It is possible that you have to be of a certain age to know about this music, or at least, to know how people became aware of it in the late 1960s. It is a haunting and other-wordly sound; a Latin Mass based on traditional Congolese songs. It came into popular mainstream through the 1968 Lindsay Anderson movie “If…”, with Malcolm McDowell’s character Mick Travis playing it over and over , his personal soundtrack to an ethereal, adolescent cool in the buttoned-up world of the traditional public school.
I remember finding a copy on a 45rpm single in the HMV record shop in London’s Oxford Street. I was 6 years out of boarding school, but had seen this movie whilst still ensconced in that peculiar world. I had to buy that disc, just for the memory, and I have it still.
