griotn.
/ˈɡriːəʊ/, U.S. /ˈɡrioʊ/, West African English /ˈɡrio/, /ˈɡriɔt/ 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.
ΘΚΠ
society > leisure > the arts > music > musician > [noun] > caste of musicians > member of
griot1820
kathak1959
society > leisure > the arts > literature > poetry > poet > poet by kind of poem > [noun] > praise poet
praiser1836
praise poet1935
praise-reciter1935
mbongo1948
griot1968
1820 tr. G.-T. Mollien Trav. Interior Afr. p. viii Explanation of certain terms, employed in Africa... Griot, public singer.
1906 F. 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’.
1935 G. Gorer Afr. Dances i. iv. 55 The griots form a special caste... They are outcasts... Griots are by tradition attached to families.
1968 M. A. Klein Islam & Imperialism in Senegal 10 The griots were the historians, the genealogists, the musicians, and the praise-sayers.
1978 J. 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.
1983 Spectator 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.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1989; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
<
n.1820