Music with effects: "Musicking" to survive (The case of the Pygmies)

This research is based on musical documents that the Ogooue-Congo Mission collected in 1946 among the BaBinga Pygmies (Haute-Sangha, Congo Republic) and on the ethno-musicological publications to date about the Pygmies, who are scattered over the equatorial forest from east to west, from Itouri to Gabon. These documents lead us to ask, "Why do the Pygmies "musick" so much?" and to reply, "To survive." For them, "musicking" - instead of "making music " - is a technique of the "social body" and group life. The effects they expect of it must be seen as combining two types of effectiveness: a "symbolic musical effectiveness" operational in their hunting rites and their magic and religious practices; and the "sociosomatic musical effectiveness" of all the musical activities (song and dance) that they do every day. Several notes at the end of the article comment on various problems, in particular yodeling and polyphony.