The group singing of the African pygmies is a highly intricate form of social interaction. The Biaka pygmies of Central African Republic, Cameroon and the Congo have developed this form of expression into a mode that reflects the egalitarian structure of the society. The goals of this project are to determine what an individual must know in order to participate in Biaka social interaction as expressed in music and to describe the processes of musical creation within a closed, egalitarian community. The student will attempt to convey Biaka understandings of their musical performance and of their culture. Anthropological analyses are increasingly concerned with performance as the structuring of experience, but rarely do they describe the details of the structures as they emerge within actual performances as this study will do. Specifically, essemble music as performance concentrates cultural knowledge in patterns of interaction, cueing, and non-verbal communicative modes. This study in ethnomosicology will provide creative input into traditional questions of social structure, gender roles, social process, symbolism, and culture change.
