NJAAJAN NJAAY GOES TO BERKELEY The Oral History and Literature of the Wolof People of Waalo, Northern Senegal: The Master of the Word (Griot in the Wolof Tradition). By SAMBA DIOP. Lewiston, Queenston and Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 1995. Pp. 389. $109.95 (ISBN 0-7734-9031-0).

Abstract

The Waalo Kingdom's tradition of origin, also identified by the name of its principal hero Njaajan Njaay (N'Diadiane N'Diaye), is not one of the better-known narrative texts of the Western Sudan, simply because there is not much of it and few variants have circulated in print; among the latter is one collected by Brasseur in 1778 and published in Jean Boulégue, Le Grand Jolof (XIII–XVI siècle), in 1987 (absent from this volume's bibliography) and another by Bérenger-Fèraud in Recueil de Contes Populaires de la Sénégambie, 1885. The 975-line variant presented here is therefore a welcome addition to that modest but interesting body of oral literature. This one includes the original Wolof-language text and an annotated English translation by the author. Appendices include two genealogies of Njaajan Njaay, one translated from the Arabic, and another from Wolof.