Music of Mali: people of speech ep.1/2

A documentary directed by Bruno Maïga, Djingarey Maiga, Jean-François Schiano.

Synopsis

In a very graded tra­di­tional soci­ety, the griot belongs to seper­ate caste, the Nya­makalas, sit­u­ated between the Nobles and Cap­tives. He was attached to a noble­man and his fam­ily and he was the one who could express what the Noble­man could not: the griot sung his praises and inter­vened in his buis­ness, he was the mas­ter of speech. Because of this posi­tion, he was the cus­to­dian of tra­di­tions and of the his­tory of his peo­ple. In these soci­eties of oral cul­ture, gri­ots handed down from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion up till now, the geneal­ogy and the deeds of famous peo­ple of the Malien past. But with the arrival of colo­nial­ism and is inter­est in profit, tra­di­tional val­ues changed. Those who are Noble today are the weathly ones, and the mod­ern griot has fol­lowed this evolution .