Song From The Forest [Hardcover]

Louis Sarno (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 1993

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Obsessed by the music of the Pygmies, in the mid-1980s New Jerseyan Sarno ventured to the Central African Republic to live among a Pygmy clan and record its music. His engaging, detailed chronicle is full of wonder, beauty and irony, though it can also frustrate. Sarno's initial naivete soon crumbles; the Pygmies are interested in him only as a supplier of food, liquor and tobacco. But during his three-month visit he gradually grows closer to them, taping their music, observing their rituals and exploring the forest. He returns two years later to become more deeply involved in the society, eventually becoming "a sort of village scribe." However, Sarno--who now has settled among the Pygmies--falls in love with a young tribeswoman without ever speaking to her. His account of his infatuation, their cat-and-mouse courtship and their "so-called marriage" is exasperating because he has not revealed enough of himself to make his passionate attachment to the Pygmies comprehensible.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Sarno never gave any thought to the Pygmies of Africa until one night in Europe when he heard some of their haunting music on the radio. Entranced, he decided to seek them out and record their songs. The journey took him to the village of Bomandjombo in the Central African Republic, where he took up residence with a nearby Pygmy group. Over the next several years, he became a fixture in their lives, recording their music, supplying them with tobacco and machetes, taking part in hunts, and even becoming involved in an emotionally turbulent, unconsummated marriage to a Pygmy woman. Sarno admits that this very personal account lacks the sensibility of a trained anthropologist. Yet the naivete with which he approached an alien culture led him to experience the Pygmies' lives in a way that anthropologists seldom do. More travel literature than anthropology, this book would be at home in many large public library collections.
- Eric Hinsdale, Trinity Univ. Lib., San Antonio
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 301 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin; 1St Edition edition (March 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395613310
• ISBN-13: 978-0395613313
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #610,454 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Get Real, June 12, 2008

By 

Bleating Pete "Baa" (Gabon,) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Song From The Forest (Hardcover)

The author will have no need of any defense from anyone, least of all myself, however I felt obliged to write something, especially as a retort to the reviewer attacking the author's 'demeaning western imperialism'. Anyone who has actually spent time in rural central africa will know that the items Mr Sarno offers to the villagers are an everday form of currency and in some cases a basic courtesy. Pygmies like to smoke. It may upset us to think so, but they also quite like to wear tee shirts, use machetes, and listen to radios. For the most part, they do not spend their days wrapped in bark cloth. Many no longer live in leaf huts. Pygmies everywhere in central africa are in direct contact with 'western' influences. In some cases, these influences can be seen as detrimental to their culture. In most cases, we are hardly in a position to decide which are or are not. Louis Sarno is a man who has spent many years of his life living the life of the pygmies and he understands the real threats to the most important aspects of their way of life. He is a man who recongnises the contradictions, the ugliness and the beauty of different ways of living, and he achieves this perspective through living out those contradictions in his daily life. His account is an honest one of the reality in which pygmies live their lives in this part of central africa. It is neither glorified nor demeaning. While we sit around listening to magical recordings of the pygmy's transcendant music and imagine ourselves immersed in a shimmering rainforest home, most of their forests are being logged, and their culture flattened with similar efficiency. Louis Sarno is not an agent of this destruction but someone with a deep personal attachement to these people who simply gives us a first hand account of his experience of village life in central africa. A real account, where people fall in love, and the great leveller that is human emotion and experience runs free despite the considerable cultural differences that exist.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Story of an enchantment, August 17, 2009

By 

Roman Nies (Helibrunna) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Song from the Forest: My Life Among the Ba-Benjelle Pygmies (Paperback)

Louis Sarno has been writing an extraordinary book, because he made extraordinary experiences. There are only a few people who spend a longer time with a primeval forest tribe. For Sarno it was at first the interest for the singing and the music of the pygmies in the heart of Africa which fascinated and enthralled him. Then he was enticed by something banal and at the same time mysterious: the looks, the dancing movements and promising gestures of a primeval forest girl.
The book describes the life of pygmies at the fringe of civilization very precisely. Sarno is becoming a member of the family, who lives same like the aboriginies and yet is not able to identify himself completely with them. Much remains mysterious and outlandish. The author sways between liking and admiration on one side and disappointment and annoyance on the other side. He is not a great exploring adventurer. Often he appears to be very naiv.

But the recurrent thread is the unusual love story. With stunning honesty the author describes how he is constantly led around by the nose. Everybody in the village knows, that the girl is only committed to cuff the relatively wealthy white man to the line (he supplies the pygmies with goodies like cigarettes, kitchen ware, clothes). Except himself!
He is niddling-noddling to an fro between doubts and hopes. He is regarded as married and he is imagining to be a husband, but they arrive to nothing more than an exchange of looks and scarce words. The chosen one even does not dwell with him and mostly he does not even get a sight of her, if so, she ignores him and gives him deliberately the cold shoulder. He is consoled till the next night, he is grudging, he is forgiving, he nurtures the seeds of hope until they are trodden upon and he falls even deeper in love with that same girl, the most beautiful in the village, on the next feast. This unlucky abeyance is persevering. It is touching, sometimes amusing how the author is made a fool or is making a fool out of himself and keeps to his foolishness. Even in his later writing the blinded man seems not to be ready to accept his error and deception. Somehow one recognizes oneself in him. Who did not as well give himself to vanity? The end of the story is let open. Sarno departs and returns. He departs again, always after months, and he returns.
Sarno also reports truly about spiritualist practises of the forest dwellers and describes the psychological and psychosomatic effects. Once he is taking part in such an event for which there is no natural scientific explanation. People disappear into nothingness to re-appear all of a sudden. Sarno is taking part himself in telepathic events, he believes. He does not succeed in teaching the savages civilization: disease avoiding hygienics, limitation of the use of narcotics like tobacco, alcohol, drugs - he uses them himself - protection against germs and carriers of diseases. His own life- style seems not to be exemplary, his admonishment is not pervading.
He likes the magic rituals and dances as much as he hates the hard circumstances of life. He lives between the two cultures. Many become sick or perish. Interestingly he is getting acknowledged with a settlement of a missionary couple, which apparently does not have all these problems. But he is not coming to any conclusions. Perhaps he is in the error that it should be sufficient to bring to the "primitive savages" sufficient alimentation and medicine and then all is right.
One is missing in this book the serious reflection about the experienced. Yet it is very informative. This is one of the "jungle-books" worth reading and authentic. And the story about Ngbali, the primeval forest beauty, is heart-rending. Apparently love does not know any social conventions and the characteristics of the soft gender are in the whole world not always soft! Woe betide a man who falls for a woman! Males, always activate your reason at the right time!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb and Spellbinding, July 22, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Song from the Forest: My Life Among the Ba-Benjelle Pygmies (Paperback)

The enthralling story of Sarno's life among the pygmies. It leaves you with the burning desire to visit Africa and find your own peace.