Rappers:

African memory guardians

Abstract

This article intends to analyse the rappers importance as contemporary griôs, as the social, cultural, and political agent of their community. Coated with African identities, the rappers - more precisely the Emceein/MC - through artistic manifestations, notably music, rescue an Africanity that fits into current issues and problems, having acted as important voices in denouncing the monopoly of State violence. For this, it starts from studies on the griô, narrator of African ancestry in the works of Amadou Hampate Bâ, Jean Vansina, Hama, Joseph Ki-Zerbo, finding these relationships specifities of their people memory guardians, keeping alive an ancestral tradition, rappers MCK and Emicida operate as hereditary African culture elements and their re-significations in their territories. The results point to a collective poetics in rap, a collective committed to the social layers from which they come.