Tuned to a pentatonic (five note) scale, the krar is a portable lyre associated with the wandering tradition of bards and minstrels known as the Azmari. The krar is a fan shaped harp with five or six strings originating in Ethiopia and Eritrea.
So introductions made, let’s rendez-vous with the first of our plucked cousins. Belonging to the string clan, a harp is classified as, “ a plucked stringed instrument consisting of a resonator, an arched or angled neck that may be supported by a post, and parallel strings of graded length that are perpendicular to the soundboard.” In general a player does not stop or fret these strings which are left to ring open, although they may be dampened and harmonics or overtones can often be found at different positions along the length of the string. So before we meet a few of these instruments let’s start with a quick guide to the harp family. Thanks to pyramid art we know the Pharaohs liked a lyre! whilst the kinnor – the ancient harp of the Israelites is mentioned an impressive forty two times in the Old Testament! Just as it is hypothesised that the West African djembe was the result of upcycling the ubiquitous mortar found in every Sehalian backyard, so it is believed that the earliest harps were quite literally hunting bows, augmented (or not) with additional gut strings and in some cases a soundboard.
Harps, lyres, bows, stringed instruments have existed in Africa since antiquity.
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