The Kora is arguably the most complex chordophone of Africa. It is played in the westernmost part of Africa in Mali, Gambia, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Senegal.
Each of the regions have characteristic playing styles and to some extent a region can be deduced from specific repertoire, but they share quite of bit of repertoire as well. It is very common to hear the same song with a variety of regional variants.

The people most famous for the development of the Kora are the Mandinka of The Gambia, Senegal, and Guinea-Bissau.
The Kora is made from a half a gourd calabash with a hardwood post that runs through it to which the strings are attached. The calabash is covered with a cowhide that is stretched over the open side of the half calabash and then left in the sun to dry tight and hold the handposts in place. A tall bridge is mounted upright on the skin face of the instrument and separates the strings into two planes.

The Kora player supports the instrument with the 3rd, 4th, and 5th fingers and the notes are played with the thumbs and forefingers of both hands.

A Kora can take up to a month to make in the hands of a skilled craftsman. When the craftsman is at the stage of stretching the skin over the calabash it can sometimes take up to three men to pull it properly. The construction of a Kora is very hard work.
A Kora player may make his own Kora or may enlist the help of someone who is known for their Kora making.
Some variables present in choosing materials for a Kora include; deep or shallow calabash large or small calabash, dry or moist wood, heavy or light skin, and deciding whether or not to use a traditional mixture to bring the hair from the skin or "gas" from the market which makes the skin very white.

A Traditional Kora has 21 strings but it is very common to see a 22 string Kora with an extra bass string used in the style known as Yenyengo (get up and dance). In the Cassamance region of southern Senegal it is also common to see the 25 string Kora Cassamance.

The Kora is strung with monofilament fishing line in varying thickness. In the days before monofilament was available braided antelope hide was used and produced a sound less brilliant than the modern Kora sound.
The range of the Kora is about 3 and 3/8ths of an octave and is capable of highly contrapuntal textures.

A Kora musician may accompany his own voice or he may have a Jeli Woman sing the vocal line while tapping the rhythm on the calabash.

Kora repertoire may also be performed instrumentally. Since each Kora song relies strongly on the vocal line it is easy to discern a piece when it is played instrumentally. A good musician will bring out the vocal line in an instrumental rendering of a traditional piece and ornament it and play off of that line with soloistic runs called birimintingo. The ostanato pattern that the vocal line or birimintingo is performed over is called the Kumbengo. The Kumbengo is not an ostanato in the orthodox sense of being a repeating line but is usually a looping contrapuntal texture.