The krar is a five- or six-stringed lyre from Ethiopia and Eritrea, tuned to a pentatonic scale.

According to legend and stories, passed by word of mouth (yaf taric) from generation to generation, the Krar is known as " the devil's instrument" (yeseyTan mesaria). Among many of the versions, there are two known stories told on how it got this name.

Legendary Background : " The Devil's Instrument."

I. The first version of the story bases itself on the origin of the Krar and the type of musical function it played in contrast to that of the begena. According to a few azmaris who still remember and tell the story, the make of the begena, its measurements and construction with the techniques of playing it, was miraculously re­vealed to Dawit mainly to serve in the musical praise of God, in the adoration of His name as well as in the encouragement it rendered in poetical (Kinai) religious meditations and prayers. The Krar, on the contrary, was an inferior instrument, both in sound and resemblance to that of the begena, which man made inspired by seytan. Thus, the Azmaries say, the Krar's function in music also remained inferior-only for the adoration of feminine beauty, arousal of the sexual impulse, or praise of carnal love.

II. According to the second version of the story told, the Krar was the instrument of wenbedais, shiftas, and sometimes wanderers. A member of these wenbedais used to play for a wealthy nobleman, a wolf in sheep's clothing, appearing and getting admission as a poor talented azmari, in order to attract the attention of the noble lord and his household members until his fellow wenbedais stole the cattle out of the beret and the grains from the gottera. Wanderers used the Krar for begging food. Shiftas played or accompanied fanno on the Krar. The kind of music the shiftas played enabled them to arouse their evil passions, stimulated their hearts so that their actions could be guided, or almost forced by seytan, into unreasonable destructiveness or unregrettingly merciless plunder. At last, when the evil spirits were completely aroused, the shifta destroys his own Krar first.

The Krar, by Ashenafi Kebede (http://tezeta.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=26&Itemid=1)