Leo Sarkisian, who brought African music to listeners around the world, dies at 97

Leo Sarkisian, a self-taught ethnomusicologist whose popular weekly radio show, “Music Time in Africa,” remains the Voice of America’s longest-running English-language program, died June 8 at an assisted-living center in Bedford, New Hampshire. He was 97.

The cause was congestive heart failure, said a nephew, Levon Andonian.

Born to Armenian immigrants who had fled ethnic violence in Turkey, Sarkisian was a decorated World War II veteran and artist who fell into an international music career through a series of lucky encounters. Among them was a fateful meeting with radio legend Edward Murrow, who hired him in 1961 to work for Voice of America.

As part of a Cold War strategy to cultivate a positive image of the United States at a time when many African countries were gaining independence from colonial powers, Sarkisian was given wide leeway to travel and forge relationships. Over several decades, he visited more than 38 African countries, lugging a half-ton tape recorder in a station wagon and meeting with presidents and villagers, dictators and drummers, in the name of music.

His show introduced African sounds to millions of listeners around the world and gave local musicians global exposure – jump-starting the careers of some, such as the Nigerian musician Fela Kuti. He recorded American jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong when he visited Africa as a goodwill ambassador, and he trained sound engineers at newly independent radio stations across the continent, many of whom continued to send him local recordings to play on his show.

Unlike other experts who specialized in one area or another, Sarkisian was “utterly agnostic and inclusive,” said Kelly Askew, a professor of anthropology and Afro-American and African studies at the University of Michigan, whose library is home to the Leo Sarkisian Archive and lists it as “one of the top four collections of African musical heritage in the world.”

Many people he recorded had never met an American before. Sarkisian’s show taught them and other listeners across English-speaking Africa about the music of their own countries and that of their neighbors.

Levon Sarkisian was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, on Jan. 4, 1921. He was a clarinetist in high school, and he studied Middle Eastern music theory in his hometown.