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Hello, how are you?

I hope well. I am. A bit exhausted but well. Three days after Babel Music XP I travelled again. To Venice, where this picture was done on from Friday 5th of April, before the concert by Ali Doğan Gönültaş there. It was the program called Candiani Groove, produced by the association Veneto Jazz.

From Venice we went to Vienna, for a concert in Sargfabrik. The charismatic Kurdish singer Sakina Teyna was guest star in the concert. You can watch here their performance of a song composed by her, Sema. In the description who will learn who was Sema. Don’t miss to read it.

In Vienna we met a bunch of other colleagues, like Sotiris Bekas, the Greek journalist who is member of the Balkan World Music Chart and creator of Folkradio.gr. He made a video interview with Ali. I met Anne Hofstadler too, she is the manager of Sväng, the quartet of harmonicas. Also the enchanting qanunist Sofia Labropoulou, the leader of World Music Festival Bratislava, Jarmila Vlčková, and my colleague the radio producer Vladimír Potančok. And the Kurdish journalist Ferid Demirel. And several people from the association Kulteurasia. You can imagine that I had a great time. I am so thankful to all of them!

The following week we all moved to Valencia (Festival of Sacred Music from the World, by the Palau de la Música de Valéncia) and Olot (Catalonia, for the program of concerts made by Jordi Serrat for the municipality) for more concerts. It has been an amazing time. Their four concerts have been enchanting and moving. Every time I see them, they never cease to surprise me with their charm, the rapport between them, and the overall beauty of the music.

This week I will travel again and this may be interesting for you too. I will go to MUM. What is interesting about this? I will explain it to you below. The following week I will attend Balkan Trafik festival in Brussels, about which I am very excited too. I will bring some reflections about this experience in the newsletter of May.

I hope the contents below will be of your interest. Contact me if you have something to share. By the way, all the contents in this newsletter are not promotional, I mean, not paid. For the moment, but I am open to discuss any offer for advertisements that could be of the interest of the readers. In the meantime, enjoy the read!

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WHAT ABOUT MUM AND SOME REFLECTIONS ABOUT MARKETS AND SHOWCASES

As I said before, this week I will travel again. To the MUM. It will be in Mérida, in the province of Badajoz. By the way, that is the province where my mother was born. The autonomous community is Extremadura. It is a historically poor region despite the diversity and wild beauty of its landscapes and being the land of Iberian pork and other delicacies. Additionally, there are impressive tourist attractions, with cities like Cáceres, one of the most beautiful in the world, a World Heritage Site according to UNESCO. The archaeological assets of Mérida are also a World Heritage Site. The MUM will take place in this city. This picture shows the temple of Diana, that will host some of the showcases. It is by user Joloher in Wikimedia Commons.

Despite this, the region has complications, such as a train service that is a recurrent source of complaint due to its slowness and breakdowns. It lacks a coastline and relevant centers for commercial routes. In short, there are a series of geographical, historical, and political reasons over centuries that have made the region of Extremadura differentially poorer than others.

The thing is, since I was little, I saw how people didn’t starve, they even had some money to drink at the bar, but many people with a bit of ambition in life left the region. My mother did it at the age of 14, to be a servant in Madrid… This is not the case for some of the people behind the MUM, who continue to dedicate their lives to promoting cultural projects in their land. Why am I explaining all this? Well, because I think it’s especially important that these Professional Music Days are already in their 8th edition and have progressively grown. And I think about it in the context of the number of similar events that I hear about. Frequently, a new professional event with showcases emerges. Some are useful for artists, others are not.

As I announced earlier, at the end of March I was at Babel Music XP. There was a particularly significant moment regarding this. In a panel on the topic of professional markets (this panel), a colleague of mine explained that she had a showcase at Tallinn Music Week in 2022 and had a disappointing experience where the delegation was still at an official dinner party hosted by the Week and were therefore not able to attend the showcase. One of the festival programmers who was invited by my colleague texted to apologize for not making it and saying that everyone was still held up at the delegate dinne… My colleague considers it’s a clear violation of the whole showcase concept and she wonders why they should pay for bringing their artists to events that benefit from their content that they even finance. Apart from that, and in general terms, not about Tallinn, she told me later that production and bad sound quality are also something to mention during showcase festivals. They can cause damage. I agree. If the band sounds badly, you have few chances to get any return for your investment.

In other occasions, the showcase can be really fruitful. For instance, my experience at the Fira Mediterrània de Manresa of 2023 with the show case by Ali Doğan Gönültaş was totally a different story and we have already 3 concerts directly from our participation. 

So, what do I think of MUM? When does a showcase make sense?

On these particular issues, production and sound, the two previous times I was there, they were good, and the program was designed so that the activities did not interfere with each other. At MUM, there will be conferences, showcases, project pitching (I will talk about my mentoring offer for artists and novice managers), and, of course, informal networking moments.

And in general, for a region like Extremadura, I think it makes a lot of sense to have such an event. I wish we had this in Castilla-La Mancha. It’s something I’ve previously discussed with one of the people who will be attending MUM this year, David Sierra, from Sierra Contratación Artística. I think it’s difficult to develop a good crop of musicians if the opportunities to show their work are limited. So having an event like this, once a year, where artists present themselves to professionals and have access to them and can talk and ask questions, is in this case a great incentive for artistic creation in the region.

This year, at MUM, apart from me and David Sierra, who are potential collaborators for the performing artists, professionals such as Davide Mastropaolo from Italian World Beat/Napoli World, a couple of very interesting entities from Portugal, a programmer from a festival in Canada, and a representative from the Cervantes Institute in Paris will attend, as well as a bunch of professionals from the region and Spain in general. For now, the activities take place in Spanish, and I think there is no simultaneous translation. It will be one of the issues they will have to consider in the future if the event continues, which I hope it does.

AND NOW THE FLOOR IS FOR:
TURNA EZGI TOROS, agent from Turkey

I know Turna for some years. We met probably at WOMEX. She was working for Charmenko, the company lead by the multifaceted personality Nick Hobbs. Some time after I learnt Turna was working for the municipality of Istanbul, that sounds thrilling. And a few months ago we got in touch more deeply and had the chance to chat and interchange ideas. She is now settled as an independent agent and collaborates with a music organization in Antalya, where she is currently living. It’s normal for me to feel sympathy for a woman like her, more or less like me, because even though I work with the Mapamundi Música brand, I’m almost always alone in these management and booking tasks. So, I love bringing her here. Apart from that, I think Turna’s experience is very interesting, both because of the diversity of professional environments in which she has developed her career and because of the reflections she makes and the fact of being in a country where they face some difficulties in multiple areas. I hope to stay informed about her activities, and you can follow her too, for example, on her Instagram.

While you read, you can listen to this beautiful instrumental piece by the group Seyyah, one that Turna collaborates with.

Mapamundi Música: Can you define the focus of your activity? I mean, can you explain which kind of music you work with or what makes your interest in any specific artistic project arise, what makes you want to work with it?

Turna Ezgi Toros: So far in my professional life, I have worked in various roles such as promoter, event programmer, artist agent and booker. That’s why I’ve had chance to work with the artists from almost all musical genres. My promoter and programmer work has generally been based on popular music genres, like pop and rock.

As an agent, I have mainly worked and continue to focus on jazz and world music (I use the general term “world music”, but meaning folk/traditional/rooted music generally. I am a bit anxious about the terminology in general 😊). It is difficult to define the projects that interest me because I cannot limit them to genres. This is an actually difficult question, although that seems easy 😊.

In general, I can say that I like well-thought and well-designed projects. This could be a songwriter or a project interpreting anonymous folk repertoire, it does not matter. The crucial point is the musician’s dedication to truly understanding and engaging with their work. I try to avoid formulaic, non-original work.

MM: When I knew about you, you were working for Charmenko, which has a very eclectic profile. What was your role there? Can you select one main learning you got for working in this context, a private company of booking and production? 

TET: Charmenko was an important school of my profession for me. I learned a lot from our founder Nick and my colleagues. I worked there in different roles such as promoter, artist agent and booker.

I had responsibilities that required me to juggle very different tasks at the same time: I was planning an electronica dance music festival in Istanbul and also working for a showcase with a Belarusian jazz trio at the same time.  In fact, the most important thing I learned was to develop a versatile perspective. I had to wear different hats in there and it was a great training.

I experienced how both a promoter and an agent can think and work at an event. This made it much easier for me in my subsequent jobs, when planning events and communicating with the artists/agents. Because it made it easier for me to predict who would need what and what problems I might encounter.

MM: Before Charmenko, had you been working related to music?

TET: Charmenko is my first professional music business experience. Before, I was always in close contact with music and concerts. Throughout university, I took part in the Music Club and organized festivals and concerts. I had the opportunity to meet and work with many respected musicians from Turkey for the first time there, such as Büyük Ev Ablukada, Pinhani, Ceylan Ertem, Gevende and Cenk Erdoğan. That club was one of the most important experiences that prepared me for this professional job.

Although I studied engineering at university, I made a serious change in field of profession with the help of such club concerts, festivals and the music courses I took at the university.

I started my master’s degree in Ethnomusicology after graduation. It was a period when the printed music magazines were shut down, and digital media was being popular. And I thought that digital music magazines generally write about similar and mainstream or alternative genres. I felt there was a lack of a medium that included cross-genre content. With my enthusiasm for music magazine publishing, which has been one of my biggest dreams since forever, I started writing a music blog called Müzikli Mevzular.

With the contributions of my other musicophile friends, we published articles about world music related genres. We prepared interview series and podcasts. I am still working on making this medium a more comprehensive and qualified music platform to cover various contents and genres.

MM: After Charmenko you have been working for the municipality of Istanbul in culture issues. What were you doing there? Can you select one main learning you got for working in this context, a public institution founded by public money? 

TET: I worked at a subsidiary company called Kültür AŞ that is programming and managing most of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality’s cultural affairs. My role was as a senior specialist in event programming and content. We held events in various disciplines; not only limited to music, but also in literature, cinema and visual arts etc. The events happned in important places in Istanbul; as squares, museums, bookstores, piers and other public spaces of Istanbul. I worked for the concerts that reached hundreds of thousands of people from different age groups and social classes, especially in events like national day celebrations.

The most important difference between working in the public institution and other jobs is your target audience is “everyone” when you are the municipality. So you need to provide content that appealing to everyone. You are responsible for holding a rap concert for Generation Z as well as planning a concert at the Nursing Home for the Elderly or providing a stage for the emerging young bands. Doing all this in a balanced way, matching the right content at the right time and place  – it was a very challenging task in a such huge and dynamic city like Istanbul.

Here I experienced that an event organizer must be able to analyze the audience, location, the needs and design of an event very well.  Sometimes even when we do not have a stage or content, we needede to “invent” the event.
I really experienced that the adaptation to the conditions in a minute is the essence of the eveything, and you need to manage sudden and major crises very calm and quickly.
Yes, this is nature of the music and events industry, but doing this as a public institution in a metropolis like Istanbul was much more intense than a regular job I believe.

MM: Before all this, how did your interest in music appear? Do you have any relationship with music since you were a child, is it a family thing or did it develop later?

TET: We don’t have a professional musician or music professional in our family; although I grown up with the instruments at home. But rather, I realized my own interest in music and educated myself. In the 90s, when I was a child, I had followed the music programs and video clips on TV and tried to learn the credits for the lyrics, music and production. Likewise, I would go and buy casettes and read their liner notes until I remembered all the information on them. I used to follow music articles in newspapers and magazines. I still have a decent archive of cassettes and CDs and still enjoy reading the liner notes.
I still use the information I learnt about 90s and 2000s Turkish pop and rock music when I was a kid 😊 I sometimes make pop quiz to my friends or in my blog.

MM: A few months ago you left the municipality, moved to Antalya and started to develop your own entrepreneurship. Please, explain what you do in this part of your activity and how you can be useful for the foreign professionals that will read this. 

TET: It is not an easy thing to be in the music industry in Turkey, live outside Istanbul and continue this business. Turkey is a big country, but unfortunately Istanbul is the center of many industries, sometimes the “only” center of everything. In today’s world, it’s possible to handle most tasks digitally, travel is easy, yes, but still, not being at the center can sometimes cause you to miss out on certain things.

I thought a lot before making this decision, weighed the pros and cons before deciding. I tried to plan both the work I could do remotely and the things I could do in this city. Everything is going well now luckily. I also travel to Istanbul from time to time. Being away from the chaos and noise in Istanbul allowed me to think calmer in many ways to be honest.

About Antalya, it is one of the largest metropolitan cities in the country. It is a multinational city that hosted more than 15 million tourists in 2023. The entertainment industry is very well developed in here, although it is generally dominated by mainstream concerts and tourism-oriented content. Concerts continue all year long, not limited to summer “tourism” season.
Due to tourism and hotels, there are also plenty of festivals, concerts and events hosted by hotels. In fact, some events that cannot be done in Istanbul are carried out here. For example, like a Jennifer Lopez concert 😊

However, as someone who has lived and worked in Istanbul for years, this is also a new city and market for me. I’m still trying to get to know the city and understand its dynamics. As far as I could see for now, much more comprehensive festivals and events can be held in this city. I think it is a city suitable for major international events with the right content, planning and promotion. It has a big potential.

MM: For the work you do, which are the main skills that are needed? 

TET: Since I work most intensively as a programmer and agent, I can say that being able to make right planning is the most important issue in these works. There are many dynamics in this “right” process such as timing, venue choice, reaching the target audience etc, thus I think the most important feature is “analytical thinking”. Frankly, I see the benefits of my engineering education in this regard, I try to approach everything like a case study.

I also think that polite and open communication is essential. It is very valuable to be able to accurately explain what you want or what you can do to both the artists and the venues/festivals you work with, and to communicate politely while doing this.

Finally, multitasking is the backbone of this business. An agent should know not only booking, but also technical production, or a programmer should also understand social media management, even if at a minimum level.

MM: You are also collaborating with other people or companies and I think you have some plans for the near future. What can you tell us about this? 

TET: I work with a music company in Antalya. I’m responsible for following the program and logistical coordination of the festivals and concerts they organize. Their experience in this industry and in the city serves as a guiding light for me.

I am also trying to develop Müzikli Mevzular with a group of friends. Here, we feature content such as interviews, reviews, album critiques, playlists, etc. Additionally, we will have various podcast broadcasts. We are planning to evolve into a platform that designs its own events in the future. We have taken our first steps towards establishing a comprehensive platform for both publishing asl well as event and artist management and marketing.
Furthermore, I continue to collaborate with the musicians for whom I act as a booking agent. I strive to develop these relationships for long-term success and to enhance their careers.

MM: You are the second person from Turkey that is the protagonist of this interview (the previous one is Asya Arslantaş, who I think you know). And you have some international experience so you can compare the situation of the world/traditional/rooted music in Turkey and in other countries. I see Turkey is so big, but I feel the entry barriers are strong. Which do you think are the main obstacles that foreign artists have when planning to develop anything in Turkey?

TET: This may be a bold statement, but Turkey is perhaps one of the countries with the widest musical and cultural diversity in the world. It has a great variety of musical repertoire, languages and instruments. Many different musicians, like Erdal Erzincan, Aynur Doğan, Baba Zula, Gaye Su Akyol, Derya Türkan are known all over the world with the music coming from these “roots”.

In addition to these well-known names, there are local music masters and young musicians/band performing different traditions with their own interpretations in many parts of the country. I think in Turkey very good quality of folk music is produced and performed.

But there is a lack of sufficient number and quality of stages in the world/traditional/rooted music area. At its most basic level, we do not even have a well-established and comprehensive festival with the concept of world/traditional/rooted music. Although these genres sometimes find place in jazz festivals or festivals with a wider program, I think the lack of even a thematic festival is a very unfortunate deficiency in this country.

In fact, although folk music is a widely listened-to genre, I think it is not considered popular and “cool” enough. In recent years, musicians and bands in genres such as rock and electronic have begun to be inspired heavily by the “roots”. But we see that the musicians and groups that perform this “root” music in a more traditional sense are still not known and popular enough.

Considering the world/traditional/rooted music artists from outside Turkey, I can say that this is a bit of a difficult market for names that are not known in Turkey. Unfortunately, it is a scene followed by a limited audience and where stages can be found in limited areas. But this is still a promising area and I haven’t lost hope yet.

MM: Do you have any recommendations or advice for people like me, or for artists, when trying to collaborate with Turkish professionals?

TET: I think the most effective way to follow similar artist to your music or your roster or your music taste and try to connect directly with them or their managers/agents. I think similar people can understand each other better and help each other better.

Unfortunately, we do not have any music expo or culture office, so we do not have a common place where you could easily reach to venues, programmers, agents and managers.

Some of music professionals from Turkey are joining to the conference and network events like Womex, Eurosonic, Fira Mediterrania de Manresa, Babel XP, etc. every year. It will be nice to meet whoever is here, because in our scene, we mostly know each other and could help to introduce you to other people.

And you are always welcome to visit Turkey, venues and festivals in here and be our guests of course 😊

MM: And, last, please, feel free to add anything else you want.

TET: Thank you very much for inviting me to this interview. I sincerely think that what you do with Mapamundi is a very valuable for both musicians and industry professionals. I am honored to be a guest on this platform, which I have been reading for a long time.

And of course to be the guest of you dear Araceli, I always follow your work with inspiration.

Thanks to you, dear Turna!

THE EUROPEAN FOLK NETWORK ANNOUNCES THE DATES AND PLACE FOR THE ANNUAL CONFERENCE

If you are already a subscriber of the news of the European Folk Network, you already know. If you are not, you can subscribe, here. If you haven’t received the news yet, I tell you that the annual meeting this year will be in Kaustinen, Finland, on 24 and 25 of September.

According to the EFN, “Kaustinen – deep in the heart of Western Finland – is a very special centre for the living traditions of intangible cultural heritage and folk arts and home to our hosts and EFN members the Finnish Folk Music Institute and the renowned Kaustinen Folk Festival.”

BRIEF NEWS FROM THE MEDIA, CHARTS AND SISTER PROJECTS 

• #1 for Transglobal World Music Chart in April of 2024 is: Lina’s Fado Camões (Galileo Music Communication)

• Mundofonías: the three favourites of the month are Rundsnurrknurr by Hulbækmo & Jacobsen Familieorkester, Our sorrow by Maliheh Moradi & Ehsan Matoori and Cuero, by Guada.

Do you have a call of interest for our community that you want to share? Let me know asap

OPEN CALLS 

This section is open for news. It is free of charge. You can let me know if you have any open call of relevance to the community

The finals of the 17th edition will be held in Cagliari, Sardinia in autumn 2024.
Applications must be sent through the format found online on the website. Contact for questions: fondazione.andreaparodi@gmail.com.Some more useful data: “The prize for the Winner includes concerts and performances in some of the partner music festivals in their 2025 editions, such as European Jazz Expo (Sardinia), Folkest (Friuli), not forgetting the very same Premio Andrea Parodi 2025.In addition to the aforementioned, the winners will be entitled to a € 2,500 scholarship. Whereas the winner of the Critics’ Awards will have a professional videoclip of their competition song produced, offered by the Andrea Parodi Foundation.”Check the website for more information.

MEET ME AT

If you happen to attend these events, drop me a line. If you are not, they can be interesting for you too in any case.

• 18-20 April: Mérida, Spain. MUM (Professional Days of Music in Extremadura)
• 25th-27th April. Brussels. Festival Balkan Traffik
• 17 May, Deventer (Bergkerk), Netherlands, 18th May, Nijmegen (Music Meeting), Netherlands, 20th May, Hannover (KunstFestSpiele), Germany: concerts by Ali Doğan Gönültaş
• 16th June: Prague, Festival Respect. Concert by Ali Doğan Gönültaş.

Sotiris Bekas made this wonderful picture of Ali Doğan Gönültaş on the occasion of the meeting for an interview for Folkradio.org.