{"product_id":"various_obe-musiques-des-pygmees-efe-et-des-lese_2019","title":"Obe- Musiques des Pygmées Efe et des Lese","description":"OBE: Music of the Efe and Lese Pygmies. This record would not exist without Ngucha, Kebe, Angidulu, the Efe, and the Lese-Dese villagers from the surrounding areas of Ngodingodi and Digbo. The Efe Pygmies live in the Ituri region, in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They coexist with forest farming groups, the Lese and the Mamvu. The Efe are organized into small camps, which can have up to fifty members, loosely divided into a few families. For more than half of the year, they are located on the edge of the forest near the Lese villages. The association between the Efe Pygmies and the Lese-Dese villagers, recorded on this disc, is marked by the sharing of certain social institutions, important rituals, part of the musical repertoire, and language. The differences between these peoples lie in their respective habitats and partly in their modes of subsistence. However, Efe songs fundamentally differ from those of the Lese through the performance of very rich and admirably structured vocal polyphonies, a cultural characteristic shared by all Pygmy groups, whether in Ituri, in the DRC, or elsewhere in Central Africa. The Pygmies do not disdain, far from it, the use of musical instruments. Hand claps, clashing sticks, split bamboo pieces struck with a stick, and kuce drums are their usual percussion instruments. Luma whistle ensembles are mainly played by the Efe during collective celebrations marking important events such as the end of circumcision. The Efe also frequently use domu harps and likembe. The latter instrument can even be found in some camps deep in the forest. Mouth bows are used by Lese and Efe men before hunting, to trap the spirits of animals or to create interludes when telling songs and stories. Bark trumpets called mai are played during tore ceremonies. This word refers to death, ancestor worship, and the spirit of the forest. These trumpets are generally played by the Efe. Each trumpet produces a note and plays a rhythmic pattern that interlocks with those of the others to form a hiccuping music, essentially a polyphony through polyrhythm. The longest measures about one and a half meters, and the shortest around thirty centimeters. They are rigorously tuned according to a pentatonic scale. The musical instruments used during the women's ima initiation are two-stringed musical bows called kitingbi placed on drums serving as resonating bodies. The recordings featured on this disc were made in Ituri between October and December 1987 when the Efe had set up their camp near the Lese-Dese villages of Ngodingodi and Digbo. The title of the disc, obe, is a word that means both to sing and to dance in Efe and Lese. These recordings were made shortly before the wars and chaos that settled in this region of the DRC.","brand":"Various","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":58079117902168,"sku":null,"price":23939292.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0898\/4943\/0360\/files\/5419999000680.jpg?v=1787265900","url":"https:\/\/vinyles.com\/en-us\/products\/various_obe-musiques-des-pygmees-efe-et-des-lese_2019","provider":"Vinyles.com","version":"1.0","type":"link"}