and late-'50s field recordings are among the most captivating examples of traditional pygmy music. Folkways released two LPs of them, one devoted entirely to the Mbuti pygmies, the other giving a side apiece to the forest people and their villager neighbors. This CD collects all of the pygmy material from the earlier two volumes -- too much for one sitting, perhaps -- and presents them in pristine re-mastered form. The disc begins in a Mbuti camp where small groups sing rounds and play home-made flutes; moves to a Bantu village for raucous ritual observances; and then returns to the forest for private meditations on musical bow (a hunting bow plucked and held to the mouth like a jaw harp) and the fireside evening reveries of the sacred molimo. ~ Ted Greenwald