Hi Greg,

I visited your Myspace page today and found the name Tiumane Diabate listed among your influences. If I'm not mistaken, he's the uncle of Mamadou Diabate http://www.mamadoukora.com/?
I'd never heard a Kora player of this caliber until I caught Mamadou live last year, and I was blown away by the playing and the instrument. There were elements of harp, mandolin, fingerstyle guitar and some pieces with distinctive bass and melody parts (sound familiar?). The semi-improvised pieces often reminded me of the "streams of arpeggios" that Bob Culbertson uses in his playing.

Cheers,
Andy

Hi Andy,

I think the kora is one of the most amazing instruments, and there are some similarities with certain styles of Stick playing, where a hand will anchor a root note and arpeggiate above it, while the other hand can do the same. Bob and I both do this, as does Emmett and Don does it quite a bit on his latest NS/Stick videos, and Steve does it a lot with his right thumb on the bass strings and the rest of his hand on the melody strings..

There's a pretty good video on YouTube that show the kora in action:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lep1tjEIkJc

Of course they don't have to keep the note held like we do, but the idea of breaking the hand down into two parts is definitely one that resonates with Free Hands.

Of course, I spelled Diabate's first name wrong, sooo... if you're searching, please make sure you spell it:

Toumani Diabate