Death of ethnomusicologist Marcel Cellier
The name of the panpipe virtuoso Gheorghe Zamfir is inevitably associated with him: his discoverer for the West, the producer and organist Marcel Cellier, has died in Vevey at the age of 88.
Cellier, an amateur organist, originally worked in private industry as an accountant and salesman. This led to his contacts in Eastern Europe.
In the 1960s, he traveled with his wife Catherine to the then still inaccessible countries of Eastern and Southern Europe and documented the local folk music with tape and camera.
As promoter of the Bulgarian women's choir "Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares", he was awarded a Grammy in 1990. In 2012, his work was also portrayed with critical undertones in the documentary "Balkan Melody".
Recorded in a Lausanne church, Cellier and Zamfir's "Flûte de pan et orgue" embodies a piece of popular music history from the 1970s. It has sold over 1.5 million copies and triggered a boom in pan flute music and Eastern European folklore in Switzerland.
