Oral poets

thumb|right|200px|Senegalese griot, 1890 thumb|200px|A Hausa people|Hausa griot performs at [[Diffa, Niger, playing a (Xalam).]]

thumb|right|250px|Aoidos and outer space; [[allegory by Mikhail Kurushin]] The Greek word '''''''' (; plural: , ) referred to a classical Greek singer. In modern Homeric scholarship, it is used by some as the technical term for a skilled oral epic poet in the tradition to which the Iliad and Odyssey'' are believed to belong (compare rhapsode).

thumb|A citharede Terpander ( Terpandros), of Antissa in Lesbos, was a Greek poet and citharede who lived about the first half of the 7th century BC. He was the father of Greek music and through it, of lyric poetry, although his own poetical compositions were few and in extremely simple rhythms. He simplified rules of the modes of singing of other neighboring countries and islands and formed, out of these syncopated variants, a conceptual system. Though endowed with an inventive mind, and the commencer of a new era of music, he attempted no more than to systematize the musical styles that exis

The bakshy (, ) are traditional Central Asian folk singers.

In Greek mythology, Thamyris (Ancient Greek: Θάμυρις, Thámuris) was a Thracian singer. He is notable in Greek mythology for reportedly being a lover of Hyacinth and thus to have been the first mortal male to have loved another male, but when his songs failed to win his love from the god Apollo, he challenged the Nine Muses to a competition and lost.

legendary ancient poet and musician

Izhorian oral poet (1833-1904)

Brazilian poet (1909–2002)

Mahbuba (Arabic: محبوبة / maḥbūba c. 1825 – 27 October 1840) was an Oromo girl from present-day Ethiopia who was taken to Germany as a slave. She is known to have helped lay the foundations for the Oromo language studies in Europe by reciting her oral traditions through songs.