Oral storytelling transmits the echoes of ancestors across generations. African oral tradition has played a pivotal role in preventing the erasure of stories and bloodlines, resonating through history, parables and poetry. Keren Lasme (she/her) shares how oral traditions combine with her practice researching, documenting and uplifting our griots.
This article features in The Quick + The Brave Journal 003: ‘Advocates + Allies’ out February 2025.
Pre-order yours from our shop on Ko-Fi from Monday 27 January.
Hi listener, it’s Keren here.
I hope you are well and safe wherever you are listening in. I am currently in Abidjan and I’m recording this thought piece from my home. It’s early in the evening, the soundscape of the night is being activated and, of course, crickets are already chirping in the background.
So before I start this reflection on African oral tradition, I’d like to open the space with the following invitation.
It is a way for me to kind of continue the practice of transmission and the passing down of knowledge from generation to generation.
If you wish to know who I am
If you wish me to teach you what I know
Cease for the while to be what you are
And forget what you know

Listen in to Keren’s reflections on oral tradition
This is a humble invitation that travelled the early 1900s until now to find its way through my voice from Fulfulde to French and from French to English.
It is an invitation from Tierno Bokar, a Malian mystic and spiritual leader known as the Sage of Bandiagara. These words were collected by his student at the time who was Amadou Hampâté Bâ, one of the greatest African thinkers of the twentieth century who contributed immensely to the preservation of the collective memory of Africa.
Now, what comes to your mind when you hear African oral tradition?
I can imagine that you might be thinking about griot, stories, legends, fables, myths, proverbs, historical tales like the epic of Sundiata Keita who was the founder of The Mali Empire. You might also be thinking about kora music, songs, wisdom, and ancestral knowledge.
All these are of course part of African oral tradition but they are not oral tradition in itself – in the same way that the griot is not the only custodian of this tradition. It is actually a widespread misconception created by early European interpreters. That being said, please don’t forget about these imageries but I am going to ask you to put them aside for a while as I attempt to offer other layers as taught to me by Amadou Hampâté Bâ to whom I am a student and whom I would like to reintroduce.

Amadou Hampâté Bâ was a Malian historian, ethnologist, diplomat, writer, storyteller, poet, mystic, collector and translator of oral texts. He is famously known for having said during the UNESCO General Conference in Paris in 1960 that “in Africa, when an old man dies, it is a library that is burning”.
I remember back in 2020, when we were allowed to leave our houses again, I used to go on long evening strolls around Brixton where I used to live and listen to Amadou Hampâté Bâ’s teachings as part of my research in African Literatures and literary arts.
So while I was listening to his wise words, he was actually initiating me into what we call African oral tradition which he refers to as the great school of life, a living tradition of embodied knowledge in which orality – that is to say the spoken word – is the prime technology used for transmission due to its divine origins, its high vibrations, and its creative and mystical powers.
In other words, orality is a sacred methodology used to pass down knowledge from generation to generation since time immemorial. So according to traditionalists, those who are Master Initiates like Amadou Hampâté Bâ, whose teachings come from the Bambara and Fulfulde traditions of West Africa, oral tradition is “total knowledge”.
It is the practical science of life, it is cosmic genesis, it is medicine, astrology, psychology, spirituality, philosophy, craftsmanship, alchemy, occult sciences and so on. The great repositories of this oral heritage, holders of a prodigious memory, who are required to be impeccable with their words are the traditionalists. They are also known as the knowers, the makers of knowledge who are called ‘domas’, ‘salatiquis’ and ‘nyamakala’ in Bambara and Fulani languages. Their knowledge, exoteric and esoteric is complete, it is embodied in their entire being.
I am going to illustrate my words by reading an extract from ‘The Living Tradition’, an article written by Amadou Hampâté Bâ and published in 1981 in ‘Methodology and African Prehistory’. This extract speaks about the weaver who is a traditionalist belonging to the nyamakala group, the group of craftsmen.

The extract says:
“…the weaver’s craft is linked with the symbolism of the creative Word deploying itself in time and space. A man who is a weaver by caste (a ‘maabo’, among the Fulani) is the repository of the secrets of the thirty-three pieces that are basic to the loom, each of which has a meaning. The frame, for example, is made up of eight main pieces of wood: four vertical ones that symbolise not only the four mother elements (earth, water, air, fire) but the four main points of the compass, and four transverse ones that symbolise the four collateral points.
“The weaver, placed in the middle, represents primordial Man, Maa, at the heart of the eight directions of space. With his presence, we obtain nine elements which recall the nine fundamental states of existence, the nine classes of being, the nine openings of the body (gates of the forces of life) and the nine categories of men among the Fulani.
“Before beginning work the weaver must touch each piece of the loom, pronouncing words or litanies that correspond to the forces of life embodied in them. The movement of his feet to and fro as they go up and down to work the pedals recalls the original rhythm of the creative Word, linked with the dualism of all things and the law of cycles. His feet are supposed to speak as follows:
“Fonyonko! Fonyonko! Dualism! Dualism!
“ When one goes up, the other goes down.
There is the death of the king and the coronation of the prince,
the death of the grandfather and the birth of the grandson,
quarrels over divorce commingled with the sound of
a marriage feast . . .
For its part, the shuttle says:
I am the barque of Fate.
I pass between the reefs of the threads of the
warp that stand for Life.
From the right bank I pass to the left,
unreeling my intestine [the thread]
to contribute to the fabric.
And then again from the left bank I pass to the right,
unreeling my intestine.
Life is a perpetual to and fro,
a permanent giving of the self.
The strip of cloth accumulating and winding around a stick
resting on the weaver’s belly represents the past, while the reel of thread still to be woven, unwound, symbolizes the mystery of tomorrow, the unknown what- is-to-be.
The weaver always says: ‘ Oh tomorrow! Hold no unpleasant surprise in store for me.’
“In all, the weaver’s work represents eight movements to and fro (movements of his feet, his arms, the shuttle and the rhythmic crossing of the thread of the fabric) that correspond to the eight pieces of wood in the loom-frame and the eight legs of the mythical spider which taught its science to the weavers’ ancestor.”

When it comes to other repositories of African oral tradition, we have the ‘dielis’, commonly known as griots. They are musicians, ambassadors and genealogists who are masters of speech, music, lyrical poetry and tales. They mostly circulate in the public sphere.
Their name ‘dieli’ means blood in Bambara. They are responsible for the health and illness of the society depending on their use of words. They have the right to have two tongues meaning they have total freedom of speech, they can embellish stories, be shameless with their words and even lie to protect someone if need be therefore, they are not always traditionalists but can become one if they go through initiation therefore choosing to never abuse their customary rights.
They then become ‘dieli-faama’ meaning ‘dieli-kings’.
So these are some aspects of African oral tradition. But what do they mean in our contemporary context?
How do we use knowledge and practice knowing?
How do we treat knowledge?
How do we remember?
What is our relationship with the words we utter in our everyday?
How true are we to our words?
How committed are we to them and how much sacredness, value and respect do we assign to them?
Knowing that the creative forces within us are set in motion through speech and that thoughts become sound then words, how do we use our voices? How do we use the spoken word as a technology for world building and world making?
Oral tradition teaches us that listening is as important as speaking so how do we practise silence and active listening?
It also encourages us to become teachers at some point in life while remaining students. There is a proverb that says “He who knows that he doesn’t know will know and he who doesn’t know that he doesn’t know won’t know”. I believe that passing down knowledge is the duty of a generation and a gift to the next one so that they come to understand and embody the ways of life.
These are questions I attempt to answer inside my art and research practices but also in my life. There are no separations.
Oral tradition is the great school of life, and life is an initiation itself.

I am a student of life, we are all students of life. When we are protesting, chanting or doing advocacy work, we are inside the practice of oral tradition. We are embodying our values and using our words to conjure the kind of justice we want our society to embody.
When we are organising our community, caring for one another and making art, we are participating in life inside the practice of oral tradition. Our every gesture, movement, and action are vibrational languages that re-establish order so we can continue the work of creation.
When we behave like our great-grandmothers, or cite and make references to Bessie Head, Suzanne Césaire, Brenda Fassie, Maryse Condé and Sobonfu Somé, we are inside the practice of oral tradition, we are acknowledging our elders and continuing their legacy.
I am going to close this thought piece and leave you with a quote from one of my favourite books ‘In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens’ written by Alice Walker.
“We are a people. A people do not throw their geniuses away. And if they are thrown away, it is our duty as artists and as witnesses for the future to collect them again for the sake of our children, and if necessary, bone by bone.”

This article features in The Quick + The Brave Journal 003: ‘Advocates + Allies’ out February 2025.
Pre-order yours from our shop on Ko-Fi from Monday 27 January.
Follow Keren Lasme: @angnm__
Follow Meeting Our Griots: @meeting.our.griots