Mini-interview with Yu Su-Ying from World Music Festival @Taiwan, updated calls and +

Are you and all your people OK? The news from Spain have been scary during the last weeks… In terms of health, we are all well. My father was hospitalized two days, during the, so far, most critical period of the pandemic, with the hospitals to the maximum of their capacity. The staff of the hospital of our city, Alcorcón, managed to enable a place for him in a waiting room and they treated him warmly. He’s now recovered and the situation in Spain seems to be getting better. We’ve been in confinement for more than 5 weeks. It’s been strictly observed all over the country.

In the meantime, the Spring doesn’t seem to be willing to arrive. The cloudy and rainy weather is been common, increasing the sense of gloom. Nevertheless, I’ve transplanted my avocado tree to a bigger pot in the terrace, so at least I’ll see something growing…

With the hope that this situation will end and we’ll be able to gather around a stage again, I share one more interview with a festival director. Sharing the insights of Yu Su-Ying, artistic director of the World Music Festival @Taiwan, excites me a lot. Since the March’s edition many disheartening news have turned out. Cancelations of Colours of Ostrava, TFF Rudolstadt, La Mar de Músicas, FMM Sines, Rainforest WMF, 5 Continents, Roskilde… The work of so many colleagues and professionals vanished… Meanwhile, the expressions of solidarity are showing up all over the world and some institutions are announcing initiatives to support the people and, specifically, the people in the arts. I invite you to share any useful information in the Facebook public group Transglobal World Music Community, in this announcement. Many professionals are already part of the group and we are collecting useful infos there. Feel free to join.

Remember that you can send any suggestion of content for the next editions. And if you like this, share it and let your friends know. And once more here you have our playlist to accompany the reading –>

Thanks for your attention.

Araceli Tzigane | info@mundimapa.com | +34 676 30 28 82 

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CURRENT AND FUTURE CHALLENGES FOR FESTIVALS 

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MINI INTERVIEW WITH YU SU-YING FROM WORLD MUSIC FESTIVAL @TAIWAN

The festival defines itself in its website as the most visually appealing music festival of 2019 rhapsody for the eyes and ears. I believe it, as they are kind of pioneers in Taiwan, in the dissemination of live world music. I am really pleased to share their insights with you. It was born in 2016 and this 2020 it will celebrate its 5th edition. It will be in Taipei, in October, the week before Womex. Already in the first edition it included artists from USA, Portugal, India, Japan, China and Taiwan. You can check the program of the last edition, here. The activities, apart of concerts are also lectures, workshops and tents with handicrafts

This interview is with Ms. Yu Su-Ying, the artistic director (find her CV here). It is interesting also to learn about the beginning of the initiative in words of the founder, Mr. Ken Yang, here. This interview has been possible also thanks to Ms. Peiti Huang.

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MM – What do you search in an artist when you create the programme? 
YS: Usually, we invite those artists whom full of stage creative and attractive, we especially prefer the music based on traditional music culture but fusion contemporary or pop materials, such as powerful ethnic voice or instrumental performing, amazing musical fusion or any great music ideas. We hope to introduce multiple world music style to our audiences and help Taiwanese musicians go to more fantasy music world.

MM – Which are the global objectives of your festival?
YS: We hope to be a really international music festival. For example, audiences come from all of the world, international musicians happy to participate and share their experiences, get some good appraisals from global festival organizations or international media, sharing Taiwanese music to the world, and the most important thing is… keep going to next and next generation. We are also happy to be a member of international festival organization to learn or share more.

YS: Climate and ticketing are the difficult issues to us.

We take place the festival in river side of Taipei city every year, the dates between the Typhoon season and the Northeast monsoon season, although the climate is very comfortable and relatively stable in this period, but sometime still have to worry about the suddenly raining and windy, this problem bother us every year, it is the same challenge to all outdoor festivals in the world.

Regarding to the ticketing, the difficult part is that most of the people have not yet used to buying ticket to attend a music festival, especially this kind of world cultural festival, so we need to do something to cultivate our audience, such as co-operate with industries, companies, schools and keep talking with a lot of families. Until 2019, we have some good achievement, and believe it will get better and better in the future.

MM – Which are currently the main challenges for this kind of cultural proposals like yours?
YS: Find and cultivate a stable audience. To most of Taiwan people, world music and World Music Festival both are still strange to them, especially to some international musicians or groups, music types, instrumentals, they are totally slack of understanding. This situation make us more difficult to open the festival marketing, we have to do something to guide people accept and love this kind of events, so we design some easy and experiential activities to attract family, companies and young people coming.

Every year, we give a diferent slogan to lead people understand what we do, and carry on call people attending the festival, it isn’t an easy work. Fortunately, we already find a lot of stable audiences back to festival, they give us good respond and willing to help us to call more people attending. It’s a good develop and we are looking forwards to embrace more audiences.

MM – In one sentence, summarise the reason/s to go to your festival. 
YS: An amazing festival that you can get many satisfactions from your ear to your stomach.

• Logo of the festival
• Yu Su-Ying portrait
• Shot from the public, from the website of the festival

OPEN CALLS

With big hope and strong wish to see all these taking place in 2020, let’s update some deadlines:

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