Here I will only mention two aspects:

Mapamundi Música (MM): The project MOST Music is quite complex, involves many participants from four main categories: artists, managers, festivals and institutions. Who had the first idea about this? What was the first objective that he/she wanted to get from this project?

MOST Project team (MPT): MOST Music as a project has been a long time in the making. Members of the consortium have been curating this idea for a long while. The idea started out from V4 and European Capital of Culture projects. Initially partners were applying for funds many times and modifying the project plan according to tender evaluations so that it could realize itself. The first objective is what we have been emphasizing on all platforms: a way for the Balkan world music industry’s untapped potential to be channeled into and better connected with the rest of Europe, where infrastructure is oftentimes better. 

MM: Following the previous question, when did this idea appear in your mind? How was the procedure between this first idea and the design of the complete project? How many profiles have been involved in the design? And during the development, now that it is being done, which are the profiles involved (I mean the team, not the artists, managers, festivals and policy makers that are the participants in the 4 branches)?  

MPT: We applied to Creative Europe four times before the funds were granted. The project plan was modified and expanded according to the detailed feedback that European tenders offer. The fourth version of the tender was accepted.

In terms of project design, you of course know that there are 9 partners in the consortium that’s led by Hangvető, headquartered in Budapest. Leading means that Hangvető takes on project management duties. Otherwise consortium members vote on work teams for each pillar, so that certain partners are responsible for certain pillars. These duties are also rotating, so that each partner will have managed each pillar by the end of the project. Managing a pillar means making executive decisions and deciding on experts involved (such as mentors and trainers).

MM: About the artists part. Every year, 10 artists will be enrolled in this program to receive support and greater visibility. How was the procedure of selection? Is there any jury? If so, who selected the jury and which were the criteria to select them? 

MPT: The selection procedure is decided by a professional jury. Jury members are also involved on a rotating basis from partner organizations. In the first round of MOST Music the members of the jury were Balázs Weyer, programme director of Hangvető, Budapest; Olsi Sulejmani, president of Balkan World Music Management; and Simon Broughton, editor-in-chief of Songlines Magazine.

The selection criteria (apart from citizenship of at least one of the 9 target countries) are as follows:
●    artist’s international potential
●    diversity of selected artists by style, to match the profile of showcase events
●    popularity/artistic quality
●    long-term engagement with the project
●    artist’s basic infrastructure (web, communication…)
●    artist’s local audience size
●    quality of existing audio and video material (technical and artistically)
●    diversity of selected artists by sub-scenes in world music (e.g. sevdah, brass bands, etc.)
●    diversity of selected artists by gender
●    diversity of selected artists by geography

MM: In the current selection of artists there are no artists from Albania, Croatia, Montenegro or North Macedonia. Of course, this has been the first round of selection and in future rounds they may be. But this arose some questions about this:
1.    Did you receive applications from those countries? Albania and Croatia, for instance, have musical styles that are recognized by the UNESCO as immaterial legacy. Didn’t you have applications?
2.    If you didn’t have applications from those countries or if you had very few ones, which do you think are the reasons?
3.    As with the artists, has it happened the same with the call for management training?

MPT: We had open calls in all the countries listed here, so the reason why one or the other might not be represented in a certain pillar is that there weren’t any or a lot of applicants from them. We have participants from Croatia and North Macedonia in other pillars, such as Management Training and Festival Exchange. However, Albania and Montenegro were hard for us to reach, we had very few applications altogether. In Montenegro one hardship was that we did not have a partner with their local network to help us spread the word. But all in all, we must certainly work on our communication in those regions in future rounds.

MM: About the part of urban policies, you mention “Projects will then be presented by the tandem (urban creative + policy maker)”. So, I understand you will involve policy makers. Let me see if I understand well. Would those be, for instance, the councillor of culture of a city? I mean, they are real politicians or people assigned by politicians, that can make real decisions, aren’t they? I think so, as you mention that “winning initiatives will be implemented in their respective cities.” How did you get the engagement of those people? Are they guaranteeing some budget from their cities to develop the winning initiatives?

MPT: We are only starting up MOST Music and the environment we planned it for was for a very different normal, so please excuse me, but I can only answer in terms of our goals, plans, and hopes, and not in terms of anything that has already been actualized.

Our goal is to involve real decision-makers: politicians, municipalities, local governments, and more. We hope that such connections between creative industry professionals and decision-makers will bring a certain openness and sensitivity to the situation of creative professionals.

MM: About the budget, the project is co-funded by Creative Europe. Can you tell me the overall budget? Which were the other co-funders?  

MPT: The overall budget is 4 million Euros, half of that is provided by the European Union’s Creative Europe programme (2 million Euros). The rest of the funding was raised by partner organizations and varies from country to country. 

MM: So far, apart from the emergence of the pandemic, that has made you change some activities to an online environment, did any other event or new idea arose that made you rethink any of the activities planned? 

MPT: Online activities are currently happening in three pillars – we just finished a week-long online training in the Balkan Music Exchange pillar and are currently in the process of training Urban Creatives and Management Trainees, both are longer, less time-intensive training programmes. Of course one key element of this whole programme is networking and making professional connections – this is not impossible per se, but it’s certainly not as natural as it could be if we could meet up in real life, as originally planned. We are making every effort to substitute these offline connections in online ways, and to bring in new opportunities for participants to meet and network, such as providing them passes to virtualWOMEX, and more.

Previous interviews about festivals included in MOST Music project are available: 

• Maria Kaimaklioti, Andreas Trachonitis & Lefteris Moumtzis from Fengaros Festival, here below in this same edition
• Anđela Galić from Kamičak Ethno Festival
• András Bethlendi from Mera World Music
• Zlatan Jaganjac from Ritam Mediterana
• Dragos Rusu from Outernational Days
• Mirza Redzepagic from Zeman
• Davide Mancini from Musicastrada
• Béla Pap from Heritage World Music Festival
• Agnieszka Matecka from Mikołajki Folkowe
• Bojan Djordjevic from Todo Mundo
• Jordi Fosas from Fira Mediterrànea

Note that some of these interviews are from before the start of MOST Music and before the pandemic.

Fengaros Festival team (FFT) –  Besides music that catches our attention, Fengaros Festival – especially the festival founders, Lefteris Moumtzis and Andreas Trachonitis, particularly look for artists that play very well live, have entertaining and sophisticated stage presence and whose music is authentic and unique. This might not be whatever is mainstream according to western media.

We want to also provide a platform for local Cypriot acts and while we encourage all Cypriot acts to get in touch with us, one of our criteria is to see that the local acts are thinking about long-term plans for their career. We try to learn about more local acts by watching them and meeting them at live shows.

We started Fengaros Music Village in 2014, three years after Fengaros Festival was founded. FMV takes place one week ahead of the festival and is a series of workshops that allows for participants to meet each other, jam together, and potentially form new bands. We’ve booked a good handful of acts that were formed from Fengaros Music Village (FMV), or took off after FMV, or that came to our attention at the workshops in the past. We also think about the festival audience a lot. We understand that there is heavy reliance on the Greek music scene, however one of our goals is to unravel this and also create partnerships with the surrounding region. We know how our audience reacts to various genres and we are in a happy position where the audience is challenged but at the end of the day, they trust the festival.