The Many Ways of Being Human

1.4

BaAka and Mbuti

Night in the Congo Basin: a woman starts a wordless line, a second voice slots into its gaps, then a yodel, then two notes always in the same spot, and nobody leads. In a forest where sight carries about twenty paces, the BaAka and Mbuti hold a group together by ear, and the chapter asks what a forest does to a culture.