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Kumbengo

by Pop Miri Unofficial

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about

My first song on the Kora - a west African instrument made from a giant pumpkin called a Calabash. It takes two people and ten days to make this huge harp, stretching a cow skin over the pumpkin husk and letting it dry in the sun.

My Kora is from Gambia, or that's what said the label. I found it secondhand in an antique shop. It was very dusty and full of leaves, and it has a dull sound - not the distinct trebel-y songbird like you might recognise from the famous Kora player Toumani Djibouti. My Kora is a big gentle quiet beast. I feel like I am at the helm of a ship when I am playing it.

I like how the Kora faces you. Unlike many instruments (like a guitar) that face outwards to an imagined audience, the Kora faces in - removing a presupposed element of performance and instead focusing on the player's intimate relationship to the instrument.

The Kora is supposedly a virtuoso instrument. Of course, I am not, and I play it like I do everything; naive and clumsy, preferring repetition over complexity. I tried to create a Kumbengo, which is an onomatopoeic word describing the bassline element of polyrhythms played on the Kora.

Needless to say, I can't do the 'Birimintingo', which is the complex cascades of trilling melodic notes produced only by years of training in incredibly deft finger movements.

Last to say is about the tuning. My Kora has the traditional leather straps, which you move up and down the neck to tune it (instead of pins). There are 21 strings, made from fishing lines, and it takes me about twenty minutes to tune it up. Even a millimetre seems to produce a difference of perhaps half a step (painstaking). And because of the straps, the instrument tends to detune yourself as you play... Luckily I love wonky things.

An interesting side note is that some players give their strings individual names - not like 'A', 'B Sharp', etc. - but personified names. Makes me think about how in some Indian devotional music, notes (or combinations of) are considered to have certain qualities and powers, that should be played in a specific context and for specific purposes.

That's everything I have to tell you so far about the Kora. hope you find it as charming as I do!

lyrics

Lyrics:

Sorrow in the morning
Like a sunbeam
On my face

I feel as if I woke up from such a strange dream
Such a strange dream

Don't wait up for me, my love
I don't think I'll be here long

Sorrow in the morning
I have been dreaming
Dreaming

Don't wait up for me, my love
I don't think I'll be here long

credits

released July 19, 2022
made by me and me and me :-)

unmastered - play at yr own peril.

license

all rights reserved

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about

Pop Miri Unofficial image

Pop Miri Unofficial London, UK

where i put my fragments, demos. and love scribbles

xx

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