Pygmy music

Researchers who have studied Pygmy music include Simha Arom, Louis Sarno, Colin Turnbull and Jean-Pierre Hallet.

The Mbenga (Aka/Benzele) and Baka peoples in the west and the Mbuti (Efé) in the east are particularly known for their dense contrapuntal communal improvisation.

[1] The polyphonic singing of the Aka Pygmies was relisted on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2008.

It is based on repetition of periods of equal length that each singer divides using different rhythmic figures specific to different repertoires and songs.

The term hindewhu is an onomatopoeia of the sound of a performer alternately singing pitched syllables and blowing into a single-pitch papaya-stem whistle, in an interlocked rhythm similar to the gutera-kwakira structure of the Burundian akazehe.