The kora is built from a gourd, cut in half and covered with cow skin to make a resonator with a long hardwood neck.

The sound of a kora resembles that of a harp, though when played in the traditional style it bears resemblance to a guitar played using the flamenco or Delta blues technique of plucking polyrhythmic patterns with both hands (using the remaining fingers to secure the instrument by holding the hand posts on either side of the strings).

Ostinato riffs ("kumbengo") and improvised solo runs ("birimintingo") are played at the same time by skilled players.

A vital accessory in the past was the nyenmyemo, a leaf-shaped plate of tin or brass with wire loops threaded around the edge.

[6] By moving the konso (a system of leather tuning rings) up and down the neck, a kora player can retune the instrument into one of four seven-note scales.

[8][9] In the 1300s, the traveller Ibn Battuta mentioned that the women who accompanied Dugha to perform were carrying bows that they plucked.

He did not mention the number of strings, but this clearly shows the existence of harp instruments in 14th century Mali and could be the earliest written reference to the kora.

The earliest European reference to the kora in Western literature is in Travels in Interior Districts of Africa (1799) by the Scotsman Mungo Park.

In the late 20th century, a 25-string model of the kora was developed, though it has been adopted by only a few players, primarily in the region of Casamance, in southern Senegal.

The French Benedictine monks of the Keur Moussa Abbey in Senegal (who possibly were the first to introduce guitar machine heads instead of leather rings in the late seventies) conceived a method based on scores to teach the instrument.

This notation system was created for the kora in the late 1970s by Brother Dominique Catta, a monk of the Keur Moussa Monastery (Senegal).

Two notable Western composers for the kora are Brother Dominique Catta[18] and Jacques Burtin[19] (France), who wrote most of these scores, though composers like Carole Ouellet[20] (Canada), Brother Grégoire Philippe[21] (Monastère de Keur Moussa) and Sister Claire Marie Ledoux[22] (France) have also contributed with their own original works.