The griots and their instruments

Abstract

On the whole, it seems that West African musicians’ castes, known as grios and others, used several types of instruments, depending on the function and the social stratum to which they provided musical services. The cora harp-lute, used for epic performances, was used for vocal accompaniment, as were lutes and, earlier, bow harps. Balaphones and fidulas had a strong sacred background, and the use of the flute may have been typical of village griot musicians, so it is not considered to be one of the griot instruments. The original function of the various types of drums, such as the hourglass, the long and the funnel drum, was to provide musical accompaniment to public histories, official announcements and poems praising important people, and then, as a result of social changes, they became the accompaniment for increasingly profane ceremonial events in Africa and, in world music, typically the accompaniment for stage dances. This latter development can also be explained by the fact that Western public opinion tends to identify the music of sub-Saharan Africa with drums. Related to this, the use of the jjembe is the only instrument among the griot instruments that has spread outside Africa, because as a multicultural instrument it has become an iconic instrument of various ideologies such as pan-Africanism, the Black Lives Matter movement or other movements linked to globalism.