I’m looking for authentic ”ethnic” vocals for a project. To be combined with electronic music production. Would prefer actual melodies, not just chants/grunts or choir ahs/oohs.

Mostly Africa, but also Asia. Anyone have suggestions for products, packs or even records? Also old sample CDs from the 90’s!

I have Spectrasonics’ Heart of Africa and Asia I & II, and those have a couple of nice chants, but no real melodies.

Here are a few really random examples:

Enigma: ”Carly’s Song” (1993, from the movie Sliver) https://youtu.be/1o2c4u7XwGo

2fox: ”Lonzania” https://youtu.be/Z7uMCQtsLIc

Shadow Warrior 3 OST: ”Long River” (this is a bit too cliched) https://youtu.be/ZS8g2UvyPd0

 

all the series by Zero-G called Ethera
https://zero-g.co.uk/collections/ethera-collection

It's mostly based on Asia Mid East sound, but a lot also from Morocco or Maghreb, its more oriented for movie scoring or epic EDM than afrobeat or amapiano, but can cointain something also for that

you have to make a deep search because there are many libraries, all containing vocalise but also construction phrases, a bit complex to use because you can really build a song but it sounds amazing and works in many genres

 

This one's got some gems inside, a lot of interesting melodic phrases:

https://www.functionloops.com/trance-vocal-hooks.html

That YT demo doesn't do it justice.

 

Zero-G - Creative Essentials 27 - Voices Of Africa
Zero-G - Creative Essentials 08 - Spices Of India
Zero-G - Ethnic 1-2
Sample Africa - AmaMpondo 1
Sample Africa - Zulu Warriors 1
Earth Moments - Voice Of India
Zero-G - Deepest India (Oldy but goldy, you'll find many samples used by top producers in this one, like SUFANI 3 by Timaland is classic)
Q Up Arts - Voice of Istanbul
Q Up Arts - Voices of Native America 2
Best Service - Spiritual Voices

But the best place to look for ethnical vox is https://archive.org

 

Thanks, guys! I do have Ethera, and while amazing, it is indeed more Middle East and epic/movie style.

I also have Deepest India and a few others. But I need to investigate more Zero-G especially.

I have to say, Cretu from Enigma was a one kind of genius, perfectly combining all those (in this case Chinese and Mongolian) traditional vocals into his easily digestable new agey instrumental pop tracks. https://www.whosampled.com/Enigma/Age-of-Loneliness-(Carly's-Song)/