Gerhard Kubik (ethnomusicologist)

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Gerhard Kubik (born December 10, 1934 in Vienna ) is an Austrian music ethnologist and ethnologist . He researches African cultures and the African diaspora in South America.

Life

Gerhard Kubik came into contact with jazz in 1946 in what was then the American sector of Vienna : He got to know the music of Glenn Miller , Cab Calloway , Lionel Hampton , George Lewis , Bunk Johnson and Charlie Parker , among others . After graduating from high school, Kubik studied law , political science and African studies at the University of Vienna . In 1953 he joined the real jazz band from Walter Terharen at. Since 1954 Kubik began to appear publicly with his jazz band Musici , which received first prize at the annual jazz festival in Vienna in 1959 (but broke up shortly afterwards); like Oswald Wiener (trumpet), Ernst Steiner (trombone) and Walter "Padhi" Frieberger (washboard, percussion) he was also active in the real jazz band . While still a student, Kubik undertook his first trip to Africa from October 1959 to October 1960, during which he became acquainted with the Amadinda pupil of Evaristo Muyinda and the Baganda court music . After further research trips, he received his doctorate in ethnology in 1971 with the dissertation The Institution mukanda and associated institutions among the Vambwla / Vankangela and related ethnic groups in southeastern Angola and habilitated in 1980 on Theory of African Music . In 1974 he began to teach at the University of Vienna, at the Institute for Ethnology at the University of Mainz and at various universities and institutes in Africa and Brazil.

Kubik has published since 1959, in particular on music, dance, totemism , oral tradition and education in Africa and in the African-influenced cultures of Venezuela and Brazil. Kubik's approach to studying and conveying African music culture in the West is paradigmatic. He is internationally recognized as a capacity in the field of intracultural African cultural research. He has also appeared regularly since 1973 with the Donald Kachamba Kwela Band and the Donald Kachamba Heritage Kwela Band as a clarinetist and guitarist.

Together with the ethnomusicologist Simha Arom, Kubik has significantly influenced the composer György Ligeti and his polyrhythmic way of thinking since the 1980s. In the last few years he and a team from the Center for Oral Literature in Malawi have also been collecting the oral traditions in South African villages.

Publications (selection)

  • Theory of African Music . 1994 ISBN 978-3-7959-0560-6
  • Africa and the Blues . 1999 ISBN 1-57806-146-6
  • African Guitar: Audio visual filed recordings 1966–1993 . DVD Vestapol 13017
  • To understand African music . 2nd edition, Lit, Münster 2004.
  • Totemism. Ethnopsychological research materials and interpretations from East and Central Africa, 1962–2002 . Lit, Münster 2004.
  • Tusona - Luchazi Ideographs. A Graphic Tradition of West-Central Africa . 2nd edition, Lit, Münster 2006.
  • Jazz Transatlantic. Volume 1: The African Undercurrent in Twentieth-Century Jazz Culture. Volume 2: Jazz Derivatives and Developments in Twentieth-Century Africa. (= American Made Music Series ) University Press of Mississippi, Jackson 2017, ISBN 978-1628462302 and ISBN 978-1496806086

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Kubik, Gerhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian ethnomusicologist and Africa researcher
DATE OF BIRTH December 10, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna