Griot Chronicles

The tradition's own name is jeliya (JEH-lee-yah), the art and office of the jeli (JEH-lee), the hereditary keeper of speech, genealogy and music. In Mandinka of the Gambia, Casamance and Guinea-Bissau the word is jaliya and the specialist a jali (JAH-lee); among Bamana speakers the jeli is also called jeli or, in older usage, belen-tigi for a master of the word. The Songhai (Songhay) and Zarma call their hereditary bards jesere or gesere, a word shared with the Soninke, whose bards are also gesere. The English word griot comes through French and is of uncertain origin; scholars have proposed Wolof, Portuguese and Fulfulde sources, and none is settled.

The homeland itself is Manden (MAHN-den), the Mande heartland on the upper Niger. The great epic is called after its hero: Sunjata (soon-JAH-tah), also written Sundiata, Son-Jara, Sun-Jata and Mari Jata, from Sogolon Jara or Sogolon Jata, the son of Sogolon. The river at its centre is the Joliba (JOH-lee-bah), the Niger.

The tradition belongs to the Mande-speaking peoples: the Maninka (Malinké) of the upper Niger in Guinea and Mali, the Bamana (Bambara) of the middle Niger around Segu and Bamako, the Mandinka of the Gambia River and Casamance, the Soninke (Sarakole) of the Sahel between the Senegal River and Nioro, and the Dyula (Jula) traders of Côte d'Ivoire and Burkina Faso. Alongside them stand the Songhai and Zarma of the Niger Bend, from Timbuktu and Gao down to Niamey, whose language most linguists place outside the Mande family, and whose empire succeeded Mali.

The Soninke kingdom of Wagadu, which Arabic writers called Ghana, flourished in the Sahel by the 8th century. The Maninka state of Mali grew from the Manden heartland around Kangaba and Niani in the 13th century. Songhai, centred on Gao, became the leading power in the late 15th century.

Movement shaped the stories: Soninke dispersal after Wagadu's decline, Maninka expansion west to the Gambia and Kaabu, and Dyula trading diasporas carried the jeli's repertoire across the savanna.

These stories exist because Mande societies were organised by lineage, and lineage needs a memory. The jeli recites who descends from whom, which clan fought beside which at the founding of Mali, and what each family owes to the others. A person's jamu (clan name) carries a history, and the jeli can sing it.

The founding of Mali in the 13th century, the wars with the Sosso king Sumanguru Kanté, the assembly at Kurukan Fuga, the pilgrimage of Mansa Musa and the later rise of Songhai, Segu and Kaabu all live inside the repertoire. So do the Moroccan conquest of 1591, the slave trade and the French conquest of the late 19th century.

The stories serve weddings, naming ceremonies, installations of chiefs, settlement of disputes and political mediation. Most jeli performance is public and social. Some recitations are ritual: the Diabaté jeliw of Kéla recite the Sunjata epic at the septennial re-roofing of the Kamabolon at Kangaba, and hunters' bards perform for the donso brotherhoods. Knowledge held by initiatory societies such as Komo is a separate, restricted domain that belongs to its members.

The written record begins with Arabic geographers and chroniclers: al-Bakri (1068), al-Umari (c. 1337), Ibn Battuta (who visited Mali in 1352–53) and Ibn Khaldun, and then the Timbuktu chronicles, the Tarikh al-Sudan of al-Sa'di (c. 1655) and the Tarikh al-Fattash.

The oral record has been transcribed from named masters. D. T. Niane built his 1960 Soundjata from the telling of Mamadou Kouyaté of Djeliba Koro. John William Johnson recorded Fa-Digi Sisòkò in 1968, published as The Epic of Son-Jara. Gordon Innes recorded Mandinka versions from Bamba Suso, Banna Kanute and Dembo Kanute. David C. Conrad worked with Tayiru Banbera on the Segu epic and with many Maninka jeliw on Sunjata. Charles Bird recorded the hunters' bard Seydou Camara. Thomas A. Hale worked with the Songhai jesere Nouhou Malio on the Askia epic.

Scholars who have engaged deeply include Nehemia Levtzion, Ralph Austen, Barbara Hoffman, Patrick McNaughton, Jan Jansen, Youssouf Tata Cissé and Wa Kamissoko. The jeli families themselves, especially the Kouyaté of Niagassola and the Diabaté of Kéla, are the tradition's own authorities. Entries here should be checked against these sources before publication.

Five values shape the narratives.

First, lineage and its obligations: a person acts as the descendant of named ancestors, and the jeli's praise reminds them what those ancestors did.

Second, the tension of fadenya and badenya, as Charles Bird and Martha Kendall named it. Fadenya (father-childness) is rivalry among half-siblings of one father, the drive to surpass and to make a name. Badenya (mother-childness) is the solidarity of children of one mother, cooperation and loyalty. Heroes need fadenya; communities need badenya.

Third, nyama, the energy released by every action, which makes deeds and words dangerous and powerful.

Fourth, the word itself: kuma, speech, is weighty, and the jeli handles it on behalf of the noble who must not speak too freely.

Fifth, destiny: a hero's greatness is foretold, and the story shows how it was fulfilled.

Unlike much Western narrative, the hero's achievement is not purely individual. Sunjata wins because of his mother, his sister, his jeli, his allies and his ancestors. A story that would seem to a Western reader to be about one man is, to a Mande listener, about a web of families.

Causation in the Mande world runs through several channels at once. Events happen because God (Ala) wills them, because destiny was spoken at a birth, because a person gathered or lost nyama, because a sorcerer's power was matched or exceeded, and because human beings chose. A battle is won by soldiers and also by the stronger secret: Sumanguru falls when his tana (taboo object) is discovered, not merely when he is outnumbered.

The individual exists inside the lineage. Ancestors' deeds create obligations and protections that the living inherit, and the praise lines a jeli sings tie a living person to them.

Time is layered. The founding era of Sunjata is a deep past that remains present: clans still keep the alliances made then, and the jeli speaks of it as if the listeners were part of it. Ordinary history runs forward from that founding, but the founding is constantly returned to.

Reality is single but double-layered: the visible world and a world of hidden forces, jinn and spirits that knowledgeable people, hunters, smiths and sorcerers, can reach.

Stories are told to keep genealogy, to give counsel to rulers, to celebrate and to move people to act. The jeli's own description, often quoted from Niane's teller Mamadou Kouyaté, is that they are the memory of mankind and that through the word they bring the deeds of kings to life for younger generations.

The tellers are specialists. Jeliw are born into jeli lineages such as Kouyaté, Diabaté, Kanté, Sissoko, Cissoko and Suso, and train for years. Hunters' bards, often not of jeli birth, sing for the donso. Everyone tells folktales in the evening, and elders and mothers tell them to children.

Telling happens at life ceremonies, at courts and installations, at the Kamabolon ceremony every seven years, at hunters' gatherings, and now on radio, television and stage.

The power relation is mutual. The noble (horon) patron supports the jeli with gifts; the jeli can praise and also shame, can mediate between rival lineages and can speak truths a noble may not. Jeliw were the advisers of kings in the epics, and Balla Fasséké's service to Sunjata is the model of that bond.

The great Mande epics are built in three registers that the jeli moves between: narrative, praise and song. Narrative passages advance the story; praise passages (fasa, the praise lines of a lineage or person) stop it to name and honour; song passages, often sung by a chorus or a jelimuso, mark emotional peaks.

The Sunjata epic follows a pattern of foretold birth, early weakness and humiliation, rising, exile, gathering of allies, the discovery of the enemy's secret, the decisive battle and the founding of an order. It is a hybrid: part life-story of a destined hero, part founding charter of clans and institutions, part genealogy.

Story movement is not strictly linear. The jeli may begin with genealogies reaching back to Bilal, the Prophet's muezzin, whom many tellings name as an ancestor of the Keita, or to earlier hunters, then move forward, pause for digressions about allied clans, and return. Each episode can be told on its own, and a full performance may be spread over nights. A listener's family history may be expanded because they are present.

Tension in the Mande epic comes from rivalry and from contests of power. The deepest rivalry is fadenya: Sunjata against his half-brother Dankaran Tuman and his mother's co-wife Sassouma Bérété, who mocks the crippled boy. This is conflict in a sense Western readers will recognise, but it is framed by kinship: the rival is family, and the story is also about who will inherit the father's name.

The larger conflict is between two kinds of power. Sumanguru Kanté of Sosso is a smith-king of great occult strength; Sunjata is a hunter's descendant, a son of a buffalo-woman, destined to rule. Their war is fought with armies and with sorcery, and it is decided by knowledge, when Sunjata's sister Nana Triban learns the secret of Sumanguru's protection.

Tension also comes from imbalance: a king who has broken with his jeli or his allies, a land under tyranny. In the hunters' epics, the driving force is the contest between hunter and the powers of the bush.

The epic protagonist is a destined individual whose greatness belongs to his lineage. Sunjata is the clearest case: he is the founder, and every Keita and every allied clan finds its place through him. Yet he is never alone. His mother Sogolon's suffering earns his destiny; his sister Nana Triban wins the decisive knowledge; his jeli Balla Fasséké carries his name; his general Fakoli, Sumanguru's nephew, brings the smiths over to him.

Other protagonists follow the same pattern with variations. Askia Muhammad in the Songhai epic is a usurper whose legitimacy must be explained. Da Monzon and Biton Coulibaly in the Segu epics are kings surrounded by warriors and counsellors. Kambili, in the hunters' epic recorded by Charles Bird, is a hunter who defeats a lion-man with the help of his wife.

In folktales, the protagonist can be an orphan, a youngest child, a clever animal such as the hare, or a woman who outwits a powerful man. Lineages and clans function as collective protagonists in the genealogical sections.

The Sunjata epic resolves in founding. After Kirina, Sunjata gathers the clans and, in many tellings, at Kurukan Fuga distributes rights and duties: which clans are rulers, which are jeliw, which are smiths, which are allies bound in joking relationship (sanankuya). Victory is the means; the satisfying end is order and the naming of every family's place.

The enemy is often not destroyed but removed. Sumanguru vanishes into the mountains at Koulikoro, in many versions, rather than dying on the field.

Some tellings end with Sunjata's death, which is itself contested: some jeliw say he drowned in the Sankarani river, others say he was killed by an arrow at a celebration, and many simply do not say. The epic continues into the reigns of successors and into the jeli's audience: the ending is the present day, where the descendants still honour the agreements.

In folktales, resolutions restore justice or teach a lesson; the clever wins, the proud is humbled.

Narrative time in the jeli's art has two layers that run together. One is genealogical: a long chain of names, each generation following the last, reaching from a remote ancestor to the person being praised. The other is episodic: the great events of the founding age, told as scenes.

The founding age is fixed and returned to. A jeli at a modern wedding may move in one breath from the bride's grandfather to Sunjata's general from whom her clan descends, so that the 13th century and the present are folded together.

Within an epic, time moves forward, but the teller interrupts with prophecy (what will come), with praise (what has always been true of a lineage) and with digression. A full Sunjata is not told in one sitting; it may be spread across a night or several nights, and the order of episodes can vary between tellers.

The Kamabolon ceremony every seven years gives the epic a cyclical ritual time as well: the story is retold as the roof is renewed.

The community is the reason the epic exists. In the Sunjata tradition the founding of Mali is the founding of the clans' relations to one another. Each clan appears through its ancestor: the Kouyaté through Balla Fasséké, the Kamara, Traoré, Condé, Konaté and others through the allies who came to Sunjata's aid. Tiramakan Traoré, in many versions, leads the westward expansion that the Mandinka of the Gambia remember.

Individuals relate to the community through obligation. A hero is admired for what he does for Manden; his rivals are condemned because they divide it.

The community expects the jeli to include it. Families present at a performance expect their names and praise lines to be sung, and they reward the jeli for it. A teller who omits a lineage risks offending; one who praises well is paid well. Audiences also expect the story to confirm the alliances and joking relationships they live by, which is why the Kurukan Fuga episode is so important in many tellings.

Mande morality is relational. Right action is action that honours one's lineage, keeps one's word, respects elders and the bonds between allied clans, and protects the weak. Wrong action breaks these bonds: a king who abuses his people, a son who disrespects his mother, a host who betrays a guest.

Condemnation falls on tyranny and pride. In the epics Sumanguru is condemned for cruelty, especially for taking his nephew Fakoli's wife; the act drives Fakoli to Sunjata. Sassouma Bérété is condemned for humiliating Sogolon.

Honour comes from courage, from loyalty, and above all from maintaining one's mother's honour. Sunjata's rising to uproot a baobab for his mother is the moral hinge of his childhood.

The moral framework is not absolute in a Western sense. Heroes use sorcery, deceit and seduction (Nana Triban's mission to Sumanguru) when the cause is just. Fadenya, the drive for name, is admired even when disruptive. Stories teach moral logic by example and through the jeli's interjections, which often take the form of proverbs.

The central transformation in the Sunjata epic is from weakness to power. The child who could not walk until he was seven, mocked by his father's other wife, rises on an iron bar that the smiths forge and that bends under his weight, and becomes the founder of an empire. The transformation is not earned so much as revealed: his destiny was spoken by a hunter-diviner before his birth.

Transformation is also bodily and supernatural. Sogolon is, in many tellings, the double of the buffalo of Do, a woman with the power to become an animal. Sumanguru can take many forms in battle and slips away from blows.

The world is transformed from disorder to order. The land of Manden, scattered and dominated by Sosso, becomes an organised federation with roles for every clan.

The tradition mourns some transformations: exile, the loss of a jeli, the decline of Mali, the fall of Songhai in 1591. Jeli songs of later centuries mourn heroes killed in war and kingdoms ended by conquest.

Sacredness in Mande thought is closely tied to nyama, the energy of action that every being and deed releases. Things, words and places that are charged with nyama are dangerous and powerful, and only those with the right knowledge and lineage handle them safely. Smiths, jeliw and leatherworkers are thought to carry and manage nyama in their crafts, which is one reason they are set apart.

Sacred objects include the Sosso-Bala, the balafon that tradition says belonged to Sumanguru and was taken over by Balla Fasséké; it is kept by the Kouyaté family at Niagassola in Guinea. The Kamabolon at Kangaba is a sacred house whose roof is renewed every seven years. Boliw, power objects of the Bamana initiatory societies such as Komo, belong to those societies and are not described here.

Words are sacred: the jeli's speech, praise lines, and the Sunjata epic when recited at Kangaba. Islam adds its own sacred elements: the Qur'an, mosques, the tombs of saints and scholars in Timbuktu, and Arabic amulets. In daily practice the two layers coexist.

Ancestors are present above all through their names. To praise a living person is to name their ancestors and remind them of the deeds they must live up to. A jeli's genealogy is, in this sense, an invocation: the dead are brought into the room through the word.

Founding ancestors are especially active in the social order. The agreements made in Sunjata's time are still honoured; descendants of clans that were allied at the founding keep sanankuya joking relationships today, and the Keita of Kangaba remain custodians of the Kamabolon.

In the older religion of the Bamana and Maninka, ancestors also receive offerings at family altars and at village shrines, and some lineages keep shrines tied to a founder. Practice varies widely by village and has been reshaped by Islam, which in most Mande communities is now the main frame for prayer for the dead.

What ancestors want is continuity: that the name not be shamed, that obligations be kept, that the lineage endure. A person who betrays an ancestral alliance is thought to invite misfortune.

The Mande spirit world is not usually described in fixed layers. It is the hidden side of the same world: the bush (wula or kungo) beyond the village is full of forces, animals with nyama, and jinn (jinew) and spirits who can help or harm. Water, especially the Joliba (Niger) and its pools, is a dwelling place of spirits.

Hunters cross most often. Donso brotherhoods learn to enter the bush, to deal with its powers and to survive the nyama of animals they kill. Smiths and sorcerers also cross, through knowledge of materials and of words.

Among the Songhai and Zarma, the spirit world is more fully peopled. The holey (holle) spirits, organised in families, possess dancers in public ceremonies, and the sohanci, sorcerers who trace descent to Sonni Ali, work with their own powers, as Paul Stoller has described.

Movement goes both ways. Spirits enter people in possession, cause illness and bring messages; people approach spirits through offerings, divination and initiation. Islamic thought adds angels and jinn, and many people hold both frames together.

Rituals mark the life course: naming ceremonies on the eighth day after birth (in Muslim communities, following Islamic practice), circumcision and excision, marriage and funerals. At almost all of these, jeliw speak, sing and praise, so that ritual and storytelling are joined.

Initiation into Bamana and Maninka societies such as Ntomo (for boys before circumcision), Komo, Nama, Kore and Ci Wara has historically structured the passage to adulthood and to deeper knowledge. Their rites belong to their members and are not described here.

Restorative rituals include sacrifices at shrines, divination by sand or cowries, and the rites of hunters to cleanse the nyama of a kill. Among the Songhai, possession ceremonies for the holey address illness and drought.

In stories, ritual appears as event and as resolution. Sunjata's victory depends on a sacrifice prescribed by diviners. The rising of Sunjata, the forging of the iron bar, the taking of the balafon, and the assembly at Kurukan Fuga all have the shape of rites. The Kamabolon ceremony frames the epic itself as ritual.

Most Mande and Songhai communities today are Muslim, and God (Ala, from Arabic Allah) stands at the top of the divine order. The Sunjata epic as told by Muslim jeliw invokes God, and many tellings trace the Keita line to Bilal ibn Rabah.

Beneath and beside this, older Mande thought recognises a creator and powerful spirits. In the Bamana cosmology recorded by Germaine Dieterlen and others, Pemba and Faro are central figures: Faro is the spirit of water, associated with the Niger, and Musokoroni is a disorderly female power. Scholars disagree about how widely these accounts reflect general belief and how much they record particular informants; they should be read with that caution.

Hunters honour Sanènè and Kontron, mother and son, patrons of the bush and the hunt. The Soninke remember Bida, the serpent of Wagadu.

Among the Songhai, the holey spirits form families, with Dongo the thunder spirit and Harakoy Dikko the spirit of the river among the most important. Humans relate to these powers through offerings, possession and knowledge, under the overall order of God.

The jeli's voice moves between three modes. In narration (often called kuma, speech) the voice is clear, rhythmic and close to speaking. In praise (fasa or majamu) it rises, quickens and becomes declamatory, with names and epithets delivered in strings. In song (dònkili) it is melodic and usually backed by an instrument and sometimes a chorus.

Repetition is structural. Praise lines recur for each important character, so Sunjata is again and again called by his epithets, and Sumanguru by his. Formulaic phrases open and close episodes.

An answerer, the naamu-sayer, responds with naamu (yes, indeed) or similar words after phrases, keeping the rhythm and affirming the teller. Fa-Digi Sisòkò's performance recorded by Johnson has such an answerer throughout.

The jeli uses proverbs as commentary, direct address to the audience and to the patron, and moments of silence or slowed speech for emphasis. Jeliw also speak of the danger of speech: some knowledge is held back and only hinted at, and the master teller controls what is said and what is left unsaid.

Three instruments define jeli performance. The bala (balafon), a wooden xylophone with gourd resonators, is the oldest in tradition, linked to the Sosso-Bala. The kora, a harp-lute of twenty-one strings with a calabash body, is especially associated with the Mandinka of the Gambia and Casamance and with Guinea. The ngoni (koni), a plucked lute, is common in Mali. Women, jelimusow, often accompany themselves with the karignan, a notched iron scraper.

Hunters' bards play the donso ngoni, a six- or seven-stringed harp, and hunters dance with their guns and amulet-covered shirts.

A full performance may include a lead jeli, a singer (often a jelimuso), instrumentalists and an answerer. Patrons reward the jeli publicly with money and gifts, sometimes pressing notes to the forehead, and that exchange is part of the event.

Bamana masquerades such as Ci Wara, with its antelope headdresses, belong to the farming societies and are performed in their own contexts. Among the Songhai, the godji (one-stringed fiddle) and gourd drums accompany possession dances.

The audience is part of the performance. The answerer's naamu and other responses mark the rhythm and affirm the teller, and other listeners may join with exclamations of agreement. When a lineage is praised, its members respond, sometimes standing, sometimes dancing, and often rewarding the jeli on the spot.

The jeli directs praise to people present, inserting their names and ancestors into the story, so that the epic is partly composed for the occasion. Listeners can request episodes or songs, and patrons can redirect the performance with gifts.

At weddings and naming ceremonies, women dance and sing choruses; the jelimuso leads, and the crowd answers. At hunters' gatherings, hunters dance in turn as their deeds are sung and fire their guns.

The audience also judges. A jeli who omits a lineage or praises badly may be criticised; one who knows the genealogies thoroughly is honoured. In Songhai possession ceremonies the audience includes the possessed, and spectators speak to the spirits directly.

The main memory device is lineage: jeliya is passed from father to son and mother to daughter within jeli families, so that knowledge stays in households trained from childhood. Apprentices travel to study with masters, and certain centres are known for training, especially Kéla near Kangaba (Diabaté) and Niagassola (Kouyaté).

Formulaic structure helps. Praise lines are fixed units attached to names; once a name is spoken, its praise follows. Episodes are stable blocks that can be recombined. Musical accompaniment carries the rhythm of speech and gives melodic cues; specific songs, such as Janjon for Fakoli and Tutu Jara for Segu, are attached to specific heroes.

Ritual repetition secures the epic: the Kamabolon ceremony every seven years requires the Kéla jeliw to recite it, and the Kouyaté of Niagassola keep the Sosso-Bala and its history.

Writing has also played a part. Timbuktu scholars wrote chronicles in Arabic, and manuscript libraries there hold works from the 15th century onward. Since 1960 transcriptions, recordings and translations have added another layer of memory.

The power system of the Mande world is built on nyama and on knowledge. Nyama is the energy that all actions release; it can be gathered, shaped and directed, but it also rebounds on those who handle it carelessly. Words, songs, praise and curses work through nyama, which is why the jeli's speech is powerful.

Sorcery (subaya) and the power of knowledge (dalilu, the means or recipe for achieving something) appear throughout the epics. A great figure has dalilu: Sumanguru's power lies in his protections, and Sunjata wins by finding a stronger dalilu, an arrow tipped with the spur of a white cockerel, revealed through Nana Triban.

What can be done: transformation into animals, invulnerability, disappearance, protection, harm at a distance, divination of what will come. What cannot: escape one's destiny or one's tana. Every power has its counter, and the rule stated and unstated is that power without its secret known is invincible, but no power is without a secret.

Islamic practice adds amulets with Qur'anic verses, prayer and the blessing (baraka) of holy people.

Power comes from several sources. It is inherited: jeliw, smiths and leatherworkers are born into families whose crafts carry nyama; royal lineages such as the Keita inherit the right to rule. It is earned: hunters gain power through skill, courage and initiation, and through the nyama of animals they kill. It is learned: dalilu, the specific knowledge for achieving an end, is acquired from masters, diviners and spirits, often at a price.

It can be bestowed by spirits and by God. Sogolon's power comes from her connection to the buffalo of Do; Sunjata's destiny is declared by a diviner; Muslim scholars and saints hold baraka.

It can be stolen or taken over. Balla Fasséké plays Sumanguru's balafon in secret; Nana Triban learns Sumanguru's secret through seduction and deceit.

Access has costs. Hunters must cleanse themselves of the nyama of kills. Sorcery demands sacrifices and binds the sorcerer to prohibitions. A tana, once taken on, must be kept for life. Misused power rebounds on the user and lineage.

Each Mande clan keeps a tana, a prohibition often tied to an animal or food that the clan must not kill or eat, usually explained by a founding story in which that animal helped an ancestor. Breaking it is thought to bring illness or misfortune.

Powerful people also carry personal prohibitions tied to their protections. In the Sunjata epic Sumanguru's tana is the cockerel's spur; once Sunjata learns it, Sumanguru's power fails. The general lesson is that a protection carries a vulnerability, and revealing it is the greatest danger.

Social prohibitions are equally strong. Marriage across certain lines, especially between horon (freeborn) and nyamakala (artisan and jeli) families, was historically forbidden, though this is changing. Breaking alliance obligations, insulting a jeli or shaming one's mother breaks sacred order.

The initiatory societies keep their own prohibitions, and revealing their secrets is the gravest offence; that domain belongs to members.

Some consequences cannot be undone: a curse from a mother, the breaking of a clan alliance, or the shedding of blood between sanankuya partners.

Initiation in Bamana and Maninka life has historically followed a sequence of societies. Boys enter Ntomo before circumcision; after it, men may enter Komo, Nama, Kono, Ci Wara and Kore, each with its own knowledge, according to the ethnographies of Dominique Zahan and others. Each society carries its own trials and teachings, which belong to its members. In many places Islam and modern schooling have reduced or reshaped this sequence.

Circumcision itself marks the death of the uncircumcised child and the birth of a person able to marry and act as an adult; the jeli's songs and the community's celebration surround it.

The hunters' brotherhood (donsoton) initiates members through apprenticeship to a master hunter. The novice learns bush knowledge, medicines and songs over years, and gains a place in a brotherhood that crosses clan and ethnic lines.

Jeliw are not initiated in the same sense; they are trained from childhood within their families. A jeli becomes a master through years of study, travel and recognition by elders. The epic itself contains trials that function as initiations: Sunjata's rising and his exile.

Mande social life has historically been patrilineal and patrilocal: clan names and inheritance pass through men, and wives move to their husbands' households. Polygyny is common, and the rivalry between co-wives and their children shapes the fadenya that drives so many stories.

Yet women hold decisive power in the narratives. A man's greatness is said to come from his mother: Sogolon's suffering and patience earn Sunjata's destiny, and Mande proverbs credit mothers with their sons' success. Nana Triban, Sunjata's sister, wins the war by discovering Sumanguru's secret. Sogolon's buffalo double shows women as carriers of wild power.

Among the jeliw, women (jelimusow) are the great singers. Since the mid-20th century jelimusow such as Fanta Damba, Tata Bambo Kouyaté and Ami Koita have been among the most famous voices in Mali, though narrating the long epic has generally been treated as men's work.

Women have their own societies, rites and knowledge, and women's songs at weddings and excision ceremonies form a distinct repertoire. Musokoroni, in Bamana thought, embodies female disorder and creative energy.

Age orders Mande social life. Elders (cɛkɔrɔbaw) hold authority in families and villages; the eldest man of a lineage leads it, and village councils are led by heads of the founding lineages. Respect for elders is a central value, and a young person who contradicts them publicly is shamed.

Age sets (flan-bolo or ton) group young people who were circumcised or initiated together; they work together, celebrate together and owe each other lifelong solidarity. The ton of young people historically organised farm labour and village festivities, and among the Bamana the youth association gave its name to wider organisations.

Elders hold knowledge that younger people cannot access: genealogies, secrets of societies, histories of land and alliances. Among jeliw, the master teller is usually old, and young jeliw serve long apprenticeships. The full epic belongs to senior jeliw.

In stories, elders appear as counsellors and diviners. Sunjata's transformation from a mocked child to a king also inverts expectations, as the youngest or weakest son rises above his elders, which is a recurring pattern.

Mande societies have historically been divided into three broad categories. The horon are the freeborn, including ruling, warrior, farming and Muslim scholarly lineages. The nyamakala are endogamous specialist groups: jeliw (bards), numuw (smiths, whose wives are usually potters), garankew (leatherworkers) and, in some regions, funew (Islamic praise orators). The jonw were people of captive or servile status. Scholars debate whether caste is the right word; many prefer nyamakala as the tradition's own term.

The justification is lineage and nyama. Nyamakala are thought to handle dangerous energies in their crafts and speech, which sets them apart and gives them both power and restriction. They are not ranked simply below horon; they are separate, with rights and immunities of their own.

The storytellers are nyamakala. Jeliw depend on patrons and cannot rule, but they speak with a freedom nobles lack, and their praise or blame shapes reputations.

In stories, class appears through the founding of roles at Kurukan Fuga, through the jeli's relationship to the king, and through smiths as powerful figures, Sumanguru above all. Discrimination against descendants of jonw persists in parts of the region and is resisted by activists today.

The basic unit is the lineage household (lu or du), a compound of related men, their wives, children and dependants under the eldest man. Lineages share a jamu (clan name) such as Keita, Traoré, Kamara, Konaté, Coulibaly or Diarra, each with its history and tana.

Villages are founded by a lineage whose head holds authority over land, while later arrivals hold other rights. Groups of villages form a kafo, a regional unit; the old Manden was a federation of kafow. Above these, the Mali and Songhai empires ruled through local rulers who acknowledged the mansa or askia.

Across these units run alliances. Sanankuya is a joking relationship between paired clans or peoples, such as Keita and Coulibaly, or Dogon and Bozo, that permits teasing and obliges mutual help. Many trace these pacts to the Sunjata era. Hunters' brotherhoods and Muslim brotherhoods also cut across lineage.

Membership carries duties of labour, hospitality, marriage, and support at life events. Expulsion is grave: a person cut off from lineage loses name, protection and the right to be praised.

The Mande world lies in the savanna and Sahel of West Africa, along the upper and middle Niger. Manden itself is the hilly country between Siguiri in Guinea and Bamako in Mali, with the Sankarani and Niger rivers, gallery forests, and wooded savanna. To the north the land opens into Sahel grassland and then the Sahara; the Niger turns north at the Inner Delta and makes its great bend at Timbuktu before flowing southeast past Gao.

The climate is shaped by a single rainy season, roughly June to October, and a long dry season with the dusty harmattan wind. Farming of millet, sorghum, rice and fonio depends on the rains and the river's flood.

The environment shapes the stories. The bush is the space of hunters, animals and spirits; the river is a road, a source of life and a dwelling of spirits; the Sahel is the zone of trade with the desert. Mountains such as the Koulikoro hills are places of refuge and disappearance.

Land belongs to the founding lineages and their ancestors. To name a place is to name who founded it.

Kangaba (Kaaba), in Mali on the Niger, holds the Kamabolon, a sacred house kept by the Keita. Its thatched roof is renewed every seven years in a ceremony at which the Diabaté jeliw of nearby Kéla recite the history of Manden. UNESCO inscribed the ceremony in 2009.

Niagassola in Guinea is the home of the Kouyaté jeliw who keep the Sosso-Bala, the balafon that tradition attributes to Sumanguru.

Kurukan Fuga, a plain near Kangaba, is remembered as the place where Sunjata's assembly settled the order of Manden.

Kirina, south of Koulikoro, is remembered as the site of Sunjata's victory over Sumanguru. Koulikoro, with its hills on the Niger, is where many tellings say Sumanguru vanished; the place is still associated with him.

Timbuktu holds the Djinguereber, Sankore and Sidi Yahia mosques and many tombs of scholars and saints, visited for blessing. Gao holds the tomb of Askia Muhammad.

In narrative these sites are thresholds: the meeting of armies, the place of disappearance, the house where the story is kept.

The Mande cosmos is mapped first in social space. The village with its compounds and fields is ordered; the bush around it is open, wild and full of forces. Moving from village to bush is moving from social order into a domain where other powers rule. Hunters, smiths and sorcerers move between them.

Water forms another domain. The Joliba and its pools and confluences are homes of spirits, and among the Bamana, Faro is associated with the river. The sky and the rain are tied to God and, among the Songhai, to Dongo, the thunder spirit.

The Islamic cosmos layers onto this: heaven and hell, the seven heavens of Islamic tradition, angels and jinn, and Mecca as the sacred centre to which prayer is directed. Mansa Musa's pilgrimage tied Mali to that centre.

The Bamana cosmology recorded by Dieterlen gives a more detailed mythic map of creation, but scholars disagree on how representative it is.

One moves between realms through initiation, possession, dreams, divination and death.

By the 8th century, Arabic writers knew of Ghana, the Soninke kingdom of Wagadu, as a land of gold in the western Sahel.

In 1068, al-Bakri described the capital of Ghana and its king's court.

In the early 13th century, the Sosso kingdom under Sumanguru Kanté rose to dominate the region, according to oral tradition.

In c. 1235, Sunjata Keita defeated Sumanguru at Kirina, by the reckoning most historians follow, and founded the empire of Mali.

In 1324, Mansa Musa passed through Cairo on pilgrimage to Mecca with so much gold that writers in Egypt recorded its effect on the market for years.

In c. 1327, the Djinguereber mosque in Timbuktu was built in Mansa Musa's time, by tradition to the design of the poet Abu Ishaq al-Sahili.

In 1352–53, Ibn Battuta visited Mali and described the court of Mansa Sulayman and its jeli Dugha.

In 1468, the Songhai ruler Sonni Ali took Timbuktu.

In 1493, Askia Muhammad seized power in Songhai and made the pilgrimage in 1496–97.

In 1591, a Moroccan army defeated Songhai at Tondibi.

In c. 1712, Biton Coulibaly established the Bamana kingdom of Segu.

In 1960, D. T. Niane published Soundjata ou l'épopée mandingue.

In 2009, UNESCO inscribed the Manden Charter and the Kamabolon ceremony.

In 2012, armed groups destroyed mausoleums in Timbuktu; they were rebuilt by 2015.

Movement runs through the tradition. Soninke tradition remembers the dispersal from Wagadu after the departure or killing of the serpent Bida and the coming of drought; Soninke clans spread across the Sahel and down the Senegal and Niger, carrying the legend of Wagadu.

Maninka expansion after Sunjata carried Mande settlement westward. Tiramakan Traoré, Sunjata's general in many tellings, is remembered by the Mandinka as leading the movement to the Gambia region, where the kingdom of Kaabu later grew. The kora tradition developed in this western zone.

Dyula traders spread south and east, to Kong, Bobo-Dioulasso and the forest edge, building Muslim trading towns and carrying jeli praise and Mande speech.

War and slavery forced movement: the fall of Songhai, the Segu wars, the Atlantic slave trade and the 19th-century wars of Samori Touré.

What was carried: language, clan names, praise songs and the epic itself, adapted to each place. What changed: each region added its own heroes. Mandinka versions of Sunjata include Gambian lineages; Bamana Segu developed its own epic.

Islam is the great exchange. Muslim merchants and scholars came across the Sahara from the 8th century onward; rulers of Mali and Songhai converted, made pilgrimages and supported scholars. Timbuktu, Djenné and Gao became centres of Islamic learning, with Sankore as the most famous circle. Ahmad Baba al-Timbukti (1556–1627) is its most celebrated scholar.

The Mande response was absorption rather than replacement. Jeliw folded Islam into the epic: the Keita are traced to Bilal; Sunjata is a Muslim in some versions and a hunter-sorcerer in others; Islamic amulets and older protections coexist. Scholars note that early mansas observed Islam while also honouring older practices, as Ibn Battuta observed.

Other exchanges came with the Sahara trade, with Berber and Arab traders, with the Fulbe, whose Macina state shaped the 19th century, and with Wolof and Serer neighbours, whose own bards share practices with jeliw.

French colonisation brought schooling, writing in French and new audiences. Jeliw adapted to praise new patrons, including politicians and wealthy migrants, while keeping their genealogies and their claim to the founding age.

Yes. Jeliya is a living tradition across Mali, Guinea, Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Burkina Faso and Côte d'Ivoire, and the Songhai jesere still perform along the Niger.

Jeliw still perform at weddings, naming ceremonies and political events. The Kamabolon is still re-roofed every seven years at Kangaba with the Kéla recitation. The Kouyaté of Niagassola still keep the Sosso-Bala. Hunters' brotherhoods continue in many areas and gained new visibility in the 1990s and 2000s.

What has changed: patronage now comes from politicians, traders and migrants abroad as well as from noble lineages, and praise is broadcast on radio and television. Many jeliw are recording artists. Women singers have become stars. The long epic is told in full less often, while praise songs flourish.

What has been lost: some genealogical depth, as young jeliw focus on popular music; some initiatory traditions, reshaped by Islam and schooling. Conflict in northern and central Mali since 2012 has disrupted performance and endangered Timbuktu's manuscripts, many of which were moved to Bamako.

Contemporary practitioners include the Kouyaté, Diabaté, Kanté, Sissoko and Suso families.

Mande people were among those taken in the Atlantic slave trade, and scholars have long debated what survived. Some musicologists, including Gerhard Kubik, have argued for connections between West African savanna music, including Mande styles, and the blues of the American South; the strength of the link is debated. The banjo's ancestry is often traced to West African lutes, including the Mande ngoni and related instruments.

The Sunjata epic itself became a text of the African diaspora through Niane's 1960 version and its 1965 English translation, which is widely taught in schools and universities in the United States and Britain. Sundiata has entered African American and Caribbean literature and children's books.

In modern diasporas in Paris, New York, London and elsewhere, Malian, Guinean, Senegalese and Gambian communities hire jeliw for weddings and naming ceremonies, and jeliw travel to perform for them. Remittances from migrants are now a major source of jeli patronage.

Kora and balafon players have built careers abroad, teaching and performing, and new fusions have arisen in jazz, hip hop and world music.

After independence in 1960, the governments of Mali and Guinea made the Mande past a foundation of national identity. Mali took its name from the old empire. State ensembles such as the Ensemble Instrumental National du Mali and the Ballets Africains of Guinea gave jeliw national platforms.

Recording and research followed. Scholars and Malian institutions, including the Institut des Sciences Humaines in Bamako, recorded epics. Wa Kamissoko of Krina and Youssouf Tata Cissé worked together on Manden history, and conferences held in the 1970s brought jeliw and scholars together.

UNESCO recognition of the Sosso-Bala space (2001), and of the Kamabolon ceremony and the Manden Charter (2009), supported local custodians.

In Timbuktu, families and scholars, with the Ahmed Baba Institute and private libraries, have worked to conserve manuscripts, especially after 2012.

Musicians such as Toumani Diabaté, Kandia Kouyaté, Bassekou Kouyaté and Salif Keita, a Keita by lineage who became a singer, have carried the tradition to world audiences. Writers including Camara Laye and Massa Makan Diabaté have written it into literature.

What remains uncertain is much of the early history, which survives only through the oral record and a few Arabic sources.

For most Mande and Songhai people today, God (Ala) is the supreme being, and the epic is told within a Muslim frame. The older beings are named here as the published record gives them.

In Bamana cosmology as recorded by Germaine Dieterlen, Faro is the spirit of water and of the Niger, associated with order, rain and fertility; Pemba is associated with the earth and with the creation of the first beings; Musokoroni is a female power of disorder and creative energy. Amadou Hampâté Bâ wrote of Maa Ngala as the creator in Bamana and Fulbe tradition. These accounts depend on particular informants and have been debated.

Hunters honour Sanènè and Kontron, mother and son, patrons of the bush and of the hunt, invoked in hunters' songs.

Among the Soninke, Bida is the serpent of Wagadu, whose bargain with the kingdom brought gold and whose death brought ruin.

Among the Songhai, Dongo is the spirit of thunder and Harakoy Dikko the spirit of the Niger, central figures in holey possession.

Ritual protocols for these beings belong to their practitioners.

Jinn (jine, jinew) are the most widely recognised spirit type, accepted in both Islamic and older thought. They live in the bush, in trees, rocks, water and abandoned places. They can help, teach or harm; sorcerers and some jeliw are said to work with them, and many stories give heroes jinn helpers.

Bush spirits and animal powers are linked to nyama. A great animal killed by a hunter releases dangerous nyama that must be dealt with. The buffalo of Do, Sogolon's double, is such a power.

Water spirits live in the Niger and its pools; Faro is the chief among them in Bamana tradition.

Ancestral spirits are present through names, shrines and offerings.

Among the Songhai, the holey are organised into families: the Tooru (noble spirits of nature, including Dongo and Harakoy), the Genji Kwari (white spirits, Muslim clerics), the Genji Bi (black spirits of the soil), the Hargey (cold spirits of death) and the Hauka (spirits that mimic colonial officials), as Paul Stoller and Jean Rouch have described.

Rules of interaction are held by specialists.

The buffalo of Do (Du Kamissa in some tellings) is the most famous creature of the Sunjata epic. She ravages the land of Do until two hunter brothers, guided by an old woman who is the buffalo herself, kill her and receive as reward the woman Sogolon, who becomes Sunjata's mother.

Bida, the great serpent of Wagadu, demanded a maiden each year in exchange for gold and rain. When a young man killed it to save his betrothed, Wagadu suffered drought and its people scattered.

The ninkinanka, a dragon-like serpent, appears in Mandinka lore of the Gambia and Casamance, associated with swamps and great danger; accounts vary.

The lion, the hippopotamus, the cockerel and the crocodile appear in clan stories and tana: animals that saved or helped ancestors and are now forbidden to their descendants.

In the hunters' epic of Kambili, set in the time of Samori Touré, a sorcerer who takes the form of a lion threatens the land until the hunter Kambili kills him.

Sumanguru himself takes animal and other forms in battle in many tellings, slipping away from blows until his tana is used against him.

The Epic of Sunjata is the signature story. Its details vary by teller; this outline follows the widely shared core.

A hunter-diviner tells Naré Maghan Konaté, king of Manden, that he will marry an ugly woman who will bear a great king. Two hunter brothers kill the buffalo of Do and bring her human double, Sogolon, to the king. She bears Sunjata, who cannot walk. The king's first wife, Sassouma Bérété, mocks Sogolon. When the king dies, Sassouma's son Dankaran Tuman takes the throne.

Shamed when Sassouma refuses her baobab leaves, Sogolon weeps; Sunjata calls for an iron bar, rises on it, and uproots a baobab for his mother. Fearing him, Sassouma plots, and Sogolon takes her children into exile, to Mema.

Sumanguru of Sosso conquers Manden and takes Sunjata's jeli Balla Fasséké. Messengers find Sunjata, who returns with allies. Nana Triban, held by Sumanguru, learns his tana and escapes. At Kirina Sunjata's arrow tipped with a cockerel spur breaks Sumanguru's power; Sumanguru vanishes at Koulikoro. Sunjata gathers the clans and founds Mali.

The story shows destiny fulfilled through mother, sister, jeli and allies.

The destined king rises from weakness to rule: Sunjata, and later kings who claim his model.

The suffering mother carries her son's destiny through patience and humiliation: Sogolon. Her counterpart is the jealous co-wife, Sassouma Bérété, whose hostility drives the hero out.

The sister who wins knowledge, often by seduction or wit, is essential to victory: Nana Triban, and Kolonkan in some versions.

The jeli is adviser, memory and voice of the king: Balla Fasséké. His bond with his patron is the moral heart of the relationship between speech and power.

The sorcerer-king is powerful, cruel and finally vulnerable through his secret: Sumanguru.

The changing ally switches sides for honour: Fakoli, Sumanguru's nephew, who joins Sunjata after Sumanguru takes his wife.

The hunter-diviner reads destiny, knows the bush and appears at decisive moments.

The wild woman of power, half human and half animal: the buffalo of Do.

The general who extends the realm: Tiramakan Traoré.

In folktales, the clever youngest child and the trickster animal, often the hare, outwit the strong.

The Legend of Wagadu and Bida (Soninke). The kingdom of Wagadu receives gold and rain from the serpent Bida in exchange for a maiden each year. When the lot falls on the beloved of a young man, Mamadi Sefe Dekote in many versions, he kills the serpent. Its head flies off, gold appears where it lands, and Wagadu falls into drought and dispersal. Structure: a covenant, its breaking for love, and a fall that explains a people's scattering and the distribution of gold.

The Epic of Askia Muhammad (Songhai). As recorded by Thomas Hale from Nouhou Malio, it tells how Askia Muhammad, born of a union between his mother and a river spirit in some versions, overthrows the son of Sonni Ali and takes power. Structure: legitimacy explained through supernatural birth and Islamic piety; the usurper becomes rightful.

The Epic of Bamana Segu (Bamana). As told by Tayiru Banbera to David Conrad, it follows the founding of Segu by Biton Coulibaly and the wars of later kings, including Da Monzon. Structure: dynastic chronicle told in episodes, with praise, warfare and intrigue; it shows how a later state took up the Sunjata model of kingship and the jeli's place in it.

Titles: God; Allah

Domain: Supreme being in the Muslim frame within which most jeliw now tell the epics

In the stories: Invoked throughout Muslim tellings of the Sunjata epic; the Keita genealogy traced to Bilal

Notes: Most Mande and Songhai people are Muslim, and Ala stands above all other powers. Jeliw open and close performances with invocations of God. Older beings are understood by many as subordinate to God.

Titles: Master of all; creator

Domain: Creator in Bamana and Fulbe tradition as written by Amadou Hampâté Bâ

In the stories: Accounts of the creation of the world and of the first human, Maa, given the power of the word

Notes: Hampâté Bâ described Maa Ngala as the creator who gave speech to the first human. His account links the power of the word to creation. How widely it reflects Bamana belief is debated.

Titles: Spirit of the Niger; master of water

Domain: Water, rain, fertility, order, the Niger River

In the stories: Bamana creation accounts recorded by Germaine Dieterlen; Faro's ordering of the world after Pemba

Notes: In Dieterlen's Bamana cosmology Faro is the great water spirit who orders the world and is associated with the Niger. Offerings are made at river sites. Scholars debate the representativeness of Dieterlen's account.

Titles: Earth power; first being in some accounts

Domain: Earth, creation, the first living beings

In the stories: Bamana creation accounts recorded by Germaine Dieterlen; the rivalry of Pemba and Faro

Notes: Dieterlen's informants described Pemba as an early creative power associated with the earth and with a sacred tree. Pemba's relations with Faro and Musokoroni structure creation in this account. The account is not universal among Bamana communities.

Titles: Musokoroni Kundyé; the little old woman

Domain: Disorder, impurity, creative female energy, the bush

In the stories: Bamana creation accounts of her revolt and wandering; associated with the origins of disorder in the world

Notes: In Bamana accounts Musokoroni brings disorder by her actions, yet her energy is also generative. She is often linked to the origins of certain practices. Interpretations vary widely between scholars.

Titles: Sanin and Kontron; mother and son of the bush

Domain: The hunt, the bush, wild animals, the hunters' brotherhoods

In the stories: Hunters' songs and the founding stories of the donso brotherhood; invoked in the Kambili epic tradition

Notes: Sanènè and Kontron are the patrons of Maninka and Bamana hunters, invoked in their songs and rites. Youssouf Tata Cissé documented their place in the hunters' brotherhood. Their rites belong to the donso.

Titles: The serpent of Wagadu; Wagadu Bida

Domain: Gold, rain and the prosperity of Wagadu

In the stories: The Legend of Wagadu: the annual maiden, the killing of the serpent, the drought and dispersal

Notes: Bida protected Wagadu in exchange for a yearly offering. Its killing by a young man is told as the cause of the kingdom's fall. The legend is central to Soninke identity.

Titles: Spirit of thunder; one of the Tooru

Domain: Thunder, lightning, sky, justice

In the stories: Songhai and Zarma possession traditions recorded by Paul Stoller and Jean Rouch

Notes: Dongo is one of the most powerful holey spirits, belonging to the Tooru family. He punishes wrongdoers with lightning. Possession ceremonies call him in times of need.

Titles: Mother of the river; chief of the Tooru

Domain: The Niger River, water, fertility

In the stories: Songhai possession traditions; stories of her children among the holey; some tellings of Askia Muhammad's birth

Notes: Harakoy Dikko is the spirit of the Niger in Songhai tradition and mother of several Tooru spirits. She is honoured in possession ceremonies along the river. Accounts of her family vary by region.

Titles: Jine, jinew; djinn

Domain: Hidden beings of bush, water and abandoned places

In the stories: Helpers and adversaries of heroes and sorcerers throughout Mande epics and folktales

Notes: Jinn are recognised in both Islamic and older Mande thought. They can teach, aid or harm. Sorcerers and some specialists are said to work with them.