KEUR MOUSSA, Senega — At prayer every day, the white-robed monks of this tiny Senegalese village lift their voices in centuries-old Gregorian chant, accompanied by the delicate strains of a traditional African harp.
The music is soft and resonant, filling their small, whitewashed, Roman Catholic church with a sense of tranquility, and providing a sanctuary from the hustle of the streets, with their shouting hawkers, fume-belching cars and overloaded horse-drawn carts.
The Benedictine monks make the harps, known as koras, out of elegantly carved hardwoods and giant calabashes covered in cow skins according to the ancient methods of the predominantly Muslim Mandingo people — with a few innovations of their own.
The unlikely convergence of cultures has yielded a new form of liturgical music that is spreading in monastic communities in Africa and France.
"Before, the kora was used in courts to sing the praises of the Mandingo kings. We took it for God," says Brother Maixant Ndeky, who helps produce the koras in the monastery's workshop.
The abbey in the Senegalese village of Keur Moussa, or House of Moses in the local Wolof language, was founded by nine French monks in 1961, one year after the country on the far western edge of Africa gained independence from France.
"We were sent to a corner where there wasn't a single tree to give the testimony of prayer in a completely Muslim area," recalls Brother Dominique Catta, the choir master, who was among the first to arrive from Solesmes Abbey in France, a center of Gregorian chant.
Today, the abbey about 30 miles east of the capital, Dakar, is home to some 40 monks, two-thirds of whom are Senegalese. They still live according to the Rule of St. Benedict, drafted in the sixth century, which means they lead a cloistered life and attend prayer six times a day.
But with their innovative approach — including their own Web site — their outlook is decidedly modern.
While the kora is not native to this part of Senegal, the monks were introduced to the instrument in 1964 when they received one as a gift from a French researcher in Dakar.
At the time, the 21-stringed harp was produced exclusively by the Mandingo, whose empire once stretched from Mali to Senegal. Knowledge of how to make and play the kora was jealously guarded by the griots — a caste of troubadours and storytellers — who passed the tradition from parent to child.
Though struck by the beauty of the kora, the monks had no idea what to do with it. So it lay untouched for months until they managed to persuade two griots to divulge their secrets — for a price, Catta acknowledges with a chuckle.
Listening to the musicians play, Catta recognized similarities in the tonality of their music and Gregorian chants dating back to the Middle Ages. Intrigued, he asked them to perform a traditional melody for the community, joining in with the "Dixit Dominus" of Sunday vespers. The other monks followed his lead.
"We had the impression that the Mandingo koras sustained our prayer and that our chant brought out even more the melodic beauty of the koras," Catta wrote later in a booklet on the instrument.
After the first two griots left, others were recruited to teach the monks to make and play their own koras.
Over the years, the monks have incorporated other instruments into their music, including drums and a wooden xylophone known as a balafon. The results have been recorded on numerous cassettes and CDs, which the monks produce and sell through their gift shop and Web site.
They also have developed a teaching method for their koras, which are painstakingly assembled by hand in the monastery's workshop. While the strings are traditionally secured to the neck with strips of leather, the monks found that made the instrument difficult to tune. So they started using metal guitar keys instead.
They also use nylon strings rather than the traditional baobab tree fibers, and have lengthened the kora's neck to accommodate the guitar keys and improve the sonority.
Despite the modifications, the monks say their koras retain the essential sound and structure of the Mandingo instruments.
"Today, the griots themselves come and buy koras here," Ndeky says.