When looking for music to study within Sub-Saharan Africa, I stumbled upon a website that mentioned the Aka Pygmy people that take place in many places throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, including the Republic of Congo. With more research I found an interesting video called the Polyphonic Singing of the Aka Pygmies of Central Africa. Within this video, I learned that these nomadic people tend to use mainly their voices and other small hand-made instruments that they can easily carry. Some of these include drums, shakers, and harps. These instruments are used on certain occasions. The most impressive thing they do in my opinion is polyphonic singing. Where they are allowed and even encouraged to improvise while singing, meaning they can change his or her voice while singing. When dancing, their traditions are similar to the Indigenous Americans that we previously studied, as they mostly dance separately by gender. Though, there are dances that include couples or even singles.

The video below shows different parts of the Pygmy culture. I do want to warn ahead that there is slight nudity.

While looking through information on the Pygmies, I stumbled across an important type of music called water drumming, or Liquindi drumming, and the instrument is in fact water. I learned that this type of music is a very important aspect of the Baka forest people, and that it is reserved for the women hunters. They do this on the morning of a hunt in hopes to bless their hunt and bring forth the animals within the forest. Drawing them out makes it easier for them to hunt and prevents them from having to go really far into the woods. The women must be in a good mood and have to finish before sunrise, so that they do not disturb the gods and the spirits. Another time in which they perform and dance is when there is war. In order to get different sounds, the women cup their hands differently when hitting the water. 

When looking into the Mbira, I found a website on Hugh Tracey, who founded the International Library of African Music (ILAM). In order to fund this, he also created the AMI, also known as the African Musical instruments. With this, he made and sold African instruments with the hopes to spread insight on the African culture. While doing this, he created a new version of a Kalimba, called a Hugh Tracey Kalimba, which is another name for the instrument that we discussed for class called the Mbira. The original Kalimba has been around for ages, at it has been played for almost 3000 years. Tracey was inspired by the Likembe, which had an alternating note layout. Tracey continued to experiment with different techniques while making them to incorporate some none traditional aspects to the instrument. He finished making the Treble Kalimbas in 1954, then created both the Alto and Celeste Trebles in later years. 

Below is a cool video of someone playing a popular song we know on the Hugh Tracey Kalimba