On another occasion I had the chance to hear Koyaté Djimo play the kora when he was on tour with the National Dance Company of Senegal. The kora is a kind of harp; a gourd which serves as a sounding box hangs in front of the musician, and he plucks the twenty-one strings which are attached to a neck on a pillar extending away from his body. M. Koyaté is famous throughout Senegal as a virtuoso on the kora, but when he stepped on stage, few people in the audience, I am sure, were aware either of his prestige among his countrymen or of the potential of the strange looking instrument which he carried. He barely glanced at the audience, and he looked down at his instrument in deep concentration as he began to play a simple melody based on an uncomplicated rhythmic foundation of three against two. As he played this simple music, he watched his fingers, and he seemed to be meditating on the musical theme which he quietly established. As he elaborated on this theme in greater rhythmic and melodic complexity, he began to demonstrate his incredible technical virtuosity. Finally, at the moment when his improvisations were reaching their most difficult and wonder ful point, he raised his head and looked out at the audience, smiling slightly as he turned his head and his eyes to survey the scene. His demonstration of coolness and poise gave those in the audience, more clearly than the drummers and dancers they had come to see, their most accurate understanding of the depth and meaning of the tradition he was representing, and as he looked at them and smiled, they acknowledged this insight with a spontaneous gesture of applause which transformed the concert hall from a Western to an African musical context. When he finished his piece, the people in the audience actually looked around to smile at each other while they applauded him again.
John Miller Chernoff, "African Rhythm and African Sensibility", The University of Chicago Press, 1979, page 142.
