Griot
storyteller of oral tradition in West Africa
A griot (; French: [ɡʁi.o]; Manding: jali or jeli (in N'Ko: ߖߋ߬ߟߌ, djeli or djéli in French spelling); also spelt Djali; Serer: paar or kevel or kewel / okawul; Wolof: gewel) is a West African historian, storyteller, praise singer, poet, and/or musician. Griots are masters of communicating stories and history orally, which is an African tradition.
Instead of writing history books, oral historians tell stories of the past that they have memorized. Sometimes there are families of historians, and the oral histories are passed down from one generation to the next. Telling a story out loud allows the speaker to use poetic and musical conventions that entertain an audience. This has contributed to many oral histories surviving for hundreds of years without being written down.
Through their storytelling, griots preserve and pass on the values of a tribe or people, such as the Senegalese. The Wolof people in Senegal depend on griots to learn about their culture.
The griot is a repository of oral tradition and is often seen as a leader due to their position as an advisor to members of the royal family. As a result of the former of these two functions, they are sometimes called bards.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Griot” is storyteller of oral tradition in West Africa. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Griot, storyteller and oral, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q511054. The Library of Congress control number is sh95000901. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Griot” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.