Björk, Uganda-style

Well, today was pretty unexciting (although reading the rumor posts on MetaFilter about US Politics and the current financial meltdown were certainly interesting), so instead check out this musical link that I also found on MeFi.

Bitone – All Is Full Of Love (cover)

This is a cover of a Björk song from her Homogenic album, performed by a music group in Kampala, Uganda, that is both a music education program and a fundraising organization for disadvantaged children in the region. If you click on the link above, you’ll go to their MySpace page (sorry, I couldn’t find a better link). If the MySpace “jukebox” doesn’t start playing the cover right away, scroll along the list of songs until you come to “All Is Full Of Love.”

Considering that most of the other recordings on here are percussion-heavy mbira-style performances, I was expecting a radical reworking of the original Björk song. Instead, they actually managed to imitate the song almost flawlessly with the instruments they had available to them. It’s actually really, really impressive. The young boy/girl that sings the vocal has a really love vocal tone, and s/he uses slightly wide intervals at the upper end of the melodic lines (wide minor seconds, to be precise), which create this light tension with the instruments that I really enjoy.