A Note on Manding Folktales

Storytelling has long been an important form of entertainment in Manding-speaking communities of West Africa. In Bambara, one common word for a folktale is "nsiirin," while other terms, including "ntalen," are used in different regions and varieties of Manding.

Traditionally, such tales were told aloud rather than read. They were especially associated with storytelling in the evening and, in many areas, with the dry season. Children were an important audience for tales, but storytelling was not simply an activity for children. Adults told and listened to stories as well, sometimes in their own storytelling groups.

A traditional performance could also involve much more than one person simply speaking while everyone else listened. The audience might respond to the storyteller as the tale progressed, and some stories included short songs or refrains that could be repeated. The way a storyteller used their voice, timing, gestures, and interaction with the audience was therefore part of the story itself.

The tales often take place in a world where people, animals, and other beings interact freely. Animals speak, argue, make plans, get married, work together, and trick one another much like people do. Certain characters appear again and again.

The hare, for example, is often a clever trickster. He may be physically weaker than the other animals, but he survives or gets what he wants through intelligence and deception. The hyena is another especially common character. He is often strong and hungry but also greedy, impatient, or easy to fool, which frequently makes him the victim of the hare's tricks. These roles are not fixed, however. The same animal can behave differently from one story to another.

Human characters are common too. One recurring figure is the hunter, who may leave the village and encounter animals, strangers, spirits, or unexpected dangers in the bush. Other tales feature farmers, kings, children, husbands and wives, co-wives, or simply an unnamed man or woman. The situations may be fantastic, but the characters often deal with familiar problems involving food, family, work, jealousy, generosity, greed, cleverness, and getting along with other people.

As you read, it is also important to remember that there is usually no single "original" or authoritative version of a folktale. Stories were passed from one storyteller to another, and a storyteller could change details, shorten or lengthen a story, add a song, or adapt it to a particular audience.

Written versions of tales (whether decades old or more recent) are therefore best understood as derivative interpretations of the oral tradition. Putting a story on the page preserves one version of it, but it also removes parts of the original experience: the storyteller's voice, the responses of the audience, the gestures, the pauses, and the particular moment in which the story was told.

Further reading

• Olga Zavyalova, "Folklore genre designation among the Manden peoples" (2023). An overview of oral genres among Bambara, Maninka, and Jula speakers, including terminology and the circumstances in which different kinds of tales are performed.

• Jean Derive, "La parole dans la culture mandingue : l'exemple des Dioula de Kong (Cote d'Ivoire)" (2015). A French-language discussion of the place of speech and oral tradition among Jula speakers in Kong, Côte d'Ivoire.

• Ruth Finnegan, "The 'Oral' Nature of African Unwritten Literature", in Oral Literature in Africa. A broader introduction to understanding African oral literature as performance rather than simply as written text.