priest consults when he is
embarrassed on a point of history, of law or of liturgy. It is
their knowledge that contributes to the summary education of
youth during its initiation into adult life. This curious and
eminently rich form of oral literature has been fruitfully utilised
by several European authors who have had some of these
professionals dictate to them some of the abundant recitals
that are so full of precise and detailed information. It is in this
manner that M.A. LeHerisse has worked to retrace the ancient
history of Dahomey, M. Ch. Monteil to describe the Bambara
kingdoms of Segu and Kaarta, the late Dr Cremer for recon-
stituting the common law of the Bobo. It is thanks to these
traditionalist griots that we possess some light on the distant
annals of numerous native States, such as the empire of
Ghana, known to the Negroes by the name of the empire of
Wagadu or Kumbi, the empire of Mali or Manding, the
kingdoms of Diara, of Soso, of the Tekrur, etc. Certain of
those chronicles written in Arabic by Sudanese authors are
simply compilations and translations of the accounts given by
these griots.
In truth, such a proceeding presents serious drawbacks. In spite
of a naturally excellent memory fortified by practice, gaps and
confusions naturally arise in the minds of those obliged to store
up in this way so many names and facts. It happens that an
annalist griot attributes to one prince actions that were in reality
accomplished by another, or gives as the direct successor of a
certain king, a personage who was not born until a century
after the death of his so-called immediate predecessor. These
Bansonyisnake (Nalu).
Guinea.
Wood, 210 cm.
Musée du quai Branly, Paris.