Griots at War: Conflict, Conciliation, and Caste in Mande.

Griots at War

Conflict, Conciliation, and Caste in Mande

Barbara G. Hoffman

Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. ix + 298 pp. b/w photographs, bibliography and index. $39.95 cloth.

Most readers are familiar with works dedicated to the role of the Mande griot as the performer of epic histories in West Africa. More recently, the term "griot" has been applied liberally to World Beat African musicians and even to storytellers and musicians in the Black Atlantic world. This new and contemporary use of "griot" clouds our understanding of jell (griot) and jeliya (griotness), in the Mande world. In her ethnography of Mande jeli, Hoffman refocuses our attention away from the current global use of "griot" and brings us firmly back into the Mande world. Through the lens of a recent griot war of succession, she demonstrates the ways that jeliya is firmly rooted in Mande social action and identity; in speech and its power and efficacy; and in history both ancient and modern.

In her prologue, Hoffman sets the stage for the book by describing the extensive preparations for travel to the Kita celebration by the Jabate family with whom she was affiliated. Ostensibly, the Kita celebration of 1995 took place for the installation of Makanjan Jabate as the new jelikuntigi, head griot of Kita, and the inauguration of a new griot hall. The event, however, was in fact an occasion to bring about the resolution of a war between Kita griot families over the right of succession. The event was played out in public, with Radio Television Mali recording the celebration, but the history of this conflict and the deeper meanings encoded in the speeches and performances given over a three-day period were not easily accessible to the wider audience. As a member of the Jabate delegation from Bamako, Hoffman participated in the event, recording and observing the many public speeches given during this celebration. For nearly a decade Hoffman analyzed both the language of the texts and their performances. Her unraveling of the polysemy of these speeches and the affective performative strategies of the speakers reveal much about the power of words in the Mande world. Her ethnography of the griot war gives us insights into a protracted social drama that had had real and serious consequences for the participants, involving rumors of death by sorcery and resulting in the dissolution of even long-standing marriages, leading to serious social ruptures within the community.

Her first chapter frames the ethnography in theoretical terms. She discusses the place of griots in Mande social organization and the complex relationship between nobles and griots in Mande society. She also introduces the distinctive performative dimensions of griot practices that define griot-ness for both jeli and non-jeli and which are still operative today. Throughout the next chapters she builds upon these framing concepts. In chapter 2 she examines the nature of Mande discourse, identifying forms associated with jeliya and performative strategies which involve extra-linguistic features such as volume, pitch, facial expression, body language, and the like. She discusses how speech in the Mande world is adjusted within a cultural framework that takes into account age, gender, social position, etc. Then, through an analysis of a speech given in Kita by Seku Jabate, a jell from Guinte, she demonstrates his mastery of form and performance affect and identifies the ways that he builds his argument for reconciliation within a specific Mande cultural frame that draws upon Mande history, social organization, and moral values.

In the next three chapters she focuses on the complex social dynamics between griots and nobles in Mande society, the crux of many debates in the literature on Mande society and the nature of Mande castes. By analyzing specific interactions between the visiting griot delegation and the noble authorities in Kita during the three days of the event, she demonstrates how the griot/noble relationship is played out through a series of speech events that reveal expectations both met and failed and that allude to tensions about legitimacy and the rights to speech that have arisen from colonial and postcolonial political histories.

The final chapter returns to a lengthy discussion of the anthropological definition of caste. She redefines caste in Mande terms and discusses this redefinition in relationship to anthropological literature that retheorizes caste in the Indian context. This is a well-written and engaging book with moments of high drama that pull the reader along through the analysis of the event. Hoffman speaks authoritatively to the issues of Mande caste, social identity, and history, Her focus on the Kita celebration demonstrates the specific ways that caste and caste identity is situationally created and maintained through speech and performance.

For students of Mande culture, Hoffman's study is a welcome addition to the literature on griots. Her analysis of the encoded messages within these texts and performances is rich in ethnographic detail and she provides the reader with the speech texts in both the original language and in translation. Her analysis of the performative strategies used by Mande jell suggests interesting parallels for the study of Mande visual arts and aesthetics. More broadly, her careful attention to performance offers insights for studies of oratorical forms and discursive practices elsewhere in Africa.