ATDTDA (1): Pygmies

[Tim Strzechowski]

"Pygmies sand Christian hymns in the Pygmy dialect" (p. 22).

A Pygmy is a member of any human group whose adult males grow to less than 59 in. (150 cm) in average height. The name is also sometimes loosely applied to the Bushmen (San) of southern Africa and the so-called Negrito peoples of Asia (such as the Philippine Ilongot). Besides their short stature, Pygmies are notable in having the highest basal-metabolism rate in the world and a high incidence of sickle-cell anemia. The Bambuti of the Ituri Forest are a well-studied example.
[...]
The African Pygmies are particularly known for their vocal music, characterised by dense polyphony, group performance and improvisation. French-Israeli ethnomusicologist Simh Arom says that the level of polyphonic complexity of Pygmy music resembles that of European ars nova polyphony. Most pygmy musical instruments are simple and portable, suitable to a traditionally nomadic lifestyle. Pygmy societies are renowned (perhaps romanticized) for their egalitarianism. They are often romantically portrayed as both utopian and "premodern", which overlooks the fact that they have long had relationships with more "modern" non-pygmy groups (such as inhabitants of nearby villages, agricultural employers, logging companies, evangelical missionaries and commercial hunters encroaching on their food sources). African Pygmies seem to have given up their own languages in favor of those spoken by the more dominant surrounding non-Pygmy peoples, who are usually Bantu.
[...]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmy
[...] Some of Turnbull's recordings of Pygmy music were commercially released, and inspired more ethnomusicological study, such as by Simha Arom, a French-Israeli who recorded a kind of whistle called hindewhu, and by Mauro Campagnoli, an Italian ethnomusicologist who studied in depth the musical rituals and instruments of Baka Pygmies, also by taking part into their secret rite of initiation. Some tracks were then used by Bill Summers, Herbie Hancock's percussionist, in the song "Watermelon Man," from the album Head Hunters. [...]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmy_music
http://www.herbiehancock.com/
http://www.amazon.com/Head-Hunters-Herbie-Hancock/dp/B000002AGP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZvKXpoFcJs
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