The Griot is a feature-length documentary about West Africas oral and musical tradition. Ablaye Cissoko, a Senegalese mastersinger, Kora player and Jali (Griot), opens a window for us into his joyful, yet heartbreaking story.

Born into a thousand-year-old family of Griots, Ablaye was just two-years-old when his mother died. Three years later he was sent into the streets to play his Kora – a large, string instrument that he could barely carry. Today his music is known and respected throughout the world.

Griots, once responsible for the regions history, for settling disputes, for advising kings and influencing aristocracy, now play their sacred songs in hotel lobbies and colonial boats. With the advent of a written language, electronic media, and shifting world values, they search for their place in the modern world while still performing their customary ceremonies of naming children, announcing funerals, and reciting family histories.

Ablayes dream is to have a thriving cultural center where children come to learn the music and traditions of their forefathers. But Saint-Louiss cultural center is empty and abandoned.

It is the songs that guide us through Ablayes daily interactions with his wife and children, his friends, his band, and his community. They are heard as a demonstration marches through the streets to revive the cultural center, but also as he rehearses and records a benefit CD with jazz musician Volker Goetze. He performs for tourists even as he prepares to play at Africas largest Jazz Festival, hoping that the exposure from the concerts, the CDs and this documentary will help him open a music school.

The Griot is an intimate and mature portrait of a man who openly embraces the future, but also recognizes the richness and relevance of the past. Unsure of his childrens desire to become Griots, Ablaye questions his familys legacy, especially since four days before filming began his father passed away. But just months later a son is born. In Ablayes words,

Bouba was my mirror, so when he left I felt lost, I no longer had my mirror. Now, with our baby called Bouba, the mirror has come back. Thats the continuity. To give the same name is a tradition, so that our history will not be lost. Perhaps one of my children will call his or her own child Ablaye to remind him or her of me.