Adventures with a kora, 3

After belatedly posting no.2 in this series, I thought I’d better post another update. A couple of weeks ago I tried suarta tuning (with B natural, instead of the B flat of silaba tuning, so roughly tuned to a C major scale) and started practising Jarabi, from the video tutorial I bought from the Kora Workshop. The video does not play properly even on my new laptop, so this is a frustrating experience. Nevertheless, I think I’ve got the basics, although I’ve probably misunderstood some of the subtleties of the rhythm. I’ve memorised the introduction and both versions of the kumbengo (thumb version and finger version), and can play them more or less up to speed, though not with all the right notes every time! When I’ve practised them a bit more, I’ll move on to the variations.

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