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‘If I lost this flute, it would be pretty tragic’: Shabaka, Corinne Bailey Rae and Nilüfer Yanya on their favourite instruments

From a Japanese bamboo flute that is harvested and then cured to an unusual fretless zither and a blue Fender Strat, three performers tell the stories of the instruments they cherish

Photograph: Gary Calton/The Observer Born in Leeds in 1979, Corinne Bailey Rae is best known for her soulful early singles Like a Star and Put Your Records On, which propelled her self-titled debut album to a UK No 1 in 2006. Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Observer Born in 1995 and raised in west London, Nilüfer Yanya put out three EPs before releasing her first album, Miss Universe, in 2019 to widespread acclaim – the Guardian called its “skewed alt-rock” the work of “a true original”. At a show in Istanbul on our last big tour, I broke the strings on the final song and didn’t have any spares, so they ran around the venue and found this random, weird-looking guitar.

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