The Source of Sound

fri 26 may 2017 21:00 hour

The Source of Sound involves the material, the movement and the vibration of which music arises. Episode 23

Louis Sarno

On 1 April this year, Louis Sarno passed away at a hospital in New Jersey, USA. In the mid eighties, while living in Amsterdam, he was captured by the music of the African pygmees he coincidentally heard on the radio in Walter Slosse’s programme ‘de Wandelende Tak’ (The Stick Insect). He was so captivated by the music, he decided to go to Central Africa himself to finds the makers and record them as soon as possible. It was the start of a period of time in which he travelled back and forth between Africa and Europe, where he released cassettes on his own label Gondwana with the music of the Bayaka. He wrote a book about his experiences in Central Africa, entitled Songs. A book which was translated into many languages and delivered him some fame.

That fame brought on the reporters and the opportunity to release some albums through commercial labels like Ellipsis Arts and to organize Europe tours for his Bayaka villagers. By then, Louis Sarno was basically permanently residing in the Central African Republic and his attention shifted to threats to the Bayaka, like the deforesting, exploitation by outsiders and the growing number of restrictions the World Wildlife Fund was putting on the now protected nature reserve where the Bayaka lived and that were was essentially driving away its inhabitants.

All the while he kept on recording and in just under 30 years, he collected over 1000 hours of music from three generations of Bayaka. It is a unique collection like no other, which makes the work of many music professors pale by comparison. He dropped of his original recordings at the Pitt-Rivers Museum in Oxford, England, which was the only scientific body that provide some financial backing and which is now in the process of making the music available to everyone online. This broadcast of The Source of Sound is an hommage to the life and work of Louis Sarno and mainly focuses on the hard-to-get cassettes and albums he released in the eighties and nineties.

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