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Kora

Musical Instrument
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A 21-string West African harp-lute played by griots, central to oral storytelling and musical-poetic traditions.

Detailed Definition
The kora appears in poetry as a symbol of oral history, spiritual guidance, and cultural preservation; its intricate, harp-like melodies carry genealogies, proverbs, and epic tales, making it a living metaphor for the poet’s role as keeper of memory and voice of the community in African and diasporic verse.
Example
Example in poetry:
Griot poets chant: “Kora strings are spiderwebs / catching history’s dew”; Each of its 21 strings maps a lineage; “Kora plays—warriors sheathe swords, listen”; In diaspora verse, the kora’s calabash body holds ocean crossings: “My kora sings Mali, but its tears are Caribbean.”
Additional Notes
The kora is a 21-string West African harp-lute with a calabash resonator, played by griots (oral historians); its cascading, polyrhythmic patterns blend melody and rhythm—ideal for poems about memory, lineage, or the instrument as archive of epic narrative, resistance, and cultural continuity across generations.
Also Known As
West African harp-lute
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