Aka (Pygmy tribe)

From NativeWiki

The Aka are a wandering African pygmy people who live by hunting. BiAka are plural and MouAka is singular. Aka musicians appear on:

African Rhythms (2003). Music by Aka Pygmies, performed by Aka Pygmies, György Ligeti and Steve Reich, performed by Pierre-Laurent Aimard. Teldec Classics: 8573 86584-2. Liner notes by Aimard, Ligeti, Reich, and Simha Arom and Stefan Schomann.

These hunter-gatherers have a symbiotic market relationship with Ngandu farmers.

Their complex polyphonic music has been studied by various ethnomusicologists, as Simha Arom, who made some historical field recordings of their repertoires, and as Mauro Campagnoli, who also studied in depth their musical instruments, comparing them to those of other pygmy groups (especially their neighbours, the Baka Pygmies).

In 2003, the oral traditions of the Aka were proclaimed one of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO.

A 2005 report named Aka men as the “Best Dads in the World"[1]. Aka fathers have their infant within arms reach 47% of the time.