BAKA BEYOND

About the Artist

The original African-Celtic crossover band returns with a joyful noise, as players from Europe's Celtic fringes and west Africa create one of the most original world fusions anywhere. Led by Outback co-founder Martin Cradick, Baka Beyond's spirited genre-benders have enlivened concert stages for nearly a decade, leaving audiences worldwide clamoring for more.

Baka tribes people from Lupé, a small rainforest village near the Congo/Cameroon border, contribute indigenous percussion and vocals on this new album. Martin Cradick and Su Hart first met and lived with the Baka in 1992, when the clan's unique music inspired the creation of Baka Beyond. The band's effervescent debut album, SPIRIT OF THE FOREST went on to become a true perennial of rainforest-related, highly-danceable world music.

Since then, whenever Baka Beyond have recorded or performed Baka songs, royalties for the tribal performers have been collected by the charity, Global Music Exchange. The relationship with the Baka grows closer each year. Most recently, Martin visited the Baka people in their village to help them construct a music house, which promotes their culture on a local level while their songs continue to reach a global audience. Cradick and Hart have also co-founded One Heart, a UK-based charity to help sustain the Baka in their traditional lifestyle and help them address the racial and tribal prejudices they routinely encounter in mainstream Cameroonian society.

Recordings