The record changer (Jan-Dec 1944)

The Record Changer, June 1944 lemME take this chdrus Ernest Borneman, the gentleman who is cooking with cosmic rays, was born in Berlin, Germany, in 19 13. His grandfather, Dr. Wilhelm von Bornemann, was founder-editor of Prussia's foremost newspaper, The Deutsche Allgemeine Ze-itung. Good sense seems to run in the family, as this grandfather of Borneman's, in a demonstration of unTeutonic realism, dropped the feudal "von" and the academic "Doctor" from his name to become plain Wilhelm Bornemann. And Ernest's father went one step further. He married a Jewish woman, daughter of an innkeeper of a small Pomeranian fishing town, causing his family, proud of their Junker pedigrees, to break off all family relations with them. The argument advanced by the distaff side of Ernest's family that their ancestors had come to Germany with the first Roman Centurion to found the city of Cologne (a good thousand years before his paternal ancestor's history began) does not seem to have improved matters. Borneman's father and mother both played musical instruments. Ernest was raised to become a pianist. When he was 15 years old he was introduced to a distant relative, Professor Erich von Hornbostel, Lecturer in Anthropology and Comparative Musicology at the University of Berlin. The Professor shook his head upon digging Ernest at the piano but allowed him to attend his lectures while at the University. Borneman matriculated from school, graduated from university and was expelled from its holy premises — all within the space of three months. He has not touched a piano since. The situation in Germany began to get rough, and in July 1933, Borneman Kit the road for England, attended Professor James' lectures in African languages, and completed a bibliography of American Negro music, the first of its type and so far still the only one in existence. Get a load of the title of his graduate thesis: On the Social Anthropology of American Negro Music from its WestAfrican Roots to its Jazz Decline; A Study in Com MR. GULLICKSON ERNEST BORNEMAN parative Musicology with Special Reference to Suriname and the Islands of the Caribbean. In 1936 Germany tightened -her currency regulations and cut Borneman off from his father's moneybags. Seven years before, in 1929, he had experimented in recording African music on motion picture film with the photo-electric cell and had devised an apparatus for recording music to accompany the German versions of African films. Remembering this experience, Borneman took up film production in England as a profession. Except for a term with the British Broadcasting Corporation as research advisor on folk music programs, he has been making movies ever since, — as scenario editor for United Artists in London, as foreign advisor for the Ministry of Information's Film Division, as London Correspondent for a bunch of film trade journals and as editor, cameraman, music editor, script writer at various other times. At present he is the producer of a unit which makes two-reel shorts for distribution in Canada (under the title Canada Carries On) and in the U. S. (under the title The World in Action). In 1943 Borneman married Eva Geisel who at the time was Columbia's continental publicity manager in London. She now heads non-theatrical publicity for the National Film Board. Borneman has written four novels, the last of which may be published this Fall by Howell Soskin in this country. There are few English magazines for which he has not written. Esquire published some time ago a piece of his on the history of the London underworld. After the war, the Bornemans plan to have a go at Hollywood, hoping to sell their idea of a monthly two-reel series on American music, — from folk music through jazz to the suitable sort of symphonic and chamber music. Ernest is compiling a list of jazzon-film which can be reedited for the purpose. This whole idea came out of a series of films made at the National Film Board with Ammons, Allen, Hall, Higginbotham, Goodman, Jimmie Jones (who played trumpet for Ma Rainey),