Word: griot
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...believe it? We took the Feb. 14 issue of TIME dealing with Roots across the Gambia River into Juffure. The village griot, or storyteller, has died, but the family picture was enjoyed by all: Binta Kinte, Karafa Kinte, Fatou Kinte, Kebba Madi Kinte, Demba Kinte, Yusupha Kinte, Yaya Kinte...
Without doubt, the medium had much to do with the impact of the message. Haley learned about his earliest ancestors from an elderly Gambian griot (storyteller), a living repository of oral history who sat him down in the tiny village of Juffure and recited for him the centuries-old saga of his West African clan dating back seven generations to the warrior Kunta Kinte. Modern Americans learned about Haley's lineage in much the same way?huddled in a semicircle in their living rooms around that electronic-age griot, the television...
Haley's genealogical search took him back to West Africa. In Gambia he encountered an aged griot-a, tribal oral historian-who traced Haley's lineage back centuries before Kunta Kinte was snatched by slavers in 1767. The emotional impact of hearing his forebears named cannot be overestimated. Roots' opening section, a fictionalization of Kunta's birth, Moslem upbringing and manhood rites, have a vividness of detail that only the impassioned imagination can provide. Consider this for example...