Label: Ocora

オリジナルは個人的愛聴盤となっている、コートジボワールの北西部に住むダン族の仮面舞踏の歌を収集したアルバム。美しい仮面で有名なこの部族の所謂降霊的な状態のサウンドが纏められており、特徴的なボイスを作る為に声を歪める、楽器を介して声の質を変化させる等、独特のテクニックと様々な謎風景が入り混じる非常にユニークな録音集。尚、本作は2022年に発表された改訂及び拡張再発版で、一部トラックのデュレーションを延長、未発表音源が3トラック追加されています。未体験の方は是非。



While African masks are readily identified, their voices –although essential– are much less well-known: they speak and sing. The most modest masks, intended for entertainment, as well as the most powerful ones with strong supernatural power, use music just as expressively.
Technically speaking, a person wearing a mask acquires beneath this disguise another personality. According to Black African religious belief, the wearer of a mask abandons his human personality to incarnate a supernatural being, most often an ancestral spirit, a mythical figure or a bush spirit.

Since the Dan consider their masks as supernatural beings, neither the spoken nor sung voices of their incarnation can be human. Their wearers must transform their voices into the voices of supernatural beings. The Dan have perfected three techniques to achieve this –they either distort their own voice, alter their vocal timbre by speaking into an instrument, or replace the voice with instruments hidden from the uninitiated.