From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
The oral transmission
This article concerns a griot-based oral performance tradition transmitting Beach Surgery. For theoretical work on oral transmission as adaptation method generally, see Griotic Surgery and Griot oral epics.
*The oral transmission* is an ongoing multi-generational griot oral epic cycle that transmits the stories of Leif and Katita across West African communities, primarily in Senegal, Mali, Guinea, and Burkina Faso. Rather than reproduce fixed text, griots improvise the narrative within established structural motifs—the one-sided coin, the earth's rubbing sound, the red motifs—adapting to audience, season, and the griot's own genealogical tradition of telling.
A key innovation: within a single 2–3-hour performance, the story may cycle, restart, and seam without marked discontinuity. The glitch unfolds as seamless oral tradition rather than structural failure. Griots accompany themselves on kora, balafon, and talking drum; audiences contribute rhythmic response and call-and-answer participation. Multiple documented lineages exist; many performances remain undocumented, preserved only in community recordings or ephemeral memory.
Recent efforts by regional archivists aim to create distributed audio records while respecting performer autonomy, lineage secrecy, and the improvisational nature of oral transmission. Some griots actively resist transcription, arguing the story lives only in voice and presence.
The practice suggests the glitch is not a literary problem awaiting solution but an inheritance—the natural feature of unfinished, living form.