Musique du Burundi – Michel Vuylsteke, 1968

🇧🇮🎙️🌍🥁🎶 During the 1960s, Belgian ethnologist Michel Vuylsteke criss-crossed Africa, from Chad to Burundi, from the Ivory Coast to Cameroon, recording exceptional accounts of the traditional music of the peoples living there. His work has been published on the excellent Ocora label, owned by Radio France, including the fantastic Musique du Burundi, released in 1968. Recorded between Bujumbura and Ngozi, the album presents a broad panorama of the region’s musical traditions. Male and female voices, whispered songs, inanga (zither), umuduri (musical bow), ingoma royal drums… each track captures the richness of a unique oral and instrumental heritage. The album won the Grand Prix de l’Académie Charles Cros. It made such an impact that several tracks were sampled as ingoma, on Burundi black by Mike Steïphenson in 1971 (then covered as a dancefloor hit in 1981 by Rusty Egan). Joni Mitchell, Brian Eno and David Byrne also sampled certain tracks. And Don Cherry himself included these « whispered songs » in his repertoire. After his African series, in the 1970s Michel Vuylsteke helped to produce various albums by singers from the Isles du Vent in Martinique.