GABON / LES MUSICIENS DE LA FORÊT VOL. 1
THE MUSICIANS OF THE FOREST
Ocora, 1981, 558569
Ocora had several series including this one entitled ''living traditional music''; and in this series there were several categories here the first one entitled ''music from the oral tradition''.
Gabon is a small country with less than 2,5 million people in 2023 (9 inhabitants per square kilometre). But as it is often the case in Africa the population is quite diversified with mostly bantu groups like the Fang, the Punu-Echira, the Vili or the Myene; the only other non-bantu people are the Pygmies who settled there before the Bantu.
This album is the work of Catherine Oneto and Hugues Poitevin, two people who fell in love with the locals. They recorded some ritual music sung and played with the eight-string harp ngombi by Nzé Menvié (seen on the cover) a Fang farmer, sculptor and crafstman in his sixties at the time of the recordings. So this ritual music was not performed during a religious ceremony. Part of this repertoire belongs to what is called bwiti that the Fang have adopted from the Tsogo at teh beginning of the twentieth century only. But the aim of Oneto and Poitevin was to help Menvié and the villagers in agricultural and cultural terms. For that they created an association which is helped by the Gabonese government.
This is not a an ethnomusicology record so the notes are brief.
These recordings were made in 1979 in mono but published in stereo.
Text in French only. I don't think that this volume 1 was followed by a second one.
