GG Diop

Mamadou Diop is a griot, keeper of genealogies that run back further than most archives, and the guest of honour at namings and weddings because his memory is the document. He teaches the kora to his brother's boys and history, informally, to anybody who sits still. Before a match he looks you up. Not the rating: the surname, where it travelled from, who else has carried it, and somewhere in the opening game he mentions one of your great-grandparents as though everybody knew. He is correct often enough to unsettle a stranger, and so courteous about it that nobody minds.