The musicians from West Africa have a millennium old history and they have witnessed many social, cultural and political changes .Their ability it adapt to change has seen them invent and re-invent music and its meanings numerous times in the past thousand years. This essay will concentrate on the musicians from the nations of Mali and Guinea while including references to other countries from the region of West Africa. Recordings will be referred to reinforce my points.
The people from West Africa are known as Mandé or Manding and their ancestry traces back to the Empire of Mali of 1235-1400. This ancient empire covered the geographical area that now includes the modern nations of Mali, Senegal, Guinea, Gambia, Ivory Coast, Guinea-Bissau, Burkina Faso, and south-eastern Niger. The musicians from this area are hereditary and are known by many names including, jelly, jelymuso, jelly, jail and griot. For clarity and consistency I will refer to the people from this region as Mandé and the musicians as jeli.
The hierarchical organization in Mandé society defines ones social rank and role. The caste system is complex. To keep it simple, three broader groups can be divided into the horo or the freeborn, the nyamakala or artisans and the Jon, the slaves. The jeli are musicians or verbal artists born into the caste of nyamakala. The jeli traditionally relied on patrons from wealthy and influential families to provide opportunities to perform musical duties, in the form of entertainment or as important participants at social ceremonies such as initiations or weddings. During this pre-colonial period the jeli were seen “as a person with unique social attributes which set him apart from either the horo or the jon.”
With the introduction of French colonial rule in the late 19th century the Jelis role in society was significantly altered. Most tribal leaders and chiefs were given positions in government and receive salaries for their work, this meant they could no longer afford to continue their traditional practice of patronizing the Jeli and their families in return for musical services, which had been the norm for centuries. This forced the Jeli to broaden their musical scope and widen their audience and they found instrumental music, more so than vocal performance, was a popular way of attracting a new audience and gaining new patrons.
The jeli tradition sees the role of women as singers and the men as instrumentalists. Vocalists are recognized not only by their singing ability but also their skills as improvisers and their knowledge of stories. These stories make up a large part of the repertoire and one of the roles of the jeli is to retain the history of the land and its people. These stories are often complex and told in a poetic fashion and they are known as epic narratives, an example is the story of Soundiata Keita. These timeless stories were often presented in a contemporary context known as narrativization , and the jelis would include their patrons or in post colonial times the political leaders, into the story.
There is a recorded example of two Mandinka jelis, Dembo Conteh and Pa Bobo Jobarteh on Kora telling the 200 year old story of the warrior prince Kelefa Saane which interestingly includes a spoken word section in English.
When exploring the instruments of West-Africa, it must be noted that the Sachs-Hornbostel system of classifying instrument has some limitations as many Mandé instruments have a combination of characteristics of the idiophones(percussive),chordophone(string) and membranophones(skin drums). The moolo is a one string plucked lute.It is not known for certain, but imaging instruments evolved from very simple to more complex designs, the moolo is probably the first chordophone (stringed instrument) in this region and it was commonly used in hunting and occult ceremonies. In a field recording of Sarjo Baldeh , the moolo can be heard making a number of different sounds ,not limited to the sound of a plucked strung, but including percussive sounds such as hits and scratching. This is an example of the difficulties in classifying these ancient instruments under the Sachs-Hornbostel system. The three-string bolon is a plucked harp associated with the songs of war and used in funeral ceremonies. The ngoni is a four or five string lute used by the jeli to accompany their vocal songs and stories. The ngoni is recognized as the ancestor to the banjo. The first banjos in North America were fretless, as is the ngoni, and both instruments have a drum resonating chamber, which again places the ngoni and the banjo into the two classification groups of chordophone(string) and membranophone (skin). The two instruments also share the same number of strings with the drone string strung closest to the player. North American banjo virtuoso Bela Fleck visited West Africa to explore the roots of the banjo, during his trip he recorded the album Throw Down Your Heart which features collaborations with the artists from Mali and other West African countries, including Oumou Sangare, the legendary kora player Toumani Diabate, and ngoni master Bassekou Kouyate.
The twenty-one string kora has characteristics of the lute, such as its neck which joins the body with strings running parallel to the neck. These strings are strung perpendicular to the bridge which is characteristic of the harp, which is why the kora is sometimes referred to as a “harp-lute” or “bridge-harp”. The body is made from a large gourd with a circular sound hole cut into it. Despite conjecture over which instrument was the first in West Africa, the kora is the most recent Mandé chordophone, tracing its creation back 300 years. The kora has become an icon of West African music and culture and has been represented on postage stamps and used as a symbol of Africa. In recent time a small number of kora virtuouso such as Toumani Diabate have become known internationally especially through collaborations with artists such as Bela Fleck and Ali Farka Touré. The 2005 Grammy Award winning album by Toumani Diabate and Ali Farka Touré In The Heart of The Moon features duets of kora and guitar.
Other instruments that are commonly played by the jeli are the Né an iron bell played by women, and the balo or balafon a wooden framed xylophone usually with nineteen slats.
Independence from French colonial rule came first to Guinea in 1958 and over the next decade other West African nations gained their independence. There was a rapid shift away from western culture and the new governments quickly began promoting indigenous art and culture. New cultural policies were put into place by these governments. In Guinea the new President Sékou Touré banned radio stations from playing foreign music and within the first weeks of independence a national system of Regional Orchestras was created. Jeli were included in these orchestras not only for their high level of musicianship , but also to act as mentors and teachers to younger musicians and also their knowledge of the indigenous repertoire and history was essential as this followed the mandate laid out by President Sékou Touré. These Regional Orchestras were to perform traditional songs as well as new compositions which included strong indigenous references.
New musical instruments were purchased from abroad and distributed to musicians in the orchestras formed in towns and cities throughout Guinea. One of the principal instrumnetns of these orchestras was the electric guitar and groups such as Bembeya Jazz, Syli National Orchestra and Balla et ses Balladidins featured as many as 3 or 4 guitarists in each group. Some of these guitarists such as Sekou ”Docteur” Diabaté and Kerfala “Papa” Diabaté became very influential in their ability to combine ancient Mandé melodies and rhythms and blend them with the modern sounds of the orchestras.”
‘The proliferation of the jeli names like Diabaté, Kouyaté and Kanté among musicians in this region indicates the predominance of jeli tradition in the music.’ Across the boarder in Mali similar cultural programmers were being instigated, with the formation of national orchestras including Les Ambassadeurs and The Rail Band of Bamako.
The guitar had been accepted by the jeli in the early 20th century when it is thought the guitar found its way to Guinea after World War I .A photograph from 1949 of a jeli ensemble in the town of Kela, shows the guitar together with the balafon which indicates the the jeli were including the guitar as part of their ensembles. With the introduction of the electric guitar in the National Orchestras the jeli adapted the sounds and techniques of the traditional instruments such as the kora, balo and ngoni and recreated the traditional melodies and rhythms. One of the ways the jeli imitaded the sounds of traditional instruments was by essentially using the same right hand picking technique of thumb and index finger,which plays both up and down strokes the same way as the right hand plays the ngoni and kora.
As private bands were forbidden to play ,the jeli playing in state sponsored bands were now employed by the government and in effect the government was their new patron and the jeli maintained relationship with the government as it had previously with the French colonizers and the pre-colonialism tribal leaders. This relationship became strained during the 1960s as both Mali and Guinea evolved into one-party socialist states. Jeli who were living in urban centers and playing in national orchestras were encouraged to sing praise songs on behalf of the ruling party. Being employees of the state the jeli had little choice but to continue lauding praise on their patrons, especially so in Guinea where dissent was not permitted and the government enforced this law by imprisoning and executing dissenters, it was during this period that a quarter of the population fled Guinea. The national orchestras continued praising the President and sung of the happiness of the people and country.
The public became tired of praise songs on behalf of the government and the public knew that jelis were employed by the government and the wider audience in both urban and rural areas became more difficult to convince that the presidential family ancestry and prestige was rightful and valid.
It was during this difficult political period in the 1970s that jeli song becomes a source of criticism towards the government. Some jeli were very skilled at creating songs with double meanings which subtly mocked the political powers. In both Mali and Guinea certain jeli songs were banned from radio airplay as the governments were ‘well aware of their critical potential’ In 1991 the first organized democratic elections took place in Mali, but the change in political regime has done little to change the publics skeptical view towards government. The jeli have found it difficult to add legitimacy to politicians through traditional songs and stories and jeli praise song was very unpopular during the 1990s.
A new movement of music has become successful not only in West Africa but also internationally, Wassoulou music. These musicians are not born of a caste and are free to sing about anything they like. Oumou Sangaré has become an internationally known Wassoulou musician, these new musicians are not tied to old traditions and don’t sing praise songs. This has created a new musical landscape in Mandé music and in all countries where jeli traditions exists there remains a division in public opinion regarding their relationship with the political rulers of the day. Some jeli are starting to distance themselves from their tradition roles as oral historians, genealogists and praise singers, and today ‘most jeli regard themselves primarily as singer or instrumentalists.’
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