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Mansa Musa's Court Poets: The Jeliw Who Sang Empire
This episode explores the role of the jeliw — the hereditary praise-singers and oral historians who preserved Mali's imperial memory. Lucas and Luna discuss how these poet-musicians served as living archives, chronicling Mansa Musa's reign and the epic of Sundiata Keita. They examine the jeliw's training, their instruments like the kora, and their social status under the farba system. The conversation also touches on the tension between oral tradition and written accounts from al-Umari, and how the jeliw's art shaped political legitimacy in the Sahel. No prior episodes…
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