Sound Archives

From 1944 to 1958, the Romanian musicologist Constantin Brăiloiu amassed sound recordings from the five continents, using the records he had made in Romania, Switzerland and other countries as the core of the Genevan archives, known as the Archives internationales de musique populaire (AIMP). His aim was to compare music from all over the world and publish its various expressions in the Collection Universelle de Musique Populaire (forty 78 records, 1951-1958). The archives now hold nearly 16,000 hours of recorded music. They let us hear the voices of the instruments and explore the history of the publication of world music.