Cool Stuff: Sub-Saharan Africa!

Whilst going through our materials this past week "in Africa," I found myself very curious about griots and the kora. I really enjoyed listening to the kora and though that it was a very interesting instrument, especially when comparing it to other "harp-like" instruments, so I went searching for more background on griots and their music. While searching, I had come across a griot named Nomoucounda Cissoko from Senegal. Now, while he plays traditional instruments, like the kora and percussion, he incorporates hip-hop into his music. In the video below, he mentions how, while professionally trained on the kora, he draws a lot of inspiration from genres like salsa, house, and hip-hop. His ideas when it comes to modernizing his traditional music, I find, are very similar to Sona Jabarteh as he wants to incorporate modern genres as a way of preserving the kora and the stories of his people. 

It really interesting to me how he is still able to make his music sound traditional but still very modern at the same time, without one genre outweighing the other. Below is a link to one of his songs off his album "Faling."

Moving on, I also found myself curious about other the music of other parts of Africa that we did not get a chance to talk about. I had wondered how different music would be from the opposite side of Africa, so I looked towards Ethiopia. In my search I had found an instrument called the "masinko". I found that it is a very prominent instrument in Ethiopia, made from horse hairs and animal hide. What is interesting about it is that you can get a variety of melodies out of the instrument, despite there being only one string. This instrument was really interesting to me because at first it kind of reminded me of the chinese instrument called the "banhu," which I had come across while on youtube in the past, but when I listened to the masinko, the timbre of the instrument was much more similar to the fiddle that we know. It was also really cool to me because it was pretty much the first bowed instrument I had come across in this class, other than the violins in the Andes! You can read more about it here!

Here is a demonstration of the masinko!

And here is what the banhu looks like for comparison.

Lastly, I found myself interested with another instrument from Western Africa: the balafon. While it was clear that the instrument worked similar to that of a marimba, I thought it was quite interesting how they utilized gourds underneath each "key" for resonance and tone. While doing more research on this instrument, I found that it can be dated back as far as the 13th century, and similar to the Native American flute, it has many different stories that are shared as its' origin story. One of these included a balafon player who had become so "one" with the instrument that he could do nothing but play it all day. The balafon's are made of kiln-baked wood (usually rosewood) and tied together by a piece of cord. What I had found interesting that I did not realize, is that each gourd that was to go under the keys had to be cut and "tuned" to its designated key. It was also interesting to read about how people are modernizing these instruments, like many others do around the world, by using materials like glue and plastic to aid them when building. See this link to read more about it!