Paul F. Berliner

Paul Franklin Berliner (* 1946 ) is an American ethnomusicologist and musician ( mbira , trumpet , percussion , kuduhorn ).

Berliner was already engaged in African music in the mid-1960s and recorded in Africa; some of his transcriptions of traditional West and South African compositions have been popularized by Paul Winter since the early 1970s. He published the first field recordings from Zimbabwe in 1973; this album The Soul of Mbira was nominated for a Grammy . In 1978 he received his PhD from Wesleyan University on the role of music in the traditions of the Shona . The resulting book was written by the ASCAP with the Deems Taylor Award excellent. In 1979 he includedFlying Fish Records presented their own album that combined African song material with the playing styles of jazz ( The Sun Rises Late Here ) and was nominated for a Grammy. His book about interactions in jazz, published in 1994, has also received several awards.

Berliner, who initially taught at Northwestern University , is professor of ethnomusicology at Duke University . He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2004 . He also recorded as a musician with the Paul Winter Consort ( Common Ground , Earth: Voices of a Planet ) and with Claudia Schmidt.

Fonts (selection)

• Music and Spirit Possession at a Shona Bira. In: African Music, Vol. 5, No. 4, 1975/1976, pp. 130-139
• The Poetic Song Texts Accompanying the Mbira Dzavadzimu. In: Ethnomusicology , Vol. 20, No. 3, September 1976, pp. 451-482
• The Soul of Mbira: Music and Traditions of the Shona People of Zimbabwe . The University of Chicago Press, 1978
• Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation. The University of Chicago Press, 1994.

Web links

• Brief portrait (Northwestern University)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ List of publications
2. ↑ The second edition from 1981 has been expanded to include instructions for building and playing the Mbira .