FREE SPEECH ZONE | African Santus BelAhdan

The late composer and music anthropologist David Fanshawe found and celebrated the core soul of our diverse and fractured species in Egypt, East Africa and Europe. His signature work, African Sanctus, resonates with hope as Ramadan reaches its midpoint.  

Mr. Fanshawe traveled with a Nagra audio tape recorder down the Nile River through Sudan to Uganda with visits to Kenya as the 1960’s became the 1970’s.  He joined Islamic, African ethnic and European sacred musical traditions into a stirring mass that has had hundreds and hundreds of performances around the world.  

 “Call to Prayer” in African Sanctus is haunting, meditative, stirring and universal.  When it was recorded in Cairo, our good friend Ahmed Tharwat was living in Egypt on one end of the Nile and I in Uganda near the great river’s source.  We met in Minnesota.  Both of us now produce television in the Twin Cities.  His program is BelAhdan – “With Open Arms” seen on the Minnesota Channel.  Mine is Democratic Visions on Comcast Cable and YouTube.   The video link provides only two movements of the mass but also links so you can hear more.  Salam.