and G. Thus F makes a suitable de
facto standard for notation.A large 21-string bridge-harp played by the male jali or jeli, professional musicians of the Mande people of The Gambia, Senegal, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau and Mali (fig.1). The profession, called jaliyaa, also encompasses verbal arts such as oratory, genealogy and historical narrative, and women performers (sing. jali muso) excel as singers (see also Gambia).
The kora is similar in size and range to the guitar, but in sound it resembles the Egyptian plucked zither qanun. In appearance, it is unique. The body is made of a large half-calabash, about 40–50 cm in diameter, covered with cowhide to form the soundtable. The body is ‘spiked’ or pierced by a stout wooden pole, about 120–30 cm long, which forms both the neck and tailpiece. The player may sit or stand, but optimum resonance is achieved when the tailpiece rests on the floor. The player holds the instrument with the soundtable facing him, the calabash dome facing the listeners, and the neck towering above him. The cowhide forming the soundtable also extends part way over the gourd, and this portion is studded with decorative chrome tacks and cut with a soundhole to one side of the neck. The strings, extending downwards from collars along the neck, diverge into two planes and pass over notches on either side of a tall bridge mounted on the soundtable. Below the bridge the strings are knotted to anchor strings with a weaver’s knot, and the anchors in turn are looped around an iron ring in the tailpiece. From a frontal aspect, the player’s hands are barely visible as he holds lightly the dowel-like handgrips parallel to the neck and plucks the strings with forefingers and thumbs.
African rosewood, called keno (Pterocarpus erinaceus), is the preferred material for the neck (falo), the bridge (bato) and the handgrips. The mirango (‘calabash’) is the ‘kettle gourd’ variety of Lagenaria siceraria. The collars (sing. konso), raised or lowered to tune the strings, are made of cowhide strips wound in a turk’s-head knot. Koras with tuning pegs have been introduced by monks of the Keur-Moussa monastery in Senegal, but most kora players still prefer collars. The strings (sing. julo) were once made of thin strips of antelope or cow hide twisted to form a round cross section, but since the introduction of nylon have been made of 40–150 lb-test fishing line. The bright sound and durability of nylon have been factors in the kora’s rise as a versatile and popular instrument. A single commercial recording made by Gilbert Rouget of the seron, related to the kora, preserves the sound of the now archaic rawhide.
A vital accessory in the past was the nyenyemo, a leaf-shaped plate of tin or brass with wire loops threaded around the edge (fig.2). Clamped to the bridge, it produced sympathetic sounds, serving as an amplifier since the sound carried well in the open air. In today’s environment players usually prefer or need an electric pickup.
Ibn Battuta visited the Mande empire of Mali in 1353, about 100 years after its founding by Sunjata. A visitor at the court, Battuta described the xylophone and plucked lute, but not the kora (1939, p.328). The kora is often linked to Sunjata’s time in the popular imagination, but most jalolu recognize it as an instrument of the westernmost branch of the Mande people, i.e. the Mandinka, and the Mandinka only emerged as Mali disintegrated after the 14th century and the Mande spread out to form smaller kingdoms. Mungo Park, living among the Gambia river Mandinka in the 1790s, noted among their instruments ‘the korro, with eighteen strings’ (1954, p.213). Lacking more data, an origin for the kora may be projected back from this first reference to perhaps the 16th or 17th century.
According to legend, the kora began with Jali Madi Wuleng. One version of the story relates that while walking in the forest one day he heard beautiful music. Seeking its origin, he found a jinn (a genie or spirit) playing the kora. The jinn agreed to teach him to play if he would marry his daughter and remain in the spirit world forever. Wuleng agreed, but after some years escaped and brought the kora to the Mandinka.
The kora was probably created by adding strings to an existing Mande harp, of which there are several with three to eight strings. Known as spike harps, these are a type unique to West Africa (fig.3). The curved neck (a feature shared with other arched harps of the world) spikes the body as on the kora, and a string carrier stands upright on the soundtable to hold the strings. Straightening the neck and passing the strings over the holder (making it a bridge) enabled the instrument to accommodate the tension of more strings. Erich Moritz von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs coined the term ‘harp lute’ to describe the kora (1914), implying a ‘harp-like lute’ (see Harp-lute (i)). But in ancestry and playing technique, the kora is a harp. The term ‘Bridge Harp’ (Knight, 1971; 1973) places it clearly in the harp family as a variety of the spike harp (see also Harp, §III, 2(i), fig.13d).
With palms facing, thumbs up and forefingers curled down in front of the handgrips, the player plucks 11 strings on the left and ten on the right. The separation is deceptive, for the music does not divide into right and left parts. Instead, the thumbs create a bass line, while the fingers play a treble melody; the instrument is inherently polyphonic. The pitches ascend in 3rds on both sides of the bridge (fig.4). This facilitates the playing of two- to four-note chords, rapid scalar passages (fingers or thumbs in alternation) and octave doubling. Brushed chords (strummed by one finger) and damped notes (detero) are also possible.
The traditional role of the kora is to accompany praise-songs and songs of commemoration, performed either by the kora player himself, his wife or other male or female singers. The kora part, kumbengo, is typically derived from the vocal line, konkilo. In its simplest form, the kumbengo consists of playing the donkilo in octaves, but the more idiomatic style is to create a polyphonic ostinato from a fragment of the donkilo (ex.1). The layers of polyphony are often rhythmically offset, and hemiola is common. One player’s kumbengo will differ from another’s, but all are compatible, creating further polyphony if several players join. The kumbengo is repeated with subtle variations and interrupted occasionally for birimintingo, improvisatory scalar and sequential motifs, usually played at dazzling speed. Occasionally the kumbengo is punctuated by a knock on the handgrip by the right forefinger in a technique called bulukondingo podi. Another type of knock, konkong, is more common; it is a time-line pattern tapped on the back of the kora by an apprentice or a male singer. Kora players compose their own songs to new or modified kumbengolu and often develop basic accompaniments into virtuoso solo pieces.
The kora spans a range of three octaves and a third. Most of the strings on the kora are not named, but the first and third strings on the right are called timbango and timbango a jingkandango (‘timbango’ and ‘the one that answers timbango’). The two lowest strings, on the left, reinforce these at the octave. Named for their importance, the right hand strings, a 5th apart and played in alternation, establish the tonal centre for the majority of kora pieces.
The
precedent for notating the kora on F was established prior to 1970 by a
book of études produced for the Ecole des Arts in Dakar by Mamadou Kouyaté. Kora
players, who make their own instruments, pitch them to suit themselves, and the
choice may range from a 4th below to a 5th above F. But players like to be able
to play together or with fixed-pitch instruments such as the balo
(xylophone), and studies by Roderic Knight (1971) and A. King (1972) show that
a significant number of koras are pitched between E and G. Thus F makes a suitable de
facto standard for notation.
There are four standard tunings for the kora, each with a regional association (Table 1). Tomoraba, also know as silaba or ‘main way’, is regarded by kora players in western Gambia, southern Senegal and Guinea-Bissau, the kora’s presumed homeland, as the original kora tuning. Pieces in tomoraba, such as the well-known Kelefaba, are generally songs composed by kora players rather than adapted from other instruments. King has observed that tomoraba matches the Western major scale in just intonation, with the 3rd and 7th lower by 15 cents than the tempered intervals (1972, p.133).
The other three tunings are prevalent in eastern Gambia, northern Guinea and southern Mali. The first is hardino, nearly identical to the tempered Western major scale. The second, sauta, is tuned from hardino by augmenting the 4th. Tomora mesengo (‘little tomora’) is associated primarily with eastern Gambia, where it is simply called tomora. It is tuned by lowering the 3rd and 7th another 35 cents from tomoraba, making these notes ‘half-flat’, while raising the 2nd and 6th to within a semitone of three and seven respectively.
Table 1 presents a single octave of the tunings in graphic alignment under a cents ruler and gives intervals in cents. The cents figures were derived from tunings by 20 players studied by King. The figures are representative, not definitive, for although kora players agree on tunings, there is much room for individual variation in actual practice.
Generally, kora pieces utilize these tunings in what may be termed ‘timbango mode’, i.e. with pitch one as the tonal centre. Some songs call for other modes when played on the kora. In tomoraba, the most common alternates are modes centred on pitches three and seven, the latter including a diminished fifth, unusual in the West but familiar to Mandinka ears through popular seruba drumming songs. In hardino, modes three and six are utilized, and sauta may be achieved without retuning by placing the tonal centre on pitch four. Sauta tuning itself is used only in its principal mode. In tomora mesengo, mode three is in fact the most common. The sound of this mode resembles sauta, although kora players do not equate the two. The versatility of kora tunings and their modes enables kora players to adapt to performing with the balo, kontingo (Mande plucked lute), other African instruments and Western instruments.
These collaborations are common today. In the 20th century, kora players migrated from the village-based courts of Mande kings and chiefs, seeking the patronage of national governments and the urban setting of African capitals. Today they are increasingly visible on the international music scene, collaborating with African musicians of other cultures, Western jazz and classical musicians and the avant garde.
E.M. von Hornbostel and C. Sachs: ‘Systematik der Musikinstrumente’, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, xlvi (1914), 553–90
Ibn Battuta: Travels in Asia and Africa, 1325–1354 (London, 1939)
R. Miller, ed.: The Travels of Mungo Park (New York, 1954) [originally published as Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa, 1799]
R. Knight: ‘Towards a Notation and Tablature for the Kora, and its Application to other Instruments’, AfM, v/1 (1971), 23–36
A. King: ‘The Construction and Tuning of the Kora’, African Language Studies, xiii (1972), 113–36
R. Knight: Mandinka Jaliya: Professional Music of The Gambia (diss., UCLA, 1973)
S.G. Pevar: ‘The Construction of a Kora’, African Arts, xi/4 (1978), 66–72
L. Duran: ‘Theme and Variation in Kora Music: a Preliminary Study of “Tutu Jara” as performed by Amadu Bansang Jobate’, Music and Tradition: Essays on Asian and Other Musics Presented to Laurence Picken, ed. D.R. Widdess and R.F. Wolpert (Cambridge, 1981)
R. Knight: ‘The Style of Mandinka Music: a Study in Extracting Theory from Practice’, Selected Reports in Ethnomusicology, v (1984), 3–66
S.C. DeVale: ‘African Harps: Construction, Decoration, and Sound’, Sounding Forms: African Music Instruments, ed. Marie-Thérèse Brincard (New York, 1989), 53–61
R. Knight: ‘Music out of Africa: Mande Jaliya in Paris’, World of Music, xxxiii/1 (1991), 52–69
R. Knight: ‘Vibrato Octaves: Tunings and Modes of the Mande Balo and Kora’, Progress Reports in Ethnomusicology, iii/4 (1991), 1–49
E. Charry: Musical Thought, History, and Practice among the Mande of West Africa (diss., Princeton, 1992)
E. Charry: ‘West African Harps’, Journal of the American Musical Instrument Society, xx (1994), 5–53
M. Kouyaté: Méthode de Kora (Dakar, n.d.)
Guinée: Musique des Malinké Le Chant du Monde, CNR 2741112 (1999) [originally issued as Music of Occidental Africa, 1952]
Amadu Bansang Jobarteh, Master of the Kora, coll. L. Duran, Eavadisc EDM 101 (1978)
Jali Nyama Suso: Kora Player of The Gambia, videotape, dir. R. Knight, Original Music OMV-003 (1991)
Gambie: l’art de la kora–Jali Nyama Suso, coll. R. Knight, Ocora CD 580027 (1996)
Jali Kunda: Griots of West Africa and Beyond, Ellipsis Arts CD 3510 (1996) [book and CD]
RODERIC C. KNIGHT