Totally Shuffled extract-Mbuti Pygmies of The Iruti Rainforest

January 30^th

Mbuti Pygmies of The Iruti Rainforest- Animal Dance Song- Mbuti Pygmies of The Iruti Rainforest

From Genesis to this. 

What may be seen as a quantum leap; two opposite ends of the spectrum. This is possibly one of the most obscure tracks on the iPod. It’s from a pair of albums recorded in the early 1950s and is a collection of field-recordings from the Democratic Republic of Congo (Zaire at the time these recordings were made). I didn’t have the original 1950 albums-I got it sometime off the net when it had been issued as a cd just because it sounded different.

It certainly does sound different however. Most of the tracks are just vocals, repetitive chants and singing.The titles of the tracks are simply descriptions of what is happening;  “Elephant Hunt Song”, “First Monimo Song Sung Only On Occasions Of Great Importance”, “Honey Gathering Song” and so on. 

The first track on the album is entitled, “In the Rainforest Approaching a Forest Camp”, and is credited to “Birds, Crickets and Young Mbuti Pygmy Boys in the Ituri Rainforest.” It sounds exactly how it is described. You hear the rustling of leaves, and the gradually increasing sound of birds and insects slowly overwhelmed by chanting voices. It’s over half a century old, but close your eyes and listen to it. It sounds as if you are right in the middle of some green canopied forest with barely any light, yet it’s from a strange continent and fifty years ago. 

The rest of the tracks are hypnotic in the extreme; it is difficult to estimate how long each of them lasts. They could be two, three or ten minutes long. (I’ve just looked at the track times-the longest is 5 minutes, the shortest is 59 seconds and most of them clock in at about 2 minutes or so). 

This is not a criticism, but rather the reverse. The sheer repetitiveness and rhythmic nature of each track makes time a slight irrelevance. There are a few tracks where basic instruments are used-sticks to beat out a tune, simple stringed and strange instruments and a flute song (called “Flute song”). 

According to the liner notes, these instruments were either “borrowed or stolen.” It makes me wonder how old these songs and chants were-had they remained unchanged for tens of thousands of years? 

Has it all gone now? Is it everyone in the Iruti rainforest lsiening to rap?

I do have to ask myself, “Do I only like this music because it is strange and exotic or because I actually appreciate it?” 

As with any music that is “different”, I think that this is an impossible question to answer truthfully. Well, not truthfully, but realistically. I don’t think that you can really disentangle what you feel about this sort of music from any preconceptions you may have, or how you respond to anything that has been labelled “world”, or “ethnic”, or whatever. (By the way I detest the term “world” music; surely everything we listen to is world music?). 

All I know is that I do enjoy listening to this. I wouldn’t have played it more than once if I didn’t and listened to it on long car journeys when driving alone. It makes a change from guitars and drums. (It is good however, to pop the CD out and say to my 21 year-old son, “Enough of Coldplay, let’s rock out with some Mbuti Pygmy music.”)    

This is an extract from "Totally Shuffled-A Year of Listening to Music on a Broken iPod"

        

  and what "Totally Shuffled" is all about:

One track per day for 366 days on a broken iPod. 

366 tracks out of a possible 9553. 

From the obvious (The Rolling Stones), to the obscure (Karen Cooper Complex). 

From the sublime (The Flaming Lips) to the risible (Muse).   

From field recordings of Haitian Voodoo music to The Monkees. 

From Heavy Metal to Rap by way of 1930’s blues, jazz, classical, punk, and every possible genre of music in between. 

This is what I listened to and wrote about for a whole year, to the point of never wanting to hear any more music again. Some songs I listened to I loved, and some I hated. Some artists ended up getting praised to the skies and others received a bit of critical kicking. 

There’s memories of spending too many hours in record shops, prevaricating over the next big thing and surprising myself over tracks that I’d completely forgotten about. 

But with 40 years of listening to music, I realised that I’ll never get sick of it.  I may have fallen out of love with some of the songs in this book, but I’ll never fall out of love with music.     

Get/read Totally Shuffled here

Kindle:
          

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00CJYZ3CA 

Paperback:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Broken-iPod-/dp/149495687X