48 Atlantic African, American, and European Backgrounds to Contact, Commerce, and Enslavementor people in time. Elements such as these are present in
blues, jazz, and hip-hop music today. Th e griot has not dis-
appeared from African history. Although griots were cus-
tomarily provided with gift s for their services, many griots
today have talent agents, record compact discs, and receive
fees for their professional services. Th e Cheick Oumor Sis-
soko fi lm Guimba the Tyrant features a griot character, and
the writer Ahmadou Kourouma incorporated important
griot characters into his novels Waiting for the Wild Beasts
and Allah Is Not Obliged. An estimated 90 percent of Sen-
egalese musical performers today claim the status of griot.
See also: Mali; Occupational Castes; Oral Culture; Sene-
gambia; Songhai; Sundiata: Th e Epic of Old MaliHettie V. WilliamsBibliography
Ebron, Paula A. Performing Africa. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 2002.
Hale, Th omas. Griot and Griottes: Masters of Words and Music.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.
Hoff man, Barbara G. Griots at War: Confl ict, Conciliation and Caste
in Mande. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001.
Wright, Donald R. Oral Traditions from the Gambia: Mandinka
Griots. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1979.Gulf of Guinea
Th e Portuguese explorer Nuno Tristo sailed around the
coast of West Africa, reaching the Guinea area in about
1450, searching for the source of gold and other valuable
commodities, notably slaves. With the help of local groups
in about 1600, the Portuguese, and numerous other Euro-
pean powers, including France, Britain, and Sweden, set up
a thriving slave trade along the West African coast. It will
never be known exactly how many human lives were bought
and sold in the slave markets along the Guinea coast, but it
is today approximated at 10 million.
Dahomey fell within that area of West Africa that re-
ceived the toponym of the Slave Coast. Th roughout the
17th century, the Dutch had obtained some slaves from Al-
lada, especially aft er 1635 when their Brazilian possessions
required African labor. Th e period of notoriety began when
the Dutch were joined by other Europeans in the scramble
for slaves from 1670 onward. Th e French started trading
at Allada in 1670. Th ey built the fi rst European factory at
Whydah in the following year and English slave tradersof West Africa today, including Mali, Gambia, Guinea, and
Senegal. Th e role of the griot in African history and soci-
ety is multifaceted. Africa as a continent with 54 countries
and over 1,000 major ethno-linguistic groups coupled with
multiple communal dialects (some with no relationship
to the major language groups of the continent) has a long
oral tradition of which the profession of the griot is inte-
gral. “Griot” is a French transliteration of the word guirot
and in English understood as griot and griottes for females.
Th e Portuguese pronounced the term as criado for servant.
In West African dialects, the word jeliya (“transmission
by blood,” indicating the hereditary nature of the title),
which comes from the root word jeli or djeli (“blood”), is
used for “griot” by Africans residing in areas that formerly
constituted the Mali Empire (1235–1645). Th e Mali Em-
pire was founded by Sundiata (1235–1260) and at its height
encompassed the geographic area from Chad and Nigeria
in central Africa to Mali and Senegal in West Africa today.
Th e fi rst professional griot, Balla Fasseke, appeared during
the Mali Empire and founded the Kouyate line of griots as
mentioned in “Th e Epic of Sundiata.”
Griots both performed and preserved traditions
through story and song. Th ey were responsible for learn-
ing both the quantity and content of a song, melodies, and
rhythms, thereby preserving the story, genealogy, and his-
tory of a warrior king or village. Griots have been said to
possess the ability to sing of one’s “fortune or doom” be-
cause the words they espouse as “keepers of the word” are
considered sacred and powerful. Each village, clan, and
royal warrior family had a griot that maintained an oral re-
cord and told stories of births, marriages, battles, and other
signifi cant historical events. Griots have been known to
memorize the entire genealogy or family history of every-
one in an entire village going back for centuries. Th e Af-
rican American author of Roots: Th e Saga of an American
Family (1976) Alex Haley claimed to have heard the stories
of his long-lost relative Kunta Kinte from the stories of West
African griots. According to Haley, through his encounter
with a West African griot in 1966, he was able to hear the
story of Kunta Kinte’s capture and enslavement. Th e history
of West Africa has been largely preserved through the sto-
ries of the griot.
Aspects of the griot’s craft in terms of poetics, music,
and the centrality of orality survive in African and African
American contemporary culture. Th ese characteristics in-
clude call-and-response, repetition, contrapuntal rhythms,
and the use of symbolism and metaphor to represent events