University of Heidelberg

Film with Franck Bernède on Nepali Ritual Speech

Dr. Franck Bernède and his research are introduced in this film portrait. The ethnomusicologist focuses on the relations between musical languages and ritual speech among the Newars in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal.

In the film, Dr. Franck Bernède describes his research on the musical repertoire associated with natural brass trumpets and compares it with the European baroque trumpet use. He emphasises the principles, symbolic functions and techniques of musical articulation in the context of rituals. In music, articulation refers to the art of imitating the inflections of the human voice through the instruments.

Franck Bernède was a short-term fellow of the Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Context" in 2010. The ethnomusicologist and professional cellist, who received his Ph.D. in Social Anthropology and Ethnology from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris,  studied the flow of musical spaces and concepts between musical articulation and ritual expression. His focus was on the trumpet in the seventeenth century France and contemporary Nepal.

The film portrait was produced by Christoph Bertolo and Frank Pfeiffer. It is part of a series by the Chair of Visual and Media Anthropology under supervision of Prof. Dr. Christiane Brosius. The idea is to present selected Cluster researchers and their projects. Among others, the historian Manik Man Bajracharya, the media practitioner Deepali Gaur Singh and the archaeologist Philipp W. Stockhammer have already been portrayed. 

Read more about Franck Bernède and his project (pdf).
Visit the film portraits section for further films and information.