"Pygmy" is the name bestowed by Europeans on the diminutive, nomadic hunter-gatherers of the central African forest belt, which stretches from coastal Cameroon in the west through the dense rainforests of the Congo and to the terraced hills of Rawanda and Burundi in the East. These peoples, who call variously call themselves Aka, Baka, Babenzele, Efe, Mbuti and Twa predate their taller, Bantu-speaking neighbors and have a rich, complex musical culture that's easily the equal of anything the more "civilized" Bantu have ever produced.
Music is integrated into almost every aspect of Pygmy life and there is little formal distinction between music for pleasure, work and ritual. Casual and ceremonial performances seldom distinguish between performers and audiences, and anyone can (and does) join in. Even mundane tasks such as gathering water or bathing can be accompanied by rhythmically sophisticated liquindi, or "water drumming"—a polyphonic series of splashes, slaps and plunges that's as much play as it is music making. While the famous yelli of the Baka is a mesmerizing polyphonic vocal chorus used to "hypnotize" animals of the forest before a hunt.
The Pygmies' relationship with the forest, which they consider an all-providing, living entity, dictates their relationship to music. Their likanos, sung origin-myths and story-songs, are full of proverbs and parables about living in balance with the forest. And their instruments, too, are made from materials easily gathered from the forest. Among these are a number of stringed instruments, including the limbindi (a thing sting bow), the ieta (a bow harp) and the ngombi (a harplike zither). Additionally, Pygmies play a host of other instruments, including flutes and reed instruments, skin and log drums and even the occasional guitar or thumb piano borrowed from their Bantu neighbors.
The forest's greatest gift to Pygmy music may not be its bounty but its lessons in listening. In the dense undergrowth of triple-canopy rainforest visibility is often limited, so hearing can become more important than sight. Pygmies are encouraged to develop their listening skills from an early age, making them excellent animal mimics and extraordinary musicians and singers. Their polyphonic singing arrangements are amazingly complex: usually in five- or seven-note scales, with designated syncopation for different singers and overlapping, interlocking harmonies accompanied by percussion and handclaps.
These otherworldly forest sounds have traveled far beyond the Pygmies' leafy realm, too, providing inspiration for Western musicians from Herbie Hancock (whose 1973 hit rearrangement of his "Watermelon Man" was influenced by a Babenzele field recording) to world-beat pioneers Zap Mama, who've experimented with a cappella Pygmy harmonies. Even more well-known is the 1993 Deep Forest album, on which French producers Eric Mouquet and Michel Sanchez combined samples of Pygmy choral music with ambient electronic soundscapes to create one of the best-selling world-music recordings of all time. But it's Baka Beyond—British duo Martin Craddick and Su Hart's 1992 musical adventure among the Baka people of Cameroon—that's won the affection of true world music aficionados. The Baka Beyond series was a true collaboration between the pygmies and Western musicians, with profits for the sales going back into the Baka community, providing a fair-trade model for the Pygmies' otherwise uncertain future. —Tom Pryor