Help Spread The Story Of Ethnomusicologist Simha Arom

In February 2010, we were lucky enough to feature French ethnomusicologist Simha Arom in an hour on the "roots" of so-called "world music" — the story of the traditional music that forms the backbone of so many modern musical traditions and continues to resonate with audiences the world over.

Now, Arom's long years of work (50 years!) in global ethnomusicology are finally getting their due in an upcoming documentary feature produced by the Paris-based production outfit, Le Miroir. The team at Le Miroir have already finished filming the documentary — traveling to Israel, the Central African Republic, Georgia and Germany with the 83-year-old Arom — and now are hoping to crowdsource the final funding hurdles in post-production work.

Le Miroir asked On Point to sound the alarm about their crowdsource campaign on the site KissKissBankBank (a French iteration of sites like KickStarter), and we agreed. The campaign has 42 days to raise €15,000, and they've already raised nearly €4,500. We look back rather fondly on our 2010 hour with Arom (who joined us in studio with fellow ethnomusicologist Michael Tenzer), and thought alerting the world of their campaign is the least we could do.

In Arom's own words:

"I think that in this strange field called 'ethnomusicology,' the heart of the work consists of collecting different types of oral music before it disappears, then describe it, like a linguist who describes a language that he discovers."

If his work speaks to you, be sure to consider helping Arom's mission of describing the world's music continue with this documentary campaign.