The Music of Mushrooms: The Polyphony of Baka Women

The women of the Baka ethnic group, who live in the rainforests of the Central African Republic, sing polyphonic chants while gathering mushrooms. This interwoven melody, fittingly titled Women Gathering Mushrooms, sounds like this:

As Merlin Sheldrake recounts in his fascinating book Entangled Life:

Louis Sarno: The Ethnographer and Musicologist Who Lived Among the Baka

Thousands of hours of Baka’s chants

Women Gathering Mushrooms is one of the thousands of recordings compiled by ethnographer and musicologist Louis Sarno during the 1980s. Over the three decades that Sarno—a native of New Jersey (USA)—lived among the Baka in the heart of Africa, he recorded more than 1,600 hours of these magical polyphonic chants. Some of them can be heard here or here.

Sarno’s personal story is, at the very least, as fascinating as Baka women’s musical culture. This Newsweek article paints an accurate portrait of the so-called “white pygmy.”

Sheldrake continues in Entangled Life:

Another example of this mesmerizing fungal polyphony:

The Baka People and Their Relationship with the Forest

The Baka ethnic group consists of about 30,000 people living in the rainforests of the Central African Republic and Cameroon—one of the most remote and inaccessible areas in the heart of Africa.
Their knowledge of and adaptation to the tropical forest far exceed those of any other ethnic group in the region. Until recently, other tribes believed (and some still do) that the Baka could transform into animals through rituals and potions, as described in this Last Places article.

The Baka are hunter-gatherers. Each group’s survival depends on hunting, fishing, and gathering. The forest provides an abundance of animals, fish, honey, mushrooms, fruits, and nuts. Honey is especially valued by the Baka people. Nearly 30% of their vocabulary consists of words used to designate plants. Their incredible skills and endurance in the forest make them successful hunters. The Baka know every plant and recognize every animal track, no matter how small.

Young Baka individual engaged in gathering tasks in the forest.

Sources: Wikipedia, Newsweek, Last Places and Entangled Life.

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