The Griot's Heir

In Kangaba, a king does not die until the last griot stops singing his name.

Sira Kouyate had known this since she was old enough to hold a kora. Her mother had taught her at the doorstep of their clay house in the shadow of the palace walls, the great carved instrument across her small knees, the twenty-one strings humming under her fingers. A king lives in the song, her mother would say. A kingdom lives in the king. Forget the song, and the sun forgets to rise.

She was nineteen now. Her mother was dead. And the song was dying.

It began the night the old king Mansa Dembele passed away. The griots gathered in the throne room at midnight to sing the Epic of the Seven Kings, as they had done at every royal funeral for four hundred years. Forty singers, in white robes, standing in a half-circle round the bier. A hundred kora players. The air thick with incense.

Sira sat at the back, among the apprentices. She was not allowed to sing. The law said that only men could carry the long songs, and that women were permitted to accompany, to hum, to play the lesser harp. Her mother had broken the law once. She had been dead within the year.