Zemp Hugo, *14 May 1937 Basel, Swiss ethnomusicologist working in France. In 1958–61, he studied musicology and anthropology at the university in Basel, and in 1960 he obtained a diploma at the conservatory (percussion class). Moreover, in Paris he attended the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, where in 1968 he received a doctorate on the basis of the dissertation Musique et musiciens chez les Dan, presenting the results of field research conducted in the Dan ethnic group in Côte d’Ivoire. In 1967, he started working at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris. Since 1981, at Université Paris X in Nanterre, he has lectured on field research and audiovisual methods used in ethnomusicology. In 1982, he became editor of the Collection CNRS/Musée de l’Homme record series. Zemp’s field exploration areas include West Africa, Oceania and Switzerland; when reconstructing the ‘Are’Are musical system from the Solomon Islands, he abandoned European vocabulary and followed concepts used to refer to musical phenomena in the ethnic group under study. In his films and works devoted to them, he shows visualizations of the acoustic and physiological aspects of music (graphs of the acoustic spectrum of sound and imaging of the functioning of the vocal apparatus in connection with the elements of the musical form).
Literature: F. Borel De l’anthropologie de la musique à Tethnomusicologie visuelle. Entretien avec Hugo Zemp, “Cahiers de musiques traditionnelles” IX, 1996; N. Scaldaferri Conversation with Hugo Zemp, “Visual Ethnography”, II 2, 2013, no. 1.
Musique Dan, la musique dans la pensée et la vie sociale dune société africaine, Paris 1971
‘Aré’aré, un peuple mélanésien et sa musique, with Daniel de Coppet, Paris 1978
Ecoute le bambou qui pleure. Récits de quatre musiciens mélanésiens (‘Aré’aré, Iles Salomon), Paris 1995
Comment on devient musicien, quatre exemples de l’ouest africain, in: La musique dans la vie, vol. 1, ed. T. Nikiprowetzki, Paris 1967
Filming Voice Technique. The Making of “The Song of Harmonies”, “The World of Music” XXXI, 1989
Visualizing Musie Structure through Animation. The Making of the Film “Head Voice, Chest Voice”, “Visual Anthropology” III, 1990
Salomon Islands, in: The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, vol. 9: Australia and the Pacific Islands, New York 1998
Talking balafons, “African Music: Journal of the International Library of African Music” 2010
Numerous articles in magazines: “Cahiers d’études africaines,” “L’homme,” “Objets et Mondes. La Revue du Musée de l’Homme,” “Journal de la société des océanistes,” “Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council,” “Ethnomusicology,” “Revue de Musicologie,” “Visual Anthropology,” “Cahiers de musiques traditionnelles,” “Journal des anthropologues,” “Yearbook for Traditional Music”
