Newsletter #11 May 2019

I am Araceli Tzigane. Welcome to Mapamundi Música’s May’s monthly newsletter. I am a bit exhausted after arranging flights for many musicians and destinations… and remembering the last flight’s quarrel at the check-in desk. And at the Canadian Music Week I verified once more that I am not alone… Check below to discover why.

Apart of this, this issue includes one more mini interview about the challenges for festivals, in this case with Mads Olesen, from 5 Continents festival, and some more topics. If you have any suggestion of contents for the next editions, let us know. Thanks for your attention.

Araceli Tzigane – info@mundimapa.com +34 676 30 28 82 

Summary: Mini interview with festival director: Mads Olesen from 5 Continents (Switzerland) – Mapamundi Música shares: tips for flying with instruments, by Folk Alliance – Find me in… – New (and still) open calls.

**** 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 

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)

 

MINI INTERVIEW WITH MADS OLESEN FROM 5 CONTINENTS

Its complete name is Festival des 5 Continents and takes place in Martigny, Switzerland. This year’s edition will happen from 13th to 16th of June and I will attend for the first time. I am eager!

The concerts program is splitted in Concerts World and Concerts Local Global. The names are quite meaningful: international artists and artists settled locally, doing world music, respectively, and two different and complementary objetives. Check more at the website.

Mads Olesen is the Délégué aux Affaires culturelles at Martigny and his words are very enlightening about the spirit of a festival like this, a spirit that probably most of us, involved in the world music in any role or position, share. Thank you for your answers, Mads!

MM – What do you search in an artist when you program? 
MO – Artistic quality within « Worldmusic », passion, authencity and the capacity to transmit his/her music to the public.

MM – Which are the global objectives of your festival?
MO – The Festival of the 5 Continents exist since 1994 and we can put out two main ideas: The first one is to permit our public to discover world music and cultures from all over the planet. The next one is to engage ourself through the festival for a better « together-living ». (Martigny is a small city in the Alps but 35% of the population comes from abroad and we are 110 nationalities living together). The festival is a symbol of peaceful together-living.

MM – What are the most complicated or difficult issues to deal with in your festival? 
MO – The Festival is completely free, all concerts are free. To offer this, we have to do a big job to find money and to raise funds. We did it for 26 years. But every year this is a hard business. But the result is that everybody can come and listen for free to more then 30 concerts, events, art exhitions…All the communities in the town are working with the Festival. We serve thousands of meals and this is done in favour of the Festival. It is a quite a hard organisation, BUT the result is solidarity and local engagement. This year we start up an ecological process to make the Festival a real sustainable event with recycling on all levels,…
MM – Which are currently the main challenges for this kind of cultural proposals like yours? 
MO – To offer a high level artistic quality program together with the fact that the Festival is free. To keep a high level of local engagement in an international event (about 100 artists from 20 countries, 15 communities in 2019).
MM – In one sentence, summarize the reason/s to go to your festival. 
MO – A Festival with a high degree of friendliness, free world class music in the middle of the Alps.

 

Picture: super nice of Mads’s Facebook former profile picture.

 


MAPAMUNDI MÚSICA SHARES…

The tips for flying with instruments, and more news, by the Folk Alliance International! 

Being us, the people involved on live music, one of the most regular clients of the flight companies, it is depressing how badly we are treated many times when flying with instruments. No matter if they are hold baggage or hand baggage: the problems will probably show up.

At the Canadian Music Week I had the pleasure to talk with Aengus Finnan, executive director of the Folk Alliance International (at the picture) and to discover this guide with deep and useful information for flying with instruments not to miss by musicians and managers.

Aengus told me also about the Nordic Folk Alliance Conference 2019 that is a milestone in the organization’s internationalization, and about which you’ll learn more in their newsletter of May, to which you can also subscribe. In parallel, the conference of Folk Alliance International will take place in New Orleans in January 2020. 

FIND ME IN…

Some dates of interest for the international audience could be:
More dates, in the next issue.

 

CALLS FOR APPLICATIONS

These professional fairs and festivals have applications open right now:

 

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