Amadou Diabaté making a kora, next door to Toumani’s house

The kora is a 21-stringed ‘harp’ made from half a gourd, covered in goat’s skin and a long wooded pole (the neck) to which the strings are attached. There are basically three systems for attaching the strings (and therefore tuning them):

(i) The traditional leather rings (see a close-up here). Tuned by pushing/pulling the rings up and down the neck.
(ii) Wooden pegs: much easier to tune than the first, but can still slip. (Photo here.)
(iii) Western machine heads, ie the same as you’d find on a classical guitar (like this bloke is playing).

I bought one using system (i) and sooned wished I hadn’t: tuning it takes about half an hour and your finger nails hurt for days afterwards. Also, I just broke a string and the only way to replace it is to slide all the shorter strings down to the base and then retune! Nightmare. I’d recommend system (iii), as you can tune it in 5 minutes and it’s just so much easier. Even Toumani Diabaté himself recommended this kind to me when I had my lesson with him, so I’m really hoping to upgrade mine before I leave Mali!