Verbal and Acrobatic Strategies in Senegalese Wolof Wrestling

Senegalese Wolof wrestling is both a traditional and a modern sport that is permeated with complex narrative and athletic strategies. This sport contains oral and acrobatic techniques that can be accessed and analyzed in the religious, musical, and battling Wolof praise songs known as bàkk. In an attempt to examine the significance of different verbal strategies and battling techniques that accompany Senegalese Wolof wrestling, I discuss selected bàkk narratives in which the use and appropriation of griots' rhetorical skills and public roles have important social, cultural, and political meanings in the sport.