Ndima

Traditionally nomadic, Pygmies are nowadays in the process of settlement. They live in the forests of Africa between the Atlantic Ocean and the big Lakes, and left according to the geographical areas in various groups in particular Baka, Bambuti, Batwa, Babongo, Efé and others.
In Republic of the Congo, we count several groups of pygmies among which aka where from are native the musicians of the Group Ndima.
Who are Pygmies aka and how do they live?
Hunters-gatherers, they are easily recognizable by their short size and their traditional housing environment established by huts in log. The esthetic expressions such the physical scarifications also allow to identify them. They live in the forest of the North of the Republic of the Congo and the South of the Centrafrique. They speak the aka language and live a life altered culturally, further to the increasing influence of the modernism in rural areas, and further to the rarity of certain foodstuffs in the forest today, which is more and more destroyed by the farmers and the foresters.
Members of a minority and marginalized, aka pygmies maintain bad relationships with their neighbors majority and slave master Bantus. They maintain with the latter relationships of clientele and exercise for their account various economic tasks: hunt, fishing, collect some honey, work in plantations and transport diverse loads.
Children of the forest, the Aka know how to take care of their environment because their life in all its aspects depends on it. To feed, they hunt animals and to edible vegetables which grow to their reach. They look after themselves with plants and with diverse essences, the virtues of which they know well. They also make use of it in their love life to conquer love of a woman, a man or to strengthen the marital union. Diverse objects are made with vegetables to be of use to the hunting, to the cooking, to the harvest of the honey...
Pygmies aka are people who practices the music on a daily basis. It is bound to diverse circumstances appropriate to their community. We find in their directory of the musics reserved for the spirits of the forest, among which each bears a name and materializes through a plant mask to appear in public, to participate in the event for which it is invited: rite of hunting or cure, raised by mourning, musics of entertainment, those linked to the divination, to the sexuality.
Aka practises the complex and rich contrapuntal, technical polyphony which they learn since their early childhood and which distinguishes their music of that of their neighbors called Bantu or big black. They also make use of the jodel - the alternation of the voice(vote) of head and the voice(vote) of breast, which also establishes(constitutes) an identity element.
The varied rhythmic formulae which support the dances show too the wealth of the culture pygmy aka, which nowadays is endangered.
This is the way the Group Ndima, consisted of...