Brave answers to our common challenge
How are you? I hope well. In this edition we’ll pay attention to some ways of facing the current challenge for our activities of live music as well as to some interesting dates for our community.
I am contacting you from El Carpio de Tajo, Vigüela‘s village. Tomorrow, Wednesday 16th, it will be the online opening gala concert of Jeonju Intl’ Sori Festival. For some days we are working in the preparation, making technical checks and rehearsals. 9 bands from different countries and from their locations will play together. Yes, together! Check the details below. This is one of the creative responses to the situation we are facing.
The Spanish office of the International Labour Organization has provided us the chance to make a virtue of necessity. On October 17th we have an online event that will be the culmination of one month of participation of the public in the design of a concert in which the repertoire is created with their direct support. Learn more below too.
Neal Copperman, from AMP Concerts, explains us how they are keeping the activity, with live offline events too. I find their experience very inspiring!
And sadly, WOMEX had to announce the decision of cancelling the on-site event and the change into an online event. I am curious to see what they surprise us with.
Meanwhile, I really miss our old normality. Some drops of hope take place day by day. The new tour Klangkosmos, the first one after the beginning of the pandemic, organized by alba Kultur in North Rhine-Westphalia, is taking place and, so far, it is going well. The band on tour is Haratago, from Iparralde (North Basque Country). You can learn more about Birgit Ellinghaus, director of alba Kultur, on this edition.
Do you want to share any useful experience you have had during this difficult time or another content relevant for our community of the global music? Contact me. And if you find this interesting, share it with your friends. You can read the previous issues here. 
Summary:· And more difficult still: 9 artists from 9 locations, playing together for Sori Festival’s gala concert· Rethinking the program, with Neal Copperman from AMP Concerts· Our value proposal or how to make virtue from the neccesity. The online event for ILO by Vigüela + Mapamundi· Interesting dates· News from our sister projects |
AND MORE DIFFICULT STILL!!!
9 artists from 9 locations will play together online for the Sori Festival’s Opening Gala. Tomorrow, Wednesday, at 19:40 UTC+9
This morning I found this picture in Facebook. The team of Sori Festival, in South Korea, are preparing for the online gala concert that will take place on Wednesday. I have been directly involved so I know for how long all this has been organiced to make it possible. 9 artists, from their locations, will play together, listening to each others. It will be not just a succession of performances. The show can be watched from the festival’s Youtube channel.
The artists will be: Khoomei Beat (Tuva Republic, Russia), ESSE-Quintet (St. Petersburg, Russia), Sebastian Gramss (Germany), Cube Band (Taiwan), Constantinople (Canada, Iran), Vigüela (Spain), Toine Thys’ Overseas (Belgium, Egypt, Luxembourg, Brazil), Boi Akih Duo (Netherlands), Imran Khan & Naim Khan (India), 2020 Sori Festival Sinawi (South Korea).
RETHINKING THE PROGRAM FOR THE NEW CHALLENGE WITH NEAL COPPERMAN FROM AMP CONCERTS
You might already know Neal Copperman. He is one of the usual attendants of Womex as well as co-director of Globalquerque! for years, as well as director of AMP Concerts, the non-profit organization that has keep going on many activities despite the pandemics, in their state of New Mexico. In this meaningful interview he explaines more about their usual activities and the current ones they are developing in the context of the pandemic. Really thrilling! Mapamundi Música: Thanks for taking the time to chat with me Neal. Can you quickly introduce yourself?
Neal Copperman: It’s always nice to chat with you Araceli. I’m sorry I won’t be seeing you at WOMEX this year!
I’m the founder and executive director of AMP Concerts. We are a non-profit that presents events across the state of New Mexico, in the United States. In a usual year, we put on over 200 events, ranging from free monthly events in the local libraries to large outdoor concerts for 8,000 people. And everything in between. We do not have our own venue and rent spaces of all sizes across the state, whatever makes sense for the event. A third of our programs are free, and we have a nice mix of school programs, workshops and residencies too.
MM: I think in your region the pandemic didn’t affect that much as in other places of the USA, did it?
NC: New Mexico is pretty isolated. With small populations and spread out population centers. And our Governor was once the Secretary of Health for New Mexico. As soon as things started to go South, she took it very seriously and has never let go. Sometimes that is frustrating, but mostly we support her efforts to keep our community safe. We are surrounded by some states with really terrible statistics, like Arizona and Texas. The other good thing about New Mexico is that we can go outside. We have mountains that rise out of my city that I can get to the top of within an hour. I can go on great bike rides.
MM: Despite the situation you have been able to do some nice things, haven’t you? Please, tell us what you’ve been doing during the pandemic.
NC: Obviously none of the things we usually do have been possible since March. We’ve been constantly reinventing ourselves, coming up with new programs and activities to bring music and arts to people virtually, keep local musicians employed and just stay connected with our community.
We started streaming as soon as the pandemic shut down our shows and have presented 20 streaming events. We film them in closed theaters, outdoor spaces and my favorite – the socially distanced neighborhood block party, where audiences watch from their porch, front yard or driveway. The musicians usually live on the same block, so it’s a real gift from the musicians to their neighbors.
We have also produced a community art contest (Art As Antibodies), a series of single song videos in iconic locations around Santa Fe (Postcards from Santa Fe) and we are in the midst of a run of drive-in shows on an equestrian center’s polo field.
MM: How are you managing to keep the finances alive within the company? Are you managing to make these initiatives profitable or at least, not losing money with them?
NC: That is an excellent question. Sadly, what we are doing is not a viable business model. We think it’s important and we are working super hard to stay active and engaged, but without putting on viable concerts, we don’t have any regular business income.
We successfully grabbed a number of bailout and emergency funding opportunities. The government issued a loan that you don’t have to pay back if you use it all for payroll, so we got that and it was 2.5 months of payroll.
We got emergency grants from a City arts fund and from the National Endowment for the Arts.
We also reached out to some historical funders the first week of the pandemic and said – Look, things are falling apart and no one knows what is going to happen. But we are primed and ready to make interesting things happen in the community regardless of the limitations, and we will pay local artists and keep people employed. Anything you can give us will help us make that happen. And one funder (who had actually cut our funding) gave us $5K, which is what we started with. And the City gave us $12K to do virtual programs.
Some projects cost very little. Like the art competition. We gave out $2,000 in cash prizes, but I think it would have been just as successful had we just given out donated prizes. Beside the $2K in prizes, it probably only cost a few hundred dollars.
We cut staff salaries at the higher levels by 40% and at the lower levels by 10%.
Most of the live streams do not pay for themselves. But we use the money that we raise, alongside audience donations, to help cover the costs.
The Drive-Ins are the most expensive projects. They cost upwards of $15K night. They are not paying for themselves either. However, we would usually do a free concert and movie series all summer. We raise enough money in sponsorships to pay for that project. Since it didn’t happen this year, we asked our main sponsors if we could roll their money into other projects and they have been cool with that.
The remaining sponsorships we are using towards the Drive-Ins. We are hopeful that some of the Drive-Ins will pay for themselves. But we are able to make up the difference right now too.
We take donations on top of everything we do, and people have been pretty generous with that.
We have probably paid over $30K to local artists and $10K to local tech people since the pandemic started. I’m pretty happy about that!
I did leave Globalquerque! – the world music festival that I helped found and run for the last 15 years. It wasn’t going to happen this year anyway and I decided to focus my energy full time in making my company be as vibrant as possible during the pandemic and poised to come out the other side once it was done. But that was a bittersweet decision. I might not feel it so much this fall, but I’ll probably feel it a lot more next year!
NC: Tom will continue to work on ¡Globalquerque!. He’s now the main person in charge. Before it was just the two of us.
MM: I think our community are people used to facing complications and we are also quite stubborn because we have a strong vision that allows us to pursue our dreams despite the obstacles.
NC: That is totally true! We are dedicated and passionate! And most of our job is problem solving and figuring how to make impossible things happen 🙂
Check also these links related to the conversation:
- Official website, with pages for the Art As Antibodies and Postcards projects: http://www.ampconcerts.org
- YouTube channel where everything that has been streamed can be found: https://www.youtube.com/c/AMPConcerts
- Facebook site: https://www.facebook.com/ampconcerts/
- The portraits of Neal are provided by himself.
- Hipico venue, Carlos Medina’s Postcards from Santa Fe flyer, Art as Antibodies flyer, from the Facebook page of AMP Concerts.
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The series of Challenges for the festivals will continue soon
VIRTUE FROM NECESSITY. OUR ONLINE EVENT WITH A TWIST
Technology can be not only a way to reach our audience from a screen but also to engage them in the artistic creation itself. Let me explain you our value proposal for the festival Laborarte.
For some years, the office for Spain of the International Labour Organization has been doing the festival Laborarte (you can guess it is a game of words with labor -work- and arte -art-) in Madrid. It used to include conferences, concerts and exhibitions.
The director of the office has had in mind for some time to book Vigüela for 2020 its edition. In 2019 the festival didn’t take place. In the picture you see a frame of the 2018 promo video.
Considering the current situation, already in May he asked us a proposal for an online event for Laborarte. But he didn’t want just a concert in streaming. He wanted something else. What? That was his challenge: something online different than a streaming.
We started to reflect on how can we use the technology to strengthen our value proposal, taking into account the artistic possibilities of the music we work with. Popular music that has given the voice to the people by channelling their claims, needs and complaints of their daily life. So let’s give the voice to the people! With this idea in mind we decided to develope three ways of collaboration by the public, two previous and one during the event:
- Survey to check the most relevant topics nowadays for our public, in the field of labour. We are now dealing with the tele-work, working from home with kids, temporary layoff, physical conditions of isolation at work, 8 hours at work with the mask, reaching the work place by subway during a pandemic… Which are the topics that produce more headaches to our public? The results will feed the band to create new lyrics about the most relevant ones. The lyrics in the music styles of jota, fandango and seguidilla are couplets. In just four verses you transmit a strong idea.
- Contest of life stories related to work. In a short text (300 words), any person can submit a life story, real or invented. A professional jury of journalists will chose the best one, that will become a song in shape of romance, the term used for story telling songs in Spanish tradition.
- During the event, there will be time for performing the results of the previous tools as well as some free time in which the band will improvise about the topics that the public requested in the chat. Musicians has been always at the service of the clients, as in any other profession. Do you want us to dedicate a song to you mom? Do you want us to sing about flirting in mask times? About the Sunday blues? Tell us!
We have set up the website www.conciertajo.com (Tajo is the river that passes by the village and tajo is an informal way of saying work in Spain) to collect all the infos and participation tools.
Of course, all this is not possible without a band that is open to do any crazy and demanding idea and of an organization like ILO Spain that has trusted us. We’ll find out soon how does all it result ?.
INTERESTING DATES
Hundreds of online events are taking place this season and many are really appealing. For instance:
- Arts Midwest + Western Arts Alliance 2020 Conference. October 6-9. Described as “a four-day virtual convening to hear from thought leaders, gather new ideas, connect with colleagues, and map a way forward.” The registration for professionals is open, here.
- Fira Mediterrània de Manresa. October 13-18. This year it will combine on site and online activities. The registration for professionals is open, here.
- And, ehem, a moment for self-promotion. On 5th November I will participate in Noam Vazana‘s proyect of interviews in the frame of her Why DIY initiative. I am proud for being considered interesting enough to be in this list of interviewed that includes, between many others, Davide Mancini (check also my interview with him about the festival Musicastrada, here), Minna Huuskonen, Martyna Markowska or Balázs Weyer.
- Global Music Month 2020. The team of BU Global Music Festival will host the program of day 1st October, as a part of Global Music Month 2020, “with 19 festivals and presenters from the US and Canada joining together for a month of online celebration of music from around the world, from August 29 to October 1.” So, we are in that month. Check the complete program here. You can read the interview with Marié Abe from the BU Global Music Festival made at the beginning of the pandemic in Europe, here.
NEWS FROM SISTER PROJECTS + CHART TIME
Two brief news from Transglobal World Music Chart of enough interest to share with all the colleagues and friends:
- A step to break the language barrier by TWMC: “For around three weeks now, if you access the website, it now includes a plugin to translate the website automatically to all the languages included in Google translator. It is very intuitive to use and shows clearly our intention to be open to other languages. The Album Submissions page has also been edited to reflect this approach. Nowadays, technology allows us to resolve this situation, not perfectly but reasonably. We expect that the most internationally-oriented producers will continue communicating in English but now we can also welcome others that don’t have those skills and might be producing musical jewels that wouldn’t reach us if they had to communicate in English.”
- The Best TWMC albums of 2019-2020 Season are here! Congratulations for the great work, artists, producers, panelists! Check the link to read about the change of period for the annual chart.
About Mundofonías, we have re-started the activity after a break in August and our monthly favourites are the last albums by Khusugtun, Trio Tekke and L’Attirail.
Juan Antonio Vázquez re-starts A La Fuente, for Radio Clásica-RNE, in October. In the meantime, during July-September, his work for that station has been La Ruta de las Especias.
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 49 stations in 18 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.
Park Jechun is the artistic director of the festival since 2014. He is also percussionist and he has a duo with his wife, the pianist Miyeon. This interview was possible thanks to other of the hearts of the festival, Ji-Young Han, known by many people of our community of world music around the world, as she is usually the one present in the fairs and other professional meetings.
MM – Which are the global objectives of your festival?
MM – Which are currently the main challenges for this kind of cultural proposals like yours?
According to Robert, some of the objectives are:
