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CD
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YY 003CD
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"Daouda Dembele is a jeli, or griot from a town near Segou, Mali. Segou is a small city on the banks of the Niger a few hours north of Bamako. Griots are the oral repositories of Mali's history. He plays the one to three-stringed spike-lute called the jelingoni; ngoni is a catchall term for any stringed instrument that is not a kora (the 20 plus stringed harp). 'Spike-lute' refers to any instrument that has a single neck made out of a stick or piece of bamboo. He's accompanied by someone beating on an overturned gourd. After the beginning introduction (I am Daouda Dembele from Kanye) I have no idea what he's talking about, but he's telling us a story. It's likely that this style of music is thousands of years old; Mali was purportedly founded by a group of hunters who were also ngoni-players and it's easier to imagine them toting around a jelingoni about two feet long rather than a donsongoni, which can be over five feet long and rather unwieldy. This hypnotic music reflects the region it is from almost perfectly. Not too far north of Segou the Sahara encroaches almost daily; daytime temperatures during hot season climb into the hundred-teens. It's not uncommon to watch people stretch out in rare patches of shade in the middle of the day and sleep."
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