BaAka Singing in a State of Emergency

Abstract

This essay seeks new ways to dismantle barriers between areas of study, practice, and politics, seeking the language and the spaces of imagination within which we can take action. Looking at polyphonic, poly-social musical practices developed by BaAka from Central African Republic, this essay asks how these practices matter to our collective future. What key role might nonfiction poetic narrative storytelling play in spreading knowledge of ecologically sustainable cultural practices? BaAka people have developed sustainable practices, knowing how to sing, dance, and live with the forest and with each other. This essay asks how what they know might be shared through stories about learning and about living, challenging the ever-expanding borders between previously separated realms of personal and intersocial life, the creative, and the scholarly.