Mini-interview with Georgia Dötzer from Rialto WM Festival, Birgit Ellinghaus, open calls and +
What to do now better than listening great music while reading this magazine, made by us and for us, the community of world / folk / traditional music all over the world? I am Araceli Tzigane. Accompany your reading with our playlist! You know: just click the logo –>.
So, welcome to Mapamundi Música‘s magazine, issue #20! I will not enlarge any further this intro, as the content below is gold.
Just remember: any suggestion of contents for the next editions? Let us know. And if you like this, share it and tell it to your friends!
Thanks for your attention.
Araceli Tzigane – info@mundimapa.com – +34 676 30 28 82
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Summary:
· Job announcement from Global Fest
· Open calls not to miss
· Mini interview with festival manager: Georgia Dötzer from Rialto World Music Festival (Cyprus)
· In deep with Birgit Ellinghaus from alba KULTUR
· Don’t miss our Spanish acts recommended by AECID
· One of our latests achievements, I have to share this ?
· Find me at…
This newsletter is open to sponsorship. Feel free to ask for details.
GLOBAL FEST SEARCHES FOR EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Global Fest is a music platform with many activities. One of them is the festival they hold in New York in January.
There want to fill a job vacancy that is a new position for their organization. A full-time position to start in April 2020. Its responsibilities include fundraising, development and expansion of the board of directors, developing and renewing relationships with prospective funders and sponsors, etc. To learn more and to apply, click here.
OPEN CALLS
Transglobal World Music Chart Festival Awards. This is open all the year but note that some time in advance of your festival is needed to find the evaluator. This award’s proceduce needs the attendance of a person in your event: one of the panelists or an independent journalist or person of culture. Check the link and send any questions, also in answer to this email as I am the coordinator of this award.
Mundial Montreal (Canada). Open until 1st April. 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.
Mercat de Música Viva de Vic. Open until 31st March. Its edition 32 will take place from 16th to 19th of September in the Catalan city of Vic. It includes around 60 showcases and a bunch of concerts are selected for the “festival” format (the rest are fair showcases for professionals).
WOMEX (this year, in Budapest). Open until 13th March. This is the referential fair for world music, with around 3 thousand delegates every year. I think Womex is really known by the 99,99 %.
**** 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
Limassol, at the South of the island of Cyprus, and July… The idea that comes to the mind is hot Sun, beach, roasted halloumi cheese with frozen white wine… and, for the past 14 years, also world music! Yes, because Rialto World Music Festival in been held in Limassol since 2006.
It started as a series of events dedicated to diversity and tolerance and now, in 2020, it will become 15! I want to congratulate Ms. Georgia Dötzer, the “mastermind behind the success of Rialto World Music Festival” in words of her compatriot Antonis Antoniou, from Monsieur Doumani, and the team. Many more to come, Ms. Dötzer! In the meantime, let me share some of your insights.
MM – What do you search in an artist when you create the programme?
GD: The quality, the different sound, the uniqueness and the attractive stage performance.
MM – Which are the global objectives of your festival?
GD: To highlight the diverse and rich universe of the world music. To promote the common elements and the differences in music, as a universal language connecting people. In this framework also to promote Cyprus and our festival as a bridge between them.
MM – What are the most complicated or difficult issues to deal with in your festival?
GD: The promotion and the right communication of the ensembles and their music, especially when they are not quite known.
MM – Which are currently the main challenges for this kind of cultural proposals like yours?
GD: Of course the high flight cost of the groups from abroad. Also to attract young audiences and to broaden the existing one. To make the festival more attractive for the tourists and visitors of Cyprus.
MM – In one sentence, summarise the reason/s to go to your festival.
GD: To listen, meet and get to know groups and musicians who share a rich cultural past and also develop a contemporary musical present, with common origins and influences, organizing a series of events, mostly music, which draw their inspiration from the tradition of each country around the Mediterranean.
Pictures’ credits:
- One of Georgia’s Facebook profile pictures
- Cover of the festival’s Facebook page
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)
IN DEEP WITH…
Birgit Ellinghaus from alba KULTUR
I like this picture of Birgit. I like it because I feel it shows how I perceive her: talking with a combination of pedagogy, strenght and conviction, attentively to the other’s understanding and reaction.
Since 1989 she directs the arts management agency alba Kultur, settled in Cologne, Germany, with which she has developed hundreds of projects, building bridges between cultures. She is also advisor of many international organizations focused on culture and diversity and an inspiration for me and probably for many others.
MM – In these 30 years, alba Kultur has took traditional music to high culture frames, has participated in strategic projects with many international organizations, has developed a network of partners in your region that allows to organice long tours of bands from many places and backgrounds, most of them far away from the mainstream styles… just to name a few of the dreams achieved. What is the next challenge?
Birgit Ellinghaus – For all projects I followed the understanding, that there is a dual nature of culture: musical works, concerts and artistic programms standing for cultural identities and are expressions of traditions and life plans, which are not possible to be mesured in terms of money or market values. Nevertheless there are elements in our field of work, which touch the economical aspects, e.g. tickets, CDs or digital music is sold and artists earn their life with music and need reasonable fees. But my priorities of work were always to support and promote strongly of the non economical aspects and expressions in the music field.
- The advanced globalization and the actual priority of European culture policy for creative industries with the economic streamlining of the music sector has effects in all european countries. For my personal work see a challenge to work on the opening of the uge public financed music sector for more diversity of local-global musics expressing identity on all levels: commissioning of new works, programming of contemporary and trad music from all arround the world, strengthening of intangible cultural heritage, support of democratic organisation and participartion of migrant musicians in the cultural-political cultural dialogue in Germany and Europe.
- Another challenge is the cultural exchange through music with artists from developping countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America: how could we give access to Europe, if the boarders are more and more closed (all questions of artist mobility and visa). How could we organize carbon neutral tours and concerts not only within Europe, but as well with artists from other continents?
- And another challenge is about the role of the artist/musician as a critical soul of society in times of racism, anti semitism and islamophobia. How to protect the freedom of artistic expression and how to use the knowledge and potential of artists for reconciliation and peace building?
MM – I have the idea that you were a pioneer when you started with alba Kultur, so you might have had to face a big lack of knowledge about the music you work with, in the people who made decisions of programming. In my experience, Germany is now much open, both the public and the culture workers, to this contents than, for instance, in my country, Spain, where we have little knowledge and also many prejudices about what is world music. Could you give any advice on how to make the decision makers interested in this?
BE – I don’t want to give any advise, because each country, each activists and professional and artists has to developpe his/her own suitable views and strategies. We are all specialists and knowledge keepers of our own culture!
What I could, is to share my experience: when I started to work many years ago, it was very helpful to know about other models of work, other’s cultural expressions, to learn from others and to consider myself as a permanent student. In my personal work, I found a lot of inspiration, e.g. from the music scene in France and from the Oriental philosophies, but as well through my travels and the rich exchange with collegues and artists all around the world.
And over the years I understand, that cultural change never goes straight ahead. It’s a ongoing process. Sometimes I felt hopeless and thought the things wouldn’t turn ever for the better and/ or I had to face a lot of ignorance or resistance from stakeholder in venues and festivals, funding bodies, by politicians, media and artists. And than suddenly I saw new doors opening… I always tried to keep my curiosity and my flexibility within my agenda and my convictions. Change and development are questions of generations and need patience. These questions go much further as the individual contribution and capacity and life.
MM – I know that you work with the same strength and passion than when we met, around 11 or 12 years ago. And I think you feel that your kind of vision and what alba Kultur provides to the society is still as essential as it was at that moment and, probably, as it was when alba Kultur started. I think that 30 years ago, the world music was quite unknown for the public and for the cultural agents. Some years after, it became a boom about it. And in the last times it seems we are lossing spots for the visibility in the media and that some relevant agents, like big festivals, have been abandoning this kind of music and moving to more commercial programs. I have some questions about this:
Are your objectives now the same as they were when you started? I believe that your objectives are totally related to the service that you consider the society needs.
BE – Yes !
MM – Is the situation now, better or worse than when you started?
BE – It’s different. E.g. just reminding about communication and means of media production: I started before there was the FAX technology existing. Communication in general and specially with artists from other continents was very slow and often related to personal traveling – by myself or by friends, who served as couriers to spred the news and brought material about an artist or a festival, etc. The recording of music was very complicated, because the digital CDs and video technology just started. Communication and travel was very expensive and a privilege for only few people too.Now we have access to all and everything world wide (or nearly). Today with internet, messengers and global mobility we receive so much and so speed information, that we are lost to make the use of it. And sometimes we forget, that still there are parts and cultures of the world which are not connected to this digitalized and globalized streams, because of censorship and missing respect to human rights, because of technology, economy or education gaps or nature disasters.
MM – How much do you think that the political situation affects our community of the world music?
BE – The world music community globally is facing the general conditions of life today. But for me the question is rather: does the world music community stands maybe (at least partly) for ethics and elements of identity, who might give some interesting answers for the future ? E.g. see some texts by
Doc Kasimir Bisou (Jean-Michel Lucas).If the answer to the previous question is that it affects us strongly, what can we, the people like us, working on this from different roles, do to, somehow, protect us? We have not to protect us as community. I believe this community should stand actively for human rights, for the role of culture in the Sustainable Development Goals, for cultural diversity world wide, for freedom of expression, for the rights of indiginous people and other minorities, for the protection of identity, etc. This could guide us in the cultural exchange and a real dialogue eye level through music.
MM – You have had to deal with complications about visas and probably also with misunderstandings and even “not understandings” on purpose. Do you have any advice for our colleagues to deal with these not so funny cultural shocks?
BE – The questions of visa I do not see in the context of cultural misunderstandings. Visa are part of international politics and an intended diplomatic tool to
keep certain people out of a territory, e.g. certain nationalities from the US and other countries. The formal and soft restrictions and obstacles are intended.In my eyes, the best way to avoid cultural shocks on a personal level, is to learn more about the culture of the other on as many ways as possible (reading, internet, personal encounters, learning the language and the music etc.), to expand the respectfull understanding through cultural exchange from early childhood.
MM – What are the plans for 2020? The ones that you can share with us, of course. BE – Hopefully we could realized the actual projects sucessfully:
- 20. Jubilee Saison of Klangkosmos NRW (January – June 2020). Website, here. PDF download, here.
- Silk Road Easter Festival – A Musical Journey from Venice to China at Elbphilharmonie (April 2020). Website, here.
- Music Summit “Migrants Music Manifesto” with residency, laboratory, concerts and international conference in September 2020 in Cologne. Website, here. (Programm is coming soon).
Credits:
OUR SPANISH ACTS RECOMMENDED BY AECID
Recently we have received the first request to book Entavía through the catalogue by AECID of the recommended artists for the Spanish embassies all over the world. We have two artists in that catalogue. The Spanish embassies have to chose artists from that catalogue when they want to book or support Spanish artists for any event.
The AECID Music Catalog is the main tool for promotion, dissemination and cultural programming outside Spain, of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation. The Catalog is prepared by a committee of experts and includes a selection of proposals of quality from all musical genres.
OUR LATEST ACHIEVEMENT
Silk Road series of concerts in Museum of Orient, Lisbon. The true is that this was born as a attempt to extend alba Kultur’s program at the Iberian peninsule. It was not possible to do it like that because of the format (intensive program in some days vs. extended in some months) but that put the seed for another series with similar topic, to be hold in Lisbon with one concert in April, another in May and another in June.
This nice man of the picture is Sahib Pashazade and he is an amazing soloist of tar from Azerbaijan. I had the joy of attending his concert with Kamram Karimov at the contest Sharq Taronalari in 2017, where they won the Grand Prix. They will play in this series at the beginning of April. It is such a joy to collaborate with these outstanding artists! Further details will follow in the next issue of this newsletter.
This newsletter is open to sponsorship. Feel free to ask for details.
This newsletter is open to sponsorship. Feel free to ask for details.
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 46 stations in 17 countries). We produce the Transglobal World Music Chart with our partner Ángel Romero from WorldMusicCentral.com. And we lead also the Asociación para la Difusión de los Estilos.
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.
MM – What do you search in an artist when you create the programme? 
