Lortat-Jacob, Bernard (1941 -2024 )

Born in 1941, Bernard Lortat-Jacob is a French ethnomusicologist with wide fieldwork experience in Southern European countries and the Maghreb and a promoter and safekeeper of traditional music within major public institutions in France. Following his studies in musicology and ethnology, he began his career as a researcher at the Musée des arts et traditions populaires in Paris, and then joined the ethnomusicology department of the Musée de l’Homme. Welcomed by Gilbert Rouget – the founder of an ethnomusicology laboratory within the museum since the late 1940s – Lortat-Jacob succeeded him as director of this experimental body. His fieldwork led him to study the rural music and village festivals of the Moroccan Berber High Atlas, the songs of the Holy Week in Sardinia, the virtuoso improvisations of the Oach violinists in Romania, and the folk music and songs of Albania. He worked with the French Ministry of Culture in defence of traditional music, and co-founded the Société française d’ethnomusicologie in 1983. From 1987 to 2008, he was head of the ethnomusicology doctoral programme at Nanterre University from a multidisciplinary perspective. The author of numerous volumes and articles, editor of a large number of CDs, and co-director of two documentary films, Lortat-Jacob recorded three CDs as a singer.

Keywords: Ethnomusicology | Anthropology of the Mediterranean | Corsica | Albania | Romania | Sardinia | Morocco | Romani | Berbers | Folk poetry | Polyphonic Chant | Folk songs | Folk Music | Folk traditions | Rural Societies | Dance | Poetry | Roma Studies | Folk religion | Folk culture | André Schaeffner | Musée de l’Homme | Musée national des arts et traditions populaires | Claudie Marcel-Dubois