A Degzy Films Production, An Adeoluwa Film present Lateef Adedemiji (Lankule), Femiloluwa Fasudo (Sanmi), Goodness Emmanuel (Tiwa), Fansho Adeoluwa (Oba) Executive Producer, Adeoluwa Owu; Co-Executive Producer, Goodness Emmanuel. Director of Photography, Adeoluwa Owu. © 2021
A man in a large gown with Kora and Balanji musical instruments entered our yard. He immediately started entertaining my father, in a melodious singing voice, with an oral history of my father’s leanage starting from almost a hundred years ago. His leanage (my father) begins in the great Mali Empire of Sundiata Keita, in the upper North of present-day Mali, Senegal, and Gambia, and down to Guinea and Sierra Leone. He named an ancestral aunt (Berete) once married to Sundiata Keita. He narrates the blood ties between the Berete family and the Kamaras, Kante, Turays, Sesay, and Kondeh. Nobody has told me otherwise, but I consider those families mentioned above as immediate cousins and kin to this day. Djeli told me so.
I first heard the word “Groit,” I still call them Djeli, in Kamara Laye’s African Child classic novel. Most especially in the chapter when the young boys go into the bush for circumcision. On certain occasions, the Griots wander into town, spread their mats with their balanji or kora in hand, and straightaway goes to work entertaining the crowd with oral history. Name a family, and present the groit with a tip; he’ll narrate your family’s history from a hundred years ago, all amid songs and musical tunes to your ears.
The Griots are like the Shakespearean bards of Stafford, England. Lower Sudanese use storytelling through Groits to narrate the history of their ancestors. Africans in lower Sudan of old didn’t leave many relics in architecture, like Northern Africa, in Egypt. The Griots are a living history, bringing singing and balafon instruments to us.
Our Groit here, in the person of Sanmi (Femiloluwa Fasudo), is a fraud. First, he doesn’t have accompaniments like balafons or balanji to complete his set. He gets credit for telling stories that were not his. He relishes in the accolades and respects the community that awards him as ‘Gbobaniyi’ for one. The Groit, for real, is Lankule (Lateef Adedemiji). A timid Tom Hanks, Forrest Gump-like character in deliveries and demeanor in the backyard, supplies Sanmi with stories in exchange for the love of Tiwa (Goodness Emmanuel). This local canary bird can sing one’s heart out of this world with her melodies. Sanmi thought he could combine the talent of Tiwa as an accompaniment to his borrowed stories to make a grand presentation.
Lankule, timid and lacking self-confidence, had asked Sanmi to hook him up with Tiwa. Sanmi instead wants Tiwa for himself. There is a clash. When the Chief of Wakajaye would ask Sanmi for a brand new story to entertain guests, he ran short. Lankule is no more. Sanmi runs from the community because he cannot deliver what the chief asks. And finally, Lankule had to face the Oba that the stories Sanmi got famous for were his. The community dragged the pretender before the Oba and disgraced him there.
Lankule and Tiwa are all alone, singing to one another and dreaming of the beautiful garden of Eden, when Sanmi and his gang of palm wine drinkers attack them. In the ensuing struggle, Sanmi slashes Tiwa’s throat, and she dies.
Lateef, our Lankule in The Groit, is not the same wayward and rugged character in Ayinla. Here, in The Groit, he is almost a retard with valuable knowledge of telling stories but is shy to face the public. He fights over Tiwa with his one-time friend, Sanmi. Here, the love of his life is slaughtered by Sanmi because he could not have Tiwa. He died prematurely in Ayinla with a bottle to his head in a bar room brawl, but here he is left with a dead girlfriend, Tiwa, on his lap.
Lankule’s love of weaving–aso-ofi–is one characteristic of Kunle Afolayan’s Saro character in Anikulapo. Growing up, I observed women falling in love with local tailors because they sewed them beautiful dresses. It is the same with the aso-ofi weavers in Anikulapo. Tiwa falls in love more with Lankule, not only for his stories but for the fact that he’s a weaver. See the romantic scene in which he’s teaching Tiwa to weave, the reason she falls in love with this timid guy.
After The Groit premiered in 2021, Anikulapo by Kunle premiered the following year, in 2022. The undercurrent of both films displays weaving as a prominent culture of ethnicity, bringing respect and fortune to the weavers. Similar to both movies, they give credence to the traditional aso-ofi culture of ethnic Yoruba. Nothing is wrong with the use of weaving and weavers as central figures in the films, but they are both two close to having such similar treatments. Tiwa couldn’t have loved Lankule over Sanmi under natural circumstances but more so for his weaving. Just as the women in Anikulapo, wives, and daughters, flocked to Saro’s life, in the heat of the night, waylaid him, Arolalake for one, which eventually led to his demise.
The Groit brings some critical historical elements of our lives to this date. The Groit denies us that we enjoy a story of either the fake groit or Lankule himself to have given us an exclusive account of family history. We can mimic Tiwa’s voice with instrumental accompaniment in a shower. We didn’t see the grand finale of Tiwa singing as an accompaniment to Lankule’s storytelling. The duo would have sung while she died in his lap—a beautiful story, yet lacking a logical and entertaining resolution.
In 2008, Nollywood produced two movies of similar names–The Strength of Faith and Strength to Strength, both the same year, marketed in the United States in stores next to each other, and the same stars were used in both films. Anikulapo and The Groit bear similar characteristics, especially when both films were made back to back, and each features weaving. There is also the tragic ending of the principal players in both films.