Original in Spanish: La lira de la Estela de Luna
Well… let’s see what I can remember so this makes sense. This whole lyre thing has a lot to do with funerary matters.
At the risk of putting my foot in it, because I’m telling it as I lived it and not in his words… I’d much rather copy-paste what he would have written about something so extra-complicated.
Y.’s first instrument was the kora, which in West Africa is much more than “a musician’s instrument”, something far more elevated. The kora is what the Djeli or Griot play, who are something like a mix of PR, prime minister, adviser… I don’t know. Traditionally they were the right hand of the local ruler. The ones who remembered history so the future could be built with wisdom (hence the sankofa symbol).
It’s also held that it’s not the djeli who chooses the kora, but the kora that chooses the djeli. In practice, those who play the traditional kora are all surnamed Diabaté, Cissoko, Kouyaté…
That’s why, when a little white guy had the huge nerve to show up in Mali at the house of Toumani Diabaté (who is something like the number 1 of the kora) unannounced, never having seen a kora in his life… well, they thought the boy deserved to learn.
But that didn’t cancel those “reticences” about seeing a white man play a black people’s instrument. Because cultural appropriation and things, I suppose. Without the slightest idea of the deep respect all this is born from.
With how beautiful fusion is, damn it.
I also met a Japanese girl who learned to play the nyatiti in Kenya, I think. Anyango is her name, google her, she’s fabulous and the story is similar in my eyes. I’m wandering off…
Anyway, I’m telling you all this so you understand that Y. was very curious, thinking about his own roots and about what music must have sounded around the Mediterranean while in Africa the traditional kora songs were being played. Because friend, the traditional kora songs preserved by oral tradition are unbelievably ancient, while here… well… here we can’t even agree on what the instruments were like, it seems.
Then he found an ancient lyre drawn on the Luna stela, and it caught his attention that it had 15 strings (many more than usual) and that clicked with things he knew about how the kora is played, or something about scales… or… I don’t know, something that escapes me and that I would have understood, and could now explain to you, if back when this happened I had had more Altozano background. If that’s the specific part you’re curious about, we can ask him directly. For some reason the lyre having 15 strings made sense and I can’t explain why.
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estela_de_Luna
Around then he met A., who devotes himself to scraping this kind of info out of the little that remains. Actually I’m not sure whether it was A. who showed him the Luna stela in the first place while he was hunting for info on ancient music…
So he decided to build himself one, and wanted it to be able to play the oldest song he could find.
The lyre was built by a luthier in Greece following his instructions, with A.’s experience too, so it would be as close as possible to what they believed it had been. We hadn’t even returned from Greece to pick up the lyre and he was already playing the Seikilos.
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epitafio_de_S%C3%ADcilo
Of course he didn’t use a tortoise shell, or any animal’s horns. All that was simulated with wood. Because really: no need at all.
And that’s how the pair “ancient instrument + ancient song” was made. All based on dead people’s things.
(Facebook, 2021-02-03)