The Empire of Mali Series: The Griot

Do you know the words to your favorite song? How many songs do you know? What about history? Can you recite the Declaration of Independence or name all the presidents of the United States? Well, back before books and reading were very commonplace, memorization was a very important skill to have. There was one group of malians, the grio, that were very good at this. I'm Alex, and I'm here at the Smithsonian folklife festival. It's just two week celebration on the national mall in Washington, D.C.. Rio is a French word. The Malian word is jelly. As you see, Rios are entertainers. There are also storytellers and historians. Molly was one of the country's featured in the Smithsonian folk like festival in Washington, D.C.. John Franklin, who helped to organize the festival, knew that it was very important to include griots in the Malian delegation. Griots are oral history and their responsibility from childhood on are to learn the histories of families, learn the histories of royal lineages, and tell the history of Mali and Malian people from ancient times to today. I actually saw some of these griots had a chance to talk with them. Let's check it out. To my immediate left, we have missed our and next to him. He is also going in play. Both of them are from the country of malia, as you know. And they are professional storytellers, genealogists, and oral historians. Well, I just saw this very beautiful princess. And if you truly alone, you have to find a way to marry her, otherwise your leadership doesn't mean anything and you sort of lose a king. And the king's court, in the tower side, there was a woman who got lots of wisdom. Who did say that there was no need every time you talk about a law of issue to come up with a conflict situation. That there is a need to ask the princes. And if she does accept to marry this lord, then they should go ahead and do that. And so basically, what are griots? How do they, you know, what is their role in the community? He explained that this goes way back that every society tried to create a collective history, a collective memory, and some people must specialize in this. Just like here, you would have historians who would write, who would comment for the research in order to keep the past. If they can not write, then they train themselves from generations to the generations, pass along the history and make sure that the descendants their children become the oral historians. Plus the record keeping orally, they also learn the skills to be good communicators. And then be in charge of the social major events. There is two family fighting. Somebody need to mediate and bring the peace. So you need very skillful communicators to make sure that every major step in somebody's life or in the group life is well taken care of and remember of. So that makes you a jelly. When do you start training in? What do you do to train to be real? This varies. It's sort of a tricky question. Because there is never an end to the process of learning. You can always learn your whole life. So your parents, yes, has jelly give you the foundation. And how you grow up to become a better and better and better and better jelly. Little by little that is a transition. You yourself can recognize that yes now I'm ready. You test that, you prove yourself, you participate in different functions, your parent can send you to replace them to do things. But the sky's the limit almost. So your whole life, you can choose to improve your status as a jelly and learn till you die. Sometimes you know less than your parents and sometimes you know more than your parents, but the learning process is just on. There are people in any society that can read and people who can not read. When you have a musical petition, everyone can hear it. Everyone can learn from it. We're very important and necessary in the empire of Mali. But today, the people who live in modern day Molly have books and newspapers and TV. Are the Greece still important? Let's ask a Molly and TV reporter what he thinks. In Mali griots have a big job to do because they agree on Mali likes and historians. They know everything in our history and when is fighting between two person or between communities. Yeah, it's this conflict. And in our community, I think that if we haven't agreed, it will be very difficult for us because they have many, many power power of language. Teams are very respected in your community. Yeah, for my production, I have information modernly. If I can explain myself in this term, but I am journalist when I work, I have a newspaper, I have many, many other things, like Internet. But on my country for history, I work some time with griot because they know many, many, many things because they get things in our fathers and parts of also very partners. Thanks to the griots, the empire of Mali is remembered with great pride throughout western Africa.