Baka Rainforest Singing Workshop with Su Hart
Sat 22 Mar 2025 10:00 AM - 4:30 PM
Henbant Barn, LL54 5DF
Description
Join us for African Baka Rainforest Singing with Su Hart at Henbant
- Learn the joyful and fascinating singing of the African rainforest people.
- Open to all, regardless of vocal experience, in this workshop we will learn chants, songs, yelli and rhythms from the Baka tradition.
- This will be a unique vocal workshop, full of joy and fun, and with a special emphasis on cooperative listening and collaboration.
- The Baka are egalitarian and their music is truly collaborative and incredible for building a sense of community and connection.
- We will feel as if we have been transported to the magical soundscape of the rainforest and that we are communing with ourselves, each other and with nature – this is sustainability in vocal form!
Please save the date if you fancy immersing yourself in the luscious rainforest rhythms and harmonies of the Baka culture from Cameroon.
Advance booking is essential.
Su Hart is a UK based dynamic choir leader and singer-songwriter and since 1992 she has been visiting the rainforests of Cameroon in Central African with husband Martin Cradick to learn from Baka singing. These trips have given her a greater understanding of the world of sound and sound making and also led to the creation of their internationally touring band Baka Beyond.
The Baka are a hunter gatherer group (they used to be known as pygmies) and are known to be one of the most musical cultures on Earth and one of the first to sing. Their vocal music is mesmerising and hypnotic. Their multilayered polyphony (harmony) has accompanied daily tasks and ritual for millennia. In Baka culture, song builds community, heals illness and argument, soothes babies and the ‘Yelli’ yodel enchants the animals ensuring luck in the hunt. Their beautiful interlocking of sound and joyous accessible rhythm is fun and easy to learn. Su has been initiated by the Baka women to share this singing as the basis of her unique workshop. Royalties go back to the Baka for projects in the forest through the charity Global Music Exchange.
Find out more here - Global Music Exchange – Helping people to help themselves through music
Location
Henbant Barn, LL54 5DF