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Centrafrique - Central Africa (LP+6pages Insert) Sanza Music in the land of the Gbaya
MEG-AIMP/- Cat No: MEG-AIMP124
- updated:2026-04-16
From the Archives Internationales de Musique Populaire (AIMP) housed at Geneva's Museum of Ethnography (MEG), known as an important archive of ethnic music, comes sanza music of the Gbaya people of the Central African Republic, originally released on CD in 1993.
Track List
A long-time best-seller of the MEG-AIMP collection and long out of print, this album of sanza music recorded among the Gbaya people of the Central African Republic by ethnomusicologist Vincent Dehoux was originally released on CD in 1993. It is now being reissued on vinyl and CD to coincide with the exhibition Afrosonica - Soundscapes. It features a selection of 'songs for thought': an intimate repertoire conducive to introspection, accompanied by the repetitive, meditative sound of lamellaphones.
A vinyl release selected from the CD on which ethnomusicologist Vincent Dehoux recorded the sanza music of Central Africa's Gbaya people in 1977. The sanza is a traditional instrument close to the mbira or kalimba, heard in the folk music of Cameroon and the Republic of the Congo, and its legacy carries through to Francis Bebey's "Psychedelic Sanza 1982-1984." (Original Japanese text by Saito)