Some, like Kouyate, play a xylophone-like instrument called the balafon.
Stein joined Kouyate, who had relocated to America, in a journey back toMaliand Guinea.
These chroniclers, as anyone who read Alex Haleys bookRootsmay remember, are called griots in English.
El Hadji Sékou Kouyaté, Balla’s father, playing the Sossa-Bala in 2017Ursula Branscheid / CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69778989)
But in the Mandinka language of West Africa, they are known asdjelis.
Remarkably, the original balafon that Sundiata first bestowed to Kouyate eight centuries ago still exists.
Balla still lives in the U.S., but his situation is quite different these days.
Within 30 minutes of hitting send, I received a call from a number I didnt recognize.
I had no way of knowing at the time, but Ballas life had recently been overshadowed by grief.
She was also instrumental in his success.
One of the reasons for this is that the Mali Empire was a notoriously secretive place.
In fact, only one first-hand written account of it exists.
And while the balafon may be the most famous djeli instrument, its far from the only one.
Women can also be djelis and usually specialize in singing historical narratives.
But Balla didnt just want to back up other artists; he wanted to do his own thing.
With one balafon, you have seven notes.
For the first hour, Balla played traditional djeli music.
In our culture, no one had ever played two balafons.
He thought it was out of line.
But when I explained it to him, he started to accept it.
I said, Dad, I dont just want to keep this tradition alive.
I want to bring it to more of the world.
But as Toure famously said, This music has been taken from here [Mali].
I play traditional music, and I dont know what the blues is.
Only the djeli knows that history, and the Kouyates are the original djeli.
They preserve the collective memory of our people.
If we lose them, we lose the history of our culture.
Eliot Steinis a journalist at the BBC.
