Britta Sweers

Le Mystère de Marcel Cellier: Transfer Processes in Early World Music

Marcel Cellier (1925–2013) played a key role in early world music due to his influential recordings of Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares choirs and of the Romanian pan-flutist Gheorghe Zamfir. As Cellier remained a “footnote” in scholarly literature, the article first provides a biographical sketch, before casting a look at the history of world music before the term was established in 1987. Cellier’s work was significant in providing access to Eastern European music during the Cold War. As will be discussed in the third part of the article, this transfer process was not only intertwined with specific and differently perceived concepts of “authenticity”, it was also tied to a specific mediatized situation.