Hugo Zemp

Hugo Zemp playing a pan flute watched by a young woman
14 x 11 inches, oil and spray paint on canvas, 2019

Most recordings (sixty-nine to be precise) in the Top 100 2018/2019 were not recorded in a studio but in the "field" by folklorists, (ethno)musicologists, hobbyists, and institutions. Not always do I, in these pages, dwell on those individuals who travel the world to record music from the most remote places in often challenging even dangerous conditions. From the sixty-nine recordings the majority were made by ethnomusicologists from France and the US. Over the next few weeks I'll single out a few of these individuals whom I will provide with a short bio and of course paint. First up is Hugo Zemp, who is represented twice in the top 10 with recordings made in Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. Both tracks come from the LP Iles Salomon: Music del Guadalcanal. Professor Zemp was born in Basle, Switzerland in 1937 and has recorded, written, and filmed on the subject of ethnic music. As a Swiss national (working in France) he is naturally interested in yodeling, a subject he also found in various places beside Switzerland. On the image above Zemp is seen playing a pan flute in the Solomon Islands. He must have transported that thing all the way from South America! The young woman (who may well be the individual heard on Aate: Dance le femmes) looks bewildered. I wonder if Zemp left the pan flute behind and if so, did the flutes end up in the repertoire of Solomon Islands traditional music?

The following is the full list of credits for the field recordings, they're in order of the Top 100. A few names will sound familiar (Bartok) but most are pretty obscure.

Charles Duvelle; Hugo Zemp (2); Jean-Jacquez Nattiez (2); Anne-Maria and Pierre Pétrequin (2); Béla Bartók; Ramon Pelinski (3); OPOS; Enrique Pinilla (2); David Fenshawe (2); Megan Biesele; Jaap Kunst; Dept. of Anthropology, Government of India; Theodore Levin (3); Henry Lecomte (7); Francisco Carreño and Miguel Cardona; W. Coppens; Charles Brooks (2); David Blair Stiffler (3); Leo A. Verwilghen (2); Steven Field (2); Denise Harvey; Frank Proschan; Albert Cort Haddon; Albert Lord; Michel Vuylsteke; Andrei Golovnev; unknown (7); F. Conti; Vietnamese Institute of Musicology (2); Andre Didier; Howard Keva Kaufman; Hugh Tracey; Carol Jenkins; Georges Luneau; A.P. Elkin; Dave Dargie; Anne Chapman; Stephen Jay; Gilbert Rouget and André Didier; Brigitta Hauser-Schaublin; Jenny de Vera; Center for Andean Ethnomusicology.