Highlights: Victor Jean-Louis was a brilliant sound engineer in film, broadcast and television. He installed and managed several radio stations in Africa. He published several literary works (poems, short stories, novels) under the pen name ofJean-Louis Victor Baghio'o. His last novel, outoumoum, was published some time before his death, in 1994 in Paris at the age of 83. He was also a writer, author among others of the African Bible and former magistrate in Brazzaville.

Victor Jean-Louis was a brilliant sound engineer in film, broadcast and television. He installed and managed several radio stations in Africa.

Victor Jean-Louis, a Guadeloupean pioneer of radio in Africa

Victor Jean-Louis was a brilliant sound engineer in film, broadcast and television. He installed and managed several radio stations in Africa.

The Fort-de-France market, 1914. © Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

By: Eric Amiens

Victor Jean-Louis was born on December 21, 1910 in Fort-de-France into a Guadeloupean family originally from Sainte-Anne. He studied engineering at the Electrotechnical Institute of Grenoble. In 1930, with his engineering diploma in hand, he went to work in Egypt building hydroelectric dams. Back in France, he became interested in sound. The young technician took his first steps in this field as a technical assistant at the Test Studio headed by the famous engineer and researcher Pierre Schaeffer.

A brilliant engineer

Having become a sound engineer, Victor Jean-Louis began a long career in radio. He records music and entertainment shows at Poste Parisien. In 1949 he published a book entitled

The Sound Engineer in Cinema, Radio Broadcasting and Television

. Some time later Victor Jean-Louis became advisor to the Société de Radiodiffusion de la France d'Outre-mer and then head of the internship service at the Radio Studio-École for Africa. This structure trains journalists and presenters. At the time when he directed Radio Yaoundé (1957-1960), he had as a young trainee journalist the future Sultan King Bamoun Ibrahim Mbombo who also became Minister of Information and Culture in Cameroon and Chairman of the Board of Directors of CRTV (Radiodiffusion-télévision du Cameroun).

In the service of Africa

From 1957 to 1967, Victor Jean-Louis was employed at the Radio Cooperation Office (OCORA). As part of the cooperation between the French State and the newly independent French-speaking African States, the engineer directs and participates in the creation of several radio stations: in Congo, Burundi, Senegal. The Guadeloupean puts his management and technical skills at the service of these countries. He also serves as Director of the broadcasting service in Cameroon and Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso). He also contributed to the creation of television in this country. In Cameroon he personally ensures the broadcast of the inauguration speech of President Ahmadou Ahidjo. His field experience in Africa and his expertise allowed him to publish

The Radio-Television Dialectic in Africa

in 1963 . In 1967, after ten years spent in Africa, he returned to France. He is assigned to the engineering department of the French Radio-Television Office (ORTF). The engineer retired in 1976. Passionate about languages, he returned to university to study Italian, Spanish, and Creole.

From radio to literature

In 1981, at the age of 71, he obtained a master's degree in modern literature at the University of Vincennes-Paris VIII entitled

"

Aimé Césaire and Saint-John Perse: a semantic reading of the

Notebook of a Return to the Natal Country

of Aimé Césaire and from

To celebrate a childhood

of Saint-John Perse

The retiree devotes himself to writing. He published several literary works (poems, short stories, novels under the pen name of Jean-Louis Victor Baghio'o, a pseudonym already used by his father, Henri Jean-Louis, first black magistrate of the French West Indies, also a writer, author among others of the

African Bible and former magistrate in Brazzaville

. The artist and animator Moun de Rivel is the sister of the engineer-writer. Jean-Louis Victor's last novel,

Choutoumounou

, was published some time before his death, on December 20, 1994 in Paris, at the age of 83.

Photo from the book by Victor Jean Louis Baghio'o by himself; letters, diaries, essays and unpublished stories © L’Harmattan

To read: Charles W. Scheel,

Victor Jean Louis Baghio'o by himself; letters, diaries, essays and unpublished stories
, LHarmattan, 2016

Victor Jean-Louis, a Guadeloupean pioneer of radio in Africa

Victor Jean-Louis, a Guadeloupean pioneer of radio in Africa

You may like

Trends 24h

Latest