In 1931, the Institut de phonétique-musée de la Parole et du Geste of Paris University took the opportunity of the Exposition coloniale internationale being held in Paris “to fix colonial music and dialects on records”. Thanks to the support of the phonographic firm Pathé, 346 sound recordings were produced, representing 173 78-rpm records, supplemented by 157 photographs of the performers. For Hubert Pernot, director of the musée, it meant to « undertake, together with a scientific work, a work of wide French propaganda ». At the same time, the rules of the market economy made the sound recordings commercial references part of the catalogue of the Pathé trademark. The peculiarity of their status, between science, propaganda and business, leads us to examine the genesis, the production and distribution of the sound recordings of the musée de la Parole et du Geste at the Exposition coloniale internationale de Paris, 1931.
Keywords
Colonial Exhibition, musée de la Parole et du Geste, Pathé, Bibliothèque nationale de France, ethnomusicology
