"Well, all these are extracts rather than being finished pieces in themselves. Obviously I've tried to edit them down to being reasonably cohesive. Ritual Mask, I suppose, is quite funny in terms of cultural imperialism. I felt very ambivalent really, and I suppose that comes out in the song. But I did try to be as varied as possible in the instrumentation. The basic drum on it - the one that sounds absolutely massive - is actually a tiny Chinese drum. The massiveness is in fact courtesy of David Lord (engineer for Peter Gabriel amongst others) and the wonderful AMS. So that was the basic track, and I did two or three of those just to get a bit of range in them. Then the bottom end is actually a bodhran - the Irish hand-held drum. So I had these two - the Chinese and the Irish - and it emerged as something a little more African. So I was drawn towards that tribal thing really. When I started I was using that four-inch diameter drum and the rhythm was there but the total sound wasn't. The main melodic instrument on it is the kora which is Ghambian."

Mentioned in this August 2, 2008 New York Times interview.

As befits “a real affinity for stringed instruments,” she also owns banjos, an African kora and an Irish lap harp.

Stevens used the kora for this performance of "Response to Criticism", released April 15, 2019 as an accompaniment to her book The Heart’s Necessities: Life in Poetry. Before that, it was featured in this May 3, 2018 Twitter post and this September 12, 2018 Facebook post.

May 3, 2018

I got inspired to (literally) dust off my kora (which is actually a kora/n’goni hybrid) and write a song. You can follow the song’s progress slowly unfolding on my Instagram stories. #noseharmonics #kora #ngoni

September 12, 2018

‘Bout to track some kora ya’ll. (Technically kora/n’goni hybrid.) #homesetup #makedo #kora #ngoni #logic #meditationpillow

In the video titled "Toumani Diabaté Jarabi live 1989," uploaded by Major Esterhazy on YouTube, master kora player Toumani Diabaté is shown playing the kora on the show Big World Café.

In the COLORS SHOW video titled "Ballaké Sissoko - Nan Sira Madi," Ballaké Sissoko is seen playing the kora, which is his main instrument. This performance is available on YouTube, published by COLORS.