Learning The Kora, My Journey by Helen Webb

The kora is an instrument from the Mande region of West Africa. Here I tell the story of part of my learning journey with my teacher Kadjaly (I refer to him sometimes here as "K")

Kadjali decided that learning more patterns to add to a song I had previously learned would be a good start. Kelefa Ba was decided on since I had asked to learn something to sing and play. We started on the task ,which proved very difficult since I could not get an old kora pattern for the song out of my head and Kadjali wanted me to start the musical cycle in a different place . This has been very difficult to get my head around. I have come to the conclusion during this week, that I will have to ask him to teach me something new, as it is going to slow down the process so much trying to unlearn the old starting point in the cycle and add new stuff. The old way is so entrenched in my brain that I can’t break away from it. Also I need to play the song next week to teach a workshop. If I start half learning a new pattern this could really mess up the process. I am using the kora in my workshop to help to encourage myself to learn, not to mess me up completely with the instrument!

Lesson Two

We started on a new song called Sunjata, from Mali. It is about the legendary Sunjata Keta, King of the historic Mali Empire. I have recorded it and written it down. I notice that K is prompting me not to play the strings too harshly, I have a tendency to want the sound to be clear and strong on each note, but I am missing something more subtle that I could bring out in my playing.

I’ve realised that K is really on another planet as far as timekeeping goes. I’m not an expert myself, especially lately as I have been extremely busy and tired and this makes me late for things and hampers my concentration. K is very “laid back” about time keeping, and about whether or not he turns up! He missed our first lesson. However I am prepared to accept this as a cultural difference. A young female friend of mine from Ghana used to complain that her black brothers and sisters were always late for appointments. I said that I thought there were worse things to be than late and that I had encountered them in white and black human beings! I myself have mixed race heritage (English and Trinidadian) Being late is not (from K's point of view), a sign of being unprepared or disrespectful. It is, I think just not pushing things.

We carried on with Sunjata. K told me that kora music from Senegal may be perceived to be a little more rhythmic than Kora music from Mali. The more deeply I questioned him about the differences, the more evasive he became until he said that every kora player was entirely different no matter where they came from because the tradition is never fixed and is always changing as it is not written down. Therefore no one plays exactly the same interpretation repeatedly. As with his teaching, he is what I might describe as vague and unspecific and hard to pin down. However I am beginning to understand this now in the context of an ever changing reality with ever changing music. The concept of music being fixed is not a cultural norm to K. I am now trying to move my brain out of it’s rigid box type way of looking at music.

An incident made me laugh: K showed me a little flicker of the strings which he called a twinkle. I asked him if this was a term used in kora playing. He said no, it was an English word he had learned and he laughed. I said well it could be short for twinbengo (I made up the word) or something similar. I thought I had heard the word twinkle wrongly. He laughed again and then said we could call it that if we wanted to. And I think he was serious. Well it is a living growing tradition. Why shouldn’t I join in as well. I realised I have been thinking of myself as an outsider with no rights to meddle with the sacred laws of kora. Not only that , but a woman as well (women were not always permitted to play) I then threatened to tell Lucy that he had taught me a new word from kora theory and said that it means a fast twiddle! I have to try and make K laugh in lessons because I get so intense with my concentration. I have to concentrate very deeply, because I take so long to absord what I am taught (I'm dispraxic and dislexic which means I'm very kack-handed, plus to learn things they have to be repeated many times. Quite a disadvantage for someone learning the kora!) K is very patient. Sometimes I feel him thinking, hurry along there dear ! I am very aware of the concreteness of my Western style musical brain. Everything is very squared up and blocked out up there! I've had years of classical training, then western rock pop soul etc. I’m going to mention this to K next time. Maybe he can help me make some cracks in the concrete.

The next few lessons were a bit frustrating as it took me ages to learn to play Sunjata, I eventually got it and had a couple of birimintengos - ornamentations, under my belt (simple ones but I was very exited about them!)

I then decided I would like to sing a song without the kora and that Kadjaly would accompany me. This would give me a chance to concentrate on the vocal style of the Sumu (female singers of the Mande region) tradition. My first choice was a traditional song called Duma, but for some reason Kadjaly picked Keme Bourema. I enjoyed learning it, especially getting to grips with the ornaments. When Kadjaly sings I had noticed always these ornaments that I couldn’t quite catch as they are very subtle, but it’s the details that make it possible to sound more authentic. I wonder if these have a name?

I ran into problems with the lyrics, as neither Kadjaly or I ever seemed to have a pen handy and I wanted to learn some improvised sections (at least get some lyrics to play with) I would usually end up listening to recordings of the lessons and slowing them down to hear the lyrics. Then I would write them out phonetically and send them to Kadjaly so that he could correct them and translate them. This system is fine until Kadjaly gets busy with gigs or workshops and I then can’t get answers to my emails, but hey, it’s all character forming! My listening skills were honed in my first music analysis course. I often had to slow things down to transcribe the musical notation. Doing this with lyrics in a language I don’t understand is tricky. It’s easy to imagine “n”s and “m”s where they don’t exist, or hear “t”s as “d”s etc.

Going into detail with the songs and getting them into shape for performance is a very useful exercise. I am thinking about adding some of Niane’s Sunjata in English to my version of Sunjata, as I know some African musicians have done this in French on their versions. Kadjaly did suggest it, then seemed to go off of the idea for a reason he didn’t explain. I will try to get hold of the translation and try it. I could sing a section, then launch into a small section of the piece in English, then carry on with the song in the original Mande language. I have some improvised sections that I have recorded Kadjaly doing so I could do my own version of those later in the song. I really like the way the jeli (West African musician caste) construct their songs as there is plenty of room for improvisation and spoken word, this is a great performance model. I may use it for my own Western style musical performances.