Mini-interview with Yu Su-Ying from World Music Festival @Taiwan, updated calls and +
Are you and all your people OK? The news from Spain have been scary during the last weeks… In terms of health, we are all well. My father was hospitalized two days, during the, so far, most critical period of the pandemic, with the hospitals to the maximum of their capacity. The staff of the hospital of our city, Alcorcón, managed to enable a place for him in a waiting room and they treated him warmly. He’s now recovered and the situation in Spain seems to be getting better. We’ve been in confinement for more than 5 weeks. It’s been strictly observed all over the country.
In the meantime, the Spring doesn’t seem to be willing to arrive. The cloudy and rainy weather is been common, increasing the sense of gloom. Nevertheless, I’ve transplanted my avocado tree to a bigger pot in the terrace, so at least I’ll see something growing…
With the hope that this situation will end and we’ll be able to gather around a stage again, I share one more interview with a festival director. Sharing the insights of Yu Su-Ying, artistic director of the World Music Festival @Taiwan, excites me a lot. Since the March’s edition many disheartening news have turned out. Cancelations of Colours of Ostrava, TFF Rudolstadt, La Mar de Músicas, FMM Sines, Rainforest WMF, 5 Continents, Roskilde… The work of so many colleagues and professionals vanished… Meanwhile, the expressions of solidarity are showing up all over the world and some institutions are announcing initiatives to support the people and, specifically, the people in the arts. I invite you to share any useful information in the Facebook public group Transglobal World Music Community, in this announcement. Many professionals are already part of the group and we are collecting useful infos there. Feel free to join.
Remember that you can send any suggestion of content for the next editions. And if you like this, share it and let your friends know. And once more here you have our playlist to accompany the reading –>
Thanks for your attention.
Araceli Tzigane | info@mundimapa.com | +34 676 30 28 82
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Summary:
· Mini interview with a festival manager: Yu Su-Ying from World Music Festival @Taiwan
· Open calls, deadlines updated
· Do you want more?
This newsletter is open to sponsorship. Feel free to ask for details.
**** Do you have a world music festival and you want to be included in our mini interviews? Contact us. ****
CURRENT AND FUTURE CHALLENGES FOR FESTIVALS
The festival defines itself in its website as the most visually appealing music festival of 2019 rhapsody for the eyes and ears. I believe it, as they are kind of pioneers in Taiwan, in the dissemination of live world music. I am really pleased to share their insights with you. It was born in 2016 and this 2020 it will celebrate its 5th edition. It will be in Taipei, in October, the week before Womex. Already in the first edition it included artists from USA, Portugal, India, Japan, China and Taiwan. You can check the program of the last edition, here. The activities, apart of concerts are also lectures, workshops and tents with handicrafts
This interview is with Ms. Yu Su-Ying, the artistic director (find her CV here). It is interesting also to learn about the beginning of the initiative in words of the founder, Mr. Ken Yang, here. This interview has been possible also thanks to Ms. Peiti Huang.
MM – What do you search in an artist when you create the programme?
YS: Usually, we invite those artists whom full of stage creative and attractive, we especially prefer the music based on traditional music culture but fusion contemporary or pop materials, such as powerful ethnic voice or instrumental performing, amazing musical fusion or any great music ideas. We hope to introduce multiple world music style to our audiences and help Taiwanese musicians go to more fantasy music world.
MM – Which are the global objectives of your festival?
YS: We hope to be a really international music festival. For example, audiences come from all of the world, international musicians happy to participate and share their experiences, get some good appraisals from global festival organizations or international media, sharing Taiwanese music to the world, and the most important thing is… keep going to next and next generation. We are also happy to be a member of international festival organization to learn or share more.
MM – What are the most complicated or difficult issues to deal with in your festival?
YS: Climate and ticketing are the difficult issues to us.
We take place the festival in river side of Taipei city every year, the dates between the Typhoon season and the Northeast monsoon season, although the climate is very comfortable and relatively stable in this period, but sometime still have to worry about the suddenly raining and windy, this problem bother us every year, it is the same challenge to all outdoor festivals in the world.
Regarding to the ticketing, the difficult part is that most of the people have not yet used to buying ticket to attend a music festival, especially this kind of world cultural festival, so we need to do something to cultivate our audience, such as co-operate with industries, companies, schools and keep talking with a lot of families. Until 2019, we have some good achievement, and believe it will get better and better in the future.
MM – Which are currently the main challenges for this kind of cultural proposals like yours?
YS: Find and cultivate a stable audience. To most of Taiwan people, world music and World Music Festival both are still strange to them, especially to some international musicians or groups, music types, instrumentals, they are totally slack of understanding. This situation make us more difficult to open the festival marketing, we have to do something to guide people accept and love this kind of events, so we design some easy and experiential activities to attract family, companies and young people coming.
Every year, we give a diferent slogan to lead people understand what we do, and carry on call people attending the festival, it isn’t an easy work. Fortunately, we already find a lot of stable audiences back to festival, they give us good respond and willing to help us to call more people attending. It’s a good develop and we are looking forwards to embrace more audiences.
MM – In one sentence, summarise the reason/s to go to your festival.
YS: An amazing festival that you can get many satisfactions from your ear to your stomach.
Pictures’ credits:
- Logo of the festival
- Yu Su-Ying portrait
- Shot from the public, from the website of the festival
If you haven´t read them, you can find the previous interviews clicking on the names: Michal Schmidt (Folk Holidays, CZ) – Jun-Lin Yeoh (Rainforest WMF, MY) – Luis Lles (Pirineos Sur, ES) – Amitava Bhattacharya (Sur Jahan, IN) – Nicolas Ribalet (Sukiyaki Meets the World, JP) – Sergio Zaera (Poborina Folk, ES) – Per Idar Almås (Førdefestivalen, NO) – Bożena Szota (EthnoPort, PL) – Ken Day (Urkult, SE) – Mads Olesen (5 Continents, CH) – Karolina Waszczuk & Bartek Drozd (Jagiellonian Fair, PL) – Alkis Zopoglou (Mediterranean Music Festival, GR/CH) – Tom Frouge (Globalquerque, US) – Braulio Pérez (Música en el Parque, ES) – Bojan Djordjevic (Todo Mundo, RS) – Park Jechun (Jeonju Int’s Sori Festival) – Jarmila Vlčková (World Music Festival Bratislava – SK) – Leo Ličof (Okarina – SI) – Georgia Dötzer (Rialto World Music Festival – CY) – Marié Abe (Boston University Global Music Festival – US)
OPEN CALLS
With big hope and strong wish to see all these taking place in 2020, let’s update some deadlines:
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Deadline extended until 30th April. The 7th edition of Visa For Music, professional music market and festival for African and Middle-Eastern music, will be held from November 18th to 21st, 2020 in Rabat, Morocco. 30 artists or groups will be selected. |
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Extended until 1st May. Its 10th edition will take place from 17th to 20th of November. The official selection includes around 30 artists to play in showcases of 25 minutes. Delegates from all the continents use to attend. |
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The deadline has been postponed and will be announced at the end of the state of alarm in the country. This grant is made to provide finantial support for logistics when booking a Spanish artists. I talked deeper about this and about our offer or Spanish artists, here. |
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DO YOU WANT MORE?
I am involved in other initiatives that produce content, much before the crisis of the pandemic, that have been continued during this time. Feel free to check:
- Mundofonías radio show. Who doesn’t know it yet? 🙂 Anyway you have hundreds of editions to listen, at our website. We launch one email per month with the playlists and links to the audio. Sign up here.
- Music Before Shabbat newsletter. The concept of stopping totally for one day in the week is powerful. So, as a kind of ritual, I send a newsletter every Friday before Shabbat with some Jewish music and a brief info about, in English. Sign up here. Check the previous issues here.
- A la fuente. This is not mine, this is done only by Juan Antonio Vázquez, for Radio Clásica (national radio of Spain). His comments are brilliant, in Spanish. If you don’t understand Spanish, you can also enjoy the music, that is traditional acoustic from all over the world. “A la fuente” means “to the source” but also “to the fountain”. Many popular songs talk about going to get water at the fountain or the events take place near the fountain, so this is a little play on words. Listen here.
This newsletter is open to sponsorship. Feel free to ask for details.
The band is active and I have just asked them what is this piece about. So, Lidiya is the mother of the clarinetist of the band, Gal Klein (in the picture, without glasses, the other man is the co-founder, Amit Peled). He made the piece for her 50th birthday.
Before ending, I want to announce the initiative of the restless team of Sephardic Stories: Sephardic Collection, in which they are producing new contents and interviews, that you can find in their Youtube channel. Don’t miss a thing: follow their FB page to be updated. Next Thursday they will have a live interview with the band Al’Fado.
Over there, as he was unable to read music, it was difficult to enter in an orchestra, so he made his living playing mainly in weddings. Soon he became known for his eccentricities, like wearing extravagant clothes (sometimes he dressed like Uncle Sam with christmas lights or even with his pants down) and playing back to the audience to hide his fingers’ technique. He raised an earned reputation of gambler and a drinker and his behaviour would prevent him for keeping a regular job in any band. So, from 1920, he worked under his own name, he proclaimed himself as the King of Jewish Music and in 1926 he recorded one of my favourite pieces of the History of klezmer: Von tashlach / New Year’s Prayer at the River. Enjoy it here below.
Madam Gaspard went to market.
I discovered David Kadoch by chance, searching for Sephardic music at the Youtube (the true is that I do this very often: it was a matter of time that I found him). He has a huge collection of wonderful recordings in 
Dr. Hans Bloemendal was chazzan at the Main Synagogue in Amsterdam from 1949. During the war he went into hiding. His family was killed in Sobibor.
I got to know Cantor İsak Maçoro at the Youtube some years ago, searching for Sephardic piyyutim. The picture of him and a short bio can be found in the website 
