Kora (instrument)

Kora is a plucked with both hands West African bridge harp, which is also classified as a harp-lute.

Design

Externally, the instrument has a remote resemblance to a bow ancient Egyptian harp, whose followers are spread among other things, in Uganda and Central Africa, and an angular harp, whose form still lives on in the games played in Mauritania ardin. In fact, the kora one of them independent development of the West African inland spit sounds of the type ngoni. When ardin the neck occurs vertically out of the calabash shell, in contrast to the long neck of the kora is parallel to the soundboard inside the gourd. The MVET of Cameroon has a similar notching web, but not a sound body. Most closely related to the kora is the Soron the Malinke in Guinea.

The kora is made of a calabash kuhfellbespannten corpus on which a bar is placed vertically. 21, the strings pass from one ring to the underside of the body by means of notches on both sides of the web up to their points of attachment along the neck. The neck keno made ​​from the hardwood acts as attachment and not as a fretboard, the strings are of different lengths and so ( diatonic) can be tuned. Unlike According instruments, the strings are attached perpendicular to the body and not in parallel.

Today it manufactures the strings of the kora of nylon, originally shot at them from the skin of a female antelope.

Play

The kora is heptatonically voted vary with three to four popular moods, their intervals more or less of the tempered major keys. The gripped by the left and right hand note values ​​are opposite each other alternately. The pitches of the left string plane are the root Q as a starting point: F1 -C1 -D1 -E1- E2- B ♭ 2- D 2 -F2 -A3 - C3 -E3, the right side of F2 -A2- C2 -E2 - G3 B ♭ 3 -D3 -F4 -G4- A4. The most common moods hot silaba and Hardino, others are tomora (similar to the Dorian mode) and Sauta (similar to the Lydian mode). A tone between E ♭ and G is the most common.

As a master of the kora Toumani Diabaté currently apply, Malamini Jobarteh, Tata Dindin and Ballaké Sissoko. A Europeanization of play has introduced Soriba Kouyaté.