Jean Lambert
Dr Jean Lambert is an anthropologist and an ethnomusicologist specialising in the music of Yemen and Arabian Peninsula, as well as the history of Arab music. He has served as the director of the French Center of Sanaa (CEFAS, Yemen) and the head of the Research Center in Ethnomusicology (Nanterre University). He published several books, articles and sound recordings, including Qanbûs, tarab. Le luth monoxyle et la musique du Yémen (2013) and The Cairo Congress of Arab Music, 1932. The Original Recordings (18 CDs) (2015).
Around the Congress of Arabic Music in Cairo, 1932: The local and global impact of the sound recordings
Almost a century after the Cairo Congress gathered many musicologists from the East and from Europe, it had not disclose its secrets, in particular the audio recordings made on this occasion. In 2015, after a restoration of the sound, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, in association with the Tourism and Culture Authority of Abu Dhabi, published the recordings made in 1932 on 18 CDs, accompanied with a descriptive booklet based on the documentation of the French-Lebanese historian Bernard Moussali (1950-1996). Today, what do these recordings teach us about the past Arabic music? What lessons do they supply for the present and for the future, in a broader perspective? The speaker will try to answer these questions by playing many of the recordings.