Constantin Brailoiu was born in 1893 in Bucharest, Romania. An ethnomusicologist and composer, he was a pioneering figure in the study of traditional music and conducted extensive research on Romanian and Eastern European folk traditions. In 1944 he founded the International Archives of Folk Music in Geneva, now part of the Musée d'Ethnographie de Genève. Brailoiu died in 1958 in Geneva, Switzerland.