African Sanctus - 2004
During a visit to Cairo in 1969, on the citadel hill overlooking the Nile, Fanshawe conceived the idea of a western choir accompanying Islamic Muezzins as a work in "Praise to One God".
With tape-recorder, rucksack and camera, hitching lifts (often by camel) he first travelled from Cairo to Khartoum and then west to the Marra mountains.
On the mountaintop, under a full moon, he recorded four men sitting on a prayer mat, in a deep trance, chanting, swaying from side to side, unconscious of his presence. This experience gave him the inspiration for the final form of the work - that "praise to one God" should contain a wide variety of East African sounds. He re-traced his tracks back towards the Red Sea and embarked on a long expedition, in the shape of a symbolic Cross, through Sudan, Uganda and Kenya and towards "the source of the Nile's music" - Lake Victoria - recording as he went. In 1973, with his new wife, he continued the search for folk music around Lake Victoria and, following the first performance, returned again with a BBC film crew to revisit the places and people he met on the original journey.