Art and Oracle: A Scholarly Resource of African and Rituals of Divination | Explore & Learn

26. Harp-Lute (Korikaariye)
Senufo, Côte d'Ivoire
Wood, string, gourd, metal, leather, cloth; 28 x 72 cm (11 x 28 3/8 in.)
20th century
B. and U. Gottschalk Collection, Düsseldorf

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26. Harp-Lute (Korikaariye)

enufo Sando diviners (see cat. nos. 2, 3) appeal to the madebele spirit entities for insight through a display of compelling sculptural artifacts accompanied by sonorous musical overtures. These aesthetic effects create an optimal setting and act as essential catalysts that facilitate communication. Over the course of a consultation, a diviner skillfully choreographs the interplay of a series of visual and auditory stimulants to achieve a state of extrasensory transcendence.

An individual's immediate concerns are addressed in an intimate encounter in which the Sando diviner and the client sit on the ground facing each other with the madebele sculptures placed in front of the diviner. Invariably, this process of inquiry is launched with a short musical invocation. While the female diviner sounds out this musical preface with a gourd rattle, a male diviner plays a six-stringed harp-lute (korikaariye). The score is essentially a form of praise that flatters the madebele and expresses gratitude for their intercession. It engages them by a dynamic of call and response, through which they are summoned forth to participate, seduced by the beauty of the music, and are ultimately induced to reveal their knowledge to the diviner.1 By initiating and sustaining this process of communication over the course of a consultation, music carries equal weight with the visual components of the divination process.2

The potential to perform as a catalyst is expressed especially eloquently in the design of this particular instrument. Beyond its functional capacity to produce music, it features a sculptural representation of a bush spirit.3 This floating, ethereal presence rises out of the calabash resonator, which is covered with cowhide. Centrally situated, it functions as the bridge from which the strings span the long, curving neck, joining the two essential components of the instrument. Iron and brass attachments suspended from the tip of the neck allow the musician to accompany his playing with percussive sound.4 Conceived as a fulcrum, the anthropomorphic string holder takes the form of an idealized woman featuring an elaborate crested coiffure.5 Her position suggests a metaphor for the divination process on several levels: the role of the musician-diviner as arbitrator between the madebele and the diviner's clients, the madebele as intermediaries between humankind and the forces of nature, and finally, the potential of music to transcend the barriers of metaphysical states.

1. Veirman 1996, pp. 152, 154.

2. Ibid., p. 156.

3. Glaze 1981, p. 176.

4. Sounding Forms: African Musical Instruments, ed. Marie-Thérèse Brincard, exh. cat. (New York: American Federation of Arts, 1989), p. 90.

5. Glaze 1981, p. 176.