Song from the Forest: My Life Among the Ba-Benjelle Pygmies

by Louis Sarno

An expatriate living among Central Africa's Pygmies recounts how his visit to research Pygmy music turned into a permanent stay, describing the spiritual sophistication of the Pygmies and his courtship of and marriage with his Pygmy wife. 12,500 first printing.

Genres: Africa, Music, Anthropology, Nonfiction

320 pages, Paperback

First published March 18, 1993

Reviews

[Max Carmichael · Rating 1 out of 5]

A master drummer gave me recordings of Pygmy music about 30 years ago, saying it was the "ultimate music of the world." I concurred - I found it to be far more sophisticated than anything coming out of either Western or Eastern classical traditions, and particularly amazing since it's created by an entire community rather than by a specialist elite.

Sarno comes off as a natural storyteller, and the first half of the book engaged me with evocations of a magical native melange of communal music/dance/theater/storytelling and ritual. Then the creepiness took over. Sarno, in his mid-30s at the time, unselfconsciously describes his pathetic, platonic love affair and "marriage" with a native teenager, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. The music takes a back seat to his disturbing obsession.

In that context, his continuing efforts to record the community's rituals also became creepy, and I began to wonder if there's any way to responsibly capture indigenous culture. Regardless of how the recording is done, how will it ultimately be used? I've studied music from all over the world, but primarily firsthand with native artists, or from commercial recordings produced by native artists. In an important sense, all ethnographic recording is theft and appropriation - the creators lose all control over their creation. Apparently Sarno stuck with his "marriage" aspirations and continues to live with the pygmies - but in what role?

[SuperBanjo · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a trashy "world music" book. Should someone tell you it was written by an ethnomusicologist, it wasn't. If someone tries to explain "this is what ethnomusicology should be," you can be quite confident in knowing that that person does not know what they're talking about. If you want to read about central African pygmy music, there are far, far better books.

[Marc · Rating 1 out of 5]

The exploitative nature of amateur-in-the-field writing is sadly overshadowed by the author's excitement for almost taking a teenage bride; disgusting

[John Vanderslice · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a terrific book. I learned so much. And what an interesting person Louis Sarno was. A musicologist born in New Jersey who went to Africa to record, and hopefully earn recognition for, the songs of Pygmy people but whose life involvement with those people went way way beyond that. The book is a tribute to the wisdom, smarts, and musical genius of the Pygmy. But it's also a warning against deforestation as well as against seeing Africa through a Eurocentric, colonial-based gaze. Most of all it is a deeply personal and admirably honest account by Sarno of what he endured, not always with the best of grace, and what he learned, and what (and whom) he came to love, in his first years of living among the Pygmies. I would certainly recommend this book to anyone.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Louis Sarno was listening to the radio one day and heard a polyphonic tune that he had to find out more about it. He found that it was music made by the Pygmies of Central Africa. He went to the Central African Republic without knowing if he would find what he was looking for. He found the Bayaka people, and slowly heard their music. He planned on staying only 3 months to record their music, but he realized that he would never leave. He made trips back to America, but his heart belonged with the Bayaka.

He went on to write a book and a filmmaker produced a documentary about the life of the Bayaka.

[DW Rowlands · Rating 1 out of 5]

I will say this for Louis Sarno: he is a wonderful storyteller. However, he's also a creepy person who spends much of the book pining over a teenage girl twenty years younger than him who he has barely talked to, and being upset that despite her "marriage" to him--which it is unclear the actual nature of--she doesn't want to sleep with him. He also seems to have a hard time grasping how awkwardly "white-saviory" his interaction with the people he lives with is.

[Emily Steele · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the story of a man traveling across the world to find and record indigenous Pygmy music and the view it provided into this hidden world. However, his obsession with his young teen "wife" besides being perverted grows annoying as he talks about her non stop even after she rejects his advances.

[Carissa Woolf · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ew. So creepy. Don't bother

[A · Rating 2 out of 5]

Deeply disturbing account of one man's mindless insistence on inserting himself into a lifestyle and culture completely foreign to him. Because he is enchanted by their music, he insists upon living amongst the Bayaka, though he cannot fully adopt himself to their lifestyle. (He is no kind of hunter, for example) They tolerate him because he can supply them with cigarettes, marijuana and alcohol. Especially disturbing is his obsession with a young native girl 20 years his junior, who, despite being called his "wife" wants nothing to do with him. The encampment or "village" where they live is riddled with pestilence and disease. Although he has a small supply of medicine he freely distributes, it barely makes a dent in the ongoing stream of illnesses and infectious diseases. The book ends abruptly, after more than half the population dies, but it is my understanding that except for brief necessary forays into the "civilized" world, (he runs out of money and has to procure more,) he continued to live there in the most remote part of central Africa for the rest of his life, until he was so weakened by malaria, leprosy and hepatitis he went back to the United States to die. It would have been good to read about the second half of his life there, (supposedly he took another wife, no idea if she rejected him as the first one did,) but a small glimpse of that may been seen in the documentary of the same title, which touches upon his life in the forest, but focuses predominantly on him bringing his adopted son for a visit to New York, which understandably, does not go well.

[mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hearing the music of Pygmies tribes of the Congo, the author goes in search of them and falls in love. Not your usual love story.