Controlling the narrative Controlling the narrative: three generations of Zarma griots facing the recording.

International audience In August 2022, I received a personal WhatsApp message containing a small video clip containing a slideshow of photos taken by my husband (and a priori not accessible), along with an excerpt from an epic recited during a wedding by the great Zarma griot Djéliba, at an artificially accelerated speed. This video poses a series of questions and problems that are not new and of which Zarma griots in Niger have been acutely aware for three generations. This has led to a series of political and aesthetic strategies for adapting to the fixation through recording and potential diffusion of the latter. This paper will analyze the strategies of three generations of griots: the first, in the 1960s, with forced instances of archival recordings, under physical threat; the second generation, from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s, with radio broadcast recordings, by the way still programmed and circulating in markets and social networks, which implemented different strategies of anticipation, avoidance of sensitive topics and conflicts, but also of self valorization ; and a third one, opened with the death in 2018 of Djéliba, marked by the question of the custody and protection of his large personal archive from my recordings and photographs. I will evoke the griot's will to control the diffusion of his work by orally designating me as its guardian, and the problems that arose afterwards from the various ambitions of the members of his family. Beyond the political and aesthetic questions, the possible course of action of the investigator will be questioned, in particular in a polygamous family context where the interests of the various parties differ.