Griots of the Mande World
The hereditary musicians of Mali, Guinea, Senegal and The Gambia, their instruments, and where to hear a thousand years of oral history for free.
Who are the griots?
Across the old Mande empire — today’s Mali, Guinea, Senegal, The Gambia and parts of Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire — music, genealogy and diplomacy have been the job of one social class for roughly eight centuries. In Mandinka they are jeliw (singular jeli); the French colonial term griot stuck in English. Griot families such as the Kouyaté, Diabaté, Sissoko and Kanté trace their lineage to Sunjata Keita’s court in the 13th century, and the profession still passes from parent to child.
A griot’s repertoire is a historical archive. Praise songs (fasa) name the ancestors of a patron; epic cycles like the Sunjata recount the founding of the empire; and every wedding, naming ceremony and political rally has its musical protocol.
The instruments
| Instrument | Description |
|---|---|
| Kora | 21-string bridge-harp with a calabash resonator. The signature sound of Mande music; played with thumbs and forefingers in interlocking patterns (kumbengo) under improvised runs (birimintingo). |
| Ngoni | Small boat-shaped lute with 4–7 strings. Ancestor of the banjo; the donso ngoni and kamele ngoni are its hunter’s and youth variants. |
| Balafon | Gourd-resonated xylophone. The Sosso Bala, kept in Niagassola, Guinea, is said to be the original 13th-century instrument. |
| Tama | Hourglass “talking drum” squeezed under the arm to change pitch. |
From the court to the world stage
The 1960s independence era produced state orchestras — the Rail Band and Les Ambassadeurs in Bamako, Bembeya Jazz in Conakry — that electrified griot repertoire. Salif Keita (a noble, not a griot, which caused a scandal), Mory Kanté and Toumani Diabaté carried it abroad. In the north, Tuareg guitar bands like Tinariwen fused griot-adjacent pentatonic modes with rock to create what the Western press calls desert blues.
The Wassoulou region south of Bamako has its own tradition, sung largely by women (Oumou Sangaré is the best-known), based on the kamele ngoni rather than the kora.
Listen for free
- Internet Archive: search
Mali koraor the collection Great 78 Project for early Sahelian recordings. Several 1970s Radio Mali broadcasts are in the Community Audio collection. - Smithsonian Folkways publishes the full liner notes for Mali: Cordes Anciennes and the Diabaté recordings as free PDFs.
- YouTube: Toumani & Sidiki Diabaté live sets, Bassekou Kouyaté’s ngoni quartet, and the archival “Rail Band – Soundiata” sessions are all officially uploaded.
Further reading
- Eric Charry, Mande Music (University of Chicago Press, 2000) — the standard survey.
- Lucy Durán’s BBC Radio 3 documentaries on Malian music, several of which are mirrored on archive.org.