Griots: yay or nay?

There are both advantages and disadvantages to griot-based history. The advantages include:

• Increased accessibility as one does not need to be literate to understand teaching/story
• Stories may stay alive longer as the spoken word travels faster among people than the written word
• Personal flairs may be attached to stories, making them more interesting

Disadvantages include: 

• "When a griot dies, it is like a library being burned to the ground" - griots hold much knowledge, but if they die without passing it on, it is lost forever
• Personal flairs may make the story more interesting, but it also may skew the facts surrounding an event
• Griots face social barriers; for example, a griot from tribe X may not be allowed in tribe Y, limiting knowledge spread

Overall, I think that textbook learning is superior to griot-based learning. While I can say that it would definitely be interesting to have someone (I'm looking at you Whitten) come in and dance and sing in an attempt to articulate history to us, textbooks have several advantages. Textbooks can be brought essentially anywhere, may be biased but must be mostly objective to get published (or at least I hope so...), and are more straightforward than the old song and dance, my friend.