Music of Mali - Mande Music

Mande Music

Styles: donkilo - jaliya - kumbengo - praise singing - sataro - Wassoulou hunters' song. Instruments: balo - balafon - bolon - djembe - doundoun - fle - kamalengoni - karinyan - kontingo - kora - ngoni - soku - tama - tamani. Other:jali. Mande include the Mandinka, Maninka and Bamana.

The Mande people are divided into various groups based on language. They all claim descent from the legendary warrior Sunjata Keita, who founded the Mande Empire. The Mandeka kan, language of the people of Mande is spoken with different dialects in Mali and in parts of surrounding Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Senegal and The Gambia. The most common dialects of Mandeka kan are Bamanan kan and Djoula kan. Djoula kan, a sub-dialect of Bamanan kan, is spoken by descendants of Bamanan people who settled mainly in Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso through trade or the expansion of the Mande Empire and the Bamanan and Kenedougou kingdoms. Djoula which means trader in Bamanan, and kan means language. The Djoula kan dialect was born from the influence of local languages on Bamanankan, which is itself a Mandekan dialect. As local people in Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso called the travelling traders by their trade name (Djoula), they also used the same name to identify the language they spoke (Djoula kan). Mande music remains a very important aspect of Malian culture. One confusing aspect of the Mande groups is the integration of Fula people (French: Peuls; Fula: Fulɓe; Bambara: Fulaw) into Mande culture. The Mansa Sunjata forced some of these pastoral herders to settle in various regions where the dominant ethnic groups were Maninka or Bamana. Thus, today, we see a number of people with Fula names (Diallo, Diakite, Sangare, Sidibe) who display Fula cultural characteristics, but only speak the language of the Maninka or Bamana.