Various

The Aka are one of the three groups of Pygmies found in Central Africa today. They are monogamous and settle in small family encampments that comprise parents, children, sons, and daughters-in-law and offspring, groups of thirty to forty persons organized in democratic communities. Pygmy music ,in the image of all their social activities, presents very similar characteristics, that is to say, relative autonomy of each participant within implied but strict structures. The recordings of this anthology, the first to be devoted to a single African people, offer in addition the distinctiveness of having been made in a single encampment, that of the old hunter Mbonzo, a group barely larger than forty persons. Music plays a central role among the Pygmies, there is no day without music.