Three hundred and fifty years have passed since Richard Jobson's vivid encounter with the jeliw, the hereditary professional musicians of the Manding peoples of West Africa. Though the kings have long since gone, the jeliw are still a conspicuous part of Manding culture, and their behaviour has not changed significantly. Their flamboyant performance style, their fine music and their ambivalent social status have been the subject of much comment from the fourteenth century onwards. Travellers, explorers, scholars and journalists have documented the multi-faceted roles of jeliw as praise singers, dancers, public orators, interpreters, historians, genealogists, mediators, and political and social advisers. What remains largely unwritten, however, is the story of female jeliw — the jelimuso (pl: jelimusow).

The jeliw are part of the nyamakala, a caste of hereditary endogamous craftsmen, which includes smiths, leatherworkers and Koranic reciters and praisers.