Rapsodie Nègre is the work with which Poulenc made his compositional début in Paris. It utilizes an unusual grouping of instruments and draws on African/Oriental exoticism and pentatonic melodies, coupled with a toneofdetachment. The baritone solo in the third movement deserves a special mention. The text is allegedly the work of Liberian poet Makoko Kangourou, but is actually nonsense onomatopoetic syllables. Kangourou was the inventionoftwo Parisian writers, Marcel Ormoy and Charles Moulié...