Bush Animals Don't Like Hunters: Music of Sierra Leone Vol 1

This is a remarkable collection of field recordings collected from different regions across Sierra Leone between 1965 and 1970. Cootje van Oven, from Dordrecht in Holland, worked in Freetown as a music teacher and became enchanted by the virtuosity and variations of musical style performed in villages across the country. Observing the tendency for Western music influences to swamp local forms, particularly in urban areas, she made it her life's work to collect and describe authentic traditional music. Between 1964 and 1978 she logged approximately 450 songs; 22 of the best examples appear on this CD. There's a lively and cheery ambience to the selection and van Oven notes in the informative liner notes that the majority of the music that she encountered was happy in character. There's a wide variety of instrumentation including kora (harp-lute) on an excellent praise song sung in Mandingo (the same Malinke style as heard across Guinea, Senegal and Mali). The balangi is a sophisticated local variation of wooden xylophone – double-framed, with gourd resonators and a delightful sound. Other widely used instruments include the plucked three-string gourd bow (bolon bata); side-blown flute with three finger– holes (serdu); ten-stringed hunter's bow (kondene); conical drum (tapoi); and single-string violin (nyayaru). However it is the most readily available musical instrument – the clapping of hands – that van Oven heard most frequently accompanying singing in Sierra Leone.

It's riveting stuff and my favourite track is a charming female vocal, ‘My Mother-In-Law’, accompanied, remarkably, by a military side drum and bass drum played with absolute quick-step precision.