Mbuti pygmy chanting - Classic or Badass?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LW2lv7_2KQg

http://www.rounder.com/images/album/ROUN/ROUN5107_Cover.jpg

^this

Downloading now!

Love that album of Turnbull recordings! But where do I file it - under C for Congo or P for Pygmy?

I file it under M for Mbuti!

i read a book about the pygmies in an anthropology class once upon a time, and then listened to some of the music (anyone know what that book might've been called?).

the first Brian Blade Fellowship album has a track where he is drumming along with pygmy chanting, pretty badass.

roxy track one off the og folkways

http://i20.ebayimg.com/01/i/000/f3/81/cd72_1.JPG

when Turnbull is walking through the forest, coming into the pygmy camp, and all of a sudden the chants start appearing - that shit gives me chills every time.

Yeah, that's an incredible moment.

this is the best one imo
http://www.amazon.com/Heart-Forest-Various-Artists/dp/B00000062C

as sampled by eye yamasucka

^^ high fidelity recording, quality water drums & great sequencing = very listenable as an album

there's some mysterious moments on that Turnbull one though

want to check out the Anthology disc

From review on that page:

" Yeah, it's different, but I do not hesitate to recommend it to others. "

some awesome children singing on that one

ps - I do not hesitiate to recommend it to others

i know this ain't no YSI thread but god damn if this isn't one of the greatest things ever:

Hut Song from this:http://www.amazon.ca/Camaroon-Baka-Pygmy-Music-Various/dp/B0006U6Q34

here: http://www.sendspace.com/file/gy7kz8

is the "ituri forest" ethnic folkways LP pictured upthread the same as this:

http://www.amazon.com/Mbuti-Pygmies-Rainforest-Various-Artists/dp/B000001DK2

?

Thanking u for "Hut Song."

"Elephant Hunting Song" from Turnbull has become my go-to waking up and making coffee song.

Not to be preachy but if people like this there is hardly any label more worth supporting in the whole history of labels than Folkways and they have an awesome website where you can download this directly from them.

Yes! I love their website.

is the "ituri forest" ethnic folkways LP pictured upthread the same as this:

http://www.amazon.com/Mbuti-Pygmies-Rainforest-Various-Artists/dp/B000001DK2

yes and no. i'm not sure of the track sequencing on that cd. definitely the turnbull approaching camp moment is on it. that cd is a combination of a folkways release and a lyrichord release. i'm not sure if it has everything off both them though. its definitely a great cd regardless.

i also have an ocora box set x3 lp of pygmies stuff. it's sort of overkill but has it moments.

http://www.wuftfm.org/The_Caravan_Playlists/Bayaka_info.htm
Love this disc so much

emusic has the Folkways disc here.

to which i should add, this is one of my all-time favorites. still enchanting and uncanny a decade on...

as sampled by eye yamasucka

-- am0n, Tuesday, 27 May 2008 17:38 (Yesterday) Link

jheah-m,on, what is this from? rebore vol. 0?
GET AT ME

dj pica pica pica

thankig u

it's comparatively pretty recent but louis sarno's bayaka recordings of the babenzele pygmies are really beautiful. more vocal than some of the above (less percussive stuff &c) and often just by a couple of vocalists.

oh, and apparently 'pgymies' is kind of outmoded and said tribes might prefer 'tribe'.

what else u pickin up from the tribes lately schlump

they're big on turning up places and correcting people. sorry x

just ribbin u pal xo

Milton, what did you mean by "mysterious moments..."?

I found Turnbull's book The Forest People by total accident today. It's motherfuckin' pygmy time.

hey, can someone with "hut song" mentioned above upload it to muxtape or something so i can listen to it real quick? it would be a+++

i read a book about the pygmies in an anthropology class once upon a time, and then listened to some of the music (anyone know what that book might've been called?).

the first Brian Blade Fellowship album has a track where he is drumming along with pygmy chanting, pretty badass.

― Jordan, Tuesday, May 27, 2008 1:18 PM (3 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Hey Jordan, it was likely The Forest People by Colin Turnbull, the most famous work on the subject. It could also have been Children of the Forest by Kevin Duffy, which is used in anthro classes sometimes. Sorry I never answered you before.

I bumped this in honor of me decorating my room in baMbuti pygmy motif.

"elephant hunting song" bringing tears to the eyes

http://www.geocities.com/tangled_strings/deepforest.jpg

"this is the best one imo
http://www.amazon.com/Heart-Forest-Various-Artists/dp/B00000062C "

seconded - that's my review (the second one down under customer reviews) it's surprisingly easy on the ears considering it's frikkin mbuti pygmy chanting.

also sampled by future sound of london

this is the jam for me right now

just got me some used pygmy off amazon

I keep reading this as Multi Pygmy Chanting.

it sort of is when you think about it

I get so excited when this thread is bumped, and it's timely for me, as well. Rereading Turnbull's thing. Love him, love the Mbutis, love "Elephant Hunting Song." All of it makes me happy to be alive, more than anything else.

i found a tape of the major Mbuti one that my friend Kalan made me, and which then got lost in the bowels of my car. not to be found for two years.

the day i found it was sweet sweet heaven.

(That Kalan isn't from Tennessee, is she?)

oh no. this is kalan:
http://www.oberlin.edu/stupub/ocreview/2008/02/15/images/arts_barf.jpg

the article and ensuing controversy behind that photo

we were roommates for a whole year. great times. (for real).

anyway, yeah, the Ba-Benzele Pygmies really kill it for me-- a bit more frenetic and better recorded than most of the Mbuti stuff i've heard.

emetophobia

ws

xxxpost

Milton, what did you mean by "mysterious moments..."?

― roxymuzak, Friday, May 30, 2008 10:05 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I found Turnbull's book The Forest People by total accident today. It's motherfuckin' pygmy time.

― roxymuzak, Monday, June 2, 2008 10:11 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

every single person's a soloist but no one's taking over

Alan Lomax based some of his theory about the relationship of sound structure to social structure on a correlation between pygmy "hocketing," the non-hierarchical structure of much Mbuti performance, and the egalitarian values of Mbuti as described by Turnbull. The ethnomusicologist Charles Keil also commented that he "long assumed that Mbuti hocketing in the rain forest and !Kung hocketing in the desert were generalizable in some broad way across all hunting and gathering societies and perhaps across the whole spectrum of classless modes of production."

Got to get myself a copy of 'The Forest People'. Found a great article online by Stephen Feld called 'Pgymy Pop' about the long history of pop music appropriation of the Turnbull records, from Herbie Hancock to Jon Hassell to the final implosion of Deep Forest

I actually have an extra copy I will mail you if you want.

Looking up that article right now btw

well of course you have not one but two copies of 'The Forest People'

I also ordered myself a copy of the Louis Sarno / Bernie Krause CD - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1559613130/ref=oss_product

Have read reviews that warn that it's a collage, rainforest ambience & pgymy songs recorded seperately and mixed, but the samples make it sound too amazing to pass over

I'm going so deep I even downloaded that Deep Forest album, which I'd never heard, though I'd read more than one article about it in reference to the lawsuits from Chant du Monde & sampling-as-cultural-imperalism etc. It is definitely so unlistenably bad as to be kitschy hilarious. The worst early 90's R&B drum loops from a CD ROM library, straightjacketed grid stuttering cut-ups of the pygmies, and a downpitched narrator intro: Somewhere, deep in the jungle, are living some little men and women. They are our past. And, maybe... Maybe they are our future.

OMG do they really say 'little men and women'?!?!?

the record is about as blissfully tasteless as you can imagine, it's so bad

Who is sings the chorus for Sweet Lullaby?
On the first chorus Afunakwa's voice is solo; on the second chorus she is backed by digital voice multiplication and a studio chorus, creating a dense "We are the World" vocal effect; on the third chorus Afunakwa's voice disappears into the linguistic indistinction of an ensemble singing her lullaby.

really interesting and honest answer to the question 'did Deep Forest steal the samples'. I'd forgotten Francis Bebey had been roped into the mess.

you emailed me about book and didnt include your email address or actual address, iirc

will send when u send!

Hut Song from this: http://www.amazon.com/Cameroon-Pygmy-Music-Various-Artists/dp/B000025MP5

― jed_, Tuesday, May 27, 2008 6:00 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark

ok, this one, this one's currently the best one

the kids are insane

& xpost, found myself a copy of 'the forest people'! you should gift your second copy to a complete stranger some night when you're travelling out

probably very few of you also interested in the ugly details behind the Deep Forest sampling swindle, and all the implications behind world music / globalism / representation but well pardon me using this thread as a bookmark for Stephen Feld's other article 'A Sweet Lullaby For World Music', which was originally posted to a Deep Forest fan site which has since gone under

http://web.archive.org/web/20070830061933/http://www.deepforestmusic.com/dfpress_00-00-00sweetlullabyforworld.htm

http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2004/11/23/turmeric-pygmies-and-piracy/

^^ second link is a well summarized short version

most hilarious detail: Deep Forest misidentified the singer in 'Sweet Lullaby': she is not a pygmy. Unfortunately this information did not get to Jan Garbarek before he retitled his cover version 'Pygmy Lullaby'.

But that's no reason not to post this link to a guy who tried to track down the original singer:

http://www.musicofsound.co.nz/blog/tracing-a-sample-to-its-source

those articles are great. amazing to read about the lion sleeps tonight & watermelon man as well - I never knew the failings of copyright law in dealing w/ indigenous cultures was such a glamourous issue.

Great articles, Milton. You can almost always count on Corporations to steal, Attorneys to sue, and for Individuals to be generally honest. Surprising that the "Amen Break" hasn't garnered more litigation.

pygmies v. ayn rand = elephant hunters for the win

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_evolution/2012/10/groups_and_gossip_drove_the_evolution_of_human_nature.2.html