Monthly Archives: September 2022

Laying the ground for the future of traditions: artistic offer 2022-2023

On this occasion I share with you a brief information about the artistic offer we have for you. I will start by putting the news at the top: Xurxo Fernandes’s Levaino!, Ali Doğan Gönültaş, Di Gasn Trio and mujereson. This last one is so new that it hasn’t been premiered yet!

I invite you to click on the link of each one, where you will be able to see a video. Or listen to this playlist with pieces by all of them while you read: so beautiful that hurts.

Araceli Tzigane +34676302882

XURXO FERNANDES – Galicia

“Levaino!“, that is, “take it“. “Take it, take the song of our motherland“. That is the call that gives its name to the new work of Xurxo Fernandes, the restless Galician singer, dancer and folk collector, after spreading his knowledge and his art throughout Europe with Radio Cos. He is accompanied by a line-up of four musicians and a troupe of colourfull entertainers.

ALI DOĞAN GÖNÜLTAŞ – Anatolia

After hundreds of concerts in Turkey and two albums released with his extraordinary band of postrock, collage and experiential genres Ze Tîje, the Kurdish artists from Anatolya, settled in Istanbul, has self produced his album Kiğı, a personal look at the 150-year musical process of Kiğı, his birthplace, consists of works in the regional languages of Krmancki, Kurmanci, Kirdaski, Armenian, and Turkish.

DI GASN TRIO (QUARTET) – Israel

Di Gasn Trio (quartet most of the times) is a band chiefly influenced by music of the Balkan region and Klezmer music of Eastern Europe, blending additional elements of jazz, Arabic and classical music. Gal Klein and Yanush Hurwitz met in 2013. The fusion of these two musical ‘worlds’, though seemingly far apart but which actually embrace one another, created a unique musical result.

mujereson, by Patricia Álvarez & Vigüela – Spain

mujereson is born from a question:

How can we women continue to enjoy tradition despite the message and the narrative it constructs about us?

mujereson is a dialogue between the group Vigüela and the dancer Patricia Álvarez. A dance approach to how women are portrayed in the repertoire of Castilian sones.

To be premiered at the Fira Mediterrània de Manresa on October 7th.

RODOPI ENSEMBLE – Greek Thrace

Thrace is the birthday of Dionysus. A region at the Balcans, on the Southeast of Europe, at the North of Aegean sea, splitted between Bulgaria, Greece and the European Turkey. In Trace, the administrative borders blur in a cultural continuum that is evident on the unique features of its music and its dances. From the Greek part of Thrace it comes the Rodopi Ensemble.

We have a special collaboration with Medigrecian, the agency lead by Alkis Zopoglou, qanunist of Rodopi Ensemble. Learn more here about the other proposals of music from Greece.

HUDAKI VILLAGE BAND – Ukraine 

Nick Hobbs, CHARMWORKS: “I don’t know if there is a village called Hudaki but, if there is, that’s where I’m retiring to. Their music has a lovely languidness, speaking for itself without showy display. There’s no lead singer; voices and instruments come and go in all kinds of combinations. They’re delightful; positively adorable.”

VIGÜELA – Castile-La Mancha

The unique masters of son, jota, seguidilla and fandango. The history of Vigüela is the story of a vital surrender to a cultural legacy of a wild and very ignored beauty: the traditional music of the center of the Iberian Peninsula.

“I just cannot keep it in myself. I had the chance to listen to Vigüela live afterwards!!!! Wow… I really liked them… Truly amazing… indeed.” Zsuzsanna Kerényi. Cultural manager, Hungarian Heritage House

JANUSZ PRUSINOWSKI KOMPANIA – Poland

Janusz Prusinowski Kompania is the main representative of Polish traditional music, appreciated internationally both by the institutions and the public. At the same time, they are born entertainers, that combine their work in concerts in very diverse contexts, from rural parties to temples of music like the Carnegie Hall in New York, with folk dance workshops.

ENTAVÍA – Castile and León

Roots attached to the past and wings to fly towards the future… Entavía is a project born in Salamanca, made up of like-minded musicians. Entavía released their first album, Raíces con Alas, in 2017. And in Autumn of 2021 they released their second work: Arando Ñieve (Plowing Snow). They have played massively in Spain and have performed also in Portugal and Greece. This second album will be the definitive boost for their international career.

MONSIEUR DOUMANI – Cyprus

Cyprus’ most exported cultural product since Aphrodite. During their 9-year career Monsieur Doumani have received numerous awards including the ‘Best Group‘ Award in Songlines Music Awards 2019, the ‘Critics Award’ in Andrea Parodi World Music Awards and the German Records Critics Award (Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik) for their album Angathin (2018), which has also been awarded as ‘Best Album of 2018’ in the Transglobal World Music Chart“.

With Monsieur Doumani we work only for some regions. Feel free to ask.

Thank you for watching.

Sept. 22. After concert by Ali Doğan Gönültaş, new radio show, calls and plans #51

Summary 👇 

  • Babel (Music XP) strikes again 💪
  • “Mil Mundos” radio show, by Juan Antonio Vázquez, now in Radio Clásica-RNE 📻
  • TWMC announces the best of the season 👏
  • Brief news from the media, charts and sister projects
  • Open calls and more news from professional events. 💼
  • Meet me at ✈️

Hello, how are you? I’m very well, sending this letter from home after returning from Vienna, where I attended the last Friday the concert by Ali Doğan Gönültaş, that was really worthwhile to make that flash trip. He is with me in the portrait of this edition and I hope we’ll make many things together.

If you don’t know him yet, ➡️ here ⬅️ you have his album Kiğı, that is his personal look at the 150-year musical process of Kiğı, his birthplace, which consists of works in the regional languages of Krmancki, Kurmanci, Kirdaski, Armenian, and Turkish.

Let yourself be accompanied by his fascinating music as you read these lines. And take a look at my website to learn about the current offer for concerts.

I hope you find all this interesting. I would like to point out that Babel Med is finally coming back, as Babel Music XP, renovated, and I think this is great news.

As always, if you have any news of interest for our community, let me know. Thank you very much for your attention.

Araceli Tzigane | Mapamundi Música | +34 676 30 28 82 
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BABEL STRIKES AGAIN

WELCOME, BABEL MUSIC XP, WE’VE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU

One year and one month ago, this newsletter contained an interview with Olivier Rey, from Dock des Suds, about the rebirth of Babel Med, under the renewed name of Babel Music XP. I invite you to read that interview, here. As a warm-up to the physical event that was going to take place, a series of online conversations were organiced, in which I had the great honour of participating. You can find here a brief summary of some of the ideas shared then. The physical gathering was finally not possible in 2022 but it was a matter of time!

And on this occasion I will just share their own words, that I took from their Facebook page:

“We are very happy to see you again, from March 23 to 25 in Marseille, for 3 days of exchanges and discussions during an international professional trade fair and 3 evenings of showcases to discover a unique overview of current musical talents! Artists and bands, you have until October 16 to register and try to be selected to join the Babel Music XP 2023! Artist registration > https://babelmusicxp.com/en/” 

I have to add that I am very happy too and I will be there.

 

MIL MUNDOS, ONE THOUSAND WORLDS

THE RADIO SHOW, BACK IN SPANISH NATIONAL RADIO, WITH JUAN ANTONIO VÁZQUEZ

While the historic Radio 3 of Radio Nacional de España (RNE), which has always been a leader of diversity, has increasingly abandoned the music I work with and that nourishes Mundofonías, Transglobal World Music Chart or World Music Charts Europe, Radio Clásica, known for many years as Radio 2, has taken over, opening up to sounds other than those of Western classical music, which has been the vast majority of its content for many years.

I am very happy to see that where some have abandoned this human heritage, others have picked it up and are making it great.

Thus we come to the conclusion that the radio programme Mil Mundos returns to Radio Clásica, under the direction of Juan Antonio Vázquez. Thus, La Ruta de las Especias, his summer programme, will rest for now, but Mil Mundos begins, with a weekly edition, which will be accessible both on the airwaves and on the podcasts of Radio Clásica, from October. In the meantime, you can listen to the 2016 editions here. And you can listen dozens of editions of La Ruta de las Especias, here.

Juan Antonio (in the picture) has kindly provided me with some insights about this work:

“”Mil Mundos” is an opportunity to explore and showcase the immense musical richness that is usually left out of the media: the folk-inspired music of the world’s cultures, from its most traditional facet to the reworkings and experiments of the most restless and daring artists.

The musical ecosystem of the mainstream media and platforms is, to a large extent, noise that contributes nothing. Just the eternal repetition of the same thing: the production and reproduction of what is known or supposed to generate returns. Nothing, with happy and rare exceptions, that generates discovery, knowledge and true musical pleasure.

It is false that the public has no interest in these musics: what happens is that they have been denied the possibility of knowing them. From my experience of more than three decades in radio, I know that there are always receptive people who enjoy discovering this stuff, if given the opportunity, and who feel fortunate when that happens. Generating that happiness and fostering that discovery is the most gratifying thing that can happen to a disseminator of these musics.

That is why it is important to open sound windows that allow the public to hear music that they had never imagined and that can change their lives and their perception of the world. But it must always be from an honest commitment of the disseminator to the uncompromising quality of what he is offering to his audience, with absolute respect for their intelligence.”

TRANSGLOBAL WORLD MUSIC CHART

ANNOUNCES THE BEST OF THE SEASON 2021-2022

TWMC’s account for the best ones counts the votes from September to August. These are the results for 2021-2022:

BEST ALBUM
Susana Baca · Palabras Urgentes · Real World

BEST LABEL
ARC Music

BEST OF SOUTH AMERICA
Susana Baca · Palabras Urgentes · Real World

BEST OF EUROPE
Vigüela · A la Manera Artesana · ARC Music

BEST TRANSREGIONAL ALBUM
Omar Sosa & Seckou Keita · Suba · Bendigedig

BEST OF NORTH AFRICA & MIDDLE EAST
Monsieur Doumani · Pissourin · Glitterbeat

BEST OF SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA
Oumou Sangaré · Timbuktu · World Circuit / BMG

BEST OF ASIA (CENTRAL & EAST) & PACIFIC
Khöömei Beat · Changys Baglaash · ARC Music

BEST OF NORTH & CENTRAL AMERICA
V.A. · Changüí: The Sound of Guantánamo · Petaluma

BEST COMPILATION
V.A. · Changüí: The Sound of Guantánamo · Petaluma

I am very pleased that so many colleagues have voted for Vigüela’s album that it has reached this position. It didn’t happen with the previous album, so I think the band is on the right track.

BRIEF NEWS FROM THE MEDIA, CHARTS AND SISTER PROJECTS 

OPEN CALLS AND PROFESSIONAL EVENTS

If you have anything to share in this section in a future edition, let me know. 

  • Babel Music XP. NEW IN THIS NEWSLETTER. Aforementioned. It will take place in Marseille, France, from 23th to 25th of March 2022. The application for artists is open until October 16th. Application and terms and conditions, available here.
  • European Folk Network annual meeting / Fira Mediterrània de Manresa. The anual meeting of the EFN is hosted by Fira Mediterrània de Manresa, that will take place from 6th to 9th of October. The registration for the Fira is open here. The program is here. And the complete program of the EFN meeting, with most of its activities open to the delegates, included the non-members of the EFN, is available here.
  • English Folk Expo. NEW IN THIS NEWSLETTER. It will take place from 13th to 16th October in Manchester, England. If you are working in the music industry, in the UK or internationally, and interested in attending English Folk Expo Showcase, contact: Terry O’Brien by clicking here or at terry@englishfolkexpo.com.
  • Pro/Press accreditation for Visa for Music 2022, open. “Accreditation requests are now open ! If you are a music professional or a journalist/media, ask for your accreditation by filling the google form linked to the button.” It will take place in Rabat, November 16th-19th.  To request the accreditation (it seems to be still open) click here.
  • Tallinn Music Week 2023, open call. Artist submission will close at 23.59 (CET) on 12 December 2022. Dates: “Music festival: Thu, 11 May – Sat, 13 May. Around 150 artists from various genres and scenes from all over Europe and beyond in Tallinn’s best venues play to an audience of around 15,000 people and to 1,000 music industry professionals from international markets and Baltic-Nordic region.” Check their proposal and apply here.

  • Mundial Montréal, professional registration is open. Here. “Mundial Montréal is back for its 12th edition from November 15 to 18 in person and via its virtual networking platform from November 1 to 25!”
  • Afro Pépites, two calls:
    • Call for artistic project: opens till 30/09/22. Not just music, but almost any kind of art. Learn more, here.
    • Call for talent-hunters: the Afro Pepites Show is a tool dedicated to talent-Hunters. “The committee members will receive the instructions by e-mail. You will have to select 5 musical projects and 5 other projects (painting, dance, sculpture, short film…), in the quiet of your home, between 03/10/22 and 23/10/22.” Learn more, here.

MEET ME AT

Will we meet? Drop me a line!

  • Fira Mediterrània de Manresa and the meeting of the European Folk Network. At the Fira, we will make the world premier of the show mujereson, with the dancer Patricia Álvarez and Vigüela. This picture below illustrates this new show:
  • The EFEx Showcase in Manchester, 13th Oct – 16th Oct.
  • And WOMEX in Lisbon, 19th Oct – 23th Oct.
  • IMSF – Israel Music Showcase Festival, in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, November 22rd-27th, 2022.
  • And in March 2023, Babel Music XP, aforementioned.

mujereson, world premiere at Fira Mediterrània de Manresa. With Patricia Álvarez & Vigüela

mujereson, world premiere at Fira Mediterrània de Manresa, Friday 7th October at 17:30 at L’Anònima. 

👉 And meet Araceli Tzigane, from Mapamundi Música, there. For any questions: +34676302882

 

mujereson,

by Patricia Álvarez & Vigüela 

mujereson is a dialogue between the group Vigüela and the dancer Patricia Álvarez. A dance approach to how women are portrayed in the repertoire of Castilian sones. 

As the philosopher Ernst Cassirer points out, we are symbolic animals and what we understand by cultural traditions are catalogues and manuals of behaviour constructed on the basis of symbols and they mark, on many occasions, how we see the world and how we see ourselves.

The music of the son is intimately linked to the message of the text, it speaks to us of experiences of legends, of stories that belong to the collective memory of communities and women are, on many occasions, represented in these lyrics through archetypes and characters full of clichés and corseted in forms of behaviour.

This spectacle brings together different songs that portray different archetypes of women, which could reconstruct the biography of our grandmothers and mothers: What is expected of a woman at the age of 20, what happens when she gets married, and if she doesn’t get married…? The choices of many women in the Iberian territory, the shortcomings, the longings, the prohibitions are portrayed in this corpus of knowledge that make up our musical tradition.

Symbolisation as a shape

Vigüela is a group with a long and strong link to tradition, their many years of research into singing, their styles and manners make them an international reference. They live tradition not as an artistic challenge but as a daily action, integrated in their day to day life.

Patricia Álvarez is a dancer specialised in traditional dances and folklore of the Mediterranean area, from a contemporary vision of dance that distances her from specific languages, although she relies on this corpus of traditional and folkloric information to navigate the performing arts.

All of them are united by this interest in the tradition that goes beyond the artistic fact, how the tradition is integrated in our subconscious, the experience itself that is linked to forms of expression through voices, sound or the body. Those symbols that take shape through music and dance.

mujereson is born from a question:

How can we women continue to enjoy tradition despite the message and the narrative it constructs about us?