Monday, October 12, 2009

Hugo Zemp 'Are 'Are


Hugo Zemp (14 May, 1937, Basle, Switzerland) is a Swiss-French ethnomusicologist.
Zemp Studied musicology and anthropology at the University of Basle (1958-61) while finishing a diploma in percussion at the Basle Conservatory (1960). He then attended the Ecole pratique des hautes études and took the doctorate with Denise Paulme and André Schaeffner in 1968. He also joined the CNRS at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris, then directed by Gilbert Rouget, in 1967; and was appointed to teach ethnomusicology in 1981 at the University of Paris X-Nanterre. In 1982, he was made editor of the recording series Collection CNRS/Musée de l’Homme, to which he has contributed recordings both before and during his term as editor.
Zemp’s extensive fieldwork in West Africa, Oceania and Switzerland have resulted in writings which are now standard reference works. His dissertation was one of the first books on African music written from the anthropological perspective. Zemp has also explored the sophisticated polyphony and structures of vernacular oral traditions of the ‘Are’are of the Solomon Islands in a number of publications. His films (such as Voix de tête, voix de poitrine, 1988) and writings about film, particularly concerning yodelling, investigate for the first time the visualization of musical structure as well as the physiological and acoustical aspects of overtone singing.
Are‘are is the name of a people from the south of the island of Malaita, which is part of the Solomon Islands. Their language is the ‘Are’are language, which part of the Austronesian language family. In 1999 there were an estimated 17,800 speakers
In the 1920s bamboo music gained a following in several countries. Bamboo music was made by hitting open-ended bamboo tubes of varying sizes, originally with coconut husks [1]. After American soldiers brought their sandals to the Solomon Islands, these replaced coconut husks by the early 1960s, just as the music began spreading to Papua New Guinea
The ‘Are‘are  distinguish four types of panpipe ensemble and more than 20 musical types. The music of panpipe ensembles enjoys the highest prestige among the ‘Are‘are. They have an extensive system of thought about music that centres on ‘au, their word for bamboo, the material of which panpipes are made.

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