Take the bone-dry shell of a large gourd, a straight length of rosewood and a piece of cow or antelope hide, combine them with 200 years of craftsmanship and 21 strings, and you have the kora: ...

His ancestors were the voices of kings. His surname identifies him as a member of a musical family that can trace its genealogy to the 13th century, a lineage of storytellers, singers and musicians, ...

The kora is a West African harp with 21 strings and a large calabash gourd body. According to Eric Charry, a historian of West African music, the instrument originated in the late 18th century, during ...

BAMAKO, MALI — On a moonlit African night in a leafy open-air bar, kora virtuoso Toumani Diabate is peeling off an ethereal flood of kaleidoscopic riffs from a 21-string cow-skin-covered harp like one ...

The music of West Africa will fill Franklin & Marshall College's Barshinger Center Friday when Mamadou Diabate performs on the kora, in the first Sound Horizons concert of the year. The series brings ...

Editor’s Note: African Voices is a weekly show that highlights Africa’s most engaging personalities, exploring the lives and passions of people who rarely open themselves up to the camera. Kora master ...

If an African kora-led album is called Electric Griot Land, it'll be different. For years, this instrument - a 21-string harp-lute with half a calabash covered with cow skin as a resonator - has been ...

Her instrument was the preserve of men for hundreds of years, but the Gambian musician wasn’t fazed. She explains why she ripped up the rules – and is now remodelling African education In west ...

Monks in blue-grey habits lift their hands in supplication before breaking into a chant accompanied by the singsong twang of the kora, a traditional West African harp. It is mid-afternoon prayer in ...