Louis Sarno


Louis Sarno was an American musicologist and author. In the mid-1980s he made field recordings of the music of a Bayaka Pygmy clan while living among them in the forests of the Central African Republic. Sarno lived in the CAR for more than 20 years, and held a dual citizenship there and in the United States. He documented some of his experiences in his memoir, Song from the Forest: My Life Among the Pygmies, which Geoff Wisner included in his survey work A Basket of Leaves: 99 Books That Capture the Spirit of Africa.
Louis Sarno was born and raised in Newark, New Jersey. In 1985 he went to Africa to record the music of a pygmy tribe. He "combined recordings of Bayakan music with sounds of their surrounding environment into a two-CD/book package entitled Bayaka: The Extraordinary Music of the Babenzélé Pygmies. Two albums of Sarno's work, Music of the Bayaka Volumes I and II, was produced by Bernie Krause in the mid-1990s and can be found at
Louis Sarno married a Bayakan woman and they had sons.
The documentary film Song from the Forest, by German director Michael Obert, tells Sarno's life story. The film premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam 2013 where it was honored with the Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary. A movie based on Sarno's life called Oka! was released in 2011.
Sarno died on April 1, 2017 in Teaneck, New Jersey.