Christian Poché on Alain Daniélou
Christian Poché on Alain Daniélou
PRÉSENTATION
In March, we will have the pleasure of hearing about Alain Daniélou’s work at the Institute for Comparative Musicology in Berlin from 1963 onwards.
Christian Poché talks about Alain Daniélou’s approach as director: a great deal of freedom, but with a strong guiding principle. At the institute, during Daniélou’s time, the focus was of course on India, and this choice was not always unanimously supported.
But everyone learned a great deal from Alain Daniélou and his heterodox culture: among other things, the institute’s musicologists agree that they learned what ethnomusicology is in the field. Alain Daniélou also taught them how to classify music.
The lessons that Christian Poché learned from Daniélou: that all countries have their own music and that there is no music that is not worthy of interest. However, a distinction must be made, in all places, between art music and other musical forms.
Alain Daniélou’s legacy: an intuitive approach that emphasizes the aesthetic dimension. Poché learned to distinguish a good musician from a bad one… a dilemma in ethnomusicology, a scientific discipline that was not accustomed to taking quality into account, only variety.
Alain Daniélou, as an outsider, was a visionary.
This is evidenced by his inimitable approach: even though his collections have been taken over, his approach has remained unmatched and his collections remain historical pieces, unique in their kind.
The complete radio interviews can be consulted on the archives site.
Alain Daniélou jouant du Mridangam, Bénarès 1950.
Photo : Raymond Burnier.
TRANSCRIPTION
Brigitte DELANNOY: Christian Poché, you worked with Alain Daniélou at the Institute for Comparative Music in Berlin.
Christian POCHÉ: That’s right. It was the International Institute for Comparative Music, founded by Alain Daniélou with the aim of first serving as a meeting point for musical cultures from around the world and then promoting them in the West. This institute was founded in Berlin because the mayor at the time was Willy Brandt, who later became chancellor, and he insisted that the institute be entrusted not to a German but to a Frenchman. And since Daniélou was returning from India with a great deal of Indian prestige, he was given the task.
So, I can say that I worked at this institute for four years. Of course, Asia was the continent we were all interested in. We knew much less about Africa, nothing at all about Latin America, which was little known, and almost nothing about Oceania, where there are nevertheless musical cultures, but because of Alain Daniélou’s past as an Indianist, we mainly worked on Asia.
So, of course, we had a lot of freedom. Everyone was free to think what they wanted in terms of ideology, but as he was the master and the boss, there was a guiding principle. And when Daniélou founded his record collections, particularly the Philips collections, he wanted to prove the following thesis: that India is a reservoir of musical culture for the whole world and that everything came out of India. We didn’t always agree with that, but it was with this perspective in mind that he built his collection.
Brigitte DELANNOY: So you learned a lot from him through him?
Christian POCHÉ: Well, I can say that I learned my profession as an ethnomusicologist in Berlin. There were no classes. We all worked in our departments. I was in charge of publications, the Buchet-Chastel collection, which no longer exists, but from time to time we would meet Alain Daniélou at the table outside.
He wasn’t always with us because he was commuting between Venice, Rome, and Berlin. So it was at the table or sometimes when we were flying or taking the train together that we would discuss music, and I can say that I learned a lot. And from Berlin, thanks to him, I was able to go on a mission to learn what it means to be an ethnomusicologist in the field. I was like that in Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon, and I can say that I learned my trade in the field thanks to his initiative. In Berlin, we mainly learned how to classify music, which is a huge job. It takes years to learn how to classify music when it comes from a given continent, where to put it. And we spent days discussing among ourselves, always with complete frankness and freedom, and I learned a great deal.
Brigitte DELANNOY: So, was this institute in Berlin a school of freedom for you?
Christian POCHÉ: Absolutely. First, the fact that music exists outside of Europe; second, that there is no culture or society that does not have its own music and that all music in the world is interesting. Then there is a hierarchy that can also be established, that there are certain types of music that are classical music and are much more sophisticated than other types of music, but we learned all of that at the institute in Berlin.
I have to say that it was a fairly closed circle because it wasn’t a research institute. There were only about fifteen of us who passed through that house. Among those 15, some are very famous. They are great researchers who live in the United States. I have my colleagues in Paris, Jacques Brunet, who made Java and Indonesia famous. I can mention Brunet. There was Manfred Junius, who was a sitar player and wrote about the Indian sitar.
Brigitte DELANNOY: Do you mean that there is indeed a Daniélou legacy in ethnomusicology today?
Christian POCHÉ: Absolutely. Although it is contested by ethnomusicologists, what Daniélou brought that ethnomusicologists do not have is this intuitive side and this taste for music.
The ethnomusicologist is a man of science. But sometimes, a man of science doesn’t see. He goes towards an object that he wants to define and analyze. Daniélou was more interested in the aesthetic object, and he taught us that. When I was in the field, I learned to recognize a good musician from a bad musician, which is something a scientific ethnomusicologist doesn’t do. For him, everything is the same because he needs the material he is going to analyze.
And I can say that when I left Berlin, it backfired on me because I was criticized for focusing more on aesthetics than on science. And now, with the years, I have to say that Daniélou was not wrong—because in any society, even the most primitive, you find some people who can sing and others who cannot, and it’s up to you, when you’re in the field, to discern who carries the most beautiful music and aesthetic.
Brigitte DELANNOY: “Do you think Daniélou is a visionary who sees much further than others?”
Christian POCHÉ: “I would say that because he’s an outsider, he has that gift of seeing far ahead—and he always has been, and always will be, an outsider. Everything he did was marginal in his life, even his record collections. They were picked up by others, but they never followed his original vision. Ultimately, despite setbacks and even their disappearance, those collections are anthological treasures—historical artifacts. And at that level alone, it’s better to publish music that people can hear than to write a highly specialized thesis that four specialists will read and five others will debate. With Daniélou, he made this music available to the general public—and in that, he succeeded.”
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