Wolfgang Laade, *13.01.1925 in Zeitz, German state Saxony-Anhalt (near Leipzig), is a German musician (violon, contrabass), musicologist and anthropologist, who from 1954 onwards studied in Berlin anthropology with Prof. Nevermann and Westphal-Hellbusch and ethnomusicology with Prof. Kurt Reinhard and became one of the few German academic ethnomusicologists (Musikethnologen).
He early did ethnological field research in the Torres-Street and Australia, and then extensive research in ethnomusicology there, and later in Tunisia, Korsika (dissertation on Die Struktur der korsischen Lamento- Melodik 1960), Lappland and Tamil Nadu (habilitation 1973).
From 1970 to 1972 he was assistant at the Institute of Sociology and Ethnology of the University of Heidelberg, and became Professor of ethnomusicology at the university of Zürich from 1971 to 1990. During his complete lifetime he collected all kind of musical documents in paper, books, grey literature, on disks, tapes, films etc and founded the huge “Sammlung Wolfgang Laade - Music of Man Archive.” Actually this Archive is integrated into the Center of World Music at the new University of Hildesheim, German state Lower Saxony, with its special branches in the arts.
Laade passed away 27.09.2013.
(text and photo by courtesy of Ekkehard Schröder, 5.Jan.2013)
