Traditional African Storytelling?

Question:i'm trying to find some sites that teach about how africans used to tell stories and how they tell stories today- and how they connect with the culture and stuff, i'm pretty sure everything was passed down orally.. but anyway - some links would be nice

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: i'm trying to find some sites that teach about how africans used to tell stories and how they tell stories today- and how they connect with the culture and stuff, i'm pretty sure everything was passed down orally.. but anyway - some links would be nice

The ancient West African profession of griots and griottes -- individuals who orally pass on history -- can be traced back nearly 1,000 years, yet these esteemed historians-musicians are thriving and expanding their audiences, with the help of modern technology such as the Internet and communications satellites.

"Widely popularized by Alex Haley's narrative 'Roots,' griots are best known outside Africa for genealogy and musical performances," said Thomas Hale, professor of African, French and comparative literature. "But over the centuries, they have performed a variety of important functions for African rulers and communities -- providing advice, serving as a spokesperson, reporting news and praise-singing -- that served as a social glue for African societies.

"No profession in any other part of the world is charged with such wide-ranging and intimate involvement in the lives of the people," he said. "What distinguishes griots from poets in the Western tradition is that the speech of these African wordsmiths combines both poetic art and, in many cases, a much less clearly defined occult power that listeners respect and sometimes fear. This verbal art ranges from short praise songs for people in society today to long epics about heroes of the past." They are in demand not only for performances before expatriate African communities in the United States and Europe, but also before audiences hungry for world culture and music.

"Griots may be vehicles for conveying the past to the present, but they are no more locked into traditional technology than the blacksmith who discovers welding or the weaver who adopts color-fast thread," he said. "Where it suits their needs, many griots have embraced modern technology without hesitation.

The traditional nature of the profession masks an inherent adaptability that has enabled griots to survive for so many centuries through the political phases of colonialism, independence and neocolonialism as well as the many waves of Islamic and Western cultural influences that continue to sweep across the Sahel and Savanna regions today,

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Search "Roots" by Alex Hailey or his bio. Hailey used his journey to Gambia to connect to one of his African slave ancestors. He listened to weeks worth of traditional oral histories before hearing the same story that was passed down in his family. The Story was of Kunta Kinte a young man that went searching for a hollow log to make a drum for his little brother and was never heard from again. Hailey's family tradition said that Kunta Kinte was captured while looking for a log to make a drum for his little brother.

“Traditionally, Africans have revered good stories and storytellers, as have most past and present peoples around the world who are rooted in oral cultures and traditions. Ancient writing traditions do exist on the African continent, but most Africans today, as in the past, are primarily oral peoples, and their art forms are oral rather than literary. In contrast to written "literature," African "orature" (to use Kenyan novelist and critic Ngugi wa Thiong’o's phrase) is orally composed and transmitted, and often created to be verbally and communally performed as an integral part of dance and music. The Oral Arts of Africa are rich and varied, developing with the beginnings of African cultures, and they remain living traditions that continue to evolve and flourish today.”