(no subject)

[miko2]

Today's Song: Spirit of the Forest

Baka Beyond Baka Beyond is a band formed by Su Hart and Martin Cradick. who travelled to Cameroon in 1992 to live with the Baka people of the rainforest and record there. They are one of the original afro-celt groups, although there have been many others and they all have different sounds. Baka Beyond's music is heavily inspired by the music of the Baka tribe, and the band includes musicians from that tribe, as well as musicians from many African and European countries. Spirit of the Forest is the title track from their first cd, and is a very infectious tune. There are no lyrics but it conjurs up the sound of the rainforest particularly well.

I don't have a link to it here, but all of Baka Beyond's music is good, so here's a few video clips of the band:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGUvkyfnzc8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfavWh6JJ1E&mode=related&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbuO6wsRvl4

Some people compare their music to the sound of Deep Forest, but there's a crucial difference. Deep Forest was a studio project assembled using sound clips of African musicians -- the singers and musicians themselves weren't involved in the creation of Deep Forest and recieved no royalties for it. Baka Beyond on the other hand not only directly involves musicians from the Baka tribe, but sends a lot of money back to that tribe to help improve things there. It's a cooperative effort between European and African musicians, and it's a real band that has gone on tour, as you can see from the clips. ^_^

Spirit of the Forest is also my favorite song from the folk-metal band Korpiklaani which means "Forest Clan" in Finnish. I'd reccomend that song as well. ^_^ I don't have any videos of that song, but here's the band playing wooden pints, a song about the little people that live underground and party all night long (the Nac Mac Feagle perhaps?). "They raise their wooden pints and they joik and they sing and they fight and dance 'til the morning."

Although these songs are quite different from each other, I like both Spirit of the Forest songs.



It's a nice sunny day out. Mostly nice, some clouds but lots of sun. I went for a short walk.