Pygmies.org is a website dedicated to the hunter-gatherer peoples living in Central African rainforests, commonly called
Pygmies.
This website has been created and is maintained by the Italian anthropologist and ethnomusicologist
Luis Devin. It presents hundreds of photos and other material collected during his fieldwork among the
Baka of Cameroon and Gabon and among other pygmy groups in Central Africa. Along with the images (concerning the life and traditional activities of these peoples, the Central African rainforest biodiversity, and the increasingly rapid disappearance of this world), you can find some brief ethnographic descriptions serving as introduction to pygmy cultures or commentary on the photos. Each internal page also includes sound or music recordings relative to the soundscape of the rainforest and pygmy camps.
The main aim of these pages is, therefore, to provide an introduction to the cultures of pygmy peoples and to promote their protection, documenting their richness and showing some of the factors that increasingly threaten their survival (for more information, visit the
About section of the site).
A special thank goes to the Baka friends of the author as well as the other forest peoples who made his fieldwork possible over the years, always with great patience and affection, accepting him in their camps and in the extraordinary African rainforest world.
Regarding the site structure, the thematic sections currently available are:
- Baka Pygmies: this section illustrates various areas of the culture of the Baka of Cameroon, Gabon and Congo, including hunting, fishing and gathering, material culture, music and dances, etc., plus the male initiation rite to the Spirit of the Forest that the author took part in.
- Bakola, Bedzan, Bakoya and Aka: section devoted to other pygmy peoples who live in the rainforests of the western Congo Basin, namely the Bakola / Bagyeli, the Bedzan, the Bakoya, and the Aka (the last ones during a concert tour in Italy).
- Fieldwork: audio-photographic diary of the author's fieldwork in Central Africa among the Baka and other forest peoples, with photos and soudscapes.
- Portraits
: presents a selection of photo-portraits of pygmy men, women and children, during daily and ritual activities. - Rainforest : section devoted to the African rainforest biodiversity, with images and sounds concerning the rainforest environments and the species that inhabit them.
- A Vanishing World : pages that illustrate some of the threats to biological and cultural diversity of African rainforests, including deforestation and exploitation of forest resources, bushmeat trade, the critical plight of pygmy peoples in modern African societies, the contaminations and the inevitable sunset of their traditional culture, etc.
- Luis Devin: link to the author's web site.
- About: pages of information about the Pygmies.org website, with the copyright notice, contacts, site map, etc.
