Summer moves on in the sound of music, still with the Akele from Gabon; this next video shows two lullabies sung by a group of women in a little village of the Lake region, near Lambarene.

Like other lullabies from around the world, these songs often grow from the repetition of basic sentences. But they also bear the features of numerous traditional songs from central and southern Africa: their composition, based on repetition within a narrative framework, gives them a somewhat heady and almost obsessive tone. Some musicologists even believe that this is where the origins of blues are to be found…

Mothers won’t help but notice that the point of these lullabies is not necessarily calm and tenderness… Each culture has its own way of putting its children to sleep!

Linguist: Jean-Marie Hombert
Camera and sound: Luc-Henri Fage
Translation: Hugues Awanhet
Editing: Caroline Laurent