Les Troubadours Du Roi Baudouin – Missa Luba

my pressing says 1958 as year of release not 63

"Incendiary, subversive, and darkly humorous, If.... is a landmark of British countercultural cinema."[5] Beautiful artwork on the album cover(?woodcuts?).

This is a unique recording, has it's own Wikipedia entry and has been the subject of a Master of Arts Thesis undertaken by Doris Anna McDainel in 1973 at the University of Rochester. Portions of the recording have been included in a number of films, the first being the final musical scene in MGM's the Singing Nun released in 1966.

The singing group is part of the Baluba tribe which spreads through south central Africa. At the time the Missa Luba was first performed, the area in which these people live was a colony, the Belgian Congo. of the choir were students at Kamina Central School, Katanga Province, in east central Belgian Congo. In September, 1953, Father Guido Haazen, O.F.M., was appointed Director of Kamina Central School. A few weeks before Christmas that year, he formed a singing group of about fifty schoolboys, ages 9 to 14, to prepare some traditional songs for the approaching holiday. This choir was well received, and the boys continued to perform together for special occasions after Christmas had ed. With the help of the Commission of the District of Kamina, Father Haazen prepared an illustrated album of the choir and forwarded it to King Baudouin of Belgium in 1955. About a year later Father Haazen received an official notice from the Royal Court of Belgium, authorising him to use Les Troubadours du Baudouin as an honorary title for his choir.

Sometime between 1956 and 1958 the President of the Catholic Missions Pavilion for the 1958 Brussels World's Fair, Mgr. Guffens, S. J., visited Kamina and requested an audition of the Troubadours. The audition resulted in an invitation to perform in Belgium. In 1958 the choir made a concert tour of Europe, performing in Belgium, Holland, and . Since the Missa Luba was created in 1957, it is highly probable that the mass was set especially for performance on the 1958 concert tour. (extract from Doris Anna McDaniel Thesis)

The thesis explores the unique "fusion" and challenges of accurately describing and transcribing in musical notation the composition as elements of traditional spontaneous tribal song and chanting do not necessarily confirm to standard aspects of Western musical notation.