Ritual Mouth Organs of the Murung

The Murung exist in the tropical forest hills of western Bangladesh, almost in Burma, and thrive as a self-sufficient farming community of about 50,000 and unlike some of their surrounding neighbors, have yet to be Hinduized, Christianized or Moslemized. Their religion revolves around spirit worship of various gods related to nature, one of their premier rituals involves the sacrifice of a cow that represents a mytholological messenger, famous for having once gobbled sacred scrolls instead of delivering them. Their instrumentation in this ritual revolves around an amazing mouth organ called the plung, and while it's bamboo-based and quite primitive, emits a resonant, powerful sound that is compounded in force when played in larger ensembles with different levels of drones/octaves happening. On the disc Ritual Mouth Organs of the Murung (Inedit label, France), recordings of one of these events (captured in 1997) are stunning, in particular one piece called Dance For the Sacrifice (MP3) which I first heard Donna play over the air way back when we were still broadcasting out of East Orange. We had just started to get the whole batch of Cortical label Terry Riley reissues at WFMU, so the airwaves were filled with drones quite often, but this piece in particular was totally head-turning with its rich, see-sawing cycle of sounds that either got the phones ringing because people were so blown away and had to know what it was, or were literally being driven crazy by the repetition. This hypnotic music ranks up there with the best Terry Riley, Steve Reich etc, and the fact it's lung-driven makes it all the more impressive.

Comments

[Joe]

Not to be a nitpicky dweeb or anything (although I suppose I am being one), if they're almost in Burma, they'd be in eastern Bangladesh, not western Bangladesh. That said, this is an amazing recording, up there with the Balinese Monkey Chant for pure otherworldliness.

[Brian Turner]

Sorry, what I really should say is that the mountain tract they live in stretches over to Burma. They indeed do dwell in western Bangladesh though.

[Mike]

Incroyable.