| 释义 |
griot|ˈgriːəʊ|
[a. Fr. (17th. cent.), of uncertain ulterior etym.]
A member of a class of travelling poets, musicians, and entertainers in North and West Africa, whose duties include the recitation of tribal and family histories; an oral folk-historian or village story-teller, a praise-singer.
1820tr. G. Mollien's Trav. Interior Afr. p. viii, Explanation of certain terms, employed in Africa... Griot, public singer. 1906F. B. Archer Gambia Colony i. ii. 33 In most of the towns the head chiefs have a band of musicians and dancing women known as ‘Griots’. 1935G. Gorer Africa Dances i. iv. 55 The griots form a special caste... They are outcasts... Griots are by tradition attached to families. 1968M. A. Klein Islam & Imperialism in Senegal 10 The griots were the historians, the genealogists, the musicians, and the praise-sayers. 1978J. Updike Coup (1979) vii. 273 The one robe in which I would always be clothed, even in death, as long as the griots could sing my ancestry. 1983Spectator 28 May 20/3 Charters was introduced to several griots, the troubadours of West Africa, who played for him on strange tribal versions of the fiddle, banjo and xylophone. |