Ritual Mouth-Organs of the Murung

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During the Course of 1999's second half I was recommended this remarkable piece of ethno-musicological archiving on three separate occasions - by no less a trio than David Toop, Clive Bell and Paul Schütze. I'm ashamed to say that I only got round to hearing it at the beginning of this year, so it's a tad out of date, but for motion to have missed out on it would be a shameful. INEDIT are the record label operation of Paris's Maison des Cultures du Monde, and have a remarkable catalogue of music from all over North Africa and Asia, from Tunisia to Azerbaidjan, Ethiopia to Taiwan. The music on this particular release originates in Bangladesh. The Murung are a non-Christianised, non-Muslimised and non-Hinduised 50,000-tribe tribe from the isolated West of Bangladesh. Speaking a language unrelated to any of the local Bengali dialects, the Murung have developed religious beliefs that border on animism, with unique rituals based upon it. These rituals - the "sachiacum" or sacrifice of the cow - are accompanied by music performed on the "plung" , a mouth organ consisting of several long pipes extending from a calabash gourd. The plung can be played by an individual soloist or by a large group of up to 20. This recording was made in the Spring of 1997, in Paris. The musicians were invited to play at the inaugural Festival de L'Imaginaire, a remarkable fact given that none of the musicians had previously left the hills of their homeland. We can only speculate on what effect the experience of travelling to a (very nearly) 21st Century European City had on their performance, but this nonetheless remains laudably alien music. It's time like this that I'm especially relieved to be writing a soundfile-accompanied review, as the ability to describe what's going on here - a fair task at the best of times - is truly impossible. Ever wondered why the harmonica is called a mouth organ? Mmm, me too. But there's no doubt here. The sound of the plung orchestra is uncannily like like a keyboard organ. An electric organ, specifically. A Farfisa electric organ, to be even more precise, and, to cap it all, one played by Terry Riley circa 1967/8/9. With tape delays. And accompanied with saxophone, now and then. This performance consists of a piece for plung orchestra, a piece for voice and solo "rina" plung (a softer version of the Murung mouth organ), and a final orchestral piece to accompany a dance celebrating a ritual cow sacrifice. It's remarkable throughout, but it's the ensemble pieces to which I keep returning. They are full of a sound that's the most beguiling I've heard in a very long time. Spellbinding stuff.