We are here on a mission — to track down and listen to what is most likely the oldest music in the world. There are references to the pygmies in the Iliad and their music is mentioned in a report about the source of the Nile to the Pharaoh Nefrikare in 2,500BC. It is thought there are around 300,000 of them in central Africa — though as nomads they don't tend to fill in forms — and they were probably the earliest inhabitants of the region. I first heard their extraordinary and haunting music in the Seventies on classic records by the musicologist Simha Arom. Some of the same group of Aka pygmies that Arom recorded make a first visit to Britain next month. As part of their tour, they will join in the eightieth birthday celebrations of the Hungarian composer György Ligeti at the Barbican. Ligeti became obsessed by the complex polyrhythms and irregular multi-part vocalising of the pygmies, which became a great influence on his own work. Far from being primitive, the music of the pygmies is as advanced as anything in the Western canon. It may well be that only now are we actually catching up musically in the West with the complexities of this ancient music. All of which was a great excuse to visit them. I only wished they lived somewhere less volatile and violent.
| Continue Peter Culshaw's Observer Music Monthly article "It's easy to find the world's oldest form of music"
posted in articles on September 21, 2003 2:31 AM | t (0)
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