Dec. 22. 15 years of MM, interview with Daryana Antipova, after Napoli World, news, calls and + #54

Dec. 22. 15 years of MM, interview with Daryana Antipova, after Napoli World, news, calls and + #54

Summary 👇 

  • Editorial
  • Interview with Daryana Antipova, from Russian World Music Chart
  • After Napoli World
  • Brief news from the media, charts and sister projects
  • Open calls and more news from professional events 💼
  • Meet me at ✈️
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Hello, how are you? 

I am very well. This day has started with two great news that I will be able to share in a near future. And December is the month of the birthday of Mapamundi Música: it was on 27th of December of 2007 that the first concert under the brand took place. It was the trio Cherno More, with the Sudanese Wafir Shaikheldin and the Bulgarian brothers Nasco (accordeonist) and Ivo Hristov (clarinetist). There is no video of that concert, yes of another not much later, that is available here.

Throughout these 15 years I have continued to collaborate with Wafir in various line-ups. He is still in Madrid. The Hristovs, however, returned to their country several years ago. We lost them to Spain, a country that is not exactly known for treating non-commercial artists well. But they returned to their country and that seemed to me at the time, and still seems to me, very good.

However, our protagonist today has recently had to leave her country. You may know her. Daryana Antipova is one of the people who has been most active in recent years in promoting the world and traditional musics of Russia and not only Russia. She left her home a few weeks ago. I am very grateful and honoured to share her reflections. I have also learned that the leader of Antonovka Records, Anton Apostol, has also left Russia. This is the label that released the album by Damir Guagov and Asker Sapiev, the Adyghe guys I talked about in the previous issue, which you have here. Since then I have come across more productions from Antonovka Records and I am absolutely fascinated. I invite you to listen to Ms. Tsitsino Dingashvili on the label’s Bandcamp. She is mind-blowing. She is also an accordionist – what a coincidence! 🙂

We are approaching the end of a year full of sorrow. It is hard to believe that Ukraine has not seen the return of peace. The news are horrifying in other places too, even where there is never usually a popular outcry, and I wonder if it will get anywhere. I was told by Gorka Hermosa, the world-famous Basque accordionist, that the competition named under his name and organised by the Confédération Mondiale de l’Accordéon”and to be held at the Tianjin Conservatory in Tianjin, China, is being held online “due to the fierce protests in China over the “zero covid” policy“. Gorka asked us to disseminate this news. And I can say no to very few things that an accordionist asks me to do.

I started out very happy to write and seem to be drifting towards darker feelings, but I will struggle to regain my joy. As a result of the interview with Will Villa in the last edition, which you have here, I have put myself in his hands, I have decided to open to his vision and go out of what I already know, to make between the two of us the website for Ali Doğan Gönültaş, which is almost ready and is here (you can already read his bio, watch several videos and some other things). This fateful year in some ways has brought Ali into my life, this extraordinary singer and extremely talented musician, and we have started a close collaboration. The contact with him and his culture has given me a broader vision of the world, an important piece of the puzzle of humanity, which I knew existed but had not yet fitted in.

This year, three of my collaborating artists, three pieces of my heart, have recorded for the Library of Congress: Vigüela, Janusz Prusinowski Kompania and Rodopi Ensemble, Alkis Zopoglou’s group. This year we premiered mujereson at the Fira Mediterrània in Manresa and a show of sacred art in the popular sphere, with Vigüela, at the Festival Internacional de Arte Sacro de la Comunidad de Madrid.

Those are achievements that give meaning to so much effort. But now it is time to give the floor to other people. I reiterate my thanks to Daryana. Her answers are very strong.

One last thing from me: during the time I was writing this, I spoke with Nasco Hristov on the Whatsapp. He and his brother are still working on music. They live in their birthland, Smolien, Bulgaria, and they are doing well. They are two incredible musicians. It was wonderful to hear Nasco’s voice after so many years. He told me something they used to tell me when they were here: that I can count on them whenever I want. It seems like it hasn’t been 15 years. 😀

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: DARYANA ANTIPOVA

It is not easy to define Daryana in the context of a particular organisation or initiative because she has several lines of activity. She is a regular in the global world music community. She is the initiator of the Russian World Music Chart, but she is also a musician, she is also a panellist of the Transglobal World Music Chart, she has her background in media… so I will just mention her by name and let her explain her professional framework. Like many other Russian cultural figures who have been able to leave, she is now out of the country and exposed to great uncertainty. I find her statements courageous and I am very grateful to her.

Mapamundi Música: Your activities in music are both as an artist and as a disseminator. What was first?

Daryana Antipova: At first I was invited to sign in Vedan Kolod back in 2005. I planned to help with the first album, max the first promo and then to go study abroad, but the British Embassy didn’t approve my application and I became more and more involved in folk music. It wasn’t my plan to be involved in music showbusiness, especially folk music. Now it’s been almost 18 years since I have been into folk music daily and nightly.
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MM: And why did you start on music? Does it come from your family?
DA: My grandparents from both sides are great singers and keepers of old musical traditions. We started singing with my sister Tatiana when we were 3 and 1 years old. Just to make our grandparents happy while meeting all together. Before Tatiana met her future husband Valerii Naryshkin who was making ancient instruments from around the globe, we were mostly singing and accompanied by piano. Sounded very… “Icelandic”.
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MM: What have you done related to music journalism?
DA: Since very early years we participated as part of different traditional folk ensembles in many festivals and when I was 14 we met the first tuvan throat singer of our age at one of the festivals and I was so excited that I took a pen and made the first interview for the newspaper. Since that festival I realized that there is music journalism as well. So I wrote quite a lot for our “teenage” input to the biggest Siberia newspaper (it was more than 1 million copies every week) about local folk music, then when I moved to Moscow I became a freelance journalist. First to the small cultural magazine and some folk radio with my own podcast then to The Moscow News newspaper where I later worked as a production manager and writer in 2013. It was shut down by our government in the beginning of 2014 as a liberal and opposition media. So after 2014 I became a freelance journalist again with the podcast Scythian Horn and rare articles for foreign media. The last few years I tried to review almost all Russian new releases and to make my own statistics and talked a lot to Russian folk music lovers about groups I saw at Womex or received as part of TWMC.
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MM: You are the initiator of the Russian World Music Chart (RWMC). Could you state the objectives you had when you started it?
DA: I wanted to share with the world how interesting and diverse folk music from Russia is. To build a bridge between our musicians especially from far away republics and global media.
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MM: So far, which have been the main achievements of the RWMC?
DA: We just started at the end of 2021. Received our first results in December 2021. January 2022 was a great month when I talked quite a lot for foreign media about our top-10, goals, albums, we had a lot of reviews from journalists, I was happy I could highlight some unique names and projects like, you know, Antonovka records, Tatiana Molchanova, etc. February 2022 has changed everything.
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MM: In the current situation, we all know many reactions from the world of culture towards Russian artists. What do you think about the boycott?
DA: From personal feelings I understand why it happened. From practical point of view I would say it is super naive, all this things like “bands performing abroad will be paying taxes in Russia and support this way the army”, “to ban all Russian artists but will bring some bands that don’t look very Russian or were have paid a lot before the war, but to write their republic name instead of “Russia” like maybe our audience thinks it is some unknown small country somewhere in Asia”. I have followed 99 % of folk musicians from Russia on social networks for years and I would say that some artists who happily performed abroad this year and they “do not” look or sound very Russian – they support Putin and perform to raise money for the army. And those who are fully banned are part of local opposition who feel like they stuck on the plane taken by terrorists. Also all these bans help Russian propaganda to show that Europe is their enemy because it hates Russian citizens just because of the passport. I personally am not sure what to do with RWMC next year. I have already checked artists’ media pages and if I see they support the war against Ukraine I decline their applications so it is not already all about music and culture.
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“I personally am not sure what to do with RWMC next year. I have already checked artists’ media pages and if I see they support the war against Ukraine I decline their applications so it is not already all about music and culture.”
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MM: And when we talked about doing this interview you mentioned that you wanted to talk about the Russian artists leaving Russia. You are now out of the country and settled in Serbia (I have to tell you that I find it heartbreaking that you have had to leave your country, your family, your home…), where I think there are many other cultural workers from Russia nowadays. What do you want to explain about this? What are your plans now that you are in Serbia?

DA: Yes, there are quite a lot of cultural intelligences who left Russia and now live where they are allowed to stay longer than 1 month. We have a plan for Serbia but not sure if it is workable, this is all so expensive and we simply do not have so much money especially after the pandemic, my pregnancy and now war year. Most of the folk musicians can’t leave Russia even for a few months, they are poor and not even information technologists.

About relocators – I see how 1 or 2 leading musicians leave Russia (some literally run so as not to get into the prison after February protests). Sometimes it is the only folk group in a small republic that keeps traditions alive. Now it is gone. Maybe forever. The thing is that both musicians who left Russia and who stayed are broken. Mentally. Yes, we didn’t run under mortar fire with our kids naked in the middle of the winter night, but we are afraid to talk. Our lives have failed – it’s a complete failure. We have worked all our lives to break down stereotypes about our beloved country. As one Russian musician said recently, “we wanted the world not to be afraid of us, not to consider us as aggressive cretins.” We liked to communicate with people of other cultures. Our government just broke us and destroyed our lives as well. We are afraid for our relatives and how our words can affect them.

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“Our lives have failed – it’s a complete failure. We have worked all our lives to break down stereotypes about our beloved country.”
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I was raised with the story of my great grandfather who was killed in a repression of Stalin. He had business before the revolution. One day, when he was fixing shoes for a neighbor, he said that before the revolution and regime change, he had money to feed his family, because people had money to repair shoes and make new ones. And now he had almost no orders. The next day, he was taken away from home and shot because a neighbor reported that he was dissatisfied with the new government. In October I was pushed to talk to some girls from the city we lived in, and one asked me about my musical career these days, because “we remember how you traveled to different conferences like every month”. I said: there are no foreign conferences for me anymore. They asked: so you are now very dissatisfied with the Russian political system now? 

THANK YOU, DARYANA! 🙏

Daryana’s portrait credit’s is Rai Sunny.

You can get in touch with Daryana through her Instagram. 

 

AFTER NAPOLI WORLD

In the previous edition I talked with Davide Mastropaolo about Italian World Beat and about Napoli World, the second showcase and conference organiced by them, after the edition in Pistoia in 2021.

From Wednesday 7th to Saturday 10th we attended 19 showcases (the complete program is here) and two panels. I enjoyed specially the showcase by Alessio Arena, who performed in a trio, with a Portuguese guitar player and a cellist, and him singing and playing the guitar. And in a totally different style, Ars Nova Napoli.

Another of the highlights was this kind of spontaneous performance at the door of the theatre. Indeed they were some of the musicians that would play that night and it was a very nice and unexpected moment of popular music and dance in the street.

One of them was by Gigi di Luca, director of the festival Ethnos, who gave a very meaningful lecture about the vision of the festival, which goes far beyond generating entertainment or aesthetic enjoyment. He explained some situations in which the festival has responded to complicated events that have taken place in and around the Naples community. He explained for example the two occasions when Miriam Makeba performed at the festival, in a decision specifically against racism and the camorra, and that the second time, she ended the concert early because she felt unwell and shortly afterwards died in Castel Volturno, a town 30 minutes from Naples. Gigi explained how 10 years later, at the tribute concert to Nelson Mandela and Miriam Makeba, a dove was present the whole time on stage, suggesting that the soul of the South African artist was accompanying them on this occasion.

The whole programme took place as planned by the production team and I hope it will give them a lot back. If nothing unforeseen happens, the next year, Napoli World will take place again.

In addition to the concert programme, the city is undoubtedly also picturesque and the planning allowed for a few moments of sightseeing. I invite you to take a look at my four photo collections: first, second, third, forth.

And here we are, almost all the international delegates (some left earlier that day) with Fabio Scopino and Davide Mastropaolo, the main forces behind Italian World Beat:

I would like to close by just congratulating them.

BRIEF NEWS FROM THE MEDIA, CHARTS AND SISTER PROJECTS 

ARTISTS
The Artists category honors solo and ensemble living artists who have achieved lifelong artistic and technical quality or historical significance in the field of world music.

  • Salif Keita
  • Debashish Bhattacharya
  • Danyèl Waro
  • Oumou Sangare
  • Milton Nascimento

INDUSTRY AND MEDIA EXCELLENCE
Industry and Media Excellence celebrates influential music industry and media individuals and organizations who have provided increased visibility and recognition to world music and its multiple subgenres.

  • Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM) (& director Dr. Ahmad Sarmast)
  • Ian Anderson
  • Ben Mandelson

IN MEMORIAM
In Memoriam includes posthumous inductions that honor historically inventive and influential artists or industry professionals who passed away in previous years or decades.

  • Paco de Lucía
  • Djivan Gasparyan
  • Mariem Hassan
  • Fela Kuti
  • Miriam Makeba

All the credits of the pictures are on the website.

  • The World Music Charts Europe (WMCE) has released their chart of the year 2022, with 854 nominated releases. You can check the list of the first 200 here. Throisma, by Antonis Antoniou, released by Ajabu!, is on the #1. Thank you for the great work, Milan Tesař as coordinator of WMCE and all the panelists of WMCE!

Congratulations, Antonis Antoniou and Pether Lindgren from Ajabu!

  • The results of the Russian World Music Chart, lead, as aforementioned, by Daryana Antipova, for 2022 are:
    1. New Asia — Chorchok — CPL-music / Dobranoch — Zay Frelekh! — CPL-music
    2. V. A. — Folk and Great Tunes from Siberia and Far East — CPL-music
    3. Art project VILY — Krapiva — Zion Music
    4. Yggdrasil & Vera Kondratieva — Timint areh — Tutl records
    5. ZOR — Buu Ai — Baikal music label
    6. Unknown Composer — Aurora Borealis — Navigator Records
    7. Oduchu — Road to Home — Self-released
    8. hodíla ízba — Rites — Self-released
    9. Damir Guagov & Asker Sapiev — Adyge Oredyzhkher: Adyg / Circassian Music — Antonovka records
    10. Choduraa Tumat — Byzaanchy — Pan records

 

OPEN CALLS AND PROFESSIONAL EVENTS

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

  • Fira Mediterrània de Manresa, open call for showcases. NEW IN THE NEWSLETTER. It will take place from 5 to 8 of October in Manresa, Catalonia. The call for artistic proposals is open here until 19th of January at 24h. The participation rules are available here. If you are thinking of submitting a proposal, it is very important that you read this page because it gives a very good orientation of what the Fira’s areas of interest are. Also, bear in mind that they do not only programme music, but also performing arts and popular culture and associationism proposals. The Fira will be 26 years old in 2023 and has a well-developed vision and objectives, so it is important to understand this to assess whether your proposal can fit in.
  • Babel Music XP has open the registration of stands and the accreditations. NEW IN THE NEWSLETTER.  The long-awaited fair in Marseille is finally approaching. “From the 23 – 25 March 2023, BABEL MUSIC XP will make Marseille the economic and cultural epicentre of the music industry. With its professional trade fair at the Friche La Belle de Mai and world music festival open to the general public at the Dock des Suds, BABEL MUSIC XP is firmly at the heart of the Mediterranean hub on the world music map.”  For now and until February 01st, the small stand (3m2) costs 500€ and includes 2 accreditations, 1 table, 2 chairs, light and electricity, wifi, trashcan. The standard unit (6m2) costs 670. The price will be increased on February 2nd. The accreditation for a person costs 129 euros and I don’t see any deadline or date for an increase of cost. Check the official information on their website.
  • For artists settled in the USA.   Applications are open for the 2022-23 cycle of the Performing Arts Discovery (PAD) Showcase program — an international virtual showcase opportunity for U.S.-based performing artists who are ready to tour internationally. “Applications are open to music, dance, and theater artists/ensembles with a demonstrated capacity to tour internationally. 25 artists/ensembles will be selected for this year’s cohort by a diverse panel of peers from across the country“Applications will close on January 6, 2023 at 11:59pm PT. Learn more and apply, here.
  • »FolkHerbst« (Folk Music Autumn), open call. FolkHerbst “is a series of folk music events that culminate in handing out the only European Folk Music Award of Germany, the »Eiserner Eversteiner (the Iron Eversteiner)«. The promoter Malzhaus e.V. bestows this award upon folk musicians living in Europe as he/she has for the past 30 years. He/she will do it again next year at the 31th FolkHerbst. We anticipate the best, most accomplished and inspired musicians competing for this prestigious award.” “Musician/ artist must be a European resident. The performance/ music must be derivative of or influenced by folk music. This includes both the broadest interpretation and most specific, as a traditional folk music“. It is open until 01th March 2023. I have received the complete information with the procedure and conditions from Christian Dressel (kultur(at)malzhaus.de) and I don’t see them on the website so I suggest you to ask him. Their website is this.

MEET ME AT

Will we meet? Drop me a line!

  • Brussels, 17th January. For a board meeting of the European Folk Network, the day before I will be in Brussels and I am making plans and open to professional meetings of interest.
  • And in March 2023, Babel Music XP, of which I have talked several times in previous editions.

WHO WE ARE AND SISTER PROJECTS 

Mapamundi Música is an agency of management and booking. Learn more here. Check our proposals at our website.

We also offer you our Mundofonías radio show, probably the leader about world music in Spanish language (on 50 stations in 18 countries). We produce the Transglobal World Music Chart with our partner Ángel Romero from WorldMusicCentral.com.

Feel free to request info if you wish. For further information about us, get in touch by email, telephone (+34 676 30 28 82), our website or at our Facebook.