Hello, how are you? I hope well. I am well but I have been so busy the last times!

The 5th Annual Conference of the European Folk Network

In previous editions, I have been announcing the 5th Annual Conference of the European Folk Network. I must say that it was extraordinary in both the diversity and depth of the topics we covered, as well as the brilliant minds that participated. The production was also exemplary, led by Nod Knowles and an incredibly dedicated and experienced team. You can find all the details about the specific individuals and the entire program here.

This time, it was held in Kaustinen, a place that, at least for folk fans in Spain, sounds almost mythical, like Rivendell or Avalon of Nordic folk. Well, it has a more tangible reality. If you haven’t been there, believe me, I assure you. More than a hundred people gathered, and I must say it was two days filled with exciting reflections.

One of the moments I enjoyed the most was the participation of Miklós Both, who is with me in the photo.  I consider Miklós is one of the brightest minds we have in this community. The first time I heard about him was through his Polyphony Project, which you can check out here. It is an initiative dedicated to preserving and documenting the traditional polyphonic songs of Ukraine. It provides an extensive digital archive of folk songs and stories, aiming to maintain and share the cultural heritage of Ukraine’s polyphonic singing tradition.

Miklós has been the director of the Hungarian Heritage House since November 2021. He took on the position when we were having the second Annual Meeting of the European Folk Network right at its facilities. The House is a center for the safeguarding and presentation of Hungary’s intangible cultural heritage, particularly through music, dance, and folk art.

And in this 5th Annual Meeting, Miklós explained how, during the folk revival of the 60s and 70s, the original rural context of traditional music was lost when that music was brought into the city, to a completely different setting. I found this idea quite insightful. This topic, regarding the romanticization of traditional music and how certain ideas are sometimes created around it that have more to do with fantasy than reality, is something I often discuss with Juan Antonio Torres from Vigüela. One day, I’ll delve deeper into this with him and bring it here.

For my part, I had the pleasure of participating in the panel “Branding for Professional Folk,” moderated by Laia Canals (Tempi, Denmark), and with the participation of Ale Carr (Sweden), on the frame of his role for the Nordic Folk Alliance. The picture is by Pablo Camino (Spain is Music), who came to lead a discussion group about musical tourism.

Honestly, it was a fascinating mental exercise for me, reflecting on some issues around country branding, comparing certain characteristics of my own country, Spain, which has a strong and recognizable brand, with its advantages and disadvantages, offering a few insights into its historical roots, and exploring how it contrasts with the concept of Nordic folk in a way that could be useful for them.
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Relocated identities
Directly connected to the topic I discuss further down, the part about Birgit Ellinghaus’ participation in the Annual Meeting is what I want to tell you now. I learned from Eyal El Wahab, leader of the Yemeni Jewish band El Khat (picture by Kfir Mualem, Eyal is the one in the middle), that they have emigrated from Jaffa, the old city next to Tel Aviv, to Berlin. It feels disheartening that such things happen.

In the notes sent by the Glitterbeat record label about their latest album, Mute, (you can listen to it here) these words are included:

“The move was an expression of the nomadic urge that has been a constant in el Wahab’s life, one that flows directly into his work. ‘These songs are about emigrating, leaving someone or somewhere. I don’t think I’ve stayed in any one place for more than a year. For us Arab Jews whose families were forced to leave Yemen, it really began with that big move and our families’ arrival in Israel, a land with a constant muting of the ‘other’.” 

I would also like to share a few more words from Eyal:

“We Arab Jews of Yemeni origin condemn the war in Gaza. The war is a mute, the actions of leaders are a mute, dividing Islam and Judaism or any other religion is a mute. Judging people based on their skin colour, where they were born, or ethnicity is a mute.” “I cannot even share my feelings with my friends and family anymore. People only see themselves instead of the entire picture, that ‘whole’ where we all complete each other and cannot be separated as if we were different parts of a human body.”

I don’t know Eyal very well. We only met two years ago in Tel Aviv. Will we ever meet there again? Will they ever return?

I had the idea, which turned out to be a very good one, to record the mentioned panel, as the speakers I know best, Birgit Ellinghaus (alba Kultur, Germany) and Alan Ibrahim (Music for Identity, originally from Syria and based in Germany), contribute ideas that open paths to deep reflection. I am less familiar with the other participants: alongside them were moderator Jaana-Maria Jukkara (Global Music Centre, Finland) and Mehrnoosh Zolfaghari (kanunist from Iran settled in Finland).

I have interviews with both of them from previous editions:
🔸Here is Birgit’s and she has appeared on several occasions, for instance, before Migrans Music Manifesto, here,
🔸and here is Alan’s.

This time, I have transcribed Birgit’s participation. To fully understand it, I recommend checking out, before or after reading her speech, the Conventions and the charter she mentioned:

🔸UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expression – website 
🔸UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) – website
🔸And the newest tool, which Birgit encouraged us to check and countersign, the Fair Culture Charter – website (available in English, French, Spanish and German)

Birgit Ellinghaus’s speech:

“We spoke a lot about Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH), yesterday and today, mainly in rural peaceful territories: Nordic Countries, Scotland… we saw all these great examples. And today the majority of the European population is living in urban regions of very pluralistic societies due to the migration of many different kinds: we call “recruited skill workers” who came and who are still coming to Europe, we have blue card holders, we have international students, we have displaced people from war zones or, in the future, maybe because of climate change, refugees coming to the Nordic zones, because they can’t survive anymore on the small islands in the Pacific or the Indian Ocean. So, they all have different cultural identities, they have different kind of food, languages, music, instruments, rituals, religions, understanding of the universe and nature. This is the cultural baggage they carry along here to this European territory. 

So, I going to start with some questions about the term “new Europeans”. Are there new Europeans and old Europeans? And who are old Europeans and could we really use this term? Do we really have a European identity? If we think about what Matti Hakamäki* introduced to us yesterday as principles of communities and ICH, would the communities from the rural North identify themselves first as Europeans? Or do they have their local identity and the term European is put as a political on top? And do we want really ask to migrants from non-European territories to assimilate in Europe and to have an European identity? And in this case, what kind of European culture do we ask from them? And do we really want to put the power on others (the migrants) and name them “new Europeans” and ignore and reject by this attitude their own roots in other (non-European) cultures? Or is there a new grown identity by a community of people living in urban pluralistic societies in Europe we could name, now or in the future, European? All these are very dynamic and multifaceted questions. I would just pledge to avoid in this debate the Eurocentric views or post-colonial wording and classification.

And all this is in a broader context which has given us, not only the convention on ICH, but as well the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, which stands for the diversity of individuals and their rights to be recognized equally with their cultural expression and to make their cultural expressions and identity flourishing and developing freely.

This is why we call the UNESCO Convention of Cultural Diversity the “magna carta for contemporary creation”. This is a convention, which has a different position within all the other UNESCO conventions, because only this convention has a binding power for the ratifying states. All states who have signed up with the UNESCO convention for cultural diversity have to implement this convention and all the rules and knowledge and concepts into their society, into our society and in the intergovernmental relationships with other countries. Europe has ratified as an entire network of states and each state within Europe has ratified this convention too. We have to see, that the ICH convention is nice to have, but it has no legal binding power. The UNESCO convention for cultural diversity has this legal binding power. And through this different concept we can say, both conventions are sister conventions, and the ICH convention is carried through the Convention on cultural diversity into a more powerful meaning, because, through the convention of cultural diversity, the ICH convention gets the relevance to be implemented within the concept of cultural diversity.

This is the concept which gives us access to the cultures from migrants of all kinds, which should be included on equal base into our cultural political debate and into our actions. Both conventions are commitments to artistic freedom, for fair working conditions of artists and creatives and other cultural workers, because around each artist you have such activists and many of you are activist as well.

And this diversity convention is a commitment to pay particular attention to vulnerable and marginalized people in all territories. It highlights the systematic inequalities and imbalances to cultural exchange, that continues to exist on local level, on regional, national and on global level. So, this is a tool we have with the cultural diversity convention, which makes us acting in our relationships and though these relationships we are expressing, what we mean with communities.

And I just would like to finish to give you some brand-new information, because last week we all got a new tool to act in this diverse cultural landscape in Europe: it’s the Fair Culture Charter, which has been worked out after the World Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development MONDIACULT in Mexico one and a half year ago by a number of national UNESCO committees from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America. All together it was a really a collective process to draw down and to squeeze some rules, specifically for the cultural sector from these UNESCO Conventions, but as well from some international laws, such as the status of artists, which had been recommended already in 1980, by the UN, by the Human Rights Declaration, by some economic, social and cultural rights laws, which has been approved by the UN and, lately, the Sustainable Development Goals.

This Fair Culture Charter is the complete application of all these diverse tools for the cultural sector and it has been broken down to eight principles, I do not name them all, but some are: access to diverse culture expressions and resources, non-discrimination and gender equality, local development… These are principles of this Charter which gives us now really power to act. And I call to all of you to get in the internet on the on the website www.fair-culture.org and to countersign this Charter and to spread the word. Everybody, individuals and organizations, can sign this Charter and this could be a very powerful tool for us, similar to what we know already since many years from the fair-trade movement. So, we would like to start a fair-culture movement with this, which helps to implement our mission in the field of music.”

🔸#1 for Transglobal World Music Chart in September of 2024 is: Bassekou Kouyate & Amy Sacko’s Djudjon, l’Oiseau de Garana (One World)

🔸The 20 Top Labels for WOMEX is made with the data of the monthly playlist charts that they receive from their partners “World Music Charts Europe and Transglobal World Music Chart who work with more than 100 journalists and broadcasters worldwide enable us to compile this list“. All the details are here.

• Transglobal World Music Hall of Fame

The Transglobal World Music Hall Fame celebrates excellence in the world music field. The Hall of Fame includes three categories: 1) Artists, 2) Professional Excellence; and 3) In Memoriam. Would you like to submit any individual or organization?

The period for proposals for 2024 is open until 31st of October 2024. Submit your proposals through the form at the bottom of this website. Below you see the inductees of 2023. Check the ones also of 2022 and 2021, in the website.