In the mid-1980s until about 2016 he made field recordings of the music of a Bayaka (BaAka) "pygmy" forest people while living among them in the Central African Republic.
[1] The recordings are now held by the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford University and Wild Sanctuary, an archive of indigenous music, stories and natural soundscapes.
[2] He documented some of his experiences in his memoir, Song from the Forest: My Life Among the Pygmies (1993), which Geoff Wisner included in his survey work A Basket of Leaves: 99 Books That Capture the Spirit of Africa.
Louis Sarno married a Bayaka woman for a period of time, and adopted a son (Samedi).
[4] The documentary film Song from the Forest, by German director Michael Obert, tells Sarno's life story.