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The Kora

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THE KORA

The sounding body of the kora is made from a half a calabash gourd covered with cowhide. The cowhide is soaked in a bath of chemicals for three or four days. This makes it much easier to remove the hairs and makes the normally tough leather very soft and pliable and it also bleaches the skin white.

The wet skin is the wrapped over the open half of the calabash and ties firmly at the back. Whilst the skin is still soft and pliant, the two mahogany hand poles and the transverse pole are fitted. This in then let in the sun to dry for a few days and whilst it is drying the skin shrinks when thus fitting very tightly over the calabash. The need for this drying process means that koras can only be made during the dry season from mid-November to mid-June.

When the skin is dried, it is cut around the calabash and then attached to the edge with brass-headed pins. Some koras have the most beautiful and intricate designs created by these pins. Sherrifo favours using as few pins as are necessary for two reasons. He claims that by using too many pins the maker will deaden both the tone and the volume of a kora. In addition, he does a lot of his playing whilst standing or walking around, so he wants his kora to be as light as possible. A round sound hole is cut in the closed half of the calabash and this is also edged with the pins. A round wooden pole made of mahogany is to be used for the neck. For each string a wet strip of cowhide is plaited round this pole.

A sharp metal tool is used for this to plait the tuning rings tightly to the pole. After drying, this tuning ring fits snugly to the pole ready for the strings to be attached to it.

Holes must now be drawn and cut through the calabash to allow the neck pole to be fitted tightly through the calabash. A notched bridge stands upright on a wooden cushion on the skin (traditionally this is covered in red material). It has notches either side for the strings, ten on one side and eleven on the other. The strings are made from three different thickness of nylon fishing line. In former times they were made from cow skin, cut into thin strips and twisted, which gave a quieter sound. These were also much more likely to break.

The 21 strings are attached either side of the bridge. One end of the string is looped several times round the tuning ring and the other end is knotted in the string holder. The string holders are made of either of a shoe-lace like material or double nylon lines and are attached to the iron ring that forms the tailpiece attached to the bottom of the pole. A hole is drilled through the bottom of the neckpole to take this iron ring

Tuning and scales. Tuning is achieved by pushing the rings up or down the neck. Then the loops of the string are pulled with a long iron nail to lengthen or shorten the strings to get lower or higher pitches. The rings hold their position well so tuning can be done in very fine microtonal intervals. Four named traditional heptatonic tunings are in general use. Siliba is the original kora tuning and the one in which the oldest kora songs are played. Tamora and Hardino are somewhat similar to a western major scale. For example, the seven-note scale of Tamora has three notes on standard pitch, two that are slightly flat and two that are somewhat sharp. In the Sauta tuning, the fourth degree of the scale is raised a half step. There is no real sense of absolute pitch in traditional kora music. The instruments are often tuned to match the range of the singer.