This paper analyzes and compares The Epic of Son-Jara: A West African Tradition and The Mande Blacksmiths: Knowledge. Power, and Art in West Africa, two books that take quite different approaches to examining two of the groups of clan families that specialize in the Mande community in West Africa. The Epic of Son-Jara records a meticulous translation of the oral tradition of storytelling crucial to the community's recording and preservation of its history. The translation is drawn from a performance by a jeli or griot, a professional bard trained to tell the epic story of the legendary figure who founded the civilization more than 750 years ago. The Mande Blacksmiths is a more conventional examination of another of the four hereditary clan families within Mande society, the numuw, professional blacksmith/sculptors who also hold a distinct place in Mande society. Both of these groups perform very specialized and important roles in preserving and advancing the civilization. These two contrasting books provide a fascinating contrast in
approaching a complex subject and explaining its intricacies to Western readers.
The nyamakala encompass a specialized group of professionals within Mande society "that own the rights to arcane spiritual and technological practices and are therefore able to offer special services to the rest of society" (McNaughton 3). The nyamakala are endogamous, meaning that members can only be born into the group; while family members can leave the profession, outsiders cannot enter it.
This exclusivity assures the society that members of the nyamakala will have grown up in the profession, receiving the kind of long-term apprenticeship required to master such complex artistic crafts. Since the society believes that the nyamakala possess spiritual powers which they are born with and which make their works possible, the nyamakala are respected but also feared within their own society, seen as outsi...