Leo Sarkisian (January 4, 1921 - June 8, 2018) was the founder, director, and producer of Music Time in Africa, the longest-running broadcast of Voice of America to Africa. He was a musicologist, musician, artist, and audio engineer who spent 47 years working for Voice of America, retiring in 2012 at 91. Born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, Sarkisian was the son of Armenian immigrants who fled ethnic violence in Turkey. He played clarinet in the local high school band and studied Middle Eastern music theory with an Armenian violinist in his hometown. However, it was his talent for drawing that earned him a scholarship. He attended and graduated from the Vesper George School of Fine Arts in Boston with a degree in fine arts, commercial, and illustration art with honors. Not long after graduating, he joined the U.S. Army and served in intelligence during World War II as a cartographer. He served in North Africa (Morocco and Algeria) before participating in the Allied landing at Anzio since he was familiar with the terrain from studying aerial photographs. He also fought in France, Austria, and Germany. During his time in Europe, he continued drawing, using business cards he had found in an abandoned business in North Africa. He drew sketches of wartime life and portraits of people he encountered. After the war, Sarkisian worked as a commercial artist in New York City and spent countless hours reading about music from Japan, China, Central and Southeast Asia, and the Middle East at the New York Public Library and published essays about what he was learning. These essays came to the attention of Irving Fogel, who operated Tempo Records, a company that acquired field recordings for use in movies. Fogel hired Sarkisian because of his knowledge of music and facility with languages (he learned Armenian, Turkish, and French as a child and eventually added Farsi and some Arabic) and brought him and his wife to Los Angeles, where he taught him to be an audio engineer. Fogel sent the Sarkisians to Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh in 1950 to help local radio stations. What was supposed to be an 8-month trip turned into 3.5 years after Sarkisian befriended the King of Afghanistan, Zahir Shah. The Sarkisians traveled Afghanistan with a reel-to-reel recorder, recorded local music, and spoke with villagers in their own languages. Tempo sent the Sarkisians to West Africa in 1959, where they recorded in Ghana, Ivory Coast, Liberia, and Guinea. Then, in 1963, while living in Conakry, Guinea, the legendary broadcaster Edward R. Murrow knocked on the Sarkisian's door and offered Leo a job with the Voice of America in Liberia. That was the beginning of his 47-year career with VOA. Sarkisian launched Music Time in Africa in 1965 and never looked back. Two years later, production of Music Time in Africa was moved to Washington, D.C., but Sarkisian continued to travel throughout Africa for the next 25 years, recording hundreds of hours of traditional and contemporary African music. Leo retired from VOA in September 2012. Leo met his wife shortly after returning to the United States following World War II. He and Mary Andonian married in 1949 and were married until he died. More by this mapmaker...