Eccentric, intrepid, obsessive and gifted, the English composer and ethnomusicologist David Arthur Fanshawe spent decades travelling, during which he taped the near-lost sounds of the Middle East, Africa, and the Pacific and fused them with live music that mixed East and West. His efforts produce some seminal works of unifying harmony.
Born in Devon during an air raid, David Arthur Fanshawe was the son of the Raj - four previous generations of Fanshawes had lived in India.
He was educated at Stowe school, where mild dyslexia prevented him from joining the choir. Piano lessons bore fruit, however, and in 1965 he won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music. His travelling began about this time, and he experienced an epiphany in St George's Cathedral, in Jerusalem, in 1966.
As he listened to the Kyrie Eleison, he heard "Allah Akhbar", the muezzin's call, floating from the neighbouring mosque. Sensing harmony, he saw an opportunity to unify two musical traditions and felt a compulsion to record the sounds. He also visited Bahrain, where he was fascinated by the chants of the pearl fishers, which resulted in Salaams, first performed in London in 1970. In 1969 he commenced an epic cross-like journey, from Egypt down the Nile to Lake Victoria; and from western Sudan to the Red Sea.
Armed with a tape recorder, he persuaded local musicians to play and recorded their sounds. Hundreds of hours of recordings resulted in his most acclaimed work, African Sanctus (1972).
In the 1970s, he composed music for film and television. He also produced Fanfare to Planet Earth, and Lament of the Seas, a tribute to victims of the Boxing Day Tsunami. In 1976 he produced an album, Arabian Fantasy, and two years later commenced a decade-long exploration of the Pacific.
He is survived by a son and daughter from his first marriage, to Judith Croasdell Grant, and a daughter from his second marriage, to Jane Bishop, who also survives him.
David Fanshawe was born on 19 April 1942, and died on 5 July 2010, aged 68, following a stroke.
* The National
The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
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In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
What is graphene?
Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms arranged like honeycomb.
It was discovered in 2004, when Russian-born Manchester scientists Andrei Geim and Kostya Novoselov were "playing about" with sticky tape and graphite - the material used as "lead" in pencils.
Placing the tape on the graphite and peeling it, they managed to rip off thin flakes of carbon. In the beginning they got flakes consisting of many layers of graphene. But as they repeated the process many times, the flakes got thinner.
By separating the graphite fragments repeatedly, they managed to create flakes that were just one atom thick. Their experiment had led to graphene being isolated for the very first time.
At the time, many believed it was impossible for such thin crystalline materials to be stable. But examined under a microscope, the material remained stable, and when tested was found to have incredible properties.
It is many times times stronger than steel, yet incredibly lightweight and flexible. It is electrically and thermally conductive but also transparent. The world's first 2D material, it is one million times thinner than the diameter of a single human hair.
But the 'sticky tape' method would not work on an industrial scale. Since then, scientists have been working on manufacturing graphene, to make use of its incredible properties.
In 2010, Geim and Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. Their discovery meant physicists could study a new class of two-dimensional materials with unique properties.