Podcast appearances and mentions of louis sarno

Mamadu playing the geedal (bow harp) in the forest with the sound of rain dripping. From the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, being from a large collection of cassette tape and digital audio tape recordings of Bayaka music and soundscapes made by ethnomusicologist Louis Sarno mainly in the Central African Republic (and the Republic of Congo) between 1986 and 2009.Recorded by Louis Sarno.Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

Momboli and Gongé playing flutes in the forest at night.From the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, being from a large collection of cassette tape and digital audio tape recordings of Bayaka music and soundscapes made by ethnomusicologist Louis Sarno mainly in the Central African Republic (and the Republic of Congo) between 1986 and 2009.Recorded by Louis Sarno.Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

From the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, being from a large collection of cassette tape and digital audio tape recordings of Bayaka music and soundscapes made by ethnomusicologist Louis Sarno mainly in the Central African Republic (and the Republic of Congo) between 1986 and 2009.Recorded by Louis Sarno.Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

This piece was created in response to an archival field recording made by Louis Sarno among the Bayaka people of the Central African Republic. Instead of using the recording as musical material to be featured in the piece, I chose to use it as a generative constraint. I intended to have a single piece of audio from which the entire composition could be created. The original recording and its history also prompted me to think about listening as a form of attention. How sounds emerge from the environment, and how attention shifts as focus drifts. In this way, I imagine the piece resembling a strange forest which the listener passes through, encountering different sounds as they move on their way and attention drifts. All the sounds in the piece originate from the original field recording. I processed the recording through my modular synth, producing a new set of sounds that were then recorded into a DAW. My usual practice is to perform with the modular synth, recording the output as the finished work. However, for this piece, I wanted to try working differently and to construct the piece out of the new sounds. I created 18 distinct stereo sounds, all from the same sample. I then listened back to them carefully and named each one based on how they sounded. Next, I grouped them into four categories based on shared qualities (for example, ambient textures, crackling or low-frequency elements).I then started assembling the piece by imposing a set of compositional rules. No more than three sounds could play at once, and no more than two sounds from the same category could be used simultaneously. Early versions felt incoherent, but as I listened more and made changes, a sense of structure began to take shape. It was at this stage that I started to think about the idea of the piece resembling a forest with the listener slowly passing through. As the listener walks through this "forest", attention drifts between different elements, some inviting and others more unsettling.The original field recording does appear briefly at the end of the piece, layered with itself, reversed, and time-stretched. While processed, it remains recognisable, functioning as a trace rather than a central feature.In preparation for this work, I started reading Sarno's book "Song from the Forest" and the documentary film of the same name. These materials informed my understanding of the context of the recording, whilst also reinforcing the decision to avoid direct representation and instead focus on response, transformation, and attentive listening.Geedal (bow harp) in the forest with rain dripping reimagined by Richard Charles Boxley.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

This piece begins with a single recording: a forest soundscape captured by Louis Sarno in what is now the Central African Republic and the Republic of Congo, with birds, shifting air, and the distant rumble of a storm. The tape is not just a neutral document. It shows how sound can be taken, stored and studied. It is both a memory of a living environment and a product of the colonial era that collected and classified other people's worlds.Bernard Stiegler writes about tertiary retention, the way human experience is stored in technical objects such as recordings. These objects extend our ability to remember and listen, but they also change and sometimes remove what they hold. Stiegler calls such technology a pharmakon, something that can be both harmful and helpful. The recording is a trace of a forest displaced, but it is also a way that forest continues to be heard.This composition works with that tension. It does not sample the sounds or remake them as material for a new track. Instead it tries to “stay with” the recording, to listen beside it rather than take from it again. Stiegler speaks of care, the need to handle inherited technologies in a way that can open new and more ethical futures. This piece tries to practice that kind of care.Within this frame, the composition builds a new “forest” of sound, a network of layered micro and macro gestures that mirror the density and dispersion of the original recording. Close-mic techniques capture the vibrations of small objects, surfaces and resonant materials so that their textures mimic biotic activity such as insects, air, leaves and distant thunder. These sounds are woven with broader spatial gestures, creating an environment that moves between intimacy and expanse, between the barely perceptible and the encompassing. The resulting texture is not a reproduction of the forest but an echo of its living complexity, reimagined through the act of listening.The work draws on the Wandelweiser tradition's radical sparseness and on Discreet Archive's sensibility for fragility, quiet and slowness. Silence here is not empty; it holds space for the forest, real and imagined, to be heard without being consumed or overwritten. The piece does not try to reconstruct the forest or bring it back. It lets the recording remain what Stiegler calls a default of origin, something already outside its first context but still alive in new ways.The work also follows Jean-Luc Nancy's idea of listening as exposure, being open to something that comes from elsewhere and cannot be fully understood or controlled. It accepts that the original place and time cannot be restored and that the act of recording was shaped by unequal power. Yet it asks whether we can still listen in a way that acknowledges that history without turning it into an aesthetic resource. The piece tries to hold that fragile space, one of care, hesitation and attention, where another kind of future listening might become possible.Forest sounds with bird calls and distant thunder reimagined by Jacob Calland.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

From the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, being from a large collection of cassette tape and digital audio tape recordings of Bayaka music and soundscapes made by ethnomusicologist Louis Sarno mainly in the Central African Republic (and the Republic of Congo) between 1986 and 2009.Recorded by Louis Sarno.Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

Forest sounds with touraco (bird) and distant thunder.From the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, being from a large collection of cassette tape and digital audio tape recordings of Bayaka music and soundscapes made by ethnomusicologist Louis Sarno mainly in the Central African Republic (and the Republic of Congo) between 1986 and 2009.Recorded by Louis Sarno.Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

From the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, being from a large collection of cassette tape and digital audio tape recordings of Bayaka music and soundscapes made by ethnomusicologist Louis Sarno mainly in the Central African Republic (and the Republic of Congo) between 1986 and 2009.Recorded by Louis Sarno.Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

I spend a lot of time thinking about a project before I even begin to work. I wanted to create something that would feel odd and a bit disorienting to the listener. I got started and spent weeks reinterpreting the percussive music of the earth bow, a single-stringed musical instrument. Some ideas morphed from one place to another but then I got lost. So, I stopped and started again from scratch. This is where I ended up. I think it's pretty good.I read a great deal about Louis Sarno and his love of the hypnotic music of the Bayaka people. His love had him uproot his life to live and work with them in the Central African Republic until his death in 2017. "Lost in this World" is dedicated to them.Ngbanda playing the ngbindi (earth bow) reimagined by Bill McKenna.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

From the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, being from a large collection of cassette tape and digital audio tape recordings of Bayaka music and soundscapes made by ethnomusicologist Louis Sarno mainly in the Central African Republic (and the Republic of Congo) between 1986 and 2009.Recorded by Louis Sarno.Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

"Then we heard the grass blades bending under the laziest hoovesbut they know how slow they should be grazing at noon Then we heard the pine twigs snapping under bare feet and fresh blisters forming from the here and now because they know how fast good pain turns to fluidThen I heard the tallest reeds breaking under boots of rubber and I couldn't help but think of the 87 months it took those barks to become adult because they know when they're ready to bleedIt's when the man's hands form the cup for the milk to rest and sit and wait and stop moving because they both know how long fluid turns solid so it can stretch and bend and stretch and bend again between hardened hands of fewer grooves than blistersBut the blisters didn't know when that large cylinder would come to move things along and the man became two and they learnt each others' names as they rolled and compressed and rolled and compressed again until the rubber was already rubber and the blisters were gone because the hands became idle while the cylinder kept turning for god knows how long So the men unlearnt how to tell time and the two men became one again and he no longer knew his name so was now just “the man” from somewhere he can't remember and how did we get here?First we heard the tallest reeds whistling"Text by Yorgos O'Neill-Zafeiropoulos In this soundscape, I have worked solely with the original sound clip "Instruments in the forest at dawn (flute and harp)". This 1993 recording was made by ethnomusicologist Louis Sarno in the Central African Republic and features the Bayaka musicians Momboli on flute and Boyobi on the geedal (bow harp).You will hear this clip around 34 times but at different speeds, making "time" — and therefore pitch — the main variable altered to produce the soundscape. No recordings or sounds of my own were added. At the end of the piece, you can hear the original, unedited full clip re-emerging from the warped soundscape.Artist: Christina-Shelagh Mongelli; mixing/mastering: Matt Chapman; creative text: Yorgos O'Neill-ZafeiropoulosInstruments in the forest at dawn reimagined by Christina-Shelagh Mongelli.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

Instruments in the forest at dawn (flute and harp).From the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, being from a large collection of cassette tape and digital audio tape recordings of Bayaka music and soundscapes made by ethnomusicologist Louis Sarno mainly in the Central African Republic (and the Republic of Congo) between 1986 and 2009.Recorded by Louis Sarno.Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

Bayaka group water drumming, with rhythm changes.From the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, being from a large collection of cassette tape and digital audio tape recordings of Bayaka music and soundscapes made by ethnomusicologist Louis Sarno mainly in the Central African Republic (and the Republic of Congo) between 1986 and 2009.Recorded by Louis Sarno.Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

From the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, being from a large collection of cassette tape and digital audio tape recordings of Bayaka music and soundscapes made by ethnomusicologist Louis Sarno mainly in the Central African Republic (and the Republic of Congo) between 1986 and 2009Recorded by Louis Sarno.Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

The archival field recordings of Bayaka hunters captured by Louis Sarno were the starting point of this work, not only for their sonic richness, but for their ability to convey life and presence across time. The voices, full of rhythm, laughter, and communal energy, immediately suggested the potential to create a composition that honours their vitality while exploring cross-boundary cultures and beliefs. Rather than reconstructing the historical narrative or fixing the recordings in their original context, I was inspired by the idea of non attachment to source: once recorded, sound can outlive its moment and enter new acoustic environments, where it can be reshaped and reimagined.In creating Voices Through Wires, the Bayaka voices form the structural backbone of the piece, alongside ethereal Muslim calls. Their rhythms, call-and-response patterns, and vocal textures guided the pacing and form of the composition. I approached these recordings as living material, letting their natural flow dictate the layering and movement of the work. Rather than imposing an external structure, I followed the inherent pulse of the voices, allowing the composition to emerge organically, with short layered beats on the drum machine and esoteric synth textures creating the bed for the overall soundscape.Alongside the Bayaka material, I integrated field recordings from my travels in North Africa and vocal expressions influenced by African diasporic cultures, including Afro-American recordings recalling hip hop, richly inspired by African textures. These sounds were included not as contrast, but as connection, reflecting the interwoven cultural and sonic influences across Africa and how African sounds have shaped music worldwide. The piece brings together Central African hunter-gatherer voices, North African field recordings, and African diasporic vocal expressions into a single composition, exploring Africa as a continuum of creative and spiritual expression where ancestral and contemporary voices coexist.The story behind the composition is one of listening, layering, and honouring sound as a living presence. The Bayaka voices, together with the additional recordings, create a dialogue between regions, times, and cultures. Forest and wire, field and studio, past and present coexist in the work. The aim was not to fix or reproduce history, but to allow the recordings to breathe anew, forming a composition that celebrates the mobility, vitality, and resonance of sound while connecting disparate African traditions in a shared sonic space.Out in the forest with Bayaka hunters reimagined by Deep Dive Sound.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

 I was delighted to work with the recording of Aka masters Momboli and Gongé, playing flutes in the forest at night, recorded by Louis Sarno in the 1990s. I decided to retain the essence of the sounds of the forest camp at night, including the community of women, men, and children, as well as the wild shouts that are often parts of these moments. For many years, I have wished to visit the Congo, including the Dzanga-Sangha, and immerse myself among the Bayaka people. With this opportunity presented by the Century of Sounds project, I envisioned a composition that reflects this long-held dream. I decided to create a dreamscape. Perhaps I am dreaming while sleeping in one of the shelters within the forest camp? Or am I dreaming from a faraway country, caught between two worlds?The concept of a dreamscape was reinforced after listening to an interview with Louis Sarno on the Pitt Rivers Museum Vimeo channel. Sarno describes how Bayaka mbyo flute music can be experienced in dreams, and that the songs are often received in dreams. This insight confirmed that a dreamscape was the appropriate direction for my composition. Sarno also mentions that the sound of this flute no longer exists, as no one plays the flute anymore. The breathing of the dreamer draws the listener within the sleeper's dream, while a distant drum, perhaps a heartbeat or the pulsing of the forest, soothes and draws you deeper. For the final part of the composition, I improvised a flute part, playing with Momboli and Gongé. Joining these two masters across space and time was a privilege and honour, sharing a song, a highly-valued documentation of Aka culture.“A Sound That No Longer Exists”: a dreamer is immersed in the sounds of the forest at night with Aka master flute players, Momboli and Gongé. Perhaps the dreamer is asleep in the forest camp, or in another country altogether, dreaming and connecting across the unconscious mind and the supernatural.Breathing - laryngeal microphone.Traditional African drums, rainstick, flute, small bellsPerformed by Momboli and Gongé, and Vicki HallettFlutes in the forest at night reimagined by Vicki Hallett.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

From the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, being from a large collection of cassette tape and digital audio tape recordings of Bayaka music and soundscapes made by ethnomusicologist Louis Sarno mainly in the Central African Republic (and the Republic of Congo) between 1986 and 2009.Recorded by Louis Sarno.Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

I selected the recording of a night forest in the Central African Republic without looking at the description, simply because it sounded magical. I usually search the recorded sounds for inspiration to tell stories that are more or less personal, but this time it was different. As I started reading about the origin of the sound, chosen solely for its magical aspect, I found myself lost in the discovery of a real-life hero who devoted his life to the collection, protection and conservation of the sounds and culture of the Bayaka people. I met legendary ethnomusicologist and fantastic human being, Louis Sarno. From that moment, I felt that I could not use the rainforest sound as a simple backdrop for my personal musing, I felt the need to bring back to life the magic of the forest and the love and passion that Louis Sarno devoted to his life's work. The word "magic" that drew me to select this specific recording, kept echoing in my head, so I let the magic guide me, and what could be more magical than an incantation? At that point, it was simply a matter of filling in the elements usually found in an incantation: the desired effect, capturing and preserving the sounds of life; the ingredients, all freely found in the dream of a night forest; the spell, pronounced in the name of Louis Sarno's life work; the special effects, unmissable touches for someone devoted to sounds; and finally the real-live love and poetry of life itself. Likimbi forest camp late at night reimagined by M Cristina Marras.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

My chosen sound was a sample of a geedal (bow harp) being played in the forest with accompanying male voices, recorded in Dzanga-Sangha Special Reserve. by ethnomusicologist Louis Sarno in 1987. I was drawn to the sample on account of its musicality, not just in terms of the music and vocals, but the lilting patter of conversation and laughter that resonates in these conversational intervals, conveying a joyfulness and inferred novelty and humour at being recorded. At its base level it is so distinctly human and as such I wanted to use as much of the original recording as the instrumental basis for my reimagined soundscape. I began this process by splitting out the voices from the instrumental elements and selected a section of the instrumentation which I stretched and slowed to see what kinds of sounds and rhythms I could split out further and loop. This first iteration resembled the roar and might of the sea, which is ironic as the Dzanga-Sangha Special Reserve is located in the land locked country of the Central Republic of Africa (CAR); a far cry from any kind of sea. CAR has been almost constantly unstable since its independence from France in 1960, and although the region is rich in diamonds, gold, iron and uranium, it remains one of the world's poorest populations. It made me think about all of the countries and people who are enduring the horror of conflict, and also of the myths and misinformation about people who are displaced because of a lack of safety. Most people seeking refuge are more likely to migrate to neighbouring countries. It is only a small proportional few who have exhausted all options that are left with no other option than to risk their lives in small boats in one of the most dangerous shipping routes in the world. The piece takes its title from the national motto in Sango, Zo Kwe Zo, meaning All People Are People. A motto which emphasises the call for equality and shared humanity that transcends ethnic or other differences. Billions of years ago the Earth had just one continent and by the time human life formed in the continent now known to us as Africa, the tectonic plates had shifted to something that resembles how the continents are arranged now. And if you believe in evolution, we are all descended from those early tribes of people who traversed and migrated via long lost land bridges to those early, dispersed, continental forms. All People Are People in essence is an envisioned journey of these treacherous small boat crossings. The instrumentation has been looped with effects to create a bass undertone to give both that lilting feeling of the waves but also the depth and peril of the sea. This is juxtaposed with an overlaid, pitched-up, choral sample from the original recording to convey hope and also the mythology of singing sirens, symbolising the perilous journey of life. This is further accentuated through field recordings and an additional melody, emulating the sound of an accordion, representing the notion of a lamenting sea shanty and a tribute to those who have lost their lives at sea. Geedal (bow harp) played in the forest reimagined by Claire Todd.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

From the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, being from a large collection of cassette tape and digital audio tape recordings of Bayaka music and soundscapes made by ethnomusicologist Louis Sarno mainly in the Central African Republic (and the Republic of Congo) between 1986 and 2009.Recorded by Louis Sarno.Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

Hearing the vocal music of the BaAka for the first time was a powerful, emotional experience for me. This led me to explore some of the other sounds in the Louis Sarno archive, and to his book and film "Song from the Forest", where I learned more about the context and culture behind this music. In arranging and orchestrating my piece, which blends electronica with neocIassical elements, I wanted to reflect elements of nature. I used calabash, seed based shakers, and deeper, shamanic drums to reflect the forest, with its earthy, natural rhythms. In the original field recording I noticed bright flickers of birdsong around the BaAka voices, and I wanted to leave these environmental sounds in the mix. Later in the piece I introduced higher sounds like strings and voices, a call towards the infinite sky beyond the high forest canopy, and I wove some electronic colours and textures, like tape processed synths and arpeggiators, around the whole. Listening to the BaAka recordings, I hear a joyful positive energy resonating in the music, but I also feel a poignant melancholy, perhaps a response to my ongoing learning about the fragility of this unique culture, a way of life that harmonises with nature rather than living in opposition to it. Competing interests in the Congo Basin Rainforest continue to threaten the BaAka, and the destruction of their forest habitat continues. This composition is my reflection on the uniqueness and fragility of this ancient way of life, a way of life that has so much to teach us.Bayaka women singing yeyi in the forest reimagined by Neil Foster.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

Bayaka women singing yeyi (polyphonic song) in the forest.From the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, being from a large collection of cassette tape and digital audio tape recordings of Bayaka music and soundscapes made by ethnomusicologist Louis Sarno mainly in the Central African Republic (and the Republic of Congo) between 1986 and 2009.Recorded by Louis Sarno.Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

Geedal (bow harp) played in the forest with male voices accompanying.From the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, being from a large collection of cassette tape and digital audio tape recordings of Bayaka music and soundscapes made by ethnomusicologist Louis Sarno mainly in the Central African Republic (and the Republic of Congo) between 1986 and 2009.Recorded by Louis Sarno.Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

From the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, being from a large collection of cassette tape and digital audio tape recordings of Bayaka music and soundscapes made by ethnomusicologist Louis Sarno mainly in the Central African Republic (and the Republic of Congo) between 1986 and 2009.Recorded by Louis Sarno.Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

Geedal (bow harp) played in the forest with male voices accompanying.From the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, being from a large collection of cassette tape and digital audio tape recordings of Bayaka music and soundscapes made by ethnomusicologist Louis Sarno mainly in the Central African Republic (and the Republic of Congo) between 1986 and 2009.Recorded by Louis Sarno.Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

.From the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, being from a large collection of cassette tape and digital audio tape recordings of Bayaka music and soundscapes made by ethnomusicologist Louis Sarno mainly in the Central African Republic (and the Republic of Congo) between 1986 and 2009.Recorded by Louis Sarno.Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

From the sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, being from a large collection of cassette tape and digital audio tape recordings of Bayaka music and soundscapes made by ethnomusicologist Louis Sarno mainly in the Central African Republic (and the Republic of Congo) between 1986 and 2009.Recorded by Louis Sarno.Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.———Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds

“This recording of thunder and rain was made in Boungingi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, in 1994, by musicologist Louis Sarno (born in Newark, New Jersey, 1954), who lived in […]

Louis Sarno, an American original who lived for 30 years among Bayaka Pygmies in the Central African rainforest and recorded their polyphonic music more completely than any audio adventurer or ethnomusicologist could dream of, died where he was born, in New Jersey, on April 1, 2017. In his memory, we bring you this encore Hip Deep program. Read more of Banning Eyre's tribute to Louis Sarno at http://www.afropop.org/37016/remembering-louis-sarno/ A new season of Hip Deep kicks off with a remarkable journey among the forest people of the Central African Republic. The polyphonic, hocketing vocal style of this region's forest peoples ("pygmies") is one of the most singularly beautiful musical expressions in Africa, one that has entranced outsiders since the time of the pharaohs. Ethnomusicologist Michelle Kisliuk has spent nearly 25 years immersing herself in this music, and wrote a landmark book about the lives and music of the BaAka people in the Central African Republic. Kisliuk believes deeply in the performance experience--learning by doing--and this program will initiate listeners into one of the most enchanting and mysterious musical practices in Africa. The program also deals with the BaAka's problematic encounters with neighboring ethnic groups, Christian missionaries, and modernity in general. Produced by Banning Eyre. Follow Afropop Worldwide on Facebook at www.facebook.com/afropop, on Instagram @afropopworldwide and on Twitter @afropopww. Subscribe to the Afropop Worldwide newsletter at www.afropop.org/newsletter/ [APWW #603] Distributed 7/13/2017 [Originally aired in 2010]

Matthew Bannister on The theatre director Michael Bogdanov, who co-founded the English Shakespeare Company. His National Theatre production of the Romans In Britain led to an obscenity trial. The ethnomusicologist Louis Sarno who fell in love with the music of an obscure tribe of pygmies in the Central African Republic and went to live with them. Sheila Abdus Salaam, who became the first African American woman to serve as a judge on New York's highest court. Dick Potts, the ecologist who worked to save Britain's grey partridge population. Don Rickles, the American comedian who made his name by insulting Frank Sinatra and was the voice of Mr Potato Head in the Toy Story films.

Alex Perry, based in England, has covered Africa and Asia for Newsweek and Time. His most recent book is The Rift: A New Africa Breaks Free. “I got a call from one of my editors in 2003 or 2004, and he said something like, ‘You realize someone has died in the first line of every story you’ve filed for the last eight months?’ And my response was, ‘Of course. Isn’t that how we know it’s important?’ It took me a long time to work out that the importance of a story isn’t established only by death.” Thanks to MailChimp, Feverborn, and AlarmGrid for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @PerryAlexJ alex-perry.com Perry on Longform [2:00] The Rift: A New Africa Breaks Free (Weidenfeld & Nicolson • 2015) [3:00] The Hunt for Boko Haram (Newsweek Insights • 2014) [4:00] "Inside the World of Louis Sarno, the Pygmy Chief from New Jersey" (Howard Swains • Newsweek • Apr 2015) [4:00] "Behind the Scenes in Putin’s Court: The Private Habits of a Latter-Day Dictator" (Ben Judah • Newsweek • Jul 2014) [27:20] "The Collateral Crisis in Somalia" (Time • Sep 2011) [44:00] "Once Upon a Jihad" (Newsweek • Jan 2015) [47:00] HHhH: A Novel (Laurent Binet • Picador • 2013) [54:00] "The Cocaine Crisis: How the Drug Trade is Ruining West Africa" (Time • Oct 2012) [54:00] Cocaine Highway: The Lines That Link Our Drug Habit to Terror (Newsweek Insights • 2014) [56:00] The Quake: The Day Everest Shook Its Bones (Newsweek Insights • 2015)

This podcast on the rainforest music of the BayAka was produced and presented by Jo Barratt It is part of our series on ethnomusicology made with the sound archive  of the Pitt Rivers Museum  in Oxford.  In this podcast you'll hear the sound of the BayAka people of the Central African Republic. Specifically a collection of recordings made by Louis Sarno.   All of these recordings, and more, are available on the Pitt Rivers Reel to Real sound archive website   In other programmes in the Pitt Rivers series, we look at different aspects of ethnomusicology, but here we are taking an in-depth look at a single collection of sounds, the rainforest music of the Bayaka and, through it, telling some of the story of the BayAka people. Guiding us through this podcast is Noel Lobley   from the Pitt Rivers Museum.  The interviewer is social anthropologist Sarah Winkler Reid from the University of Bristol. Here is Noel to introduce us to the man who made these recordings: Noel Lobley: Louis Sarno is a guy from New Jersey who fell in love with the BayAka music from the rainforest of the Central African Republic/Northern Congo. He bought himself a one way ticket, a tape player, batteries and some spare tapes to record the music and more or less never came back. He became a part of the community and over the last 30 years has made the world's most important collection of BayAka music. It currently stands at about 1500 hours worth of music recorded. He has recorded every hunter-gather community and mapped its relationship to forest and the environment. He has gone from being a recorder to an advocate, living amongst the community and helps to mobilise healthcare. BayAka singing has been well documented,  but the instrumentation has not been looked at as much. Amongst the community he has been living with, there is a beautiful four note flute called a mbyo (sometimes called mobio), it is made from climbing palm. A musician may play it for many reasons, sometimes for entertainment.  But it is usually played at night, when the rest of the camp is asleep. They will wonder around the camp and it is played to enter your dreams. If you think about it, when you are asleep, the sound echoes around the canopy and the forest is sometimes described as a cathedral, due to the way the sound resonates. A musician may play at night for benediction, protection or for the camp. Bear in mind Louis has recorded it in its context: its relationship to the rain forest, acoustic and environment. When you listen carefully, you can sometimes hear musicians playing against the canopy, so the overtones weave in and out as the musicians are playing. So sometimes it sounds like two people singing perfectly together. You can hear the forest soundscape. You can hear the insects, and if it is a heavy sheet of insects, it can tell you whether it is late at night or early in the morning. Sometimes you can pick out the pulse of the insects the musicians are playing with. You can sometimes hear they are playing to a rhythmical structure that is in the forest. The music is very much of the forest and a gift for the forest. Most of these instruments are made from the forest.  It sounds very much to me like an exploration of the acoustic properties of the forest. In this community, it is not played any more. Over the time Louis has been there, there were three master musicians, but they have all died. The last player who played this, and who knew how to make the flutes gave one to Louis to look after. Louis says he never hears it played anymore. No one knows how to make it, or which particular plant is needed to make it. He looked after the last flute (mbyo) in Yanduombe and it was on its way to us in April earlier this year. There has been oucoup d'état in the Central African Republic. Seleka Rebels have overthrown the government. President Bozize has fled. Rebels have overtaken the capital. In April last year, Louis posted from the Central African Republic...

regular edition featuring mike bullock, gilles aubry, desmond knight, lawrence english with stephen vitiello, Louis Sarno, and espaces sonores.

regular edition featuring mike bullock, gilles aubry, desmond knight, lawrence english with stephen vitiello, Louis Sarno, and espaces sonores.