Cradick, a British musician, got involved more than a decade ago with the Baka pygmies, who have lived deep in the rainforest of this part of southeastern Cameroon for centuries.

After seeing a television documentary about them, Cradick set off to find the Baka and brought their music to world audiences as the world encroached on their sound-filled lives.

Cradick formed a band named Baka Beyond and has produced several albums with the Baka or inspired by their music -- often fusing it with other African rhythms and traditional Celtic sounds. He used some of the proceeds for a charity to help them.

"They're family now," Cradick said after arriving at the bar in Moloundou, a town surrounded by dense forest just up the road from the village where he lives with the Baka when he visits.

"I've probably seen more people born and more people die there than I have in England."

The Baka are semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers, shorter and more slightly built than people from the neighbouring sedentary communities known as the Bantu. They range in size from less than four feet to about five feet (1.2 to 1.5 metres).

Music and dance play a central part in their life, with women chanting before men go to hunt. The Baka also play "water drums", slapping the surface of a river to create rhythms, as well as traditional drums and home-made stringed instruments.

The chorus of birds and insects which forms a permanent audio backdrop to life in the forest blends with the chanting and playing to become part of the music.

RAINFOREST SOCIAL CENTRE

On the edge of the forest stands a timber-framed "music house", built from a local sapele tree and funded by Cradick's charity as a concert venue and social centre for the Baka.

Cradick says the Baka are such good musicians partly because they have become acutely sensitive to sound as the forest provides few visual clues to what may lurk nearby.

As dozens of Baka put on an impromptu show in the house featuring a song from the new album "Rhythm Tree", released next month, they also show a big talent for exuberant celebration.

"They're basically a bunch of anarchists," Cradick said. "They like having a party. Any excuse for a party."

His hope is that the house will help improve the status of the Baka, often marginalised by authorities and the Bantu.

Andi Main, a British timber-framer who worked on the reconstruction of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London, helped build the house.

"I didn't know what I was turning up to," said Main. "I didn't know what sort of wood there was."

The Baka chose a two-storey design almost unknown in the area. But the house is nearly complete, at the end of a narrow forest path by the village of Banana, with a stage at one end and a long vine twisted around the inside.

TRADITIONS UNDER PRESSURE

Traditionally the Baka set up camps of dome-shaped igloo-like huts made from branches and leaves called mongoulous and exploit the surrounding area before moving on.

But large-scale commercial logging and hunting along with the authorities' efforts to get them to stay in villages have put their way of life under pressure.

Sitting around the music house in shabby clothes and flip-flops, a group of Baka say revenues from logging stay in the pocket of government.

"Since our ancestors began to explore the forests, we the Baka haven't seen a thing," said a local chief named Mindoula.

"This isn't giving us anything to eat," said Pelembir, one of the top musicians. "It's the government that's eating well."

Resentment has built up between some Baka and Bantu, who dominate local administrations even where Baka are the majority.