Oral History and Griots of West Africa

Oral history is people sharing stories of the past by speaking or singing about it. Oral history can be formal, such as a historian recording an interview with a person who experienced a signiﬁcant historical event or a singer performing an original song about a current social problem. But an oral history can also be something simpler, like an older relative talking about a memory from their childhood or a friend chatting about something funny that happened to them last week.

Historians use oral histories to understand the past, just as they use other sources such as written documents, images, and artifacts. But oral histories are uniquely important because they often help historians learn about people whose experiences are missing or excluded from other sources.

For example, in many places throughout history, it was expensive to have a portrait made! Because only the wealthy could aﬀord it, there are far more historical images of queens than there are servants, even though there were far more servants than queens! Similarly, written documents can’t capture every perspective. What about people who were never taught to read or write? What about cultures that have no written language? What about people whose writings were never published or saved?

Oral history is powerful because it’s common. Just as nearly every community has its own ways of speaking, telling stories, and singing, nearly every community has its own unique oral history traditions.

One uniquely powerful oral history tradition has its roots in West Africa. Starting over 600 years ago, many communities in the Mali Empire assigned oﬃcial community oral historians. These oral historians were called griots (also jeliw and other names across West Africa).
Being a griot was a huge job. Griots had to memorize every detail of their community’s history. They had to remember the names, births, marriages, and deaths of every person in every generation of every family. They had to remember the stories of every drought and political conﬂict the community ever faced. They had to remember the victories and mistakes of every past community leader. They had to learn hundreds of their culture’s religious and folk stories.
But griots didn’t just remember their community’s history. It was also their job to share that history. Griots were master storytellers and often skilled singers and musicians. They performed songs praising heroes of the past, singing and playing traditional instruments like a balafon (a wooden instrument like a xylophone), a kora (a stringed instrument like a harp), or an ngoni (a stringed instrument similar to a lute). Griots told stories to children to teach moral lessons. Some griots served as advisors to rulers to help them solve the problems of the present using lessons learned from the past.

Originally, the role of griot was passed down through families. The daughter or son of a griot family trained for many years, learning history, musicianship, and storytelling from their older relatives. Griots still exist today. In modern times, the name and role have been adopted by many diﬀerent artists, historians, leaders, and storytellers in West Africa and in communities with African heritage throughout the world. This new generation of griots brings their own modern stories and styles to this long oral history tradition.