ABSTRACT
After his father’s death, Dembo and his mother, his brother Fabala and his sister moved to Tambacounda in Senegal, where they settled. Dembo travelled extensively in Mali and Guinea as well as in Senegal and The Gambia, and he became well acquainted with several prominent men in these countries. After some time he moved to Dakar, where he greatly enhanced his growing reputation by his frequent performances on Radio Dakar. Largely because of his work on Radio Dakar he established himself as one of the leading griots in Senegal. In 1958, however, he seems to have begun to lose favour and his performances on Radio Dakar became less frequent. From about this same time he rarely performed on the xylophone, the instrument on which he had been trained, but concentrated on singing and narrating to the accompaniment of a kora played by another griot.
