page_title: African Pygmies
section_title: Music
hierarchical_section_title: African Pygmies / Music
caption_attribution_description: English: Low resolution screenshot of Pygmy drummers and dancers from the American public domain film Africa Speaks! (1930). The film was taken during a 1928 expedition. The film with some nudity was passed by the national motion picture code as ethnographic films were considered educational.
context_page_description: The African Pygmies are a group of ethnicities native to Central Africa, mostly the Congo Basin, traditionally subsisting on a forager and hunter-gatherer lifestyle. They are divided into three roughly geographic groups:
  the western Bambenga, or Mbenga,
  the eastern Bambuti, or Mbuti, of the Congo basin
  the central and southern Batwa, or Twa. The more widely scattered Southern Twa are also grouped under the term Pygmoid.
  They are notable for, and named for, their short stature. They are assumed to be descended from the original Middle Stone Age expansion of anatomically modern humans to Central Africa, albeit substantially affected by later migrations from West Africa, from their first appearance in the historical record in the 19th century limited to a comparative small area within Central Africa, greatly decimated by the prehistoric Bantu expansion, and to the present time widely affected by enslavement and cannibalism at the hands of neighboring Bantu groups.
context_section_description: The African Pygmies are particularly known for their vocal music, usually characterised by dense contrapuntal improvisation. Simha Arom says that the level of polyphonic complexity of Pygmy music was reached in Europe in the 14th century, yet Pygmy culture is unwritten and ancient, some Pygmy groups being the first known cultures in some areas of Africa. Music permeates daily life, with songs for entertainment, special events, and communal activities.
  Polyphonic music is found among the Aka–Baka and the Mbuti, but not among the Gyele (Kola) or the various groups of Twa.
caption: Pygmy drummers (1930)
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