Song:Sweet Lullaby
Album:Essence of the Forest
The French duo Deep Forest mix electronica with World Music. They scored a top ten hit in England with Sweet Lullaby in 1993. Michel Sanchez and Eric Mouquet are both classically trained pianists. After a trip to Africa, Sanchez wanted to mix Baka pygmy spoken word with contemporary music. Deep Forest was born. They brought in Dan Lackman from the group Telex to produce. Deep Forest's music is ambient electronica with samples of African music. But the big surprise was when Sweet Lullaby became a dance club hit and reached the top ten in England. It did chart in the US but it was not a hit. The record is based on a traditional Baegu lullaby called Rorogwela and it uses a sample of a woman called Afunakwa singing that was recorded in the wild by ethnomusicologist Hugo Zemp in 1970. Their album did particularly well in Europe and it won a Grammy in 1995. The video directed by Tarsem Singh was nominated for an MTV Award. You can get two versions of Sweet Lullaby on this comp, the original and a 2004 version with a vocal by Ana Torroja. Deep Forest continued to have success sampling World music with electronica. They recorded four albums from 1992-2002. Sanchez and Mouquet have also released solo albums. And they have recorded with Catherine Lara, Josh Groban, Joe Zawinul and most recently Italian producer Daniele Gaudi on the 2018 album Epic Circuits. Here's the video for Sweet Lullaby by Deep Forest.
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