Guardians of the Word

Griots and Oral Tradition

“custom will protect”

I was first introduced to the Cora, a West African stringed instrument, when I was around 18. At the time, I was working and going to night school at the local community college when my sister’s friend, a musician, reached out and said I should check out this West African drumming class at the Univ of MD that she was helping to facilitate. I started making the trek via subway every Monday night to attend.

The class was headed by a man from Senegal, Djimo Kuyaté, an engineer by profession and a griot, as I would soon find out, by tradition. The course centered around the Djembe, the goblet shaped drum from West Africa that is popularly seen in drum circles. For most of the semester, we learned a rhythm called “Mandiyami” (sp?) which was a pattern played in villages for girls when they reached adolescence. There were several different parts to the rhythm and it seemed more like a film score, with different patterns that changed from polyrhythmic dancing to heavy footsteps

On more than one night he brought out his Cora, usually towards the end of class. The instrument has a long neck that is attached to a large gourd. There are nylon strings that come down on either side and it’s played by the fingers on both hands while the instrument rests on the musicians lap. The sound has a magical, playful quality, similar to an Irish harp, and it was there that I first learned about the instrument’s role within the Mandinka tradition of West Africa.

Players of the Cora are known as griots and they carry on an oral tradition, passed down from father to son, that dates back to the 13th century. Many of the songs are centered around the story of Sundiata, a Western African epic that tells the story of this warrior king who united many of the kingdoms from Senegal to Guinea to form the empire of Mali.

That class, and especially the sound of the Cora, was like a small peep hole into this colorful tradition that was unknown to me before then. It turns out my mom, an elementary school teacher at the time who retold many children’s books from around the world through felt stories, had a picture book called Sundiata, the Lion King. Set in vivid colors of purple and gold, it told the adventurous tale of this epic.

It was a while before I came across the story again in further detail although I continued to listen to Cora music off and on. I always paid attention to the last names of the musician since I learned about the deep, hereditary tradition. Musicians with the last name Diabaté or Keita I came across often and enjoyed their albums.

Just recently I was walking through my house when I came across a book called, The Guardian of the Word. I had never seen it before, turns out my wife brought it home from the library. It had an attractive title and cover so I opened it to find out it was a modern telling of the Sundiata epic. It was written by the Guinean author Camara Laye, published in French in 1978 two years before the author’s death. It is like, many mythical stories, a story within a story.

The book is based on conversations Laye had with the Malian griot, Babu Condé, also known as Belen-Tigi, guardian of the word. He visited Condé for one month, from March 16 to April 16 1963, in the village Kouroussa during a 20 year trek through Africa where Laye was searching for the soul of Africa.

The tale Babu Condé recites him is the epic tale of Sundiata, the boy who was born crippled but would grow up to become a great warrior king and the first emperor of Mali. Laye begins the book with a short introduction on the Griots. He states,

The true griots, namely the Belen-Tigi, or masters or guardians of the word, do not wonder round the big cities; they are few, travel very little, remain attached to tradition and to their native soil…

The griot are the carriers of the oral tradition and thus maintain the histories and traditions. He then describes Babu Condé, by then an old man, who was the “scholarly custodian of the history of all the districts of Kouroussa”. He states,

Babu Condé, author of the legend that follows - we are but the modest transcriber and translator - was to traditional African society what the primitive cathedral sculptors and painters were to the European Middle Ages…

He further states,

He was a man who considered himself a simple story-teller, not an artist, a man who had no desire to serve his own ends, but only the needs of society - to serve the word and the world beyond the word…

The griots, the protectors of the word, were always accompanied by the Cora which they used to set their words to music, a tradition dating back to the Empire of Mali. Many of the songs in the repertoire come from the histories and retellings of the stories of warriors like Sundiata and can still be heard to day. Music and song preserved through oral tradition, just like the Greek epics of Homer, before they were written down and codified.

In the actual legend that Laye retells, the future king is accompanied by his friend and griot Balla Fassali Kuyaté. Upon coming across that name I remembered the drum teacher from Senegal I visited for a semester many years ago in Maryland. He was also keeping this tradition alive through his songs and teachings. I remember that class so vividly. There were no books, we didn’t take notes, there were no laptops. We just sat in a circle in a class room, we each had our djembe and he was in the middle. When he walked in the room he carried with him a sense of respect and honor without egoism. He was a carrier of something important and beyond himself.

* * *

There’s one line in the book that really stayed with me after finishing it. It was said by one of the elderly women in the village when the young hero is going through a particularly difficult time in his childhood. She states, “custom will protect”. By protecting the word and the world beyond the word, the griots are preserving something that can’t be reduced to words, a tradition. But the village woman provided some invaluable insight, the tradition will also protect those who try to keep it alive.