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Griot
A griot (; ; Manding languages, Manding: or (in N'Ko script, N'Ko: , or in French spelling); also spelt Djali; or / ; ) is a West African historian, storyteller, praise singer, poet, and/or musician. Griots are masters of communicating stories and history orally, which is an African tradition. Instead of writing history books, List of oral repositories, oral historians tell stories of the past that they have memorized. Sometimes there are families of historians, and the oral histories are passed down from one generation to the next. Telling a story out loud allows the speaker to use poetic and musical conventions that entertain an audience. This has contributed to many oral histories surviving for hundreds of years without being written down. Through their storytelling, griots preserve and pass on the values of a tribe or people, such as the Senegalese, who are Muslims. The Wolof people in Senegal, many of whom cannot read or write, depend on griots to learn abou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oral Tradition
Oral tradition, or oral lore, is a form of human communication in which knowledge, art, ideas and culture are received, preserved, and transmitted orally from one generation to another.Jan Vansina, Vansina, Jan: ''Oral Tradition as History'' (1985), reported statements from present generation which "specifies that the message must be oral statements spoken, sung or called out on musical instruments only"; "There must be transmission by word of mouth over at least a generation". He points out, "Our definition is a working definition for the use of historians. Sociologists, linguists or scholars of the verbal arts propose their own, which in, e.g., sociology, stresses common knowledge. In linguistics, features that distinguish the language from common dialogue (linguists), and in the verbal arts features of form and content that define art (folklorists)."Ki-Zerbo, Joseph: "Methodology and African Pre-history", 1990, ''UNESCO International Scientific Committee for the Drafting of a G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Oral Repositories
Oral repositories are people who have been trusted with mentally recording information constituting oral tradition within a society. They serve an important role in oral cultures and illiterate societies as repositories of their culture's traditional knowledge, values, and morals. Roles People termed as "oral repositories" have been likened to "walking libraries", leading to the saying "whenever an old man dies, it is as though a library were burning down". Roles vary, and can be titular, formal or informal, some professional specialists such as the Caucasian '' ashik'', or more commonly amateurs and knowledgeable generalists such as the '' bulaam'' of the Kuba people. Types of information held by oral repositories includes lineages, oral law, mythology, oral literature and oral poetry (of which oral history is often entwined), folk songs and aural tradition, and traditional knowledge. In many indigenous societies, such as Native American and San, these roles are ful ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Caste
A caste is a Essentialism, fixed social group into which an individual is born within a particular system of social stratification: a caste system. Within such a system, individuals are expected to marry exclusively within the same caste (endogamy), follow lifestyles often linked to a particular occupation, hold a ritual status observed within a hierarchy, and interact with others based on cultural notions of social exclusion, exclusion, with certain castes considered as either more pure or more polluted than others. The term "caste" is also applied to morphological groupings in eusocial insects such as ants, bees, and termites#caste, termites. The paradigmatic ethnographic example of caste is the division of India's Hinduism, Hindu society into rigid social groups. Its roots lie in South Asia's ancient history and it still exists; however, the economic significance of the caste system in India seems to be declining as a result of urbanisation and affirmative action programs. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Malinke Empire
The Mali Empire ( Manding: ''Mandé''Ki-Zerbo, Joseph: ''UNESCO General History of Africa, Vol. IV, Abridged Edition: Africa from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century'', p. 57. University of California Press, 1997. or ''Manden Duguba''; ) was an empire in West Africa from 1226 to 1610. The empire was founded by Sundiata Keita () and became renowned for the wealth of its rulers, especially Mansa Musa (Musa Keita). At its peak, Mali was the largest empire in West Africa, widely influencing the culture of the region through the spread of its language, laws, and customs. The empire began as a small Mandinka kingdom at the upper reaches of the Niger River, centered around the Manding region. It began to develop during the 11th and 12th centuries as the Ghana Empire, or Wagadu, declined and trade epicentres shifted southward. The history of the Mali Empire before the 13th century is unclear, as there are conflicting and imprecise accounts by both Arab chroniclers and oral trad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
West Africa
West Africa, also known as Western Africa, is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations geoscheme for Africa#Western Africa, United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo, as well as Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha (United Kingdom Overseas Territories, United Kingdom Overseas Territory).Paul R. Masson, Catherine Anne Pattillo, "Monetary union in West Africa (ECOWAS): is it desirable and how could it be achieved?" (Introduction). International Monetary Fund, 2001. The population of West Africa is estimated at around million people as of , and at 381,981,000 as of 2017, of which 189,672,000 were female and 192,309,000 male.United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2017). World Population Prospects: The 2017 Revision, custom data acquired via webs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mali Empire
The Mali Empire (Manding languages, Manding: ''Mandé''Ki-Zerbo, Joseph: ''UNESCO General History of Africa, Vol. IV, Abridged Edition: Africa from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century'', p. 57. University of California Press, 1997. or ''Manden Duguba''; ) was an empire in West Africa from 1226 to 1610. The empire was founded by Sundiata Keita () and became renowned for the wealth of its rulers, especially Mansa Musa (Musa Keita). At its peak, Mali was the largest empire in West Africa, widely influencing the culture of the region through the spread of Manding languages, its language, laws, and customs. The empire began as a small Mandinka people, Mandinka kingdom at the upper reaches of the Niger River, centered around the Manding region. It began to develop during the 11th and 12th centuries as the Ghana Empire, or Wagadu, declined and trade epicentres shifted southward. The Pre-imperial Mali, history of the Mali Empire before the 13th century is unclear, as there are conflict ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bakari Sumano
Bakari Sumano (1935 – July 21, 2003) was head of Malian association of griots (wandering poet-musicians) from 1994 until his death. Biography Bakari Sumano left school in 1955 to become a mechanic's apprentice, but continued to take night classes in history and typing. In 1957, he received a position at the Social Security Office. He went on a career at the National Institute of Social Providence, where he became the principal inspector and regional director of Kayes, Gao, Mopti, Koulikoro, and Bamako before his 1997 retirement. Along with his administrative career, Sumano also assumed the functions of a griot. In 1994, he became head of the Association of Griots of Mali and dedicated himself to restoring the griots (who he preferred to call ''jeli'') to a prominent role in Malian life. He began courtesy visits to foreign heads of state visiting Mali and won recognition for the Association of Griots in the protocol list of the Republic in many official ceremonies. He als ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bard
In Celtic cultures, a bard is an oral repository and professional story teller, verse-maker, music composer, oral historian and genealogist, employed by a patron (such as a monarch or chieftain) to commemorate one or more of the patron's ancestors and to praise the patron's own activities. With the decline of a living bardic tradition in the modern period, the term has loosened to mean a generic minstrel or author (especially a famous one). For example, William Shakespeare and Rabindranath Tagore are respectively known as "the Bard of Avon" (often simply "the Bard") and "the Bard of Bengal". Oxford Dictionary of English, s.v. ''bard'', n.1. In 16th-century Scotland, it turned into a derogatory term for an itinerant musician; nonetheless it was later romanticised by Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832). Etymology The English term ''bard'' is a loan word from the Celtic languages: Gaulish: ''bardo-'' ('bard, poet'), and ('bard, poet'), ('singer, poet'), Middle Breton: ''b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Francis Bebey
Francis Bebey (, 15 July 1929 in Douala, Cameroon – 28 May 2001 in Paris, France) was a Cameroonian musicologist, writer, composer, and broadcaster. Early life Francis Bebey was born in Douala, Cameroon, on July 15, 1929. Bebey attended college in Douala, where he studied mathematics, before studying broadcasting at the University of Paris. He moved to the United States and continued to study broadcasting at New York University. In 1957, Bebey moved to Ghana at the invitation of Kwame Nkrumah, and took a job as a broadcaster. Music career In the early 1960s, Bebey moved to France and started work in the arts, establishing himself as a musician, sculptor, and writer. He was also the first African musician to use electric keyboards and programmable drum machines which he set alongside off the traditional African instruments. His most popular novel was ''Agatha Moudio's Son''. While working at UNESCO from 1961 to 1974, he was able to become the head of the music department in Paris ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amiri Baraka
Amiri Baraka (born Everett Leroy Jones; October 7, 1934 – January 9, 2014), previously known as LeRoi Jones and Imamu Amear Baraka, was an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays, and music criticism. He was the author of numerous books of poetry and taught at several universities, including the University at Buffalo and Stony Brook University. He received the PEN/Beyond Margins Award in 2008 for ''Tales of the Out and the Gone''. Baraka's plays, poetry, and essays have been described by scholars as constituting defining texts for African-American culture. Baraka's career spanned nearly 52 years, and his themes range from Black liberation to White racism. His notable poems include "The Music: Reflection on Jazz and Blues", "The Book of Monk", and "New Music, New Poetry", works that draw on topics from the worlds of society, music, and literature. Baraka's poetry and writing have attracted both high praise and condemnation. In the African-American community, some ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Root Word
A root (also known as a root word or radical) is the core of a word that is irreducible into more meaningful elements. In morphology, a root is a morphologically simple unit which can be left bare or to which a prefix or a suffix can attach. The root word is the primary lexical unit of a word, and of a word family (this root is then called the base word), which carries aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents. Content words in nearly all languages contain, and may consist only of, root morphemes. However, sometimes the term "root" is also used to describe the word without its inflectional endings, but with its lexical endings in place. For example, ''chatters'' has the inflectional root or lemma ''chatter'', but the lexical root ''chat''. Inflectional roots are often called stems. A root, or a root morpheme, in the stricter sense, is a mono-morphemic stem. The traditional definition allows roots to be either free morphemes or bound morphem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
