Summary 👇 

---

---

If you like this content, forward it ⬅️

Share it in Twitter

Share it in FB

Share it in Linkedin

Hello, how are you? I am well. I am waiting with great interest for the results of the second round of the elections in Turkey. On the same day we have municipal and regional elections in Spain. There is a lot of uncertainty. But I think we have less at stake than the Turkish citizens.

In Spain, a very important part of the budgets dedicated to the music I work with depends on the local governments (that’s the example of Etnosur, for instance, for which the city council of Alcalá La Real provides a relevant part of the budget). Another significant part depends on the diputaciones provinciales, an intermediate entity between the town councils and the autonomous communities, something like a grouping of town councils to support with services the small town councils. For example, bringing concerts to small towns. Whatever happens, we do not expect drastic changes in Spain. And in Turkey? We shall see. To be honest, I’m on tenterhooks about this.

Our protagonist today is Alan Ibrahim, a Syrian Kurdish guitarist who has been living in Germany since 2013. I talk to him as the driving force behind the organisation Music For Identity. In the conversation with him there are profound themes. The very name of his organisation already announces some of the issues we talk about. Political issues, such as what is at stake in Turkey next Sunday, have an obvious relationship to Music For Identity’s work and increasingly to mine as well.

The interview with Alan is really very interesting, as well as very long, but the deep things that are explained cannot be told in 3 words. I have put this edition of the newsletter in pdf format so you can even download it and read it on Kindle or wherever you like.

I bring another very interesting content, about one of the best known world music festivals in Spain: Etnosur. A few weeks ago I coincided in the presentation of Jaén en Julio (a series of festivals of various types of music that take place in the month of July in the Andalusian province of Jaén) with two of the people of the team that is running it and it was very interesting. Some colleagues from other countries have asked me before about the situation of the festival. So here I tell you about it.

Remember: 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 

---

AND NOW THE FLOOR IS FOR: JUANRA CANOVACA, FROM ETNOSUR

While you read, listen to the playlist for Etnosur 2023 curated by Juanra Canovaca, here 🎧

After the pandemic, the Etnosur festival, one of the best known in Spain on the world musics circuit, returned reformulated. The city council launched a call for proposals for the artistic direction and production of the festival. It was adjudicated to Juan Ramón Canovaca (in the picture) and Rafael López, together in a temporary joint venture. They carried out the 2022 edition and are repeating this 2023 edition.

Pedro Melguizo had until then been the visible face of the festival, the one who used to attend, for example, Womex. Although Etnosur always had several directors. Canovaca had been on the team that started the festival in 1997 along with Melguizo. And López has also been connected with the festival before in charge of the communication, so they both knew it very well.

At the presentation of Jaén en Julio on 26th of April, that took place in Madrid at the headquarters of the SGAE (authors society of Spain) they told me that they wanted to bring Etnosur back to the people, that the people of Alcalá la Real themselves would attend the festival. And so, without losing the cosmopolitan spirit of the festival, they have also opted to programme artists who have a strong appeal to the local public.

Juanra Canovaca (the one who answered the questions) is also the director of the Imagina Funk festival, which takes place in the Parque Natural de Cazorla, Segura y Las Villas on the last weekend of July. In addition to this, here are some more statements by Juanra Canovaca.

---

Mapamundi Música: How is the festival going in this new stage?
Juanra Canovaca: Really very well. Last year we had little time but the results were optimal. It was the edition with more public than any other so far.

MM: What do you look for in an artist when you programme?
JC: I’m looking for artists who are in line with Etnosur and specifically I’m talking about styles related to world music. On the one hand, we have to look for an artist who can be an attraction for us, like Estrella Morente this year, but what I really look for are bands that are not very well known in Spain and that are capable of surprising the audience, the surprise factor is the most important thing for us. And of course, that it is danceable, fun music, the kind that makes the soul happy.

MM: What are the most complicated or difficult issues to deal with in your festival (specifically in yours)?
JC: Perhaps the most complex part is the pre-production of the festival, there are dozens of activities and coordinating them is a major effort but, well, we already have a lot of experience and we try to solve it in the best possible way.

MM: What are currently the main challenges for this type of cultural proposal like yours?
JC: Etnosur is a free festival and we want to keep it that way. Funding is perhaps the most complex issue, but thanks to the City Council of Alcalá la Real and the other sponsors we can continue to maintain a quality proposal open to all audiences.

MM: In one sentence, sum up the reason(s) to go to your festival. 
JC: For me Etnosur is a unique, international, multidisciplinary, solidarity and free festival.

MM: Do you want to share any ideas? 
JC: The idea I propose is that respect for others should be the main reason to go to the festival.

Credits:

• Portrait of Juanra Canovaca, from his Facebook profile
• Poster of Etnosur, from the website of the festival
• Landscape with public, from the website of the festival, by Amada Santos

---

UPBEAT PLATFORM: BEST NEW TALENT AWARD + UPBEAT UNIVERSE

In the previous editions, in the conversation about Folkest with Andrea del Favero and in the March edition, in the conversation with Peter Dimitrov of A to Jazz festival, the Upbeat Platform, the European Showcase Platform for World Music, was mentioned. This time it appears again, with two news items. 

🔹Best New Talent Award

Together with Chris Eckman from Glitterbeat Records and Balázs Weyer from Hangvető we are the jury of the Best New Talent Award. The nominee list consists of all the emerging artists who performed at one of the partner festivals of Upbeat Platform (check them here) between the time period of 31 July 2022 and 1 May 2023, and the partner organization accounted for them as emerging artists. How is “emerging artist” defined? In a practical and concrete manner, the definition has been artists that meet at least 5 of the following conditions:

• max 3 albums released
• max 5 years passed since the release of their first album
• no more than 20.000 followers on either of their social media channel
• the average age of band members does not exceed 35 years
• had at least one concert in a professional setting
• the band did not go on an international tour of 10 gigs
• the band does not have a contract with a non-national record label
• the band has an up-to-date web presence (website, social media)

The nominated artists also have to be legal residents in any country participating in the Creative Europe programme.

THE WOMEXICANS MEET…:
I’M INTERVIEWED BY JULIA OLSEN AND STEPHEN KEARNEY ON WATERWAVES RADIO

---

IN DEPTH WITH: ALAN IBRAHIM, FROM MUSIC FOR IDENTITY

---

THE CONVERSATION WITH ALAN IBRAHIM

Alan and I were talking for more than one hour and we have revised the result to make it all clear. We talked deeply about several topics. To facilitate the understanding, I will put some titles at the beginning of each topic. Nevertheless, I recommend that you read it all in order. 

---

About the background of Music For Identity

MM: This you have said brings a lot of ideas to my mind. For instance, maybe you know this band from Belgium, Refugees for Refugees, who changed their name to Refa, because they wanted to stop being considered like refugees. They wanted just to be a band of music and they wanted not to be separated from the rest of the cultural world.
And I was also thinking about… You are working with music and sometimes in the history, when there has been huge emigrations and exile, the immigrants have forgotten or totally abandoned their cultural background. For instance, the Jews after the Holocaust, they went to United States and they abandoned totally the Klezmer music, they stopped talking Yiddish. Something that is still happening: when Israel was created many people rejected totally the klezmer music because that was the music from the ancestors in Europe, because they wanted to leave behind all that a horrible story. And only the second or third generations are taking back this legacy for them. So I see, at least in Europe, there are options for keeping this. The people who are like you, you are maintaining your roots, you are not rejecting your roots in trying to be assimilated and, in a fast way, forgetting your roots. Also I was thinking that sometimes, in the field of world musics, let’s say, this concepts of the refugees or different cultures or cultures that are persecuted are used to sell specifically. So they are they are a sales tool. Sometimes I see bands that are quite not very good as artists, I think, but they are successful because of the political background of these people. So this is very exploded. Sometimes it is more important than the artistic talent.So yeah, I understand what you mean. You are a musician you have a high profile of talent. I’m sure you have studied and worked a lot to be a guitarist as you are, and you feel like that all that is left behind because the definition of you is that you are a refugee or you are an immigrant. You say that you are presented like that. I think it is on purpose sometimes, because it is like a more sellable, it is easier to sell to the public. Because it is also a way to differentiate you, maybe, you specifically, Alan, comparing to other musicians who play classical guitar. Your differentiation from them, the easiest is that you are a Syrian and all these things…

Well, it’s really terrible to confuse all these ethnicities, backgrounds and languages… Really I understand because I have been working with this kind of issues for more than 20 years, so I have a strong sensitivity on how to define the people, but I see it’s difficult because here in our countries… In Spain, well, we have also this situation because we have a national languages, also. The situation in Spain is quite good for understanding this, because we have other languages inside our country and they are official languages. So we recognize and we know they are a minority and we know they are endangered and they are losing speakers, but they are respected. It’s not like other countries that are much more centralized. I think Germany doesn’t have this diversity that we have here. So they’re not so close to this cultural diversity as we are here. For us it is natural in Spain, I think.

About the legal shape of Music For Identity

MM: Well, I will make you some questions specifically about the organization. As I’m focus on professional people on the field of music, I also want to know how the things are done, so, which is the legal shape of your organization?

AI: We are a non-profit company. I chose this legal shape. Actually it was super complicated. In Germany the bureaucracy is like in the highest level you could imagine, just to register an organization. I wanted it to be a non-profit company. It’s a non-profit organization, actually, but the “company”, because it means that we can apply for funds for projects but also we can offer services and we can be paid for. This is the difference between just to be a non-profit organisation, which is you are only counting on funds: if you have a fund then you can work, if you don’t have, then you just stay where you are. I thought about it on the long run that to have a good financial, economic situation, we should have to think differently. That’s why we chose this legal form.

MM: It’s very reasonable also because, perhaps in this shape you have decided you also trust in giving services for which people is going to pay. You are not only trusting in the support from public money. I think it changes the idea and the approach to market, let’s say. I have a private company. I think I could not have done all I do if I was not a private company for profit. I’m for profit and it changes your mind because you have to think differently, you have to put yourself in the mind and in the needs of the market and your clients. And we are talking about culture. So this is something also that is not a basic need for the people. I mean we are not selling oranges or bread, we are selling something that is quite different. So… I deal with many organisations that are not for profit and sometimes the lack of market vision is quite obvious and that’s the problem: if you don’t get funds, no matter whatever you have done… And you are exposed to the politics. The politics can change and all your activity can end from one year to the other year. So I think it is a wise decision that you can keep the both sides.  

About the workshops

MM: I wanted to ask you also about what you specifically do, because you speak about the workshop method “will be in the form of impulse, discussions, group work and Community Music training”. So I understand you make workshops that last for several days or months or are regular for communities, or do you have different shapes of workshops that you offer? How is the concrete shape of your proposal for workshops? 

AI: What we do in Music for Identity is a couple of main categories. One is workshops and with workshops we always use the community music as main tool. We are working on our Music for Identity Ensemble to be playing music of minorities. And our mid-term project, that needs a lot of time, investment, is to create a platform for world music sheets but, more specifically, for minorities music. Not just an archive to collect the music but in a more practical way, where we can have, let’s say, music from different minorities but in a form for different instruments. It could be for a quartet, it could be for ensembles… and so on. Things that they can be really useful and can be spread internationally. So the idea is just to have more means to spread this music.

Picture: Music For Identity Ensemble

In workshops now we have generally two main subjects: raising awareness and empowerment. Raising awareness it’s about understanding these dynamics, how you can work in music education field with minorities. And minorities, when we were working on the in the workshop, it was, again, not only ethnical minorities. It meant minorities in different ways and, of course, more specifically, marginalized minorities. Because there can be a minority in a country, that is a minority, but whose rights are preserved, and they have their tools that they could express themselves and so on. But there are marginalized minorities: there is where’s our work is more focused on.

Empowerment is more directed to the targeted groups themselves to give them more tools to express themselves, to get over their own barriers of expressing in the verbal and a physical ways, and using the music as a tool to connect in a collective way.

The Music For Identity method is that we want to talk about these issues, we want to have a conversation, we want to have a dialogue between us. We have the group work and we have different methods of how we implement all this together depending on the group need, and it’s always combined with music, Community Music exercises!

About Community Music

MM: I don’t know what you mean exactly with Community Music. 

AI: Community Music is a kind of a new approach in music. It started in between the 60s and the 80s in the UK and then it started slowly in Europe and it’s being practiced now around the world. It’s an approach about connecting people. It’s not about learning an instrument in itself. Because when we think about music, we think either about learning an instrument or having a music production at the end of the day, you know.

Community Music is about music making in a collective level and both the social and the musical aspects of it are in the same importance. So it can be done anywhere, anytime, by any group, as long there is safety involved for everyone. This method can be done with musicians and non-musicians. Regardless of what experience you have in music, we can make music together. In relevance to whatever topic we have, whatever topic we want to address. So the exercises or trainings that we design are always related to the topic of the workshop. This is a method that is widely used in conflict zones. So, for example, if you want to do a music project with people in a conflict zone or you are doing it on their way of immigration or once they arrived, let’s say, it’s not the time to expect with music that they will be learning the instrument and they will make a high musical performances. It’s more that they have a path, a way, that they could could use, music as one of the aspects that they are doing through the time of the workshop, where they could express themselves with music, without words, without the need of doing words.

On a personal level, Community Music helped me to go through what’s left from the experience of war, of facing the issues of my identity growing up in a marginalised minority community. It helped me to break the barriers of the fear that we grow up in to express myself. So you have the moment, your moment in, not only by yourself, but in a collective way. So it’s the joy to connect with others with music making. We use body percussion, percussion instruments, dancing, movement and much more.

It’s the right method to come over the barriers of your own body, of movement, or raising your voice. In certain communities there is a lot of judgment that affect your ability to to express yourself and for example just your ability to raise your voice and sing for yourself, specially, for women, about how they should walk, how they should behave, how they should do this and that, and all of this adds up to how they could just express themselves. Or actually also for men, which they have their own criteria to act and be seen as men. This is not only for gender but also in many other contexts. For example in the time of war, the way you are moving, the way your body is reacting, your own connection to your body and the connection of your body to the surrounding is affected by this high level of stress, where you need always to be in extreme survival mode in order to survive, and this adds up also to how you express yourself in the future.

As a professional musician, my personal favourite point about Community Music is to deconstruct the hierarchy of perfectionism that is leading the connection between professional musicians. We usually give our attention and respect on the basis of who has the highest level of performance. Here we learn how to see each other at eye level and to believe that I can learn from every musician something new regardless of how ‘’non-perfect’’ musicians they are. We are humans, and for sure humans aren’t perfect creatures.

MM: This you are explaining about the Community Music reminds me the use of the music in the tradition in which music was not the objective. Music was the context, let’s say. In Spain and probably in your land also, everybody participated in the music. It doesn’t matter if you are a great singer it or not. Indeed it is still being done here in Spain. There are meetings where the people meet and they play and we have a music that is not songs, it is a style. You know probably a bit of Flamenco. And Flamenco is also style, it’s not songs. I mean, for instance, bulería is a style. If you know bulería and you play bulería with the guitar, if I know bulería I can sing with you at any moment without any rehearsal. So this is still being done. And of course, some people sing more beautifully, others less beautifully, more are more agile in the dance, others do what they can… but it has been like that in the tradition. But at some moment the music and the dance stopped being part of the people and it started to be only something from the artists and people stopped singing and stopped dancing. Here we keep it a bit in some specific contexts, but it reminds me a lot what you are explaining of Community Music. This it is not something for making a wonderful art, it is about participation and being part of the community.

AI: The main focus is not about this high elite music performance, but it’s also without compromising the quality of music. Because you can always do something more complex depending on the participants knowledge of music. If in your group, who are participating are musicians, and you want to do community music with them, there is no music sheets, there is, of course, Community Music and you want to do and improve free improvisation of them, but also connecting them in a more social level. It’s also, as much as possible, without compromising the quality, but that’s not the main focus.

MM: Of course, in, let’s say, the natural context of this music, you can hear wonderful things. Indeed, we have recordings from 80 years ago, people in the villages, and it’s really wonderful, they were great performers but they were normal people and we have kept that because it is a beautiful art, also not only a picture of the moment. It is also something that is a pleasure to hear nowadays, yeah. I think it is quite related to this.

And one of the things that I have really liked to do and I am still in the path of doing is to provide to the people again the participation themselves in the music and, as I work with traditional musics, for me it’s like an objective. It is very difficult because people are very shy sometimes. I think through dance it is a bit easier than through singing. People, to sing… they are so so shy in the Western World. I think they don’t want to sing.

AI: But this is the thing, you know, why are we shy, why we feel that? It’s because of this sense of judgment. Growing up with these stress patterns will make anyone to have struggles to sing freely. This is where Community Music comes! It’s a safe space where we can experiment together and in many exercise there is no right or wrong with what you perform. It’s a space where you could express yourself and nobody will judge you.

About the music in Spain I could totally relate to that because the Mediterranean countries they share very similar culture of music and it is a very good example that, before or like this kind of regions that they use the music, of course, way much differently than, let’s say in Central Europe, where now really music is, you know, for musicians and so on.

And Community Music goes even further, where, yes, you could do together where somebody’s playing let’s say bulería and there is someone who’s dancing, there’s someone who’s singing, there is someone who’s making that percussion or by clapping and so on… And In Community Music we could also have specific exercises, to address an issue. Let’s say, if it’s about the power dynamic of communication and the power of language (for example it’s a common issue that we have male dominance in musical spaces). What does it mean if you talk in this way? Let’s say there is a dialogue between two people, three people, and you want to enter. In which way you want to enter? Do you want to dominate the dialog? Do you want to be in the background? Do you want to help? Do you want to be…? All of these dialogs can be done non-verbally with community music. The experience with gives you a space to reflect to your own style of communication and to connect it with other things.

About plans for the near future

MM: When can we participate in one of those workshops? Do you have any a plan for the next months? 

AI: You are always welcome! Yes actually we are going to make a new workshop In July in Berlin and everyone interested regardless of their experience can join us but of course we can have limited number of participants. So I would suggest to keep checking our social media because we will announce about in the beginning of June and it’s free of cost! There’s also coordination with Landesmusikakadmie Berlin to offer community music workshop in Berlin, that’s why we have been selected to participate at the end of May in an international community music workshop in Italy to exchange experiences and bring new ideas with us. Another opportunity that’s currently on the table is to make workshops in the university of Arts Udk Berlin.

Our very good news for the next months is that we have a new cooperation partner ‘’Impact, Civil Society Research and Development’’ that will help us to develop our programs and to reach our future plans to bring our experience, our services to the Middle East also. After that, we want to go more internationally. But we want to start off where we know the area, the language, the place, and the needs. The idea here is to train the local musicians, so they spread this knowledge to the community.

This is a previous project in which Music For Identity was involved, in charge of the concert streaming in Amude (northern Syria) and Shiraz (in Iran), and organised by MitMachMusik, Sing Berlin Choir and Nikolaisaal Potsdam. Click the picture for a video. The is a footage from a smartphone. Better version will be available soon, so follow the social media of Music For Identity for not to miss it.

 

About how to be updated about their news

MM: And how can the people follow your activities and be updated?

AI: The short answer is for now people can follow our social media pages and soon check our website to get the latest updates.

The thing is we have announced about our organisation as an emergency need for the recent earthquake aid. We had this big fundraising concert that we organised in Berlin to support the Kurdish community in north of Syria, where the earthquake happened, and these families were being discriminated to not get the earthquake aid. We made this fundraising concert where we invited many Kurdish musicians. Nizamettin Ariç, a very known Kurdish singer, came to perform, along many other musicians and singers.

So now we are working to make our website, to make all the structure, of course, to have a newsletter and to announce all of these things but it it’s still in process. If it was not for that concert and the earthquake aid, I think we would have waited a bit more, although we have been doing these projects and workshops already since one year. My idea was to learn from the experience before we go to the public! To shape the structure, goals and offers through the experience and to understand our needs and struggles, all through the actual experience of the work on ground, and indeed we have learned a lot from what we done last year.

I’m careful about the level of professionality in which we want to present ourselves. And of course, all of these services are very complicated and they needed a lot of time to be analysed to the depth.

Flyer of the concert for the earthquake aid, which included the performance by Nizamettin Ariç:

 

UPDATE ON THE EUROPEAN FOLK DAY

---

– REPEATING FROM THE PREVIOUS EDITION – 

MAPAMUNDI MÚSICA, IN CHARGE OF THE SPANISH PARTICIPATION AS PARTNERING COUNTRY IN THE CZECH MUSIC CROSSROADS

MEET ME AT

Will we meet? Drop me a line!

• 8-9 June – Mediterranean Music Festival in Zurich, for the concerts by Ali Doğan Gönültaş and Di Gasn Trio.
• 28 June – 2 July 2023, Czech Music Crossroads, Ostrava.
• And later I will travel a lot with Ali Doğan Gönültaş and his musicians, who will play in July in Spain and in Germany. We will be in Valencia, Rudolstadt and Huesca and they will also play in Koblenz for Horizonte Festival on 22nd of July. But on that occasion I will be in Palma de Mallorca for my first concert with Yiannis Dionysiou.