The great ethnologist Simha Arom had been sent to the Central African Republic to set up a brass band… He was fascinated above all by the local traditional music there, and devoted his life to recognising it. These « Chants et Danses de la Forêt Centre-Africaine » are the first recording made in 1967 by the director of research at the CNRS (91 years old today…). The light shed here validates that definitively « nothing is created, nothing is lost, everything is transformed ». The rhythmic loops, harmonies, motifs and song-response structures found in traditional Caribbean music could, without exception, be sampled in the contemporary music derived from it. On this subject, I suggest (re-)reading Gino Sitson’s recent book « Santiman et lokans dans le Gwoka », which includes a particularly enlightening historical section.
Musiques Africaines – Chants et dans de la forêt centre-africaine, 1967
