Contents
What type of instrument is a kora?
harp lute
Kora, long-necked harp lute of the Malinke people of western Africa. The instrument’s body is composed of a long hardwood neck that passes through a calabash gourd resonator, itself covered by a leather soundboard. Twenty-one leather or nylon strings are attached to the top of the neck with leather tuning rings.
How much does a kora cost?
Sizes & Prices
| Model | Size | Retail Price (USD) |
|---|---|---|
| PKORAM2 | ~49″x20″x14″ | $1,300 |
What does the kora look like?
The kora looks like a giant, upside-down Tootsie Pop. A large gourd sits at the bottom of a long neck traversed by the 21 strings. The player sits, resting the gourd in his lap with the neck vertical, and plucks the strings with the thumb and one finger of each hand. It’s a tradition that dates back some 800 years.
Is the kora still used today?
Nowadays, koras are increasingly made with guitar machine heads instead of the traditional konso (leather rings). In the late 20th century, a 25-string model of the kora was developed, though it has been adopted by only a few players, primarily in the region of Casamance, in southern Senegal.
How is a kora tuned?
In tuning a Kora, the first string you have to tune is the gravest on our left-hand side. This string will be tuned to F note and you will tune it as F1. The F1 will be referred to as the lower octave. We will then go up and tune the remaining strings in order of second, third, and fourth octave.
What are kora players called?
A traditional kora player is called a korafola and comes from the Jali caste, who are traditional oral historians, genealogists and storytellers, similar to bards. They pass their skills on to their descendants.
What does Kora mean in Africa?
: a 21-stringed African musical instrument resembling a lute.
What is an African instrument?
African musical instruments include a wide range of drums, slit gongs, rattles and double bells, different types of harps, and harp-like instruments such as the Kora and the ngoni, as well as fiddles, many kinds of xylophone and lamellophone such as the mbira, and different types of wind instrument like flutes and …
What does kora stand for?
KORA
| Acronym | Definition |
|---|---|
| KORA | Kansas Open Records Act |
What are kora strings made from?
The strings, which were traditionally made from thin strips of finely twisted antelope hide, are now made with nylon fishing line. Charry writes that kora players switched to fishing line because it’s durable and resistant to changes in weather.
Is the kora chromatic?
Kora music uses a diatonic rather than chromatic scale. If we think about a piano, each octave is divided into 12 notes, each a semitone (half step) apart. The Kora uses a number of different heptatonic tunings, with 7 notes in each octave.
Can anyone play the kora?
Traditionally, only a man born into a Jali (also spelled and pronounced Jeli, or Djeli) family can play the kora.
What kind of instrument does the kora play?
stringed instrument: The harp. …gender is the western African kora, a harp-lute (or bridge harp), which is traditionally played by men.…. African music: Harp lutes. The sophisticated kora of the Malinke people of West Africa is classified as a harp lute.
How many strings does a kora harp have?
The Kora of Africa is a unique aspect to a harp and a notched bridge like a lute or guitar. The first known reference to the Kora from Mungo Park in 1799 in his book “Journey into Africa Districts Interns.” He describes as “a large harp with 18 strings.”
What is the body of a Kora MADE of?
The materials needed for a Kora are a mythological symbolism: pumpkin with earth, timber plants, leather and animal-string magic. The body of the instrument is made of half a large gourd covered with a leather of goat, sheep or cow.
How are the strings attached to a Kora?
Twenty-one leather or nylon strings are attached to the top of the neck with leather tuning rings. The strings pass over a notched bridge (10 strings on one side of the bridge, 11 on the other) and are anchored to the bottom of the neck with a metal ring.