Pygmy music

Pygmy drummers, 1930

Pygmy music includes the Sub-Saharan African music traditions of a broad group of people who live in Central Africa, especially in the Congo, the Central African Republic and Cameroon. Pygmy groups include the Baka, the Aka, the Twa peoples and the Efé. Music is an important part of Pygmy life, and casual performances take place during many of the day's events. Music comes in many forms, including the spiritual likanos stories, vocable singing and music played from a variety of instruments including the bow harp (ieta), ngombi (harp zither) and limbindi (a string bow).

Researchers who have studied Pygmy music include Simha Arom, Louis Sarno, Colin Turnbull and Jean-Pierre Hallet.

Polyphonic song

Location of pygmy peoples

The Mbenga (Aka/Benzele) and Baka peoples in the west and the Mbuti (Efé) in the east are particularly known for their dense contrapuntal communal improvisation. Simha Arom says that the level of polyphonic complexity of Mbenga–Mbuti music was reached in Europe only in the 14th century.[1] The polyphonic singing of the Aka Pygmies was relisted on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2008.

Mbenga–Mbuti Pygmy music consists of up to four parts and can be described as an "ostinato with variations" similar to a passacaglia in that it is cyclical. It is based on repetition of periods of equal length that each singer divides using different rhythmic figures specific to different repertoires and songs. This creates a detailed surface and endless variations not only of the same period repeated but of various performances of the same piece of music. As in some Balinese gamelan music these patterns are based on a super-pattern which is never heard. The Pygmies themselves do not learn or think of their music in this theoretical framework, but learn the music growing up.

Polyphonic music is only characteristic of the Mbenga and Mbuti. The Gyele/Kola, Great Lakes Twa and Southern Twa have very different musical styles.

Pygmy scale

The typical Pygmy scale is a minor pentatonic scale and follows the sequence of steps: tone, half tone, ditone, tone + half tone and tone. The use of a half tone makes it a Hemitonic scale. A Pygmy scale in C would consist of the notes: C, D, Eb, G and Bb.

Use of the Pygmy scale has grown in popularity since the invention of the Hang (instrument) in the year 2000, handpans such as the Halo and also steel tongue drums, all of which have been made using sound models based on the Pygmy scale.

Liquindi

Liquindi is water drumming, typically practiced by Pygmy women and girls. The sound is produced by persons standing in water, and hitting the surface of the water with their hands, such as to trap air in the hands and produce a percussive effect that arises by sudden change in air pressure of the trapped air. The sound cannot exist entirely in water, since it requires the air-water boundary as a surface to be struck, so the sound is not hydraulophonic.

Hindewhu

Hindewhu is a style of singing/whistle-playing of the BaBenzélé pygmies of the Central African Republic. The word is an onomatopoeia of the sound of a performer alternately singing pitched syllables and blowing into a single-pitch papaya-stem whistle. Hindewhu announces the return from a hunt and is performed solo, duo or in groups.

Western popularization

Colin M. Turnbull, an American anthropologist, wrote a book about the Efé Pygmies, The Forest People, in 1965. This introduced Mbuti culture to Western countries. Turnbull claimed that the Mbuti viewed the forest as a parental spirit with which they could communicate via song.

Some of Turnbull's recordings of Efé music were commercially released and inspired more ethnomusicological study such as by Simha Arom, a French-Israeli who recorded hindewhu, and Luis Devin, an Italian ethnomusicologist who studied in depth the musical rituals and instruments of Baka Pygmies.

Some popular musicians have used hindewhu in their music:

References

  1. ↑ Aimard, Pierre-Laurent; Ligeti, György; Reich, Steve; Arom, Simha; and Schomann, Stefan (2003). Liner notes, African Rhythms. Music by Aka Pygmies, performed by Aka Pygmies; Ligeti and Reich, performed by Aimard. Teldec Classics: 8573 86584-2.
  2. ↑ "Baka Beyond". AllMusic.com. Retrieved 28 September 2013.
  3. ↑ "Baka Beyond, Cargo, London". The Guardian. Retrieved 2013-10-13.
  4. ↑ "World Music Central.org". Retrieved 2013-10-13.
  5. ↑ "BAKA BEYOND ( Portugal & Spain) - virtualWOMEX". Retrieved 2013-10-13.

Sources and further reading

Discography

External links

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