The Griot and the Twenty-One Strings

In West Africa, in Mali and Senegal and the Gambia, there are people called griots, and their job is the loveliest job of all. They remember.

A griot remembers the names of kings and grandmothers. A griot remembers who planted which tree, and which year the rains came late, and the funny thing your great-great-grandfather once said at a wedding.

And when a griot tells you all this, they do not simply say it. They sing it, and they play the kora.

The kora is a beautiful instrument. It is made from a big calabash gourd cut in half, covered with soft skin, with a long neck rising out of it like a young tree. And along that neck run twenty-one strings.

A griot plays the kora with just four fingers, two thumbs and two pointing fingers, plucking so gently that the sound comes out like water falling on stones.

Griot families have been doing this for hundreds and hundreds of years. A griot mother teaches her daughter. A griot father teaches his son. Nothing is written down. It is all kept safe inside them, like a lamp carried carefully from room to room.

So tonight, while you are drifting off, somewhere a kora is playing. Twenty-one strings, singing everything anyone ever remembered.

Let it carry you off to sleep.

Goodnight.