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In West Africa, written history is something new. African history was written in European languages during the colonial era beginning in the late 1800s, and has been around in Arabic for centuries. But societies in the Sahel and Savanna regions of West Africa have long kept their own history, in their own languages, orally, in the form of epics.

Imagine relying on someone's memory to hold your people's history. In many parts of West Africa, this job is carried out by the griot.

Griots—masters of words and music, Tom Hale calls them in his book, Griots and Griottes—have been around for a millennium. Over time, the griots' function has changed as society evolved. Once, the male griots and female griottes were historians, genealogists, advisers to nobility, entertainers, messengers, praise singers—the list goes on. Today, they perform on television and radio and record CDs. Many are popular singers who reinterpret traditional songs, giving new meaning to old words—"time binding," Hale calls it. As performers, griots and griottes are in great demand, not only for ceremonies and parties in West Africa, where they have traditionally appeared, but all around the world. Here in the United States, they tour universities to give insight into West African culture. In a performance at Penn State in 1978, griotte Dionton Tounkara and her husband, Sekou Kouyaté performed a praise song naming some of the people in the audience, including Hale, who had invited the group.