Momi Maiga – Kora & West African Music 13-17/04/2022
Africa is a continent with a strong presence of orality in its music and culture. It is through oral transmission that stories and traditions are experienced and re-constructed, creating links between the past, the world views of the older generations – the ancestors – and the present. In this way a kind of collective memory is created, which is both real and profound. Music, in this sense, is closely related in the weaving of this net of stories and memories, through sounds and songs, instruments and voices.
The Kora and the Korafola (the Kora player, the person “who makes the Kora speak”) are, therefore, witnesses of the different traditions and cultures. The study of the Kora and its music, thus, includes the study of scales and modes of tuning, popular repertoires and techniques of execution but is also extended to historical and sociological aspects of the music and the life of musicians in West Africa and more specifically in the Mande traditions, which is where Momi comes from. Additionally with learning the technique and the traditional repertory of the instrument we will also create our own songs, as the music of the Korafola is never static but always developing, by creating new songs, inhabiting new musical worlds. This seminar is open to all instrumentalists and vocalists.