National Geographic Music (National Geographic)

In 1235, a Mande warrior king named Sunjata Keita rose to power in what is now western Mali. So began the Mande Empire (Also called Malian or Manding Empire), a 200-year period of peace and prosperity that united many smaller kingdoms and ethnic groups in an organized system of farming and trade that stretched from West Africa's southern coast to the northern reaches of the Sahara Desert.

Sunjata's reign also crystallized the status of Mande griots—traditional musicians, negotiators, praise singers and historians. Griot is a general term, but among the Mande these artists are more precisely termed jalis, jelis or djelis depending on the local dialect. This proud history and tradition lives on for substantial Mande populations in seven contemporary nations: Mali, Guinea, Gambia, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, and Guinea Bissau, with smaller communities in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Niger and elsewhere. Although languages, musical practices, and social realities vary from community to community, Mande people share much in common, beginning with a reverence for history preserved and remembered through the music of griots. When a griot sings the lineage of a noble patron, custom dictates that the patron must pay, and the sight of a griot singer holding forth amid a shower of banknotes volunteered by listeners is common throughout the Mande lands of West Africa.

Late in the Sunjata epic, Sunjata's griot is kidnapped by a sinister Soso king, but manages to enchant him by daring to play a song on the king's balafon, a wooden xylophone. Because of this, the balafon is the touchstone instrument for Mande griots. The classical core of Mande music, language and culture is Maninka culture, most strongly represented in Mali and Guinea. The balafon remains the preferred traditional instrument for Maninka musicians in Guinea, and singing stars from that country such as Sekouba Bambino Diabaté continue to feature the instrument even in modern ensembles. In Mali, the most revered exponents of Maninka culture are women singers (jelimusow) such as Ami Koita and Kandia Kouyate. Male singers, including Kasse Mady Diabaté and superstar Salif Keita (who is not actually a griot), also propound Mali's Maninka heritage. The music is often lively and features dance but it also maintains the august seriousness of Maninka classical heritage, especially among the vocalists. Few singers in the world can match their force and grandeur. Over time, artists in Mali have come to favor the spike lute, known locally as ngoni, over the balafon. However, Mali certainly has produced superb Mande balafonists, notably Keletigui Diabaté.

Aside from Maninka, there are two other broad subdivisions of Mande culture in West Africa: Bamana and Mandinka. The Bamana, mostly found in Mali, were famed for resisting Islam, and their music reflects a history of separateness. It uses a five-note minor scale, not unlike the blues scale, and very different from the florid seven-note scale favored in Maninka and Mandinka music. In the early years of Malian independence, Banzoumana Sissoko, cradling his large ngoni and holding forth with epic songs, peppered with history and proverbial wisdom, presented the essence of the Bamana griot. In the free-flowing world of Malian popular music, Bamana and Maninka have often converged, both in traditional and popular contexts. Mandinka culture is centered in Gambia and Senegal. It tends to favor male singers accompanied less often by the balafon and the ngoni, and more by the 21-string bridge harp called kora. Gambian kora players such as Foday Musa Suso, Dembo Konté and Kausu Kouyaté have gained worldwide reputations. The most famous Malian kora player, Toumani Diabaté, traces his own roots back to Gambia. His work provides a fascinating example of how Mande music varies from location to location. Malian kora playing tends to be serene and introspective, whereas Sene-Gambian players generally drive the rhythm more aggressively.

Mande music is vast and deep, but all its many subcategories and variants share a sense of pride and profound rootedness in history. Contemporary Mande musicians often demonstrate their respect, knowledge and versatility by performing music from other branches of the great Mande tree. Malian kora player Mamadou Diabaté always includes a Gambian, Mandinka piece in his concerts and recordings. Guitarist Djelimady Tounkara's work—both with the electric Super Rail Band and in his various acoustic projects—amounts to a virtual master class on Mande culture and history writ large. Tounkara believes that Mande instrumental music, with its emphasis on improvising, contains the seeds of American jazz. Certainly the two genres are richly compatible. Whether it's the instrumental virtuoso of a balafon, ngoni or kora player, or the gale-force vocal of a modern day praise singer, Mande music remains a force not only in West African music but also throughout the world.

Today, young griots find resonances between their ancestral art and the era's most fashionable music: rap. Reminding us that griots were once prized as truth-tellers, not only praise singers, the Malian rap group Les Escrocs appropriates the international sound and turns it into an extension of their Mande heritage. —Banning Eyre (Afropop Worldwide)