Country in West Africa. It has an area of 245,857 km2 and a population of 7·5 million, approximately 85% of whom are Muslim.
6. Era of government patronage, 1958–84.
ERIC CHARRY
Encompassing diverse geographic regions and peoples, the government patronage policies of the independent republic’s first president Sekou Toure constructed a composite national culture from 1958 to 1984 that is brilliantly represented in the repertory of its renowned national ballet Les Ballets Africains, established by Fodeba Keita, a pioneer in presenting African music and dance for a world audience. The resulting extensive system of regional and national government ballets, ensembles and orchestras, including the beloved dance orchestra Bembeya Jazz, has been a model for much of francophone West Africa. Guinea’s musical heritage includes a prominent class of Maninka jelis (see Griot), with its roots in the 13th-century Mali empire, who excel on the bala (and to a lesser extent the Kora and koni), masked dancers widespread among the small-scale societies that populate the coastal and southern forest regions, and diverse drumming traditions throughout the country, particularly those of log drums (krin, kele) and Jembe. The jembe is the focal point of a major African drum and dance movement outside the continent fuelled largely by Guinean jembe players since the late 1980s.
Guinea is typically divided into four regions (fig.1): Lower or coastal Guinea (Basse Guinée or Guinée Maritime), a coastal plain inhabited by small-scale societies such as the Baga who are known for their wooden sculptures, as well as the more widespread Susu who migrated from the north-east; Middle Guinea (Moyenne Guinée), including the northern Futa Jalon mountain region inhabited by the Fulɓe or FulBe (also known as Fula, Peul or Pulaar), and foothills extending into Senegal inhabited by smaller groups such as the Bassari; Upper Guinea (Haute Guinée) in the north-east, a predominantly Maninka savanna woodland; and the Forest Region (Guinée Forestière) in the south, inhabited by a variety of groups such as the Kissi and Toma (Loma). The coastal and southern forest regions share many traits, including the use of log drums and initiations in sacred groves that can last from a period of months to as long as six or seven years.
The predominant languages are Susu and Maninka (Fr. Malinké), both part of the northern subgroup of Mande languages, and Pulaar (or Fulɓe), belonging to the northern branch of the West Atlantic family. Other Mande languages include Jalonke (related to Susu), spoken between Susu and Maninka areas, and Kuranko (related to Maninka), spoken at the southern Maninka fringe. The south-western group of Mande languages is represented by Kpelle, Guerze and Loma (Toma) in the southern forest. The smaller groups throughout the country primarily speak Mel languages, which belong to the southern branch of the West Atlantic family, Baga, Landuma and Temne along the coast, and Kissi in the southern forest region. Along the northern border, pockets of northern West Atlantic Tenda (Bassari and Konyagi) and Bak (Jola and Balanta) are spoken.
After several centuries of passing references from pre-colonial European travellers such as Réné Caillié, the serious documentation of music in Guinea began with Charles Joyeux (1910; 1924), followed by French ethnomusicologists André Schaeffner (1951) and Gilbert Rouget (1955; 1956). A number of Guinean artists, novelists and scholars have also written about their music, dance and oral traditions; collaborations between Guinean jembe players such as Famoudou Konate and Mamady Keita and European ethnomusicologists and filmmakers Thomas Ott, Johannes Beer and Laurent Chevalier have produced a number of high quality publications in the post-Sekou Toure era.
For information on ethnic groups in Guinea who are also found in neighbouring countries see Guinea-Bissau, Senegal, Mali, Côte d’ivoire, Liberia and Sierra leone.
Related groups inhabiting the coastal plains share basic cultural traits, including relatively little social differentiation and a plethora of wooden masks representing spirits used in initiation ceremonies. These groups include (from south to north): Mmani (Mane), various Baga groups (Kalum, Koba, Kakissa, Sitemu and Mandori), Bulunyits, Pukur, Landuma and Nalu. The combination of renewed Muslim campaigns in Bagaland (Bagatai) in the mid-1950s and subsequent government policies devaluing traditional non-Islamic religious practices threatened mask traditions and related dancing and drumming. Local traditions have been renewed, particularly under European and American stimuli since the death of Sekou Toure.
Throughout Bagaland, specific male and female spirits are associated with various communities, and different drums are used to accompany different masked figures representing these spirits. Adult Baga, Nalu and Landuma men stand on stools and use sticks to play the spectacularly sculpted large timba drum (typically 1–1·5 m tall), which arises out of a stool with various human or animal figures. It is used primarily to accompany the coming out of young initiates, but is also played at marriages, funerals of male elders, sacrifices to ancestors and after the harvest. Adult Baga women play the të-ndëf (a-ndëf), a wooden bowl-drum that sits on the head of a sculpted woman, as part of an institution for adult female solidarity among those who have children, called variously a-Tëkän, a-Warna, M’Nyando, Këkë or Mënda according to the group. The të-ndëf is sometimes played in sets of three called mëndf during feasts for funerals of important female elders, marriages, visiting dignitaries or for the initiation of new members. A large kirinyin or krin (xylophone drum) is used by Baga and Nalu to accompany the large Banda mask and its counterpart pende-pende. A related double-edged log drum is called tali. The equally large D’mba masked dancer is accompanied by a double-headed bass drum (sangban or sangbanyi). Other percussion instruments include a small bowl-shaped drum (tamba), a small gourd rattle (apepe), and shells filled with small grains that are attached to the ankles (gbatcha).
Two Baga rhythms in particular have entered into the standard repertory of Guinean ballets: sorsorne, which accompanies a raffia-dressed mask that can telescope upwards to the height of a palm tree; and kakilambe, Susu for the highest male spirit of the Baga.
Susu have origins in Upper Guinea and Mali and are closely related to Maninka. In modern usage, Susu often refers to those who have migrated to the coast and have intermingled for centuries with peoples there. In contrast to the Baga, Susu do not use wooden masks and their society features social differentiation. They are expert jembe and bala players, no doubt due to their affiliation with the sorcerer-blacksmith Susu king Sumanguru Kante (see §5 below). They are further distinguished from Maninka who share the same family names Kante and Doumbia, in that their musical repertory and playing styles have been influenced by their coastal neighbours.
The most extensive research on music from the forest region was carried out by Schaeffner in the 1940s and written up in an extensive monograph devoted to the Kissi (1951). Over the course of two periods of six months each Schaeffner visited most of the two predominantly Kissi provinces of Kissidougou (the southern limit of Maninka influence) and Gueckedou (bordering both Sierra Leone and Liberia). Very little has been written on neighbouring Toma, Guerze, Lele and Konon groups in Guinea, but information from Liberia and Sierra Leone would be equally relevant.
The Kissi inhabit a border region between the forest and savanna and show signs of musical influence from their Maninka neighbours to the north and their Toma neighbours to the east (in Macenta) and south. Such influences can be felt in the presence of the institution of long periods of initiation in the sacred forest, probably borrowed from the Toma, and the distribution of musical instruments. In the southern Kissi areas males and females undergo long periods of initiation involving physical and mental training in sacred forest groves subsequent to and apart from circumcision or excision. In the late 20th century such initiations were on the decline. The main instruments associated with these initiations are a gourd rattle with a beaded net (gbindo, seo) for females, and a pair of wicker basket rattles (seko) and two varieties of log drums for males. These instruments are localized in the forest regions and are not used in the savanna region to the north. In northern Kissi areas, initiations are not common, and dancing associated with female excision is performed to the jembe (called yimbo in the local dialect) or a sistrum (wusamba or wasamba), both of which are widespread in the savanna.
Two types of log drum have been distinguished by Schaeffner: a xylophone drum (keñde), consisting of a hollowed-out log with two to four differently pitched slats, characterized by slits along the sides and attached to the cylinder at the ends; and a double-edged drum (kele or kelende) consisting of a hollowed-out log with one rectangular slit. Both types of log drums are used during initiations, but they appear to be mutually exclusive. The xylophone drum is used during the pokena male initiation and during funerals when female initiates of the equivalent sadendo dance. The pokena and sadendo initiations as well as the xylophone drum may have origins with the Toma, who call the drum keñgi. It is also played by the Guerze. The double-edged drum accompanies the sokoa male initiation. The two kinds of initiation, pokena and sokoa, differ in duration, body scarifications, dances and costumes. The xylophone drum can be played by three musicians on a single instrument; the double-edged drum can be played in ensembles of two or three, with the lead player on the largest instrument.
Schaeffner observed seven different kinds of drums in Kissi territory, but some were clearly imports from the north, such as the jembe (yimbo). A funeral drum (tondunduo) stands on a tripod and is played by an elder male who stands on a platform. String instruments played by Kissi include a musical bow (kilamale or kilimale), a pluriarc, a forked harp (toa or tua), also played by Toma and Guerze, arched calabash harps such as the bolindo (similar to the Bolon) and silamando, with two varieties resembling the Maninka simbi and Wasulu donso ngoni played in Mali. Although Kissi do not play flutes, their Lele neighbours do. Other wind instruments include a bullroarer associated with the secret Koma society, hunters’ whistles and side-blown wooden trumpets that are played in orchestras.
The Futa Jalon mountain region that makes up Middle Guinea is predominantly inhabited by Fulɓe, who migrated there from their Futa Toro homeland in northern Senegal around the 16th century. By the early 18th century a Fulɓe Muslim theocracy was established, and a century-long religious war of conversion was launched from Futa Jalon, the first of five major jihads that would arise from various Fulɓe strongholds in West Africa. Futa Jalon earned a reputation as a centre of Muslim learning, and Fulɓe scholars created a vernacular written literature of prose and poetry based on Arabic writing, which mixed with Fulɓe oral traditions at the royal courts. There appears to be a cultural rift between the devout settled theocracy and pastoralist Fulɓe who along with other local groups have cultivated local musical traditions.
Fulɓe instruments include a flute (serdu), a double-reed instrument with two bamboo pipes and a calabash wind chest (tunni), a lute (kerona, called hoddu by Fulɓe in Senegal), a one-string fiddle (nhenheru), a three- or four-string warrior’s harp (bolon), a sistrum (lala) similar to the widespread wasakumba, and a drum consisting of a half-calabash struck with rings on the fingers (horde). The serdu is widespread and unique to Fulɓe in West Africa and can be found in many Guinean ensembles.
The Bassari, numbering perhaps 5000 in Guinea, are one of a number of small egalitarian groups, such as the Bedik, Konyagi and Badyaranke, that can be found on both sides of the Senegal-Guinea border. Bassari music is associated with rituals that follow a seasonal calendar. Certain masks are brought out at the beginning of the rainy season for the sowing of the sorghum fields to encourage cultivators in the fields up to the first harvest, and for their evening dancing. The lukuta masks come out in the ensuing dry season. Near the end of the dry season boys’ initiation associated with the khore society takes place. Bassari dancing and music-making can involve drinking of local beer, heterophonic singing, antiphonal choral singing, singing competitions between villages and age groups (including insult songs) and instruments such as flutes, whistles, small bells worn on the body and free-key xylophones.
The core of the great 13th- to 16th-century Mali (or Mande) empire straddled the Guinea-Mali border along the Niger river, and Maninka culture is predominant in the Upper Guinea savanna woodland. A shift of political power from Susu blacksmith-sorcerers to Maninka horse-riding warriors is represented in the Sunjata epic, which tells of the defeat of Sumanguru Kante by Sunjata Keita in the 13th century. The transfer of the primordial bala (xylophone) from Sumanguru to Sunjata’s jeli (griot) Bala Faseke Kouyate remains a symbol of this shift, and a bala believed to have belonged to Sumanguru is still guarded by a Kouyate lineage in Niagassola near the Mali border. Susu migrations to the south-west coast from their origins in Mali date from this period.
Hereditary professional musicians and oral historians (jelis) of the Kouyate, Dioubate (Diabate) and Kante lineages maintain a high profile in the musical life of Guinea. Local chiefdoms have arisen, each with their own musical specialities. The chiefdom of Hamana, with its capital at Kouroussa, is known as a centre of jembe playing, and especially the immensely popular and influential dundunba, a drumming and dance event that featured sometimes violent flagellation in the past. Nowadays, dundunba is used as a generic term for a drum and dance celebration, and its identifying kenkeni (small dundun) pattern can be heard in a variety of related jembe rhythms. The chiefdom of Bate, with its capital at Kankan, came under the strong influence of the Maninka mori lineages of Kaba and Cherif, families renowned as Islamic clerics and scholars with Soninke origins in Mali. Jembe playing did not flourish in this devout Muslim environment, but the illustrious leaders of Kankan attracted a wealth of jeli lineages in the 20th century (documented by Rouget, 1955; 1956; 1999; Alberts, 1949). A renowned bala-playing family centred on Sidi Djely Dioubate and his three children was primarily responsible for a popular musical event in the 1940s called mamaya, a highly influential piece of instrumental and vocal music that is still performed by singers in Guinea and Mali. The region of Siguiri was home to the nucleus of Les Ballets Africains (see §6 below). Kissidougou, which borders the forest and is the southernmost Maninka bastion, has been home to an illustrious Kante family of jelis that included Mory Kante, the most commercially successful Guinean musical artist. Also in the vicinity of Kissidougou, the related Kuranko share Maninka traditions, including expertise on the bala.
As noted above, the earliest document devoted exclusively to music in francophone West Africa was written by Charles Joyeux, who was stationed in Upper Guinea at the beginning of the 20th century. Joyeux provided descriptions and photographs of the soron (similar to the kora) bala, jembe, animal horns, the konkoba masked figure from Kankan, and the mandiani dance, one of the most popular dances to have originated in Guinea. Autobiographical writing by Laye Camara (C. Laye) makes reference to Maninka drumming, dancing and guitar playing in the 1940s (1980). Poèmes africains (1950) by Fodeba Keita (K. Fodeba) describes the Maninka jeli repertory in the late 1940s, reinforced by recordings made by Arthur Alberts in 1949 and Gilbert Rouget in 1952.
The election of Sekou Toure as the first president of Guinea in 1958 began an era of government patronage of music and dance throughout the country, unprecedented in West Africa. Regional and national performing groups were established under three rubrics: ballets were drum and dance troupes, mixing jembes, dunduns and log drums of the forest regions; orchestres used government-purchased foreign instruments such as electric guitars, saxophones, trumpets, keyboards and a drum set, and were at first greatly influenced by Cuban popular dance music; ensembles brought together traditional instrumentalists and singers, and they were dominated by Maninka jelis. With the demise of the increasingly paranoid and repressive Toure regime after the death of Sekou Toure in 1984, many musicians sought patronage abroad, often in Europe via Abidjan.
Toure’s recognition of the political power of music and its value for spreading the propaganda of his regime resulted in an abundance of commercial recordings that were unmatched in francophone West Africa. With Toure’s help the American Tempo label issued ten LPs in 1961–3 including the National Instrumental Ensemble, the regional dance orchestras of Beyla (soon thereafter renamed Bembeya Jazz), Gueckedou and Kissidougou, the regional folkloric troupe of Kankan, and other collections of local musics from around the country. The state-run Syliphone label was established in the mid-1960s, and it released close to 80 LPs and dozens of 45 r.p.m. recordings of regional and national orchestras, ensembles, ballets and choirs by the time it folded in the early 1980s. Since the late 1980s the French Buda label has issued over 15 CDs of revitalized or new groups and artists primarily based in Conakry.
Les Ballets Africains, established in Senegal by poet Fodeba Keita with guitarist and musical director Facelli Kante, formally made its début in Paris in 1952, and became the first National Ballet of Guinea shortly after independence. Les Ballets initially had strong Maninka roots as many of the early members were from Upper Guinea: Fodeba Keita, Facelli Kante, lead drummer Ladji Camara (who would relocate to the USA in the early 1960s and train generations of American drummers), and lead dancer Fanta Kamissoko. The group integrated other traditions into their stage presentations by sequentially combining dances and their associated rhythms from across the country, leading to a new genre, the theatrical presentation of drum and dance traditions for an international audience. Ballets Djoliba, the second national ballet, was established in the mid-1960s.
The Syli National Orchestra was established shortly after independence to play popular dance music, especially for state functions. Around 1963–4 it split into two national orchestras: Keletigui et ses Tambourinis and Balla et ses Balladins. Shortly thereafter, the regional orchestra from Beyla ascended to national orchestra status by winning successive national competitions, and they were renamed Bembeya Jazz National, the best known of all Guinean groups of this era, featuring beloved vocalist Aboubacar Demba Camara (d 1973), and electric guitarist Sekou ‘Bembeya’ Diabate, still active in Paris and Conakry in the late 1990s. Approximately six other regional orchestras became nationalized and recorded on the Syliphone label in the 1970s; one of the most unusual was Les Amazones, an all-female orchestra drawn from the ranks of the Women’s National Police Force.
The guitar played a major role in the development of a Guinean style of music that would eventually shed its early Cuban influences. By the 1940s the acoustic guitar was used to play music of the jelis, and came to be accepted as a legitimate jeli instrument, as documented in Fodeba Keita’s Poèmes africains, which contains explicit instructions for playing a variety of pieces from the jeli’s repertory on the guitar. Styles of playing the bala were transferred to the guitar, with the thumb used to play the part of one hand on the bala and the index finger used to play the other. With the creation of a national orchestra two formerly distinct streams met: small orchestras orientated towards the popular European and Latin American music of the day; and music of the jelis played on the guitar. The electric guitar brought the repertory and playing styles of the jeli into the new regional and national orchestras. Kerfala ‘Papa’ Diabate was an influential electric guitarist in the 1960s and the younger Manfila Kante and Sekou ‘Bembeya’ Diabate carried on the tradition into the 1970s.
The National Instrumental and Choral Ensemble assembled traditional musicians from across the country, combining their local musics in a context dominated by Maninka-Susu jelis, but also including Fulbe musicians. Guinea’s best known traditional singer of the 1960s and 70s, Sory Kandia Kouyate (d 1977), was a former director of the ensemble and a veteran of both national ballets.
Guinea is an important source for three major trends related to African music: the sudden blossoming of interest in the jembe outside the continent; the use of the guitar for playing traditional and modern African music; and the continued revitalization of local instruments in a modern commercial musical context.
From a base in Brussels in the late 1980s the former Ballet Djoliba lead drummer Mamady Keita established jembe drumming schools around the world, which, combined with the tours of Percussions de Guinée (a nationalized drum troupe), Les Ballets Africains under European management and of the jembe master Famoudou Konate, led to a marked increase of interest in the jembe with unprecedented numbers of foreign students and recordings. A new genre of drumming was stimulated by this movement: the drumming concert featuring jembes and dunduns, without accompanying dancing. Tours and recordings by other jembe-based ensembles followed, such as Wassa and Wofa who feature Susu and Baga rhythms from the coast. An all-female performing group called Baga Guiné has recorded some of the traditional songs and rhythms of Baga women on Baga percussion instruments.
The acoustic and electric guitar have been integral parts of much music recorded in Guinea since independence, and guitar-based recordings including guitar duos, trios and quartets have multiplied since the late 1980s.
Jelis and non-jelis alike have formed ensembles mixing jeli instruments such as the kora, bala and koni, with non-jeli instruments such as the jembe, dundun, bolon and even the saxophone. Recordings featuring combinations of Western brass instruments, electric and acoustic guitars and a variety of local Guinean instruments proliferated in the 1990s. Singers with the Maninka jeli family names Dioubate, Kante and Camara still dominate the commercial market.
and other resources
C. Joyeux: ‘Notes sur quelques manifestations musicales observées en Haute-Guinée’, Revue Musicale, ii (1910), 49–58
C. Joyeux: ‘Etude sur quelques manifestations musicales observées en Haute-Guinée Française’, Revue d’ethnographie, xviii (1924), 170–212
K. Fodeba: Poèmes africains (Paris, 1950)
A. Schaeffner: Les Kissi: une société noire et ses instruments de musique (Paris, 1951)
G. Rouget: ‘Chroniques musicales’, Presence africaine, new ser., i/ii (1955), 153–8
G. Rouget: ‘Les Ballets Africains de Keita Fodeba’, Presence africaine, new ser., vii (1956), 138–40
K. Fodeba: ‘La danse africaine et la scène/African Dance and the Stage’, Le Théatre dans le monde, vii/3 (1958), 164–78
A. Schaeffner: ‘Musiques rituelles Baga’, Congrés des sciences anthropologiques et ethnologiques VI: Paris 1960, 123–5
D.T. Niane: Soundjata, ou l’épopée mandingue (Paris, 1960; Eng. trans., 1965, as Sundiata, an Epic of Old Mali)
G. Rouget and J. Schwarz: ‘Sur les xylophones equiheptaphoniques des Malinké’, RdM, lv (1969), 47–77
N. Kouyate: Recherches sur la tradition orale au Mali (pays Manding) (thesis, U. of Algiers, 1970)
S. Camara: Gens de la parole: essai sur la condition et le rôle des griots dans la société Malinké (Paris, 1976)
L. Kaba: ‘The Cultural Revolution, Artistic Creativity, and Freedom of Expression in Guinea’, Journal of Modern African Studies, xiv/2 (1976), 201–18
C. Laye: Le maître de la parole: Kouma LaFôlô Kouma (Paris, 1978; Eng. trans., 1980)
H. El Dabh and F. Proschan: Les traditions du masque et de la marionnette dans la République de la Guinée (Washington DC, 1979)
V. Dehoux and M. Gessain: ‘La musique Bassari: un parcours obligé’, Cahiers de musiques traditionelles, v (1992), 17–35
F. Lamp: Art of the Baga (New York, 1996)
F. Konate and T. Ott: Rhythmen und Lieder aus Guinea (Oldershausen, 1997)
E. Charry: Mande Music: Traditional and Modern Music of the Maninka and Mandinka of Western Africa (Chicago, 2000)
L. Kaba and E. Charry: ‘Mamaya: Renewal and Tradition in the Maninnka Music of Kankan, Guinea (1935–45)’, The African Diaspora: a Musical Perspective (New York, forthcoming)
Field Recordings from Guinea and Mali, coll. A. Alberts, Archives of Traditional Music, Indiana U. Accession no.68-214-F, ATL 3564-3567, 3574-3577 (1949) [selections issued on The Field Recordings of African Coast Rhythms: Tribal and Folk Music of West Africa, Riverside RLP 4001, 1953]
Sons nouveaux d’une nation nouvelle, la République de Guinée, Tempo 7008-7017 (1961–3) [10 LPs]
International Zone: Africa Dances, United Nations videotape dir. R. Sarma (New York, 1967) [Performance by Les Ballets Africains in the General Assembly Hall of the UN]
L’Epopée du Mandingue: Kouyate Sory Kandia et son trio de musique traditionnelle, Syliphone/Bolibana 42037-2, 42038-2 (1990)
Regard sur le passé, Syliphone/Bolibana 42064-2 (1990) [Bembeya Jazz]
Rhythmen der Malinke, Museum für Völkerkunde CD18 (1991) [F. Konate]
Guinée: anthologie du balafon mandingue, Buda 9250-2, 92534-2, 92535-2 (1992) [D.S. Kouyate]
Songs and Rhythms from the Coastal Region of Guinea, Buda 92518-2 (1992) [Wassa]
Guinea: the Nyamakalas from Futa Jalon, Buda 92530-2 (1993)
Djembefola, videotape, dir. L. Chevalier (New York, 1994)
Guinea: Songs and Drums of Baga Women, Buda 9267-2 (1995)
Mogobalu, Fonti Musicali FMD 205 (1995) [M. Keita]
Dance of Guinea, videotape, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts MGZIC 9-5068-5072 (New York, 1996)
Guitare sèche, Popular African Music PAM AG 701 (1998) [D.M. Kante]
Guinée: Musique de Malinke/Guinea: Music of the Mandinka, Le Chant du Monde/Harmonia Mundi CNR 274112 (1999) [G. Rouget]