Monique Desroches | |
---|---|
Born | Grand-Mère, Quebec, Canada | March 18, 1948
Occupation | |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Ethnomusicology |
Institutions | Universitéde Montréal |
Monique Desroches (born 1948) is a Canadian ethnomusicologist from Quebec who specializes in the music of the West Indies and the Mascarene Islands in the Indian Ocean.
Desroches was born in Grand-Mère in Quebec on March 18,1948. [1] From 1968 to 1974,Desroches was part of a folk group,"Les Contretemps" who released two LPs and three 45s and toured in Canada,the United States and Japan. [2] [3]
Desroches attended college courses at Montreal's College Jean-de-Brebeuf in 1969 before studying psychology at the Universitéde Montréal. [2] After attending a lecture by Simha Arom,Desroches decided to switch her studies back to music. [2] Desroches completed her Bachelor's in Music at l'Universitéde Sherbrooke (at the École de music Vincent d'Indy) in 1974 and later completed a Master's and PhD in musicology at the l'Universitéde Montreal in 1977 and 1987,respectively. Her thesis focused on Tamil ritual music on the island of Martinique,and was supervised by Jean-Claude Muller,and Charles Boilès. [4] She would later hold a post-doctorate fellowship at SOAS in London and at the Universitéof Aix-Marseille III studying Tamil musical influences on the island of Reunion. [2]
Desroches studied Inuit music in Canada from 1974 through to 1977 as part of a research team led by Jean-Jacques Nattiez before turning her attention to the music of the West Indies in 1978. [2] She would continue her study of Tamil music in the Indian Ocean archipelago in the Mascarenes. From 1978 she began work as a research officer at the Caribbean Research Center at the University of Montreal where she managed a research station in Martinique. She achieved full professorship in 1988 and served in various capacities at the Faculty of Music. [5] During her academic career,Desroches helped establish and foster several research labs and collections. Beginning in 1989 she began accumulating a collection of musical instruments from around the world. [6] At her retirement in 2015 the collection included over 750 items. [7] In 1995 Desroches helped create the World Music Research Laboratory in order to foster new research and scholarship around the discipline. [7] [8] In 2010 she founded the Laboratory of Ethnomusicology and Organology (LEO) as well as administering CARGO,a network of researchers specializing in the Creole-speaking Caribbean and islands in the Indian Ocean.
Desroches' scholarship focuses on the role of Tamil music in sacrificial rituals in the French West Indies and the Mascarenes as well as the interplay of tourism in Martinique and cultural identity,music,aesthetics and performance. [9]
Martinique is an island which is a single territorial collectivity of the French Republic. It is also part of the European Union as an Outermost Region within the Special territories of members of the European Economic Area, but is not part of the Schengen Area and the European Union Customs Union. As part of the French (Antilles) West Indies, Martinique is located in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean Sea. It has a land area of 1,128 km2 (436 sq mi) and a population of 364,508 inhabitants as of January 2019. One of the Windward Islands, it is directly north of Saint Lucia, northwest of Barbados and south of Dominica. Martinique is an Outermost Region and a special territory of the European Union; the currency in use is the euro. Virtually the entire population speaks both French and Martinican Creole.
Gilles Vigneault is a Canadian poet, publisher, singer-songwriter, and Quebec nationalist and sovereigntist. Two of his songs are considered by many to be Quebec's unofficial anthems: "Mon pays" and "Gens du pays", and his line Mon pays ce n'est pas un pays, c'est l'hiver became a proverb in Quebec. Vigneault is a Grand Officer of the National Order of Quebec, Knight of the Legion of Honour, and Officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Simha Arom is a French-Israeli ethnomusicologist who is recognized as a world expert on the music of central Africa, especially that of the Central African Republic. His books include African Polyphony and Polyrhythm: Musical Structure and Methodology (1991) ISBN 0-521-24160-X. He also made some historical field recordings of the Aka Pygmy music.
Armand Frappier was a physician, microbiologist, and expert on tuberculosis from Quebec, Canada.
Raphaël Confiant is a Martinican writer known for his literary commitment towards Creole literature.
L'Ensemble Claude-Gervaise is a music group based in Montreal, Quebec. Led by recorder player Gilles Plante, the group performs early music as well as traditional music, particularly from Quebec and France, in period costume.
Claude Vivier was a Canadian contemporary composer, pianist, poet and ethnomusicologist of Québécois origin. After studying with Karlheinz Stockhausen in Cologne, Vivier became an innovative member of the "German Feedback" movement, a subset of what is now known as spectral music. He was also among the first composers in either Europe or the Americas to integrate elements of Balinese music and gamelan in his compositions, alongside Lou Harrison, John Cage and fellow Québécois Colin McPhee.
Conrad Laforte was a Québécois ethnologist and librarian. He created the Catalogue de la Chanson Folklorique Francaise which contains 80,000 entries.
Lucknerson Junior Mervil, is a Haitian-Canadian singer-songwriter, actor and entrepreneur. He is known for his work in the French musical Notre-Dame-de-Paris, playing Clopin in the original French & English casts.
Henri Wittmann is a Canadian linguist from Quebec. He is best known for his work on Quebec French.
Denis Vaugeois is a French-speaking author, publisher and historian from Quebec, Canada. He also served as a Member of the National Assembly (MNA) from 1976 to 1985.
Yves-René-Jean Gérard was a French musicologist.
Monique Zanetti is a French soprano. She studied at the University of Metz, then with Elisabeth Grümmer. She first came to attention singing in the same first generation of French early music singers with Agnès Mellon and Gérard Lesne.
Isabelle Leymarie is a French musicologist, writer, pianist, filmmaker, translator and photographer.
Zviane is a comics creator and a musician from Montréal, Quebec.
Juliette Sméralda is a French Afro-descendant sociologist.
Henri Beau was a French-Canadian Impressionist painter. He is noted for Chemin en été, La dispersion des Acadiens, L'arrivée de Champlain à Québec, and Les Noces de Cana. Beau is a largely forgotten artist due to his long absence from Canada. His widow Marie Beau worked towards establishing his reputation as an artist in Canada after his death. He was only recognized as a notable artist decades later, with major retrospectives of his paintings celebrating his career by the Galerie Bernard Desroches in Montréal in 1974, and at the Musée du Québec in Québec City in 1987.
Caroline Giron-Panelnée Giron is a French historian and musicologist.
Makis Solomos a Franco-Greek musicologist specialising in contemporary music and particularly in the work of Iannis Xenakis. He is also one of the specialists of Adorno's thought. His work focuses on the issue of sound ecology and decay. He has published articles and books and participates in meetings and symposia. In 2005, he also participated in the creation of the magazine "Filigranes" which aims to broaden the field of musicology.
Françoise Aubut-Pratte, née Aubut was a Canadian concert organist, and music teacher.