Mali’s Storytellers
BAMAKO, Mali — I had been waiting close to an hour for my coffee date when I ran into the colonel. Like many of Bamako’s power brokers, the 50-something officer, who is a friend, often conducts business on the broad terrace of the Lebanese café where we met. He always wears spotless gowns of the richest fabric and expensive European cologne.
I mentioned that I was waiting to meet a griot, a traditional storyteller. His boyish, bulging eyes were suddenly defiant.
‘‘We don’t have griots anymore. Not us. We left that behind,’’ the colonel said, smirking.
She emerged from a taxi, spotted me, and advanced toward our table, squinting at the colonel. To my surprise, they embraced as old friends. He blushed as she sat down and took sudden control of the table, speaking loudly, blessing him, reminding him of shared history.
Her griot family, it turned out, has presided over his family’s weddings, baptisms and funerals for hundreds of years, praising, representing, serenading and chastising the colonel’s noble relatives. He submitted to her, putting cash in her hands and speaking by telephone with her griot father, who took the occasion to remind him of some grievance his family had committed against the community 70 years ago.
As the griot and I left for our meeting, the colonel seemed relieved to see us go.
From birth, Malian griots are taught how to flatter the wealthy and mend social ruptures. From domestic disputes to wars between clans, the griot calms tempers, tames egos, and enjoys immunity. Several years back, when a fight between farmers and nomads in Mali and Guinea erupted into armed conflict, griots from both countries held a summit meeting that produced a resolution.
Perhaps the current crisis in Mali — more than six months ago the northern two-thirds of the country were seized by Qaeda-linked Islamists who are imposing a violent form of Shariah — might benefit from the soft touch of the griot?
Also known in Bamanakan as nyamakalas (handlers of the forces that sculpt the universe), griots proved indispensable in resolving earlier rebellions in the north, says Oumar Tidiane Soumano, the well-connected griot who is president of the Network of Traditional Communicators (known by its French acronym Recotrade). Between meetings with assorted government ministers who depend upon his counsel, he welcomed me to his modest mud-colored office in Bamako, wearing fashionable sunglasses and a black fez.
Recently, when the country’s more than 70 political parties were split between backing two interim leaders after the March coup d’état, he and other top griots mediated a political consensus.
Griots worship peace and seek social harmony above all else. But there are times when only war will do. Soumano believes the current crisis exceeds his vaunted capacities as a peacemaker. For him, the circumstances call for an outside military intervention:
‘‘Mali is not in a conventional war, a war between states — these are bandits who came with their ideas to attack Mali. They came, they killed women, they killed children.’’
He said Mali desperately needs help from the United Nations, the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States.
Islamists in the north and in the south (where a conservative Bamako-based Islamist movement is rapidly strengthening) may pose a threat to the precarious balance griots maintain between tradition and modernity. Islamists are shelling, either with arms, politics or the pulpit, against secularism and animism. Griots, although situated within a local Islamic tradition, are deeply linked to animist beliefs and practices, which are anathema to strict Islamists.
‘‘The nyamakala is the barometer and the spokesperson of the society,’’ says Soumano. ‘‘He is like a fuse. For the electricity to pass, you need a fuse.’’
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