Christian Poché (1938-2010) was a notable journalist, radio producer, music historian, and ethnomusicologist whose career was primarily dedicated to the exploration of music from the Arab World. Born in Aleppo, Syria, to an Austrian father, Poché maintained a deep connection to his birthplace throughout his life. His early years included time spent in Lebanon, where he served as General Secretary and later as Director of the Jeunesses Musicales (Musical Youths) from 1961 to 1969. Additionally, he worked as a music critic for the Lebanese newspaper L’Orient-Le Jour from 1965 to 1967.
After completing his studies in Germany, Poché became a researcher at the International Institute for Comparative Music Studies in Berlin from 1971 to 1974, while concurrently serving as a co-editor of The World of Music magazine during the same period. In the mid-1970s, he was appointed by the French government to document music across various countries, including Syria, Lebanon, Yemen (1972-1975), Mauritania, Mali, Senegal, Niger, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Benin, Rwanda, Djibouti, Comoros, Maldives, Cameroon, Sudan, and Qatar (1976-1984). This initiative led to an extensive recording effort resulting in over thirty productions and accompanying booklets.
In 1985, Poché curated the exhibition La voix. Maintenant et ailleurs (The Voice, Now and Elsewhere) at the Georges Pompidou Centre, which was one of the first major cultural events in France to showcase the unity and diversity of world music. He also authored numerous exhibition catalogues and popular works, including Musiques du monde arabe. Ecoute et découverte (Music in the Arab World. Listening and Discovering) (IMA, 1994). Poché significantly influenced the recognition of recordings as legitimate scientific publications, adhering to rigorous standards with informative and supportive booklets.
Among his notable written works are the republications of archival materials, such as Archives de la musique arabe (Archives of Arab Music) (Ocora & IMA, 1988), Le Congrès du Caire de 1932 (The 1932 Cairo Conference) (IMA & BNF, 1989), and Archives de la musique turque (Archives of Turkish Music) (Ocora, 1995). These projects were executed in collaboration with Bernard Moussali. In 1985, he joined the team at the Institut du Monde Arabe (Arab World Institute) shortly before its inauguration, playing a critical role in promoting music as an integral aspect of Arab Cultural Heritage.
Poché also worked as a producer for radio shows at France Culture and France Musique starting in 1978, where he created two weekly programs: « Vocabulaire des musiques traditionnelles » (Vocabulary of Traditional Music) and « Sanza » (January 2000 – June 2003), which was later renamed « Zambra » (2006 – June 2008). He contributed to France Culture’s program « Les Vendredis de la musique » (The Fridays of Music).
His journalistic background informed his research career, culminating in extensive contributions to various encyclopedias, including Science de la musique (Science of Music) (Bordas, 1976), Encyclopédie de la musique (Music Encyclopaedia) (Robert Laffont, 1988), the Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments (1984), and the Garland Encyclopaedia (2002).
Passionate about music, Poché diligently sought out rare recordings, overlooked musicians, and neglected writings. His scholarly articles addressed women's roles in the history of Arab music, the complexities of the mizmār, the historian al-Tīfāshī, and biographies of Villoteau and Baron Rodolphe d’Erlanger, recognizing the contributions of Arab musicologists who remained largely unnoticed. He authored several books, individually or collaboratively, on topics such as Arab-Andalusian music (1995) and the role of almees in dance in Egypt (1996), while also expanding his research interests to music and dance in other Mediterranean regions, notably in a Dictionnaire (Dictionary) published in 2005. In the final years of his life, despite battling a long illness, he continued working on various projects, including an almost-complete book on the myth of Ziryāb, the reputed founder of Andalusian music, drawing from critical reinterpretations by the historian al-Maqarrī and earlier scholars like Ibn Bājjah and al-Tīfāshī.
