Great Sogolon’s House is a big book – just shy of 700 pages – containing an extensive oral recitation by the Mande jèli (griot, pl. jèliw) Djanka Tassey Condé (d. 1997) of over 15,000 lines recorded by David Conrad and Laura Arnston over four days in 1994 at Condé’s home village, Fadama, in Guinea. Its subject is Mande history, centred on the life of Sunjata – So’olon Jara (“Sogolon’s Lion”) in this account – the putative founder of medieval Mali. Sogolon is the hero’s mother and at line 3796 we read that “The house of great Sogolon” is Fadama, home to the Conde nyaraw (gloss: “masters of jeliya, the bardic profession”, footnote, p. 191). Conrad, with the assistance of Djobba Kamara and Lansana Magassouba, edited, translated, annotated and introduced the narrative, adding a range of appendices containing further interviews, short recitations and other items about the Condé jèliw of Fadama.
David Conrad has produced an exemplary piece of scholarship, with detailed annotations in the form of footnotes, plentiful colour photographs, high-quality maps, a list identifying 36 of the narrative’s major characters, a glossary interpreting over 200 common Maninka language terms (including fadenya but not, surprisingly, the related concept badenya), a 17-page list of contents, a note on (often confusing) Mande nomenclature and an index. This generous scholarly apparatus helps the reader navigate and appreciate what Conrad calls “an extraordinarily detailed version” (p. 1). Tassey’s narrative is divided into 31 titled sections; it is a pity these are not listed separately as part of the contents as that could have provided further navigational aid. Among other topics, the introduction sets the work in cultural and historical context, explores the Condé family’s history as jèliw, details the recording itself and discusses typical themes of Mande oral art.
This is the third version of Tassey Condé’s narrative that Conrad has published. His 2004 Sunjata: A West African Epic of the Mande Peoples (Indianapolis, IN), is a 5,445-line narrative, essentially edited highlights of the performance. In 2016 he wrote a 130-page prose version of the same recitation, Sunjata: A New Prose Version (Indianapolis, IN). Great Sogolon’s House is the definitive edition of what has become a landmark version of the Mande or Sunjata epic.
Condé’s narrative derives its status by dint of its length and provenance. It is several times longer than other published performances of the epic so far available in English or French. The only comparable account is the multi-volume oeuvre of Krina jèli Wa Kamissoko. Regarding its provenance, Fadama has long been home to a family of hereditary bards including Fara-Mangara Kondé, counsellor to nineteenth-century empire-builder Almami Samori Touré, and Babou Condé (d. 1963), a famous jèli of the colonial era who worked with the ground-breaking historian of pre-colonial West Africa, Yves Person and who was the source both for Laye Camara’s doctoral thesis on precolonial Mande history and his prose interpretation of the Sunjata epic, Le maître de la parole (1978).
Babou Condé’s significance in the history of the Sunjata epic was heightened by an interview given by Djibril Tamsir Niane with Elara Bertho in 2018. In 1960 Niane published what became the canonical edition of the Sunjata epic, Soundjata ou l’épopée mandingue, which he ascribed to jèli Mamadou Kouyaté of Djelibakoro. Yet in this interview Niane stated that Soundjata was in fact a composite of narratives he heard from numerous jèliw in the late 1950s, starting with Babou Condé, and that he gave the credit to Kouyaté owing to his devotion to being a jèli. Niane’s revision of his own history in turn alters our appreciation of his role in Conrad’s mission to record a comprehensive account of the epic from the Fadama bards, for it was Niane who suggested Conrad visit the Fadama bards, giving him an introduction to a Condé friend who lived nearby, and setting in train events leading to this publication.
Conrad’s introduction explains the new context in which this recent revelation places his text. In it he also reflects on parallels between Camara’s interaction with Babou Condé and his with the son, both performers nearing the end of their life, and discusses the surprisingly high level of dissimilarity between father and son’s narratives: unexpected given the conventional wisdom that Mande oral traditions are passed down from father to son among jèliw – but an opportunity to recognize the place for individual creativity in jèli practice.
Condé’s performance is described by Conrad as “an extravagant demonstration of the extremes to which Mande bardic artistry can be carried” (p. 37). A guide to the novel material readers will encounter in Great Sogolon’s House not part of the 2004 book can be found in that first version of the narrative which contains sections of italic text in square brackets summarizing edited-out portions of the original performance narrative. Another clue is found in Great Sogolon’s House where the editor notes that “an essential part of Tassey’s performance-style is to season familiar episodes with cultural details and digress into explanations not usually offered by other bards” (p. 37). A brief comparison with the new text also reveals silent editing of lines, typically digressions (e.g. compare p. 31 of Sunjata with pp. 124–5 of Great Sogolon’s House where 26 lines appear that were silently edited from the former version, related to Conrad’s interest in Mande culture). Translations largely follow those in the earlier text, but two differences were noted by this reviewer (albeit based on a small sample) both consistent with a book aimed at researchers/academics rather than students or the public. At times Maninka words with complex meanings are retained (e.g. “help” in line 823 of Sunjata is rendered “sabu” in line 1493 of Great Sogolon’s House which the glossary translates “Source, what is needed to succeed”). Translations keep the original phrasing where in the earlier version more effort was made to clarify the meaning, e.g. while in Sunjata we read “No matter how well you say it,/There is always someone who knows it better than you” (lines 21–2), the new translation is more direct: “No matter how you say it,/There is someone who knows it better than you” (lines 53–4).
