No barrier, no guard. We had barely parked when a monk came to welcome us. The monk takes pleasure in showing us around the place: the chapel, the refectory, the cells where the pilgrims come to retreat and finally, the small store where the products made at the monastery are sold, like these superb postcards with very colorful designs. stylized…
We are about fifty kilometers east of Dakar in the Benedictine abbey of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, in Keur Moussa. It was founded by Jean Prou, the fifth abbot of Solesmes Abbey who sent nine monks there. It was inaugurated in 1963 by President Léopold Sédar Senghor, before becoming one of the congregations of Solesmes in 84. Today, this abbey forms the link between the town of Keur Moussa, a locality of 11,000 inhabitants with a Muslim majority, and its neighbor Saint-Benoît, which is predominantly Catholic. But in Senegal, it is commonly called the abbey of Keur Moussa.
Behind these buildings, quite typical of an abbey, is a completely exceptional place: a Kora factory, this ancestral African stringed instrument traditionally used by the griots of Mali, Guinea and Senegal. It was a diocesan priest who gifted this instrument to the abbey in 1964. Brother Dominique Catta, one of the founding monks, then developed a passion for this instrument with its celestial sound. Through research and adaptations, he transformed the traditional kora and modernized its design. While it was tuned by tightening cowhide rings on the shaft, a very approximate method, Father Carra had the idea of installing wooden keys like for a violin, to which he then preferred keys metal in oil bath. To do this, he had to lengthen the pole and above all find a new gasoline capable of supporting the pressure of 200kg that the new system exerted. Here is how the Kora, in its modern version, was equipped with an entire chromatic range.
With the approval of the Abbey of Solesmes which agreed that this instrument could be used during services instead of the organ, Brother Carra composed works specific to the liturgy, still played today, and particularly in the chapel of Keur Moussa, where the magical sound of this kora arises every day.
Thus, Keur Moussa has become a place of pilgrimage not only for believers, but for all Korists. “The pearls are there,” recognizes one of them, hired as a resident musician by the Pullman hotel in Dakar, and thanks to whom the lobby is bathed in this unique atmosphere.