Output details

2 film DVDs: Da kali – the pledge to the art of the griot; and Do farala a kan: something has been added. Growing into music in Mali. 2 X 80-minute documentaries, researched, filmed on location and directed by Durán.

These two full-length films provide a unique window on how Mande children of specialist ‘griot’ (hereditary musicians) families acquire their musical skills and knowledge in the early 21st century, documenting a crucial period in Mali, just before the coup of 2012 resulted in a virtual shut-down of live music across the country. They give unprecedented access to the lives and thoughts of some of Mali’s most respected senior musicians, and include many remarkable sequences, in both rural and urban settings, of how the passing-on of oral tradition actually works, with some of the contradictory practices and beliefs around it.

Nevertheless, the films are much more than just an exploration of children learning music. They show musicians reflecting on notions of musical talent; on the place of griot music in the world today; on music and gender; and what determines musical progress. They reveal some of the flamboyant characters of the griot world such as the singer Bako Dagnon, who shares for the first time her views on musical memory and transmission, taking us to the remote village where she grew up, still a stronghold of tradition, where we witness various musical scenes as they occur naturally. The films portray some of the contexts in which children participate in public music-making as part of their learning experience, such as clapping songs in the countryside, wedding parties, and the popular television programme, Ministar.

Both these films were researched, coordinated, filmed and directed by myself, shot on location in Mali between 2009-12, as part of the research project Growing into Music of which I was Principal Investigator, funded by a major grant from the AHRC. They represent a sustained original research effort and provide significant new data that nuance our understanding of the griot tradition, equal in content to a major ethnographic book.