African Pygmy chants go Europop in 'Deep Forest'

by Paul Geitner / AP


"Somewhere, deep in the jungle, are living some little men and women. They are your past. Maybe... maybe they are your future."

It takes a bold record producer to put such a solemn incantation at the beginning of an album and not expect to get more snickers than sales.

But anyone who'd think of combining centuries-old Pygmy chants from central Africa with Europop rhythms and a synthesized dance beat obviously is not risk-averse.

The result is "Deep Forest," a collection of ethereal dance tracks with the professed aim -- according to the liner notes -- of "gathering all peoples and joining all continents through the universal language of music."

It already has garnered fans in France, where it was released in 1992, and Australia, where it hit the top 10 last year.

Now Americans are being drawn into "Deep Forest," helped along by regular showings on MTV of an exotic new video for the first single, "Sweet Lullaby."

"It was just for our pleasure in the beginning," Eric Mouquet, one of two French musicians who helped create "Deep Forest," says of the project. "We just put all the feeling that we wanted into this music, and after we saw the success, we were very proud."

Mouquet says his partner, Michel Sanchez, found some tapes of Pygmy chants recorded decades ago and played them after dinner one night.

"It was very quiet, very beautiful," Mouquet said in a telephone interview from the studio in Brussels, Belgium, where "Deep Forest" was made. Mouquet then came up with the idea of combining the sounds with their own music.

They made a deal with Sony France, then sought to secure the rights to all the vocals. They eventually won the backing of UNESCO, which opened its extensive library to them, and of two musicologists, Hugo Zempe and Shima Aron, who collected the original documents.

The chants chosen come from Pygmies and other ethnic groups in Cameroon, Burundi and Senegal. The musicians experimented with hiring singers to copy the samples, "but it was not the same feeling," Mouquet says. "The original emotion was lost."

They ended up cutting the tapes and mixing them with synthesized music, drum beats and sound effects, all the while keeping as much of the original melody and tempo as possible.

First released in the United States in April, "Deep Forest" attracted little mainstream attention, although the single "Sweet Lullaby" made it onto the modern rock and dance music charts last summer.

Still, the album sold about 200,000 copies in the United States, mainly through word-of-mouth and alternative radio air play, according to "Deep Forest" publicist Ellen Zoe Golden.

In the fall, Sony decided to give it a second chance by signing hotshot director Tarsem to shoot a new video for "Sweet Lullaby."

Tarsem (who was born in India and goes by one name) won a Grammy and an MTV award in 1992 for directing R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion" video. Despite a deluge of offers, he has avoided the format since then, concentrating instead on commercials for the likes of Levi's and Adidas.

"They had done a really bad video for it for Europe," Tarsem said in a telephone interview from London. "I saw the video and I heard the song and I thought, 'What a great song -- what a crappy video.'"

Tarsem's version features a little girl (his 4-year-old niece) circling the globe on a tricycle, searching for the perfect lullaby. The haunting melody of the Pygmy lullaby is combined with striking scenes shot in Moscow's Red Square, at the Great Wall of China, in front of the Taj Mahal and under the Brooklyn Bridge.

MTV latched on to the lush imagery this year, putting the video into heavy rotation and fueling new interest in the album, which finally cracked Billboard's top 100 this month.

Aware of the charges of cultural exploitation that have been leveled against similar projects by such artists as Paul Simon and David Byrne, the "Deep Forest" creators sought advice from experts on African music.

Mouquet says they took the finished album to Francis Bebey, an internationally renowned journalist, author and musician from Cameroon, whose 1975 book, "African Music: A People's Art," is considered an important reference work.

"He said, 'Oh you're right to do something like that, because African culture is not only for African people. It's a good way to merge all kinds of music with something new,'" Mouquet says.

They also decided to give a percentage of the "Deep Forest" royalties to The Pygmy Fund, based in Malibu, Calif. About $25,000 has been earmarked for the fund so far, Golden says.

The fund's founder, Jean-Pierre Hallet, was honored in Washington with a Presidential End Hunger Award in 1987 for his work with the Efe Pygmies of the Ituri Forest in Zaire. He says he was dubious when first approached about "Deep Forest."

"When I heard someone had taken their songs and cut them up and added a disco beat, I said, 'Oh wow, that's terrible to do that to that beautiful sound.' Then I heard it," he says. "It's almost magical music."

Hallet says he has yet to play the album for his Pygmy friends. His last trip to Zaire, in May, was cut short by renewed fighting in the country's civil war.

"I cannot wait to go back and let them hear it," Hallet says. "I'm sure they will begin dancing -- automatically."