West African Griots Played Highly Significant Roles Essay

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West African Griots played highly significant roles in traditional West African societies, and were charged with a number of responsibilities that rivaled even those of kings. Although kings were responsible for the safe-keeping and custody of their subjects on a daily basis, griots were charged with the preservation of the knowledge and the history of those people, and that of their ancestors. Griots were responsible for remembering and disseminating -- at prudent times -- information from generations gone past that could both advise kings and provide benefit to the people that those kings governed. Griots simultaneously encompassed the role of advisor, historian, and guardian of worldly and sorcerous knowledge that was equivalent to the sum of the wisdom attained through particular tribes of people, which an examination of D.T. Niane's story, Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali, sufficiently demonstrates.

In a literal sense, griots were masters of the oral tradition that dominated West African culture at the time period depicted within Nian's manuscript.

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These individuals were specifically taught histories of the people that they lived amongst for the purpose of the preservation of their legacy and to apply that history, and knowledge, as need be to benefit the kings they advised. The following quotation from Niane's book -- which largely chronicles events told by a griot named Mamdou Kouyate, illustrates these facts. "I derive my knowledge from my father Djeli Kedian, who also got it from his father; history holds no mystery for us; we teach the vulgar just as much as we want to teach them" (Niane 1). This quotation emphasizes that griots are highly knowledgeable about the histories of their tribesmen, and that they use this knowledge to "teach" others at their discretion. An analysis of the two principle griots denoted within Sunidata: An Epic of Old Mali indicates that frequently, griots used this knowledge to assist kings in the capacity of an advisor.….....

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