The Archives Internationales de Musique Populaire (AIMP) were founded at the Ethnographic Museum of Geneva in 1944 by Romanian ethnomusicologist Constantin Brailoiu. He devoted fifteen years to collecting, archiving and editing ethnomusicological sound documents. As a result, both the Collection Universelle de Musique Populaire Enregistrée (40 shellac records, 1951-58) and theMusique Populaire Suisse (13 LPs, 1950-54) came into existence.

At the same time, Brailoiu established an important archive collection based on his, mainly Romanian, field recordings; also included were other recordings sourced from colleagues and such institutions as the Musée de l’Homme in Paris. After Brailoiu’s death in 1958, the AIMP ‘hibernated’  until 1984. Louis Necker, who was at that time the director of the Ethnographic Museum of Geneva, employed the ethnomusicologist Laurent Aubert to revive and continue Brailoiu’s work. Thanks to this new input, the old archive collection is now enriched with thousands of new records accompanying the original field recordings.

Since May 2005, a small three team has been employed to catalogue and digitise the entire archive collection, consisting of over 15,000 carriers.