Djanka Tassey Condé (d. 1997) was a ''jeli nagara'', or "chief of the bards", from Guinea. He lived in Fadama, a small village near the river

Niandan The Niandan river is a tributary of the Niger river The Niger River ( ; ) is the main river of West Africa, extending about . Its drainage basin is in area. Its source is in the Guinea Highlands in south-eastern Guinea near the Sierra Leone bo ...

, in the

Dosso Region Dosso is one of the seven regions of Niger. The region has an area of , with a population of 2,754,500 as of 2020. History The region of Dosso is the historic centre of the Dosso Kingdom, which had its capital at Dosso. Today the palace of t ...

. His father, Babu Condé (d. 1964), and his brother taught him the art of storytelling, and he inherited his father's position. His oral performance of

Epic of Sundiata ''Sunjata'' (; Manding languages: ''Sònjàdà'', also referred to as ''Sundiata'' or ''Son-Jara''; ; ) is an epic poem of the Malinke people that tells the story of the hero Sundiata Keita (died 1255), the founder of the Mali Empire. The ep ...

in 1994 was recorded on cassette by American scholar David C. Conrad, and forms the basis of a published version of the epic. Djanka (he self-identified using his mother's name) could not read or write, but traced his lineage as a storyteller back to the

Mali Empire The Mali Empire (Manding languages, Manding: ''Mandé''Ki-Zerbo, Joseph: ''UNESCO General History of Africa, Vol. IV, Abridged Edition: Africa from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century'', p. 57. University of California Press, 1997. or ''Manden ...

; the performance of the epic on which Conrad based his text took place over six sessions, each lasting five to six hours.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Condé, Djanka 1997 deaths Griots Guinean male singers People from Dosso Region