Jeli

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A member of the hereditary caste of griots among the Mandé peoples, whose social roles include transmitting their people's oral traditions and playing traditional music (jeliya).

    "Jeliya (the art of the jeli) goes back to the thirteenth-century origins of the Mali empire, although the institution of the griot in West Africa probably stems from the earlier Ghana empire (also known as Wagadu), which declined in the late eleventh century."

Synonyms

All synonyms
griot

Example

More examples

"Jeliya (the art of the jeli) goes back to the thirteenth-century origins of the Mali empire, although the institution of the griot in West Africa probably stems from the earlier Ghana empire (also known as Wagadu), which declined in the late eleventh century."

Etymology

From Bambara jeli.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.