Songs of Biboki

Reviewing music like this is a bit like trying to slap a star rating on someone's breathing – it's rather beside the point, because it's not being done for anyone else's benefit. You don't need to know anything about the culture these songs came from to recognise them as being of the kind that have been sung for millennia to speed the working day, mark significant occasions and impart useful knowledge. Biboki is a coastal region of Western Timor (the part that still belongs to Indonesia). This recording, made in 2006, features a group consisting of female members of a weaving cooperative and male farmers. These songs are their cultural DNA: used for welcoming guests, funeral services, gathering crops, spinning thread, and so on. Most of the 20 tracks take the form of a call-and-response, either between soloists and the whole group, or between men and women. They all sound pretty similar – harmonies are gentle, tempos are relaxed, and the only accompaniment is some occasional discreet tapping. The mood is calmly positive, like gospel without the fervour. (In fact, European church singing has made its mark in Biboki.) It's not really the sort of music I can imagine people putting on their iPods – it's easier to imagine putting it on a space probe, to show alien civilisations who we are – but there are sounds here that, in their directness and universality, catch at the heart like few others.