Mar. 13th, 2008

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"Fresh Air" Reviews a new CD from a West African superstar musician. As I was listening to the samples from the disk, I made the connection between the sounds of the kora (which was also mentioned in Alex Haley's book Roots) and an instrument frequently heard in Appalachian music--the dulcimer. Yes, the two instruments belong to different sides of the family of stringed instruments...but the sound is very much the same.

One did not come from the other. Perhaps they came from a common ancestor, tho'. Dulcimers came to Europe from the Near and Middle East. Western Africa was often visited by missionaries and traders from the Muslim world long before white men came along around the start of the Sixteenth Century. So it is a bizarre thing, but neither impossible nor inevitable, that the musics would meet again in America.

And the rest? You hear it on the radio...every day.

FP

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Stephen R Bierce

March 2022

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