A talk with Daina Zalane from the label and culture management centre Lauska (Latvia)
Brief news from the media, charts and sister projects
Open calls and more news from professional events. 💼 Some new news!
Brief presentation of the new collaborations for Mapamundi Música: Ali Doğan Gönültaş, Di Gasn Trio and Xurxo Fernandes’ Levaino
Meet me at ✈️
Hello, how are you? I’m fine, sending this letter from home with the t-shirt of the Viljandi Folk Music Music Festival. It is a really nice design, I’m loving to wear it. I share some more insights about the festival here below.
I tell you that this is the 50th edition of this newsletter. It started when I had Sherezade with me. You know I lost her as an employee because of the pandemic but we are still in touch. I will meet her in person tomorrow. I remember well when I decided to start this newsletter as a way to be aware of interesting events, learning more about interesting people from our community and sharing all this info with many colleagues all around the world. After some time, I feel it has also helped to develop some reflections, at least on me.
I also tell you that this is the month of my birthday, that is on 26th of August. So feel free to send me your best wishes 😉
As always, if you have any news of interest for our community, let me know. Thank you very much for your attention.
I spent the last days of July in Viljandi, Estonia, for the Viljandi Folk Music Festival. This year, the festival invited several foreign disseminators. Remember I published an interview with Ando Kiviberg about the festival in the edition of May, that is available here.
Beyond the music programme, which has been very varied, with options for everyone (which you can consult here), I would like to highlight two very interesting aspects of the festival:
The average age of the audience, I don’t know the official data, but I would say that it doesn’t exceed 30 years old. There were hundreds or thousands of teenagers, attending the concerts at all hours. This was really exciting. In most of Europe we know that this is very different, also in festivals with very diverse programming and very affordable prices. It will be worth another future conversation with the team to try to understand what the mechanisms have been to achieve this.
The physical space where it takes place is a dream. I’ve made for you a gallery of pictures from the festival on my Facebook profile, here in particular. The festival takes place in a park that belongs to the city council. There are some buildings in the park and one of them is the headquarters of the NGO Estonian Traditional Music Center. I thought it was a municipal public body but Tarmo Noormaa told me there that it is an NGO. And in the park there are hollows, nooks and crannies, some bridges, large esplanades as well,… in a way that allows to place several stages in the open air, easily accessible to each other for the audience, and to programme the stages in a way that hardly interferes with each other’s sound. In addition, as the organisation’s building is in the centre, it can be used as a space for the artists to leave their instruments and for the team to work, with all the comfort of being in their usual space.
Another feature that I find very interesting is that most of the bands play two times in different days, in different hours and most of them in different stages, that is very nice for the artists and also for the public not to miss a band if they play at the same time as another one of their interest.
This was the stage of the ruins, maybe the most iconic one, during the concert by Samba Touré:
The practical needs for the public are well resolved, with much offer of different kinds of food, many toilets, fountains of fresh water for free and places to sit.
I will talk about the program also in Mundofonías, when we return from the holidays in September but I’d like to mention the acts that I enjoyed the most of the ones I was able to attend. Click their names to see a video (not necessarily mine or even from Viljandi, just a video that I selected from Youtube): Ak Dan Gwang Chil (South Korea), Góbé (Hungary), Lüü-Türr 10 (Estonia), Gangar (Norway), Wowakin Trio (Poland) and the super young trio Triuka (Estonia, see below).
The Estonian trio Triuka were one of my favourite acts of the festival. This year the programme favoured young folk groups from the country and these youngsters totally won me over. I look forward to hearing from them in the near future!
This was the stage II Kirsimägi, the biggest one:
AND NOW THE FLOOR IS FOR: DAINA ZALĀNE, FROM LAUSKA
Daina Zalāne is the Head of Label and Culture Management Centre LAUSKA in Latvia, that, according to their website “is a partner for independent artists and groups active in various cultural fields. “Lauska” helps to professionally organize and implement different projects and creative ideas”. She is also a member of the board of the European Folk Network, thanks to which I have been in frequent contact with her over the last year.
According to their website “The Culture Management Centre “Lauska” was founded on 29 January 2003 with the aim to support cultural processes and professional culture management in Latvia”. I sent a few questions to Daina about their several lines of activity and here you are the answers.
General questions about Lauska: Daina Zalāne: When we started, we wanted to keep the topic as broad as possible because we didn’t exactly know, which route we are going to take. We were a group of friends all engaged in culture but from various angles. For example, in the beginning I was managing a small ceramics gallery and workshop in the Old Town of Riga, because the artists were friends of mine and they needed administrative help. My husband is a historian by education and he had several ideas about projects treating history, oral history and history of everyday life in particular, about collecting pictures, recordings, stories. Some of it we also realised.
But eventually we turned out to be the biggest folk label in Latvia, because that is where our strength lies – in our network in the Latvian folk scene which has broadened into an international network.
Also our Ethno Music Festival grew organically from small-scale concerts at the opening events of our releases which we organised in different places in Riga and outside. Eventually we started working with different municipalities, who wanted a folk music stage in their city festivals, and then we grew into a separate, full-scale festival.
MM: On your website I see you are 4 people. How do you manage to sustain the organization? Do you get any grants from the government or is it sustainable with the services and products that you provide?
DZ: Our NGO Lauska is not based on membership fees. As a matter of fact we are only two active members working on the projects. The NGO is merely a body from which to initiate and administrate cultural projects. Our main funding body in Latvia is the State Culture Capital Foundation where we can hand in projects 3-4 times a year to receive funding and realise them – be they recordings, releases or concerts or workshops. From there we also receive an annual administrative grant to be able to pay a small salary, cover transport and office expenses. In addition to that we also are partners or initiators in different international projects, funded by Creative Europe or EEA Grants. There is also some income from the CDs, books and vinyls we sell, but it is decreasing rapidly and we mainly keep the shop so that all our releases are easily available, as our mission is to spread information about traditional culture nowadays as widely as possible.
About the festival:
DZ: The Valmiermuiža Ethno-Music Festival actually grew out of a compilation that we release every other year – SVIESTS. There we collect recordings of the folk groups and projects that are currently active in the scene in Latvia. As we always organise some concert or other event on the occasion of a new release, this compilation with 18-20 groups already asked for a festival.
The first five years we were located in the beautiful medieval town Cēsis, as part of the city celebration in the middle of the summer. But then we got a new partner – the Valmiermuiža brewery, that is located in a beautiful old mannor park, so there we now have the festival at the beginning of the Northern summer, in Mid-June, just before Midsummer. Our festival is slowly growing, in 2022 we already had two stages and two nights of concerts and other events. During the day there is a crafts and farmer’s market with local produce, as well as many activities for children and families, where they can learn about traditional crafts, natural materials and their use, traditional games and horse riding, etc. In the afternoon the musical programme starts with Latvian and international groups, that play what we call “post-folklore”.
When inviting groups from abroad, we are always looking for some special feature – maybe they are playing music from a specific region, singing in a special local language or dialect, or playing some specific local instrument, which people haven’t heard before and thus we can tell the stories about local nuances, diversity that adds colour to our global cultural landscape.
When darkness sets, one of the high-lights of the festival each year is the burning of the fire sculpture prepared by the Valencian artist Jordi NN.
TheEthno Festival „SVIESTS” reflects traditional culture and its different expressions that are based on their immediate environment and tradition, and thus can be understandable also for contemporary people who live in this same environment. The music in this festival is based on folklore and tradition that has passed the test of time and sounds authentic and enjoyable also nowadays.
Sviests – Butter – is a pure product, the best one can get from milk. In this time of margarine we invite to realise and return to values that have stood the test of time. Real values that we can enjoy and be proud of. It takes hard and accurate work to churn butter from milk and cream, to reach the stage when the unnecessary is separated and only the most valuable stays.
This is what the music groups in SVIESTS do – they explore and research the ancient traditional music and churn, churn until the very essence appears and the nowadays topical and unheard appears.
SVIESTS – “butter” – also has a slightly ironic meaning, because until recently we could often hear about traditional or ethno-music a certain attitude – „kas tas par sviestu!” meaning – “what is this rubbish” (literally “this is butter!”).
The main challenges
DZ: The main challenges of the festival and overall the cultural sector featuring live events is convincing the audience to attend. Especially after the pandemic, when people spent two years glued to the screen, it is very difficult to motivate them to buy tickets in advance – because the experience is that regulations can change quickly and concerts can be cancelled on short notice. Also people are not so ready to attend events where they don’t know exactly, what to expect. When the music groups are not mainstream, it requires a certain risk-taking to decide to spend time and money to go to a festival where one can be surprised by the diverse music and multitude of sounds from different parts of the world. But we are determined to carry on and provide this experience to people.
In one sentence: It is sometimes difficult to exactly describe, what the sound will be like, but I want to assure, that attending Valmiermuiža Ethno Music Festival will be an enriching and eye- and ear-opening experience you will not regret!
This is the album “Kas Jānīti Ielīgoja”, by the band Laiksne, that Daina mentions below:
About the Label and Studio Lauska:
We have been working and releasing music for almost 20 years now. And we have really gone the full circle – because the very first CD that we released – Summer Solstice Songs by the group Laiksne – we also had released as cassettes! Then there are years of CD publishing, both very traditional, authentic songs and music, as well as all kinds of contemporary folk and World music. It must be said that we always try to put some added value to our physical releases – be it design, be it song texts, or additional information about the music, that cannot be included in the streaming platforms. Some of our releases are really books with an additional CD. We also always translate all the information into English for international use.
Gradually all the music had to be published electronically on all the major platforms. In the past years some groups – like Auļi – do not publish their music in CD or other physical format anymore – instead they concentrate their effort on music video making. And recently we published our first vinyl by the legendary Latvian singer-songwriter Haralds Sīmanis.
Our studio Lauska has become specialised in recording all kinds of traditional instruments, but at the same time our sound engineer Kaspars Bārbals has now mastered the art of recording in the Dolby Atmos spatial audio technology which is the way of music listening in the future, once people will get tired of the low-quality sound experience from their phones and computer speakers.
One has to be resilient and be ready to change with the times and technical developments as well as adjust to listening tendencies of the audience.
This is the piece “Pla apli”, called like the latest album by Haralds Sīmanis, that Daina mentioned above:
BRIEF NEWS FROM THE MEDIA, CHARTS AND SISTER PROJECTS
Mundofonías: on holidays during August! But don’t miss us: on the website there are hundreds of shows available!
And… note that I already have 132 editions of Music Before Shabbat. It is a special way to enjoy music and learn about history and social dynamics associated to the migrations, identities and many other complicated issues. Visit the website and enjoy.
OPEN CALLS AND PROFESSIONAL EVENTS
If you have anything to share in this section in a future edition, let me know.
The European Folk Network’s annual meeting, open registration until August 26th. It will take place in Manresa during the Fira Mediterrània. The welcome to the attendants will be on Friday 7th of October and the day of talks and meeting will be on Saturday 8th. After the activities of the network, the attendants will be able to enjoy the showcases of the Fira. Non-members of EFN are very welcome to attend the conference and can register to access airport transfers and lunch, etc., but will pay their own hotel costs. More details and registration, here.
As I am directly involved on this event, as part of the board of the EFN, I can tell you that this is going to be a thilling event, combining a carefully designed program by the EFN with the usual know-how and good taste of the Fira Mediterrània.
Pro/Press accreditation for Visa for Music 2022, open. “Accreditation requests are now open ! If you are a music professional or a journalist/media, ask for your accreditation by filling the google form linked to the button.” It will take place in Rabat, November 16th-19th. To request the accreditation, click here.
Tallinn Music Week 2023, open call. Artist submission will close at 23.59 (CET) on 12 December 2022. Dates: “Music festival: Thu, 11 May – Sat, 13 May. Around 150 artists from various genres and scenes from all over Europe and beyond in Tallinn’s best venues play to an audience of around 15,000 people and to 1,000 music industry professionals from international markets and Baltic-Nordic region.” Check their proposal and apply here.
Mundial Montréal, professional registration is open. Early-bird rate available, here. “Mundial Montréal is back for its 12th edition from November 15 to 18 in person and via its virtual networking platform from November 1 to 25!”
Afro Pépites, two calls:Call for artistic project: opens till 30/09/22. Not just music, but almost any kind of art. Learn more, here.
Call for talent-hunters: the Afro Pepites Show is a tool dedicated to talent-Hunters. “The committee members will receive the instructions by e-mail. You will have to select 5 musical projects and 5 other projects (painting, dance, sculpture, short film….), in the quiet of your home, between 03/10/22 and 23/10/22.” Learn more, here.
Three calls from MOST, deadline: 28 August (Sunday), midnight:
For festivals and cultural venues from any Creative Europe member state: Festival & Club Exchange
Mobility grants to book Spanish artists, by Acción Cultural Española. The dates and conditions for this grants have been dramatically enhanced. The official information is here.
I will send more information about them soon but feel free to ask anything whenever you want. In the meantime, I invite you to discover (or just to enjoy them if you already know them) these artists with whom Mapamundi Música is beginning a joint path: Ali Doğan Gönültaş, Di Gasn Trio and Xurxo Fernandes’ Levaino. This is exciting! Click their pictures to watch a video:
MEET ME AT
Will we meet? Drop me a line!
Next Thursday 18th I will attend the festival Folk Plasencia (in Spain), where I have a concert by Entavía. On 20th, I will be in Roa (Burgos) where it will take place a festival for the 40th Anniversary of the Denomination of Origin of the wine of Ribera de Duero. There I have Entavía and Albaluna.
On 24th August, with the Ukrainians Hudaki Village Band in Bilbao, at the Aste Nagusia.
From 8th to 11th of September I will be in Tavira, Portugal, for the Fair of the Mediterranean Diet, to which I have to joy of providing the concerts by the Croatian band Veja, the Greek Rodopi Ensemble and the Israeli Neta Elkayam Arenas Trio.
On 16th of September I will travel to Vienna for a concert by Ali Doğan Gönültaş.
After that, I will attend, of course, the Fira Mediterrània de Manresa and the meeting of the European Folk Network. At the Fira, we will make the world premier of the show mujereson, with the dancer Patricia Álvarez and Vigüela. This picture below illustrates this new show:
The EFEx Showcase in Manchester, 13th Oct – 16th Oct.
After WOMBA, reflections and summary of the speech by Ben Mandelson as Keynote speaker
Brief news from the media, charts and sister projects
Open calls and more news from professional events, including the EFN annual meeting 💼 Some new ones!
Meet me at ✈️
How are you? I’m fine, a bit late than I would like to be but the truth is that I’m really busy this month and I also have something to tell you that has gone on for a long time and I think it’s interesting.
I won’t be any longer here. Thanks for your attention. Enjoy it.
As always, if you have any news of interest for our community, let me know. Thank you very much for your attention.
Araceli Tzigane | Mapamundi Música | +34 676 30 28 82 Subscription is available here.
Do you want to share any useful experience or call relevant for our community of the world musics? Let me know.
THE CONCEPT OF WORLD MUSIC AND THE REASONS TO EXPORT IT
Two weeks ago it took place the conference WOMBA. I have spoken about it before, and also about the framework in which this initiative takes place, which is MOST – The Bridge for Balkan Music (you can learn more and read an interview here).
Among the talks and panels there were two that were of particular interest to me. One was the Hidden and Authentic Balkans / Touringpanel, moderated by Dejan Vujinović and featuring presentations by Dragi Šestić, Kim Burton and Bojan Đorđević. You have a pretty comprehensive summary of this panel in the latest newsletter of the European Folk Network, which is available here. I strongly encourage you to read it and also to subscribe to that newsletter. You can register, here.
And the other was Ben Mandelson’s opening talk, which had two big themes: the birth and concept of “world music” and the reasons for wanting to export an artistic proposal. I liked his talk very much because I feel that his approach to it was intended to be really useful and he succeeded. He was very direct, he told a lot of things in such a short time and at the same time, it was very easy to follow him, even for not native speakers of English, like me. It is not always easy to understand native speakers of British English. Some don’t realise it, because the rest of us speak their language. But some of us speak what I call “International English” 🤣. I’m sure you get it! It was not the case of Ben, he was understandable. I will summarise him here below.
But before Ben, Ivan Petrovic, President of the Managing Board at EXIT Foundation, made a brief intervention. You should know that this whole WOMBA event was hosted by the EXIT Foundation, associated to the huge EXIT festival. The concerts programmed through MOST took place on a stage within the EXIT festival. Well, it is to be welcomed that this huge festival, which is a wonderfully organized and I was impressed with the immense production and communication work involved in a festival of this size, hosted this stage within the framework of WOMBA.
Well, Petrovic explained that for the last 11 years they had eliminated the world music stage because they had surveyed their audience and their audience didn’t go to the festival because of the world music stage. Well, that’s logical. The audience at that festival is probably going for artists like Nick Cave or Sepultura, who were on this year’s line-up. But whether or not to keep a world music stage at a festival like this, with more than 20 stages, I don’t think it’s a decision to be made like that. If the objectives of the festival are just commercial, it doesn’t make much sense to put resources into a stage for that, but if the objectives are, in addition to the economic sustainability of the festival, to reflect the diversity of the world’s cultures, then it would make sense to have that stage for the minority part of the public that might be interested, and also to create that space and give visibility to the existence of these non-mainstream musics. A foundation has no profit purpose so I understand other objectives must be there, besides satisfying the majority of the public.
In any case, this year there was a stage that was explained as the recovery of the world music stage, the “Pachamama stage”. But it was not very successful in terms of amount of public and I would say also not in terms of programme. And it was super hidden too, so you really had to go on purpose, you wouldn’t find it by chance. But the most worrying issue was that in the same stage there were mixed two tipes of concerts: one, the programme of MOST, with artists from the Balkans, those selected in the project to accompany them in their development and internationalization (the duo of Daniel Lazar (Serbian) and Almir Mešković was my favourite). The other programm was called “conscious music”. Those were very long concerts between the others, which had nothing to do with the artists from MOST. Those “conscious musics” were proposals of a new age concept, so to speak, that could make sense in their own space for chilling out, but not in a supposedly world music stage, generating confusion. Anyway, if this is the idea of recovering the world music scene, it may be better if they did not because it will once again appear to be of no interest to the public and a self-fulfilling prophecy will occur.
In Serbia there are people who are exceptionally capable of developing a proposal under the concept of “world music”. Hopefully at some point they will have more resources to be able to reach a wider audience or they may be included in such a relevant event in a future to give some strengh to the world music stage.
I have said many times before how much I admire this MOST thing and it is really fantastic. It can’t all be perfect and this pachamama thing was not. I don’t know how much involvement had the team of MOST on this strange programme. Surely all involved will assess the rights and wrongs and we will be aware of their new proposals in the future.
Ben Mandelson’s speech
Ben explained about that mythical meeting where this miscellaneous set of music was baptized as “world music”. He explained that in 1987 there was no marketing concept of “world music”. A group of people, mainly from the UK, developed a marketing campaign to identify what was already there. They raised money for an ad campaign and voted for the name. They invested £3,250 in a three-month campaign. They started putting “File under: world music” on the records, so that the shops would know where to put the music and would make a space with that label. All this is no secret. The minutes of the meeting are publicly available, for example, here: Minutes Of Meeting Between The Various ‘World Music’ Record Companies And Interested Parties, Monday 29th June 1987. If you are interested in more details, you can read it. But what I liked most about what Ben said is that world music is a community. That’s all, your Honour.
No, obviusly that’t not all but I agree with all my heart with Ben. World music is what the world music community say it is world music. Bravo.
After this part, Ben talked about exportation of the music. He explained that the music is a symbolic system. Why are you going to export it? Which are your expectations? What are the reasons? He announced 5 elements to be ready to export:
Political will. An example is South Corea.
Market will. The market demands you.
Artistic will.
Cultural will. Under the idea of “nobody makes this like us” or “we do this too”.
Transformative will.
And he added two more: educational will and systemic will.
He elaborated more for each of the reasons, of course, but I was listening instead of taking more notes, sorry! 🤣
We also had meetings with friends and colleagues. Here you have Ciro de Rosa, myself, Juan Antonio Vázquez, Marija Vitas and Carlos Ferreira, all panelists of the Transglobal World Music Chart as well as very active in all their activities.
BRIEF NEWS FROM THE MEDIA, CHARTS AND SISTER PROJECTS
Mundofonías: our monthly favourites for Julye are the albums:Lamia Yared & Ensemble Oraciones’ Ottoman splendours / Lumières ottomanes (Analekta), Sushma Soma with Adiya Prakash’s Home (Shusma Soma) and Zam groove [V.A.] (SWP).
OPEN CALLS AND PROFESSIONAL EVENTS
If you have anything to share in this section in a future edition, let me know.
The European Folk Network’s annual meeting, open registration. It will take place in Manresa during the Fira Mediterrània. The welcome to the attendants will be on Friday 7th of October and the day of talks and meeting will be on Saturday 8th. After the activities of the network, the attendants will be able to enjoy the showcases of the Fira. Non-members of EFN are very welcome to attend the conference and can register to access airport transfers and lunch, etc., but will pay their own hotel costs. More details and registration, here.
As I am directly involved on this event, as part of the board of the EFN, I can tell you that this is going to be a thilling event, combining a carefully designed program by the EFN with the usual know-how and good taste of the Fira Mediterrània.
Folk Alliance International’s official showcase application is open. Until Monday 25 July, at 5 pm (note their time is the one in Kansas City). You have to purchase the application and after that you’ll have until 26th to submit the application. The conference will take place in February 1-5, 2023, at the Westin Crown Center Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri, USA.
Afro Pépites, two calls:
Call for artistic project: opens till 30/09/22. Not just music, but almost any kind of art. Learn more, here.
Call for talent-hunters: the Afro Pepites Show is a tool dedicated to talent-Hunters. “The committee members will receive the instructions by e-mail. You will have to select 5 musical projects and 5 other projects (painting, dance, sculpture, short film….), in the quiet of your home, between 03/10/22 and 23/10/22.” Learn more, here.
Three calls from MOST, deadline: 28 August (Sunday), midnight:
For festivals and cultural venues from any Creative Europe member state: Festival & Club Exchange
Mobility grants to book Spanish artists, by Acción Cultural Española. The dates and conditions for this grants have been dramatically enhanced. The official information is here.
On 24th August, the Ukrainians Hudaki Village Band will play in Spain for the first time. It will be in Bilbao, at the Aste Nagusia. Previously I will attend several festivals in Spain with national and Portuguese artists.
From 8th to 11th of September I will be in Tavira, Portugal, for the Fair of the Mediterranean Diet, to which I have to joy of providing the concerts by the Croatian band Veja, the Greek Rodopi Ensemble and the Israeli Neta Elkayam Arenas Trio.
On 16th of September I will travel to Vienna for a concert by Ali Doğan Gönültaş.
After that, I will attend, of course, the Fira Mediterrània de Manresa and the meeting of the European Folk Network, the EFEx Showcase in Manchester and WOMEX.
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 50 stations in 18 countries). We produce the Transglobal World Music Chart with our partner Ángel Romero from WorldMusicCentral.com.
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.
Music Moves Europe, 4 years after I talked about it previously
Brief news from the media, charts and sister projects
New conference: WOMBA
La Ruta de las Especias, one more summer in the National Radio of Spain
Open Calls and more news from professional events 💼
Meet me at ✈️
How are you? I hope for the best. I’m doing very well, with an exciting summer ahead of me, as it used to be. I think that the situation with the price of energy is not being, at least for now, a decisive brake to resume the musical gatherings as they were.
Two weekends ago I had the great pleasure of accompanying Hudaki Village Band at their concert in Ethnoport (Poznań, Poland). They were able to leave Ukraine to perform, with the permission of the Ministry of Culture, and to do something that right now has much more meaning than an usual concert. From what I have experienced before, the audience in Ethnoport is devoted and appreciative in general, so you can imagine how they went all out for the band. Well, don’t imagine: check it here. I could not miss this date full of emotions and give them a hug, to see them healthy and strong was a gift. Prior to that, I had a very interesting experience, of which I elaborate much below. I hope you’ll find this info and insights of interest.
As always, if you have any news of interest for our community, let me know. Thank you very much for your attention.
Araceli Tzigane | Mapamundi Música
Do you want to share any useful experience or call relevant for our community of the world musics? Let me know.
This section may be of less interest to colleagues outside Europe, but I am not sure. I recently had a conversation with a colleague about the different approach to some concepts in Europe and the US and I think this kind of analysis is also interesting even if it does not apply directly to you.
So, prior to travelling to Ethnoport I had the good fortune to attend the annual meeting of the European Music Council as a representative of the European Folk Network (EFN). I’m just a board member of the EFN but the administrator and the chairman couldn’t make it, so I went. It was a curious experience to see how this kind of organisations think, how they spend their time and resources. We had a session about Music Moves Europe, which was of particular interest to me. If you remember, in November 2018 I dedicated some reflections on this. This is that edition. I can’t believe it’s been almost 4 years since I talked about this.
Shortly before this meeting, the results of the MusicAIRE call for proposals had been sent out. I have already spoken about this call for grants in several editions, the first one in February this year. You can read it here. The colleagues around hadn’t got the support of MusicAIRE, the same as the EFN. Although this initiative of Music Moves Europe started a long time ago, activities are still ongoing. I stated at that time in 2018 that I did not see that our world musics sector was represented and that Europe’s diversity was not reflected either in the list of organisations invited to the talks or in the European Border Breakers Awards, which had been presented in the past.
At the meeting, it was made clear that the initiative Music Moves Europe was originally industry-oriented. Although there are many of us working with world musics and we reflect the diversity, that is so much advocated in that frame, we clearly do not have much weight in the industry. Has the focus of Music Moves Europe evolved over the years? Probably yes, at least because of the impact of the pandemic and the need to digitise. What about the diversity of styles, traditions and languages? You can find the current presentation of Music Moves Europehere. And the related document A European music export strategy: final report, here. It is an extensive work on the creation of the strategy and how to implement it, but not a conclusion on the results yet. The expected results are announced on page 110. They are described in a qualitative way so I don’t know how they will be measured. This aspect of the measure is mentioned, albeit not in detail for the time being, on page 101, as one of the 6 big activities that shall be developed.
And here is a document about the music projects that have received support between 2014 and 2020 from Creative Europe. There is a section dedicated to Traditional Music/World Music & Cultural Heritage. Well, it’s very interesting, because for example there are threes projects that I’ve talked about here before, which are 2020Troubadours, Migratory Music Manifesto and MOST. There are others that I haven’t talk about, like Polyphony Project, that are deep and enriching and don’t seem to be focused on the industry.
I had direct experience of Migratory Music Manifesto last September in Cologne. I wrote about it, here. And about MOST I have talked on many occasions and there is an interview with András Sőrés, project manager, and Balázs Weyer, programme director, here. In addition, one of the professional activities mentioned below takes place within the framework of MOST: WOMBA. I hope that this all-encompassing, huge project will succeed in creating that bridge they want, a solid bridge, lasting at least as long as the Segovia aqueduct, for Balkan music to the rest of Europe. Only time will tell, but what I see already is that great professionals with powerful ideas are managing to incorporate their vision in these types of instances. Much respect!
About the Music Moves Europe Awards, heir of the European Border Breakers Awards, the winners of 2022 have been Denise Chaila (Irish-Zambian rapper in English), ДEVA (Hungary, kind of chill out music with folk inspiration, in Hungarian), Mezerg (France, electronic without lyrics), Blanks (Netherlands, pop with aesthetics of the 80’s, in English), and Alina Pash (Ukraine, commercial sounding pop, mainly in Ukrainian with some phrases in English). And the Grand Jury Prize was awarded to Meskerem Mees (from Belgium with origin in Ethiopia, singer-songwriter in English) and the Public Choice award was won by Ladaniva (Armenia, soft pop-world mainly in Armenian). There seems to have been an improvement on this issue, at least in terms of languages, compared to what was said in 2018.
BRIEF NEWS FROM THE MEDIA, CHARTS AND SISTER PROJECTS
Mundofonías: our monthly favourites for June are the albums: Maga Bo’s Amor (é revolução), Master Musicians of Jajouka, led by Bachir Attar’s album Dancing under the moon and Ali Doğan Gönültaş’s Kiğı / Gexî / Kegui
NEW CONFERENCE: WOMBA
As mentioned above, the WOMBA conference will soon take place in Novi Sad: from 7 to 10 of July. It will happen within the framework of the EXIT festival. In addition to the conference, the festival has a stage dedicated to world music: the Pachamama Stage, powered by MOST. This is how they present this stage:
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“EXIT’s Pachamama Stage, powered by MOST Music, with the support of Creative Europe, presents top acts in meditative and spiritual music this year. Mose, Maya Kamaty, Praful, Fia, and Laor will give the audience unique energy on the most colourful stage of the festival, with more announcements from the Balkans World Music scene yet to come! With this year’s line-up on the Pachamama Stage, EXIT begins a new musical chapter, and the global followers of the mindfulness movement get a place to enjoy performances from leading international acts in the Conscious Music genre.”
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The stage will also host a showcase of 12 bands. They are the selected winners of the MOST Music project competition: Almir Meskovic & Daniel Lazar Duo (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Balkan Taksim (Romania), Divanhana (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Naked (Serbia), Oratnitza (Bulgaria), Corina Sirghi si Taraful Jean Americanu (Romania), Dina e Mel (Croatia), Flying Nomads (Bulgaria), Lenhart Tapes &Tijana Stankovic (Serbia), Perija (North Macedonia), Shkodra Elektronike (Albania), and E.U.E.R.P.I (Bulgaria).
BACK TO THE AIRWAVES: LA RUTA DE LAS ESPECIAS (THE SPICES ROUTE)
One summer more, my partner from Mundofonías, Juan Antonio Vázquez, returns to the airwaves of Radio Clásica, channel of the National Radio of Spain, to talk about musics from the spices route. This will be the fifth season of this outstanding radio show.
Check the previous four and enjoy the new season from July, on the website of RTVE.
Do you have a call of interest for our community that you want to share? Let me know asap.
OPEN CALLS AND PROFESSIONAL EVENTS
If you have anything to share in this section in a future edition, let me know.
Registration for Womex, open. It will take place in Lisbon, Portugal, 19 – 23 October 2022. The registration for delegates is open. The smart rate ends on 24th of June.
The European Folk Network announces the date and location of its in person meeting. It will take place in Manresa during the Fira Mediterrània. The welcome to the attendants will be on Friday 7th of October and the day of talks and meeting will be on Saturday 8th. After the activities of the network, the attendants will be able to enjoy the showcases of the Fira. Non-members of EFN are very welcome to attend the conference and can register to access airport transfers and lunch etc., but will pay their own hotel costs. More details and registration, here.
Mobility grants to book Spanish artists, by Acción Cultural Española. The dates and conditions for this grants have been dramatically enhanced. The official information is here.
This next weekend I will attend the festival Poborina Folk, in El Pobo, province of Teruel, Spain. It is not 100 % as it was planned for 2020 but quite near to that. We have recovered the concert that was planned for 2020 of the band Entavía. I made an interview with Sergio Zaera, from this festival, in this previous edition.
From 7 to 10 of July, meet me at WOMBA, in Novi Sad. More details above.
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 50 stations in 18 countries). We produce the Transglobal World Music Chart with our partner Ángel Romero from WorldMusicCentral.com.
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.
This newsletter is open to sponsorship. Feel free to ask for details.
The Folk Alliance International conference starts tomorrow & two highlights of the online events
Brief news from the media, charts and sister projects
Talk with Ando Kiviberg, from Viljandi Folk Music Festival
Open Calls and Professional Events 💼
Meet me at ✈️
Hello, how are you?
I hope for the best. I came back yesterday from Zurich, where I was with Vigüela at the Mediterranean Music Festival (thanks to Alkis Zopoglou I can share a piece with dance of jota, here) and while this email is sent I am travelling to Manresa, the city that hosts the Fira Mediterrània.
In this edition I recover the interviews with directors of festivals, with an interview with Ando Kiviberg, from the Viljandi Folk Music Festival. Like many other festivals, this year will be the one in which they get back to normal, but in cases like this one, past complications have brought new ideas that have come to enrich the experience even more.
I hope this content is of interest to you.
Do you want to share any useful experience or call relevant for our community of the world musics? Let me know.
Araceli Tzigane | info@mundimapa.com | +34 676 30 28 82 Subscription is available here.
FLASH NEWS: FOLK ALLIANCE INTERNATIONAL STARTS TOMORROW
Unfortunately I will not be in Kansas City tomorrow. I’m probably not the only one… But this year’s edition, which has been postponed for several months to increase security regarding the pandemic situation, starts tomorrow and has a hybrid format.
The registration for the online activities is still open here. And the virtual access is pay-what-you’re-able. Rates start at $50 for non-members.
Of the online activities I would like to highlight two: Folklorist Summit Summary session, scheduled for Saturday May 21 9:00 PM – 10:00 PM CEST and, of course, the virtual showcase of Vigüela 2:00 AM – 2:30 AM CEST on Friday, May 20.
Previously, on Friday, the summit will be held for three and a half hours, with the theme “Tradition as Profession” and it is described like this: “Within the academic discipline of folklore, there has been a tendency to define a folk artist as specifically not a professional. Furthermore, institutions that adjudicate the traditional arts frequently employ a credentialing model that fails to recognize artists as experts in their traditions and to involve them in decision-making. Questions about authenticity, equity, value, and payment continue to be points for discussion in the field of folk and traditional arts. We are in an important moment to think about these questions both within the discipline of folklore and within the FAI community.” I will attend the session of Saturday as I think these are key questions in our nowadays.
BRIEF NEWS FROM THE MEDIA, CHARTS AND SISTER PROJECTS
Mundofonías: our monthly favourites for May are the albums: The Coastal Invasion, by Lucho Bermúdez y su Orquesta (Radio Martiko), Nagori, by Les Fils Canouche (Vlad Productions) and Antologia Vol. 1, by África Negra (Les Disques Bongo Joe).
AND NOW THE FLOOR IS FOR: ANDO KIVIBERG, FROM VILJANDI FOLK MUSIC FESTIVAL
In this edition I take up again two things that I have paused for a while. I have recovered my photo, which I removed at the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, and I also recover the interviews with festival directors, although I have added some specific questions for our protagonist today.
He is Ando Kiviberg, director of the Viljandi Folk Music Festival. I am very grateful to him, in general for dedicating this time and in particular because I know he is extremely busy with tasks in support of Ukraine.
This year’s edition of the festival will take place from 28 to 31 of August, and its theme is “Roots and Treetops”, as explained on the website. Let’s let Ando himself explain many more details about this appealing festival.
Mapamundi Música: In the press release, you talk about the “passport”. You explained that the last year’s passport system received an excellent reaction from the visitors. How does it work?
Ando Kiviberg: Viljandi Folk Music Festival takes place in a picturesque area of the town called the Castle Hills. It is located on a hill surrounded by the ruins of a 13th-century Livonian fortress and offers beautiful views of Lake Viljandi from above. All the festival venues are situated in this area: 4 open-air stages, the concert hall in Pärimusmuusika Ait (the folk music barn), and Jaani Church.
In previous years, we have offered the visitors a flexible ticketing system, with the option to buy a full festival pass, a one-day pass, or a separate ticket for all concerts at the festival. The individual ticket system gave the opportunity to come to hear just one concert during the festival for those who don’t want to or can’t take in more experiences in a day. However, for the organising team, keeping such a system running is exhausting and difficult. We should have a separate ticket control and a security team at the gate of each venue. In addition, we’d have to clear all the venues after each concert to make sure there’re no spectators without a ticket at the next concert. Such an arrangement has made it slow and inconvenient for audiences to move between venues.
Last year, due to the constraints of the Covid pandemic, we had to try a different system. We experimented with individual tickets and, as such, with separate security checks at the gate of each venue. This change was very well received by the audience. What people liked most was the smooth and unhindered movement from one venue to another. So, this year we’ll be implementing a solution that we tested last year on a smaller scale, and we believe it will work just as well.
This is a view of the fortess of Viljandi, by Ivar Leidus in Wikipedia. One of the stages of the festival is in front of the wall.
MM: What do you search for in an artist?
AK: The aim of our festival is to introduce the musical heritage of the nations of the world in a modern way and to support the vitality of the Estonian folk musician tradition.When choosing performers for our festival, we always consider these two goals first. The artist must know his musical tradition. Of course, it is very important that the performer is sincere, genuine, and masterful in their creation).
Mr. Harry Lindmets will perform in this year’s edition of the festival, in a duo with Henrik Hinrikus. They both play the Teppo accordion. This duo has been especially created for the festival, according to its topic of this edition: roots and treetops.
MM: What are the most complicated or difficult issues to deal with in your festival (specifically in your festival)?
AK: We do not have any insurmountable difficulties 🙂 During the Covid pandemic, it was quite difficult to organize air travel for foreign artists, because the air traffic was severely disrupted. However, we still managed to do it 😊
MM: Currently, what are the main challenges for such cultural proposals like yours (in general, not speaking of your festival only)?
AK: Always, the global crises are our biggest challenges—be it economic, health, or military crises. We haven’t yet really escaped the Covid pandemic, but now Russia has invaded Ukraine, and all of this is having a very serious impact on the whole world. All in all, music and fine arts can offer people comfort in difficult circumstances. Artistic expression and creative emotional exchange set us apart from animals. The language of music is the language of love, and it is universal—understood by everyone).
MM: How has the pandemic affected your festival? For your press release, I feel it produced some reflection and it brought some changes, am I right?
AK: Surely, the pandemic has affected our festival. I have already described some points in my previous answers. First and foremost, we were particularly affected by the gathering restrictions imposed to prevent the spread of the pandemic. For example, in 2020, we were forced to postpone our festival, because the usual number of visitors to our festival over four days is about 30 000 people. Instead, we organized a traditional music concert gala for our biggest fans for two days in a row in Viljandi—8 artists on one stage, and two days in a row. Certainly, it wasn’t the size of a festival at all, but we were able to offer comfort to our most loyal fans. Due to travel restrictions, we could not invite official foreign performers at that time. However, a few young foreign musicians who performed with young Estonians in Viljandi at that time participated in our ETHNO camp.
We were able to organize the festival in 2021 but on a reduced scale. In Estonia, it was not allowed to organize events for more than 5 000 people a day. Then, we decided to create our music party only for those who had bought our festival pass from the pre-sale. The festival was smaller than usual, but the fans welcomed the change. That’s why we dare to continue with the same format this year.
MM: What are you expecting from this year’s edition, after the two years of restrictions?
AK: I’m sure that this year the party will be excellent—one that our fans look forward to and one that’ll bring a lot of creative joy to both the musicians as well as the organizers. The geographical scale of the performers is worldwide—artists from Brazil, Mali, Jamaica, Cuba to South Korea, the best young artists from Estonia, the Nordic countries, the British Isles, and other parts of Europe will be here. Our ETHNO camp (a training camp for young folk musicians) celebrates its 25th anniversary, and many international audiences will be coming. I’m truly excited.
The trio WoWakin is one of the bands included in this year’s edition of the Viljandi Folk Festival. This is my favourite song from their last album, I hope you’ll enjoy it too!
MM: Your festival is called the Folk Music Festival. Could you define what folk music is? Or, in other words, how’d you define the scope of your program?
AK: We define folk music as traditional music. It means a musical tradition that is individual and specific to a particular nation or tribe. The broader vision of our activities is to support the preservation of the musical traditions of the nations of the world, so that the culture of mankind preserves its richness and the musical cultural nuances of different nations.
Therefore, once again, the aim of our festival is to introduce the musical heritage of the nations of the world in a modern way and to support the vitality of the Estonian traditional musician tradition.
When choosing the performers for our festival, we always consider two goals first. The artist should know their musical tradition. Most certainly, it is very important that the performer is sincere, genuine, and masterful in their creation.
MM: Could you please summarize the reason(s) to go to your festival, in one sentence?
AK: We offer to the good and kind people the opportunity to fall in love with exciting and beautiful music in the most romantic place in the world, dance to the soul and refresh yourself with great food and drinks. Viljandi was created for creation.
Credits:
Pictures of Ando Kiviberg, by Kris Süld.
Poster of the festival, by Liisa Kruusmägi and I took if from the Facebook site of the festival
This article has been possible also thanks to the support of Liisi Ree.
Do you have a call of interest for our community that you want to share? Let me know asap.
OPEN CALLS AND PROFESSIONAL EVENTS
If you have anything to share in this section in a future edition, let me know.
Registration for Womex, open. NEW. It will take place in Lisbon, Portugal, 19 – 23 October 2022. The registration for delegates is open. The smart rate ends on 24th of June.
Registration for Global Toronto, open. NEW. “Global Toronto 2022 (GT22) will be held online from June 20-22, with pre-conference activities being held in Toronto in person from June 7-10, including a diverse selection of international and cross-country delegates.” The registration is open, here.
Mobility grants to book Spanish artists, by Acción Cultural Española. The dates and conditions for this grants have been dramatically enhanced. The official information is here.
Andrea Parodi Prize competition. The subscription (for free) for the 15th edition of the contest is open until May 31st, here.
MEET ME AT
On behalf of the European Folk Network, I will attend the annual meeting of the European Music Council that will take place in Brussels on 10th of June. The day before it will take place the EMC Lab, that I will attend too.
On day 12th June I will be again in Poland after 3 years. And the occasion will be really thrilling: the Ethnoport Festival in Poznań, Poland, where Hudaki Village Band will play. The rest of the program is very appealing too! Check the program of the concerts, here.
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 50 stations in 18 countries). We produce the Transglobal World Music Chart with our partner Ángel Romero from WorldMusicCentral.com.
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.
Flash news: European Folk Network’s newsletter, 2nd edition
Brief news from the media, charts and sister projects
Talk with Sonja Heimann, from World Music Forum NL
Open Calls and Professional Events 💼
Meet me at ✈️
How are you? I hope for the best. In Spain today half the people are on Easter holidays. Hotel occupancy is expected to be close to pre-pandemic figures and in some cities close to 100% capacity. The Easter processions are a real spectacle, with people crowding the streets completely. If you get in the middle of one of the most popular processions in Madrid, you will have to stay until the procession is over because you can’t get in or out, there is no room for a single pin. This year there are finally no restrictions, so this custom will take place again, after two years in which it has not been possible. On 20 April the obligation to wear a mask indoors will be lifted. The feeling is almost normal now, although at present you don’t know what is going to come next. The news from Ukraine is still horrifying and I think we still don’t fully know how this is going to affect us in other countries. To make matters worse, our Prime Minister has contributed to further destabilisation by supporting Morocco’s proposal on Western Sahara, in a move that no one expected, not even in his own cabinet.
Where do we go from here? I do not know. But on this road, let’s try to build. I hope you find the contents of this edition interesting and, as always, feel free to send me ideas for future editions.
As always, if you have any news of interest for our community, let me know. Thank you very much for your attention.
FLASH NEWS: EUROPEAN FOLK NETWORK’S APRIL NEWSLETTER INCLUDES A BIO OF ŠABAN BAJRAMOVIĆ FROM ME
You can find a bio of him in many other places but this is a great excuse to recommend you to subscribe to the European Folk Network newsletter if you have not already done so. In the second edition there is even more content and I have had the pleasure of writing a short profile of Šaban Bajramović, a Serbian Roma artist who has been a milestone in the music of his region and continues to inspire artists from far away and who is a pleasure to listen to.
Check the 2nd edition here. And sign up, here. The newsletter is also open to contributions from non-members.
BRIEF NEWS FROM THE MEDIA, CHARTS AND SISTER PROJECTS
Mundofonías: our monthly favourites for April are the albums: Isabelle Courroy’s Confluence#2: Le chant des sources, Black Flower’s Magma and Gonora Sounds’ Hard times never kill
AND NOW THE FLOOR IS FOR: SONJA HEIMANN, FROM WORLD MUSIC FORUM NETHERLANDS
I met Sonja Heimann at WOMEX 2015, in Budapest. The World Music Forum Netherlands was planning a very ambitious project, the European World Music Monitor.
I found it very useful and I liked that people who had such a useful initiative, so it was a pleasure to participate, passing a survey to several contacts in my country, to collect concrete, quantitative data on how many people are involved in one way or another in working with world music.
I don’t think they found as much enthusiasm from all the people they asked to collaborate and the project was not concluded but I am sure it was very useful to sharpen the focus of their further efforts.
The European World Music Monitor project would be really interesting and useful if it can be taken up again in the future, by them or by some other organisation. To some extent, more recently the European Folk Network is developing a similar project, Mapping, oriented to folk music, which to some extent includes a good part of the musical manifestations that are considered world music. In any case, there is still a lot of work to be done and it is really very complex, as the reality of the different European countries is very different and the concepts are not understood in the same way in all cases.
But well, I’m going off on a tangent! Since then, contact with Sonja, and also with other people in her team, has been regular at fairs and other events.
As Sonja herself explains below, next autumn they will celebrate the 15th anniversary of this organisation and will face new challenges. I hope they will achieve everything they set out to do. In the meantime, let’s find out more from Sonja herself.
Thank you, Sonja!
Mapamundi Música: Why was the WMFNL born? What were your objectives?
Sonja Heimann: World Music Forum NL was actually born in the summer of 2006 as a grass-roots – non governmental organisation because there was no actual organisation in the area of ‘world music’ in the Netherlands. Everyone was working on its own without any kind network or collaboration. A strong need was felt to join forces and strengthen the sector making world music visible amongst other genres like pop, classical, jazz, and contemporary music. Moreover there was an urge for acknowledgement, sence of pride and advocacy. At the time we formulated concrete goals:
1) regular network meetings to connect and stimulate collaboration;
2) research to present facts and figures proving the relevance and value of our sector;
3) conferences and expert meetings to advance development on key topics like music-archives, marketing – strategic scenario thinking, music-education, broadening the scope of stages;
4) collective national and international promotion at Womex;
5) online platform;
6) Dutch World Music Award;
7) media outlets: Beyond Magazine – resulting in current online Mixedworldmusic.com;
8) recognition by Dutch policymakers and a paragraph on world music in the Dutch cultural policyplan (‘Cultuurplan’);
9) promotional samplers;
10) a Dutch world directory to connect stakeholders in the Dutch world scene.
MM: What resources did you have when you started?
SH: At the very beginning we had no financial- but lots of human resources at our disposal with strong believes in our mission & goals. First of all we initiated a tight and enthusiastic team representing the eco-system of the Dutch worldscene in its broadest sense. Thus World Music Forum NL was founded by a polyphonic bunch of musicians, promotors, journalists, festival- and venue programmers (until today our Advisery Board consists of an identical mix). This grassroots approach enabled us to work on the basis of solidarity and goodwill.
The Tropentheater in Amsterdam was so kind to host our World Blend Cafés during the first five years. ‘World Blend Café’ is like a mini-Womex. An informal network meeting consisting of a buffet, panel-discussion, several pitches, showcase and live dj-session in one. Over the years we have hosted over 100 WBCafe sessions, many new matches and initiatives were born here.
👉 The next World Blend Café is announced for June 24th, in Rotterdam. More information, here.
MM: What is the legal form of the organisation? SH: WMF NL is a foundation. Up to now membership was free for all. To stimulate accessibility anyone interested could visit our network meetings without any charge. However for the near future we will ask more commitment from our field with payed membership.
MM: There are quite a few of you, but according to what you say on the website, most of the activities are carried out by volunteers. Even so, you have some expenses, such as the website, the presence in fairs, the logistic costs of the World Blend Cafe, don’t you? How do you cover your financial needs? You have some support, such as Buma Cultuur and Fonds Podium Kunsten. Do you also have contributions from your members or do you offer any product or service as well, from which you get any return?
SH: Gradually over the years we have managed to get acknowledgement and support from two Dutch rights organisations: Buma Cultuur and Sena Performers.
Concerning international activities like Womex we receive additional funding by the Dutch government through its Dutch Performing Arts Fund and local Dutch Embassy’s as well.
Up to now we have tried to keep the network accessible for all without any costs. Organisations and individual musicians only contributed for some limited services, such as a personal page in our Dutch World Directory. However since we are dealing with receding funding we need to safeguard continuity and support by the stakeholders. Therefore we need to introduce a paid membership system in the coming year.
MM: Can you explain a bit more about “Kweekvijver”?
SH: This word actually means ‘breeding ground’ or ‘spawning pool’. Creating opportunities for new initiatives belongs to our main objectives, especially in the informal setting of our World Blend Cafés. Not only by staging young bands but also by offering a platform for ‘3-minute pitches’ from people who look for collaboration and connection. At an average of four /five sessions a year these network meetings are hosted in relevant venues spread around the main cities like Amsterdam, Utrecht and Rotterdam to connect as many members as possible.
MM: You have several Spotlight artists on the website, but the latest edition is 2019-2020. Are you going to do it again? If so, how do you decide who these artists are?
SH: Indeed our spotlight artists represent the tip of the iceberg of new exciting initiatives and talent with international appeal. And yes we will continue to present new Spotlights. Unfortunately due to Covid-19 we had to skip the last two years. A jury consisting of experienced programmers will present their new list of hand-picked spotlight artists around WOMEX 2022.
Mehmet Polat & Embracing Colours, Dr. Jordan Institute and Magda Mendes are the latest artists who have been selected for the Spotlight. In the video below, Mehmet Polat & Embracing Colours play Dancing Statues:
MM: What are you working on now and in the medium term?
SH: Currently we are looking for ways to get our scene back on its feet while trying to recover from the pandemic. Especially in difficult times it is essential to meet colleagues, exchange insights and possibilities for collaborations. At medium term both media attention and audience reach are very high on our agenda.
Other urgent issues: musical education, talent development, music archives, involving younger generations, internationalisation, sustainability, signalling current trends and developments like hybridisation.
Autumn 2022 we celebrate our 15th anniversary with a conference and several showcases. Some of the above-mentioned issues will be addressed as well.
Vital future point of attention is the search for extra financing to ensure the continuity of our World Music Forum NL. Largely depending on goodwill and limited contributions we shall need a more solid ground.
This is the crowdy stand of the WMFNL in a pre-pandemic WOMEX:
MM: What would you highlight as the main achievements of WMF NL during the years you’ve been working?
SH: We have been able to map out a network of around 3000 contacts of organisations and individuals involved in the Dutch world music scene, probably just the tip of another iceberg.
Firstly we are proud of having the acknowledgement by our governmental institutions being a solid grassroots platform for the worldmusic scene in the Netherlands. We have reached most of our goals with very limited financial means, however now it is time to make our platform future-proof.
Second highlight is the on-going success of our World Blend Cafés. Since 2006 when social media put human relationships upside down, these blend-meetings functioned as an alternative face-to-face book. Therefore we are proud to discover how this way of warm instead of cold networking inspires many other initiatives, has been adapted both at home and abroad. We take this as a compliment.
MM: Do you want to explain anything else?
SH: Yes! First of all, I would like to refer to your introduction – and the paused European World Music Monitor project. Perhaps it was too ambitious at the time. But let’s see if the near future the European world music scene will bring an opportunity to join forces to quantify collective facts and figures. Indeed it would be great if we this idea could be integrated by EFN’s mapping, and would really be a helpful tool to profile our sector on a bigger scale.
Secondly, one of the most interesting and unique qualities of Dutch World Music is its geographic and cultural history which shaped its musical identity. Imagine: the river Rhine is to the Netherlands what the Mississippi is to New Orleans. In these ‘nether’/‘low’lands- actually the delta of Western Europe- multiple streams of cultural influences have both come down the river and in from the sea. From all over of Europe but since the 17th century from its maritime and colonial links with Africa, Asia and the Americas. During the last 100 years political and economic changes led to lots of new influxes of migrants. This added hybrid legacy now multicolours our contempory music world, echoing a dynamic music ecosystem called Dutch Delta Sounds. Think of Altin Gün, Amsterdam Klezmer Band, Arifa, Boi Akih, Cabocuba Jazz, Jungle by Night, Karsu and many more to come. Check our Spotlight artists overhere and … stay tuned!
In this picture below, Sonja Heimann is with Stan Rijven, who is also a key member of the WMFNL:
Credits:
Logo and cover of the dutch world directory 2020, from the website.
Pictures of Sonja by Arkady Mitnik.
Picture of the stand in WOMEX, by Eric van Nieuwland.
Do you have a call of interest for our community that you want to share? Let me know asap
OPEN CALLS AND PROFESSIONAL EVENTS
If you have anything to share in this section in a future edition, let me know.
Visa for Music, call for proposals open. This festival and professional market will take place in Rabat from 16th to 19th of November. Application form, here. “The festival’s stage features emerging artists from the African and Middle Eastern music scene and renowned artists for the enjoyment of our passionate audiences.” “This call is addressed to artists/groups, of all musical styles, valuing the music of Morocco, Africa, the Middle East and the World.” Application open until April 30th.
MusicAire (An Innovative Recovery for Europe). – FOR THE EUROPEAN UNION AND COUNTRIES INCLUDED IN CREATIVE EUROPE – The deadline has been postponed to 25th April. Learn more here.
Mobility grants to book Spanish artists, by Acción Cultural Española. The dates and conditions for this grants have been dramatically enhanced. The official information is here.
Andrea Parodi Prize competition. The subscription (for free) for the 15th edition of the contest is open until May 31st, here.
Folk Alliance International annual conference. Hybrid event. 18th-22nd May. More info, here. Registration is open, both for the in person and for the only online categories, here. My Vigüela are part of the official selection and they will participate with a new online showcase.
MEET ME AT
My travel plans are still fairly quiet but I will have the pleasure of returning to Zurich for the Mediterranean Music Festival, run by the fabulous Alkis Zopoglou, on 15 May, where I will be with Vigüela and also dancing jota, fandango and seguidilla with folk dance teacher Miguel Ángel Montesinos, director of the Caldo de Pésoles school. If you are interested in the traditional dances of Spain, he has an impressive online school, but for now, only in Spanish.
I will be visiting Brussels in June, but I will announce it later.
And if nothing prevents it, of course, WOMEX, which goes without saying. If you haven’t seen it, I invite you to watch the video of the Ukrainian Hudaki Village Band’s showcase there last year and read the band’s message in the video description.
Flash news: the European Folk Network begins a monthly newsletter
Brief news from the media, charts and sister projects
Talk with Eric Van Monckhoven, from Music4You
Open Calls and Professional Events 💼
How are you?
My smiling picture in the sun with the blue sky usually starts this letter every month. But today we have woken up in Alcorcón and in many areas of Spain, with a heavy haze of dust (see an example here) that has covered the surfaces with an ochre tone. Neither the sun nor the clouds are visible. The sky has a dirty grey colour, as if the sky itself wanted to remind us of other dirty skies, dirty with smoke and dust, at the other end of Europe. But here it is only haze. In a couple of days it will pass and, with luck, the rain will wash the dust away. But how long will it take for those other skies to recover their blue?
The world has become very ugly between the previous letter and this one. In addition to the pain of the violence, the uncertainty for those of us with an international approach to our work has increased even more, on top of the still complicated pandemic situation. It is hard to keep faith that your efforts will bear any fruit. Last October, Hudaki Village Band crossed Europe, from the Ukrainian Carpathian to Oporto, to perform at WOMEX. It was an achievement they were thrilled about. In the last few days, I occasionally hear back from Yuri. In their remote, rural village, they have not been attacked so far, but they are busy helping those escaping from other regions. How long can they hold out? Hopefully this will be over soon.
I hope you find this letter useful. Thank you very much for your attention.
As always, if you have any news of interest for our community, let me know. Thank you very much for your attention.
FLASH NEWS: THE EUROPEAN FOLK NETWORK BEGINS A MONTHLY NEWSLETTER
The European Folk Network has started a monthly newsletter, to serve as a loudspeaker for news from its members and to contribute to the conversation about the work of the artists who fall within its scope: arts of tradition currently practised in Europe in their diverse forms and origins.
The first edition is available on the website and it included news from several of its members (10th edition of the Festival Eurofonik, open call of the Italian magazine Lineatrad, open call of WOMEX, new CD with Izvika singing, from southwestern Serbia (by World Music Asocijacija Srbije) and the announcement of the 1st North Atlantic Song Convention 2022), the featured member Mr. Geoff Cripps; the featured artist is Ms. Norma Waterson and three special contents: a recap of VONK festival and Showcase, a panoramic view on the Calabrian Tarantella and our statement about the invasion of Ukraine.
There is a way to participate, whether you are a member or not, in the special sections, that can be, for instance, an interview with someone from an institution that is not a member or a thematic article by a guest writer or anything that can appear and be considered as interesting for the scope of the EFN. If you’d like to share any content, contact them in advance in efneditors@gmail.com
Registration is free of charge by filling in this form.
BRIEF NEWS FROM THE MEDIA, CHARTS AND SISTER PROJECTS
Mundofonías: our monthly favourites for March are the albums: Alrededor de la húmisha: La música de los conjuntos típicos amazónicos de Perú [V.A.],Dobranotch’s Zay freyleikh! and Divanhana’s Zavrzlama.
AND NOW THE FLOOR IS FOR: ERIC E. VAN MONCKHOVEN
I have a more serious picture of Eric but I found this one on his Facebook profile and I loved it. He gave me permission to use it.
This is not the first time Eric has appeared here. He already told us about his World Music Lab Italy initiative in this issue and he also provided me with an interview with Alex Walter, director of WOMEX, which he published in Italian and I published Eric’s translation in this issue. I really like his generosity and his willingness to go one step further.
We are both currently members of the board of the European Folk Network and in this context we are in frequent contact.
But this time I called him as the director of Music4You, his booking agency. Click on the logo to learn more about his work, so you will have a better background before reading the interview.
Thank you, Eric!
Mapamundi Música: Which is your background, what made you become an agent for world music artists? I also want to know what made you move from Belgium to Italy.
Eric Van Monckhoven: I am not someone who used to be in the music industry. I worked for 25 years as a capacity builder, eco-social project designer, startupper, and grant writer/fundraiser for grassroots organizations, local communities, and NGOs in various parts of the world, including Europe, the Mediterranean, Africa, and eventually Indonesia and Brazil. I also had a passion for cultural diversity. This is what brought me to music.
At the beginning of the 1980s, while studying social economy and social communication in Paris, I started with some friends a live music club for ethnic minorities living in the city. They needed a place to rehearse and express their musical, artistic, and cultural heritage and creativity. We had exciting concert series presenting music from Central and South America, Africa, Asia, the Balkans, but also local folk music from Brittany, Occitania, Ireland, and Quebec. Then I helped a musician friend from Quebec to create and develop a project on Native American music. Soon I realized that I could help other music artists walk their own paths.
In 2005, while living in Finland, I started to work as a cultural producer, and in 2007, I set up Music4You to offer PR and booking services to various artists and bands of world, folk, and roots music.
Then, I met my wife, and I moved back to Italy where I had worked some years as a consultant in social project management. She is from Modica, in Sicily.
Northern Resonance is one of the groups Eric works with from Music4You. They were performing at the last edition of WOMEX and I have chosen them because Eric told me how happy he was with the result of the showcase and the feedback he received. I hope their music accompanies you as you read on.
Mapamundi Música: From your training, education, previous experiences, which ones of the skills or knowledge you got have been the most useful for your career as an agent of musicians?
EVM: To me, a booking agent is a facilitator who helps build bridges between the artist (or the management) and the venues/festivals (or/and the audience) to provide the artist with gig opportunities and live music income streams. In this context, networking and project management are important, as they deal with processes, plans, and operations. Then, there is a lot of work understanding the value of the artistic proposals and communicating it to the right people, at the right moment, through the right channel at the right time. One needs to know how branding and marketing are working – as well as sales of course.
Mapamundi Música: Apart from that or those skills, which other do you think are essential to succeed in this field of work?
EVM: Listening to all parties and knowing their needs is important too, And trying to be smart, patient, passionate, flexible, honest, transparent, plus a good sense of humor never hurts.
Mapamundi Música: Any particular advice for a fellow newcomer or someone who wants to get started in this field?
EVM: If you are looking for an easy job, pass your way and look for other opportunities. However, if you really think that this is your dream job, I would suggest starting by working in other positions within the music, cultural or creative industry – to learn how things are really working (or not working), and build connections and relationships. Never promise anything to the artists unless you are 100 % sure.
Because you will invest time, knowledge, competencies, relationships, and money, and take multiple risks – in a market that is in constant evolution, often unstable, saturated, and full of uncertainties, you do not want to work with any artist. If there is no real alchemy between the artist (or management) and the booker, it will be hard to put good work on. Things are already enough challenging in “normal” conditions. Start lean and smooth, try to understand the proposal you have and if it is “market-ready” and fits your network of venues/festivals. What I mean is the artist should have a minimum of history: followers, recordings, live gigs, and useful content you can use for promotion & marketing (video clips, live videos, etc.). It is always better if the artist has some management structure – being this internal or external.
The Belgian band WÖR is also in Music4You’s rooster.
Mapamundi Música: And now, for the artists. I’m sure you get requests from artists every day to be their manager. I am sure because it happens to me too, and many colleagues tell me the same thing. Do you have any recommendations for the artists, so that they can improve the way they communicate when they do it for this purpose?
EVM: I am personally of the idea that artists should be the CEOs of their own businesses. I am interested to build working partnerships with such artists. In the past, artists were products of music companies. They did not control anything. Today, thanks to the Internet, artists can handle their careers themselves. And that is where they can make a difference. At a lower cost than music companies, they can record their albums, distribute them, promote them, build a lasting relationship with their audience, grow their fan base, etc. Why should they give up their assets to people who will rarely put a priority on them?
I see the artist as a personal brand in search of a supportive audience. The core business is not the music but the brand – a mix of tangible and intangible values that comes with the music but also many other features. This is the new frontier of the artist or musician business. Run your projects like a startup company that puts the customer at the center of the business, and build alliances with other small business owners (like me for instance) for specific tasks. Build a “circle of trust” (including super fans, professionals, and media people) around your music and brand. Capture multiple revenue streams. This is where building a strategy for the long term starts.
Most of the artists who are contacting me are still living in the 20th century. They have no idea how the music industry works today, and what means to be an artist in the digital age. They are thousands of music talents out there in the world. This kind of talent is not enough to succeed. Artists who succeed are those who become entrepreneurs of their own careers. They start cultivating other talents to make their career sustainable and resilient. They take responsibility and act. They look for guidance and training to move their operations to the next level. They do not wait to find someone with the magic stick who will make them successful. I would love to have a magic stick. But unfortunately, I have not found it yet.
I of course listen to the artists who are contacting me and try to be clear where I stand and where they should/could stand. I need to have the big picture of who they are and where they want to go. Most of them are not market-ready – I mean for the market I am working with. So I offer them some guidance, and if I see them do something with it, I am ready to walk a step forward. But they should understand that I am already very busy with the artists I am collaborating with. I am a sole entrepreneur and cannot take them all. I am only a piece of the ecosystem.
Mapamundi Música: Do you think it makes sense for the artists to try to find an agent? Have you ever started a stable collaboration with a band or artist that approached you in their search for an agent?
EVM: I think it makes sense to look for people with whom to collaborate – as an artist and manager of your own career. To succeed you need many skills and competencies. If you are not that good at something, you can look for people to hire for that specific job. On the basis of the results, you will decide if to go on with it or not.
When it comes to labels, booking agents, managers, etc., I would say to the artist: do not look for them but build your career to the point where they are pounding down your door begging to work with you. At that point, you will be able to decide to go on your own, or sign. But ask for the advice of a professional or experienced colleague to read the contract. In this position, you will get a better deal. Contract terms can always be discussed and negotiated.
My point is that if you want to have a career in music and pay your bill at the end of the month, as with any other business in the world, you have to work for it. Agents mostly want acts that are proven, have a fan base and are making things happen on their own. There are exceptions of course. But exceptions are not the rule.
How could we explain briefly which is the value we, the agents, provide to the value chain?
I believe there are many different kinds of agents. One should be clear about what he can offer to both the artists and the venues. I think that as agents we are in a position where we can do a lot to educate both sides. Especially because we are working in a niche market and our products are specific.
Mapamundi Música: Is there any difference in the work of an agent like you, when working in the market of Belgium than of Italy? If so, which one/s and how to deal with it/them?
EVM: I am from Belgium and I am based in Italy. I am not that familiar with the Italian market, however, which I find very hard to read, understand and navigate. The audience is fantastic, but the live music ecosystem is very complicated. Belgium is interesting and very diverse. There is a real interest in folk/world music, especially in Flanders, and there are many venues and festivals for such a small country. To be honest I am not specialized in any territory. My network of contacts is international. Because I am most of the time working with musical acts that are little known, my focus is on equipping them with a CV and the tools or strategy that will help them be more attractive to other agents -who are more specialized in specific territories. It is a lot of work. But I am not complaining. I like it, and I am also developing other activities or other ways to look at my profession. In that way I think it is clearer for people if I tell them I am not working that much as a booking agent but more as a free-lance music export manager. I know how the music ecosystem for the world/folk music artists is working in various countries, like Italy, France, Benelux, Scandinavia, and Canada for instance, and who the players are. Those ecosystems are quite diverse, and it is a plus to know how they work.
Mapamundi Música: Do you have any future plans that are especially thrilling for you and that you can share with us? (related to your work as an agent)
EVM: Because many artists I meet need capacity building and education in non-artistic matters, like identifying their niche, building a personal brand, growing their online presence, creating a fan base, defining their marketing mix, etc. I created a training package on such topics. The idea is to provide them with inputs so they can strengthen the foundation to boost their careers and start build a business model that works for them. A business model is not good or bad. It is a tool that can help them visualise and organise the work to put forward to reach a scope. Business modeling is not a waste of time, and it can be fun too. There is a growing number of artists who are handling their careers as cultural and social entrepreneurs and are successful with making a living.
Mapamundi Música: Explain in one or two sentences, to the wider culture community, the reasons to book musicians from around the world that give a relevant presence to their roots.
EVM: For me, music is an instrument of peace and healing. World and folk music are living expressions of human diversity and richness. Music that is rooted in a culture, a territory, a community has the power to connect and reconnect us with nature, the people around us, the deep, and the ancient.
Mapamundi Música: Do you want to tell us anything else?
If you have anything to share in this section in a future edition, let me know.
Visa for Music, call for proposals open. NEW. This festival and professional market will take place in Rabat from 16th to 19th of November. Application form, here. “The festival’s stage features emerging artists from the African and Middle Eastern music scene and renowned artists for the enjoyment of our passionate audiences.” “This call is addressed to artists/groups, of all musical styles, valuing the music of Morocco, Africa, the Middle East and the World.”
WOMEX, call for proposals open. DEADLINE NEXT FRIDAY! The expo will take place in Lisbon, Portugal, from 19 and 23 of October. The call is open until Friday 18th March, for conferences, showcase, club summit and films. The submission site is here.
Mundial Montréal. Deadline for the call for artists extended until April 1st. The 12th edition will take place in Montréal, Canada, from 15th to 18th of November. The submission form is here.
MusicAire (An Innovative Recovery for Europe). – FOR THE EUROPEAN UNION AND COUNTRIES INCLUDED IN CREATIVE EUROPE – The deadline is on 28th of March. Learn more here.
Mobility grants to book Spanish artists, by Acción Cultural Española. The dates and conditions for this grants have been dramatically enhanced. The official information is here.
Andrea Parodi Prize competition. The subscription (for free) for the 15th edition of the contest is open until May 31st, here.
Folk Alliance International annual conference. Hybrid event. 18th-22nd May.More info, here. Registration is open, both for the in person and for the only online categories, here. My Vigüela are part of the official selection and they will participate with a new online showcase.
This newsletter is open to sponsorship. Feel free to ask for details.
Brief news from the media, charts and sister projects
Flash news: new batch of festivals & clubs in MOST Music + Mapamundi renews the collaboration with Reforesta
Talk with Sabina Schebrak, from Culture Works
Open Calls and Professional Events 💼 Many new ones!
Hello, how are you? I hope well! I am well. We got to complete the series of 3 concerts at the Museu de Oriente in Lisbon without further postponements (and with the intention of repeating it), with the concert by the Afghan master Daud Khan on 4th of February, Vigüela is presenting the new album on the stages (by the way, you can listen to it here), some programmers are even considering to bring Hudaki Village Band to Spain next Summer…
Things are starting to move again even though the incidence of the covid remains high in some areas. And during the process of writting this, an artist collaboration of mine has told me he has just known the cancelation of a concert he had for May… But WOMEX, Mundial Montréal and some others have opened their calls for proposals recently. And colleagues, like our protagonist of today, Sabina Schebrak, are daring to organise tours. I hope she succeeds! You will find below more information about the specific tour I mention. I hope you enjoy getting to know her better and that you find the news and call useful.
As always, if you have any news of interest for our community, let me know. Thank you very much for your attention.
Araceli Tzigane | Mapamundi Música
Do you want to share any useful experience or call relevant for our community of the world musics? Let me know.
Mundofonías: our monthly favourites for February are the albums: Choduraa Tumat’s Byzaanchy, Kreiz Breizh Akademi #8’s Ba’n dañs and Vigüela’s A la manera artesana.
FLASH NEWS: NEW BATCH OF FESTIVALS & CLUBS IN MOST MUSIC
On many occasions I have echoed MOST Music news here and I do it again. For several reasons. It is a very ambitious and interesting project that is worth following in itself, and it is also giving visibility to artists, festivals and other organisations that I find useful to know about.
Yesterday they released the list of winners of the festival and club exchange programme, who are:
ARTE Feastival (Bulgaria)
Balkan Trafik Festival (Belgium)
Bánkitó Fesztivál (Hungary)
ESTAM World Music Festival (Serbia)
The Festival of Street Performers (Albania) DoArt
Gardens of Sounds/ Festiwal Muzyki Świata Ogrody Dźwięków (Poland)
Globaltica (Poland)
Goulash Disko (Croatia)
Haapavesi Folk Music Festival (Finland)
Kvaka 22 (Serbia) club
Lokum Fest Bitola (North Macedonia)
Music in Village – Estensioni (Italy)
Old Town Street Fest Mostar (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
Resonator (Denmark)
Festival Șaraimanic World la Brezoi (Romania)
Sargfabrik (Austria) club
Špancirfest (Croatia)
Tivat World Festival (Montenegro)
Trefpunt (Belgium)
Viljandi pärimusmuusika festival / Viljandi Folk Music Festival (Estonia)
I hope it will ease their path towards achieving their goals.
FLASH NEWS: MAPAMUNDI MÚSICA
Mapamundi Música reiterates its collaboration with Reforesta, for the second consecutive year. Reforesta is a non-profit association founded in 1991 and declared of Public Utility. It is dedicated to the promotion of sustainable development, especially through actions for the recovery of native vegetation and the fight against desertification.
Thus, part of Mapamundi’s profit from the sale of concerts will be dedicated to reforestation of forests, which improve air quality, absorb CO2, protect the soil, provide products and food, and are home to thousands of species of plants, fungi and animals.
AND NOW THE FLOOR IS FOR: SABINA SCHEBRAK
It is impossible to look at her face and not feel overwhelming sympathy. She is Sabina Schebrak, founder & owner at CultureWorks, an essential figure in the European music landscape.
Sabina is a Tyrolean lady who loves the snow and the sun and the music. She speaks German, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian… She is also an experienced agent with very good taste, who works with some of the most important artists of the last decades, such as Riccardo Tesi, Renato Borghetti or Maria Kalaniemi. Yes, on top of everything else, I share with her a love for the accordion. By the way, if you are in France next week, her Portuguese accordion quartet Danças Ocultas will be performing in Paris (23rd), Metz (24th) and Bordeaux (25th).
I invite you to visit her website before starting the interview, as it will provide some context as to where Sabina is at the moment professionally. Click on the logo:
Thank you, Sabina!
Mapamundi Música: Which is your background, what made you become an agent for world music artists?
Sabina Schebrak: Probably I am a typical Austrian, more specifically Tyrolean: Grown up with a lot of classical music and a family background outside the current borders of the country (grandparents from what today is Northern Italy and Slovenia). I have always felt I belonged to this wider cultural space on the crossroads between the alpine, romanic and slavic world, and I have always had a strong interest for languages, travelling, music and the stories behind it.
When I was young I hated the local alpine Tyrolean folk music as perverted through the Nazis first and then through mass tourism, so my first musical heroes were Italian cantautori such as Fabrizio de Andre and Francesco Guccini, Pino Daniele and Gianna Nannini. I loved Juliette Greco, Georges Brassens, Renaud, Victor Jara, Luis Llach, Maria Farantouri, Mikis Theodorakis and Astor Piazzolla, then I discovered Al di Meola, Chick Corea, Barbara Thompson and Keith Jarrett.
As a young language student in Innsbruck I literally fell in love with a group of street musicians from Sicily – this was my first real encounter with what later on would be called world music or “nouveau trad”, and I became their friend and first agent for Austria (still at a time without internet!).
For 15 years I worked as director of communication and international relations at WUK, a big multidisciplinary cultural center and venue in Vienna, and during that time I became a passionate international networker and curator/organizer of international exchange projects.
When I finally met Brazilian accordionist Renato Borghetti at my last festival in 2000, I was so blown away that I decided to quit the job, follow my real passion and set up my own agency for exquisite sounds from the borderlands between contemporary folk, jazz and chamber music.
So the world owes Sabina’s decision to quit her job and open her own agency to Renato Borghetti. I think he deserves a few minutes of Renato’s time here.
Mapamundi Música: From your training, education, previous experiences, which ones of the skills or knowledge you got have been the most useful for your career as an agent of musicians?
SS: My knowledge of languages, my own musical education and experience (I was a passionate choir singer and co-founded one of the craziest choirs in Vienna), my experience as a networker and international communication and project manager, my experience as a teacher and tourist guide. And I love driving and travelling in general.
– The choir that Sabina mentions is Jedweder Küchenchor. I haven’t found any video where she appears singing but you can watch a video of them here, made on the occasion of their 20th anniversary. –
Mapamundi Música: Apart from that or those skills, which other do you think are essential to succeed in this field of work?
SS: First of all you have to love the music you sell and the people who make it. As a person you have to be a paradox mix of very structured and organized and at the same time crazy enough to party with your artists, crew and promoters 😊 You need a lot of patience, endurance, enthusiasm and conviction about your artists’ quality, even in the face of negative or no answers at all. Do not be afraid to get in touch with people you do not know. You better have a big reserve of good humour when dealing with artists as well as promoters.
Mapamundi Música: Any particular advice for a fellow newcomer or someone who wants to get started in this field?
SS: Don’t work with artists whose music you do not really love, you won’t be able to sell it. Better start parallel to another job that allows you to pay your bills, if you are not extremely lucky you will not be able to make a living as a booking agent right from the beginning. Do not dream of working with somebody just for the good money – or switch your musical genre towards mainstream pop. Beware of super-ego artists who make you feel their secretary or personal assistant. Be clear and transparent about your own conditions right from the beginning.
Mapamundi Música: And now, for the artists. I’m sure you get requests from artists every day to be their manager. I am sure because it happens to me too, and many colleagues tell me the same thing. Do you have any recommendations for the artists, so that they can improve the way they communicate when they do it for this purpose?
SS: Oh yes! Dear artists, please check my website and artistic agency profile before you get in touch with me (No, I am not interested in Heavy Metal Bands). And do this only by email, I will not react to long messages on Whatsapp, SMS, Messenger & co which I consider private channels for people I know.
Mapamundi Música: Do you think it makes sense for the artists to try to find an agent? Have you ever started a stable collaboration with a band or artist that approached you in their search for an agent?
SS: Difficult question. In twenty years this has happened once – I liked the album the band sent me but then it still took some years until we really started working together. Usually I prefer to discover my artists on some live occasion such as concerts or festivals, or on recommendation of people I trust. I think that young newcomers should do their own bookings at least for some time, this will make them understand the job, and they won’t have to share the fee with an agent. If the project is good enough the day will come when somebody approaches them actively, which in my opinion is far better than losing time running after people you do not know. Better develop your self marketing strategies and continue working – no matter with or without agent. And we all know that the scenario is quite the opposite with well known artists, if they approach you as their eventual agent you will feel honoured and try to make the deal (always depending on whether you like the music and what you have heard about them from your colleagues).
Mapamundi Música: I think there will still be, at least for many years, a lot of artists and a much smaller number of agents, that is the current situation. This makes me think that we are not in a very interesting business, otherwise there would be many more agents working in world music. Nevertheless, it seems the artists require us. Something seems to be wrong, what is it.
SS: I do think our business is interesting but we are working in a small niche, probably one of those with the smallest budgets of the whole music business. You have to be a passionate aficionado to work as a world music agent, and it seems there are not so many of them 😊
Mapamundi Música: How could we explain briefly which is the value we, the agents, provide to the value chain?
SS: We are the ones who lubricate the channels and in the best case make life easier for artists as well as promoters – we structure chaotic promotion material, deliver it on time, deal with the administrative needs of both sides, we know the people and their tastes in specific territories and know what to propose to whom, we have the overview of scheduled dates and can add more, thus increasing the artist’s revenue and at the same time reducing the costs for the promoters. And of course we are nice people creating a positive working climate 😊.
Mapamundi Música: Do you have any future plans that are especially thrilling for you and that you can share with us? (related to your work as an agent)
SS: My most thrilling plan at this moment are three upcoming concerts of my Portuguese accordion quatuor Danças Ocultas in France at the end of February – if they really happen and the French audience decide to attend and leave their black COVID hole I will offer champagne for the whole team!!!
I hope these guys of Danças Ocultas will make a toast with Sabina next week! 🥂
Mapamundi Música: Explain in one or two sentences, to the wider culture community, the reasons to book musicians from around the world that give a relevant presence to their roots.
SS: This is the music that touches my heart as well as my brain, it opens up the world to me and at the same time makes me think about my own cultural identity.
Do you have a call of interest for our community that you want to share? Let me know asap
OPEN CALLS AND PROFESSIONAL EVENTS
If you have anything to share in this section in a future edition, let me know.
WOMEX, call for proposals open. NEW.
The expo will take place in Lisbon, Portugal, from 19 and 23 of October. The call is open until Friday 18th March, for conferences, showcase, club summit and films. The submission site is here.
Mundial Montréal. NEW.
The 12th edition will take place in Montréal, Canada, from 15th to 18th of November. Call for artists for the 2022 edition of Mundial Montréal is open until March 15th. The submission form is here.
MusicAire (An Innovative Recovery for Europe). NEW. – FOR THE EUROPEAN UNION AND COUNTRIES INCLUDED IN CREATIVE EUROPE
“MusicAIRE offers small grants for music organisations for projects focusing on the green, digital or just and resilient recovery of the music sector.” “In order to be eligible, proposals must be presented by a single applicant must be a public or private organisation with legal personality, e.g. not-for-profit organisations; public authorities (national, regional, local); international organisations; profit-making entities, established in one of the 27 EU member states or non-EU countries participating in the Creative Europe programme.” The deadline is on 28th of March. Learn more here.
MOST Open Call for Urban Projects. NEW. – FOR SOUTH EAST EUROPE –
The call is open until March 15th. “As part of the large-scale MOST project, the Urban Project Hub is looking for creative and unique projects to add colour to local cultural scenes, and connect the music sector and cities. In a bit more detail, ideas that are city-level or regional, provide exchange or networking opportunities for local musicians, provide activities that can strengthen the local music scene will be considered for funding. Selected applicants will have to pair up with a local policymaker.” The submission site is here.
EXIB Música. NEW. – FOR IBEROAMERICAN ARTISTS –
The call is open until February 21st. This is the site for the submissions. The 8th edition of this meeting will take place in Setubal, Portugal, from 13th to 15th of October.
Mobility grants to book Spanish artists, by Acción Cultural Española.
The dates and conditions for this grants have been dramatically enhanced. The official information is here.
The subscription (for free) for the 15th edition of the contest is open until May 31st, here.
Folk Alliance International annual conference. Hybrid event. 18th-22nd May.
More info, here. Registration is open, both for the in person and for the only online categories, here. My Vigüela are part of the official selection and they will participate with a new online showcase.
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 50 stations in 18 countries). We produce the Transglobal World Music Chart with our partner Ángel Romero from WorldMusicCentral.com.
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Brief news from the media, charts and sister projects
Talk with Kaushik Dutta, from MusicConnect Asia
Talk with Dušan Svíba, from Earth Music and Colour Meeting Festival
Open Calls and Professional Events ?
Meet me at…
Hello, how are you? I hope well! Happy 2022! I am well. The tour Klangkosmos by Jako el Muzikante is going on well, today it will be the forth concert. I am working for the promotion of the new album by Vigüela, to be released on day 28th and presented live in Madrid (February 1st) and Toledo (March 25). Despite the fact that the incidence of covid in Spain is rampant, I remain healthy.
Today I share with you two long and extremely interesting interviews. And I am sure that the end of the pandemic is just around the corner. What more can I ask for! I hope this email finds you in a good mood too. Enjoy the content.
As always, if you have any news of interest for our community, let me know. Thank you very much for your attention.
Araceli Tzigane | Mapamundi Música
Do you want to share any useful experience or call relevant for our community of the world musics? Let me know.
FLASH NEWS: MUSIC BEFORE SHABBAT HAS NOW SURPASSED 100 EDITIONS
Music Before Shabbat is a weekly bulletin and a website, dedicated to the music from the various cultural branches of the Jewish people, contextualized with info about the artists, places and other relevant data.
Since 24 January 2020, a new edition of Music Before Shabbat has been published every Friday. Only one week during this time the Friday email did not go out, because I had to undergo emergency surgery. Last Friday the 102nd edition was sent out.
With Music Before Shabbat, through music, we learn about history, places and stories. As well as being sent by email to subscribers, each edition is published on the website MusicBeforeShabbat.com.
Mundofonías: our monthly favourites for January are the albums:Hoven Droven’s Trad, Assafir’s Digressions / Parekvasis and Ruşan Filiztek’s Sans souci
The Balkan World Music Chart released the last chart of 2021. #1 is Xhanthoula Dakovanou’s Lamenta.
AND NOW THE FLOOR IS FOR: KAUSHIK DUTTA
I have to confess that as I was editing this questionnaire with Kaushik’s answers, I felt I was talking about two lives or more. Such is the number of activities Kaushik recounts in these lines, each one more fascinating than the last. I hope this piques your curiosity because it’s really worth it.
Kaushik Dutta presents himself as Founder and President of MusiConnect Asia, Vice President of Glommnet and Founder CEO of Song of Soul / SOS Productions. The next lines will fill with content and meaning this list of functions… and much more.
SPOILER: the Asia Music Summit is planned for 24-28 of February. Kaushik explains this further in his answers.
Thank you, Mr. Dutta!
Mapamundi Música: Before entering into the current activities of MusicConnect Asia, please, could you explain to me which is your background? Why are you working with music? What brought you to the current moment of your professional life?
Kaushik Dutta: Music has always been my passion and I have grown with it. I started learning different musical instruments at a very early age but later on restricted my focus only on string instruments. During this time, I started listening to music of different kinds, starting from Indian classical, regional to the music of the west. Though in the sixties and seventies we had very little access to western music, radio was the only source for us. It was quite an overwhelming experience for me.
I stepped into the commercial music scenario in my thirties and gradually started receiving assignments. In the year 1985, I opened my own sound recording studio in Kolkata (erstwhile Calcutta) by the name ‘Sing–to-Live’ and started producing music. I have designed sound for ELAN (European Live Arts Network), scored music for innumerable dance theatre projects and conducted music symphony involving 400 children and 250 youths at the festival of joy in India. I have also composed for theatre, ad films, documentaries, and Bollywood feature films. Renowned Bollywood and international playback singers had lent their voice to my compositions. I have also worked as a composer and musician for a world-class multilingual British theater production. I have had the opportunity of touring extensively and performed at over 300 shows abroad. Besides conducting workshops for differently abled children and special needs schools, I have participated in many collaborative projects, including the jazz master class series organized by the National Arts Centre, Ottawa in collaboration with Manhattan School of Music. I was also invited as a visiting tutor at the London Roundhouse and Singapore Music Academy. In addition to this, I was a Judge for the Inter school drama competition and was also a workshop trainer for annual inter school drama festival both organized by the British Council. So, it’s been quite a journey for me and I cherished every bit of it.
You may have found Kaushik Dutta in some international event of world music but, were you aware of his career as a composer? You will find him in this video about a piece composed by him, Udd Jaa. And you can listen to the complete song, here.
Mapamundi Música: What brought you to the current moment of your professional life?
KD: While I was touring extensively I developed lot of international connections in the music industry and subsequently had the chance to meet many music professionals from around the globe. All my visits helped me in expanding my horizon and reach out to people whom otherwise I wouldn’t have met in my whole life.
By now I had a very clear understanding of the functionality of the global music industry and decided to contribute in my own way to the existing structure and develop a strong networking framework. This was a major turning point in my career as I have been successful in gaining trust and making a mark at the global level. I started receiving invitations from international events as a speaker, some of which are ‘Live Singapore’ a conference on performing arts (Singapore) ‘IOMMA’ (Indian Ocean Music Market, Reunion Island),’BWME’ (Borneo World Music Expo,Malaysia), ‘APAMM’ (Asia Pacific Music Market, South Korea), ‘Seoul Music Week (South Korea) ”MMVV’ (Mercat Musica Vive De Vic, Spain) , ‘Talinn Music Week’ (Estonia), ‘Showcase Scotland’ (Scotland), ‘Trans Asia Music Market’ (Okinawa), ‘Focus Galicia’ (Spain), ‘Visa for Music’ (Morocco), ‘WOMEX’, Musiconnect TransCanada (Canada), ACC world Music Festival, (South Korea) and Sharq Tarolanari Festival (Samarkand, Uzbekistan).
I was a jury member for Jazz in Seoul and was appointed as one of the Vice Presidents for GloMMnet (Global Music Market Network). Along with table maestro Zakir Husain I was appointed a judge for the 3rd Asia World Music Awards. Presently, I am the founder and acting President of MusiConnect Asia.
Mapamundi Música: In your Womex profile you still appear as founder of Song of Soul. What is this?
KD: Song of Soul was initiated by me and a group of young and energetic music lovers in the early of 1986. It is a non-profit organization and works primarily for the folk and traditional music community. We started organizing seminars, workshops, cultural programs, recording sessions and were engaged in multi various social activities. Song of Soul moved into the villages to know about the unknown and unnoticed musicians, their life, music and misery. Their histories are undocumented and the complex patterns of changes in song text, tunes and melodies, and rhythmic accompaniment as they pass from village to village and generation to generation make historical reconstruction extremely difficult.
“Song of Soul moved into the villages to know about the unknown and unnoticed musicians, their life, music and misery.”
We started travelling to villages to document this rich cultural expression. The experience has sometimes been painful, but in spite of that, the music and songs from their heart is so refreshingly melodious that encouraged us to delve more and take interest in research work. Interesting documentation has been done on forms moving towards extinct, like the BulBuli, Natua, Jhumur, Nachni, Pata Nach, Ghora Nach, Guba Naach, Dhaki and Chaau. Pung Chalam, Tusu , Jhumur, Bhatiali. The variety and intricacies in expression of these folklores that came out through such workshops have helped the rural artists to get a feel of the inner essence of such songs of the soil.National level workshops were conducted with musicians from different parts of the country as well. For a brief period of time folk artists from different corners of Bengal were recorded and filmed at the home recording studio of Song of Soul.
Along with all these Song of Soul makes a continuous effort to provide basic care and support to the rural artisans and focuses on imparting moral value education to the children of the folk musicians. We have launched Kolkata International Music Festival mostly to give a platform to these unknown forms and neglected genre of music. In the past six years the festival has supported more than 1700 distressed folk musicians of India and featured over 170 international musicians from 27 countries. This festival is probably the only festival in India that has covered more than eighty rare folk music and dance forms from all over India.
This is a video from Kaushik’s Youtube Channel with a recording from the Kolkata International Music Festival:
Mapamundi Música: About Musiconnect Asia, checking your website, there are some things about which I’d like you to elaborate a bit more. When you explain what MusicConnect Asia is, you say:
a. “Alliance with worldwide music festivals and music markets to facilitate artist exchange, residency, collaboration.” Could you explain what you are doing about this?KD: In terms of music and music industry Asia is huge, the continent has lot to offer to the rest of the world. Music of all forms and multiple genres has evolved from this region. From South Korea to India and from China to Japan, some of the world’s most ancient cultures are now producing its most modern music. Asia’s booming music scene doesn’t fit neatly in any box. It spans the spectrum — from classical, electronic to dance via R&B and hip-hop, all written with local flair and flavor. But where this is going? We are still way beyond penetrating the international market.
“For promoting the musicians working at the grass route level it is the need of the hour to create a strong networking system. And, this can only be possible through strong alliance and partnerships.”
For promoting the musicians working at the grass route level it is the need of the hour to create a strong networking system. And, this can only be possible through strong alliance and partnerships. The music fraternity is gaining more and more exposure through alliance and multiple opportunities. We are creating opportunities for musicians who are facing road blocks to travel beyond their limited boundaries. Of course, the past two years have not seen much of a development but we have initiated multiple online projects like the ‘Artist from Asia’ featuring bands from Asia, a collaborative venture between Australia and India, and South Korea, Nepal and India, workshops on digital monetization in Pakistan, Nepal and India. Featuring international bands at the Hidden Kingdom Music Festival, held in Bhutan. Featuring artists, managers, promoters, festival directors at the two virtual Asia Music Summit.We hope that we could do more when the situation eases up and start with the artist residency programme with Canada which is already on our cards. We have already signed two MOU’s with the Government of Mizoram and Nagaland (India) for ‘Artist Mobility’ and will turn this arrangement into multiple opportunities which will open up unsighted doors for the musicians. We are happy that we are already connected to international partners like Small World Music, Global Toronto, Music Works International, Cultural Connections Africa and Cultural Connections Latin America.
b. “MusiConnect Asia also envisages to create a touring network for the musicians, which will be beneficial for the touring band and the organizers.” With the current situation of the world, I think this is not possible nowadays but, what is your vision about this? How would this look if you reach your objectives related to this touring network?
KD: This is a very good question. The touring band always faces problem securing multiple concerts for themselves. Let me explain, when a band from Europe is invited to play for a stand-alone festival in any of the Asian countries it sometimes becomes less profitable for the travelling band. In most of the cases these bands search for multiple performance opportunities so that they could make substantial profit to sustain themselves for a few more days. But this is not easy. Moreover, after the pandemic many festivals are declining to cover the international travel cost and pushing the bands to a more complicated situation. The funding organizations also ask for a minimum of three concert deal. The process is arduous and back breaking.
We have already started creating a data base which will have useful information’s not only on festivals but also on local promoters, agents and musicians as well. Once we have substantial information’s with us we will create a touring calendar which will cover all the details of the festivals, concert venues region wise, thus enabling the musicians to draw up a tour plan. This will have a quid-pro-quo effect for both the promoters and the travelling band in terms of working out a workable budget. For instance, if three promoters from a particular region come together they can share the total cost and the band benefits by a package deal which will help them to earn extra money and play for a different set audience.
Mapamundi Música: How and why did it start?
KD: In the past ten years there has been a considerable growth of regional events. The regional events are really the new trend and they are answering to greater need now in the markets. People from the Asian music and arts industry are trying to act as catalyst to develop infrastructure at the Asian level. Unfortunately, their noble effort is becoming very regionalized. While many Asian artists have had broad regional and international careers, the world has had only a mere glimpse of the great Asian music in store. There is so much more to come, more to be discovered, so much waiting and worthy of breaking through.
“In a globalized world, where people and cultures are mixing and merging like never before, Asian music landscape is willfully ignored globally.”
In a globalized world, where people and cultures are mixing and merging like never before, Asian music landscape is willfully ignored globally. This is the reason why it is essential and need of the hour to set up an Asian Music Network and that is why we have taken up this initiative. The idea took off in 2017 at a music market in Okinawa and was subsequently launched in 2018.
Board members of MusicConnect Asia (January 2022):
Mapamundi Música: Which is the structure of MusiConnect Asia? Is it a registered organization?
KD: MusiConnect Asia is governed by a board consisting of seven members from India, Jordan, Pakistan, Malaysia, Uzbekistan, Japan and South Korea. We also have an advisory board and territory members responsible for individual territory. The board decides on the programming and activities. There will be more people joining our advisory board soon. The platform is registered under a separate organization.
Mapamundi Música: On the website, I see your address is in Jordan. If you are registered there, why did you guys choose this location?
KD: All of our activities are being monitored from India and Jordan. My colleague Lama who plays a very vital role also lives in Jordan. We have two office, one in Jordan and the other one is in India.
Mapamundi Música: Is the network open to more members? If so, what do they have to provide to the network? How can they apply?
KD: Yes, the network is open to all. They can join us as a general member and will be allowed to participate in our general meetings. We have a nominal joining fee for the general members. If anyone wish to be in charge of a territory they have to write to the board: musiconnectasia@gmail.com
Mapamundi Música: On the website you have a section of Playlist, with videos and audios of several artists. I think this is just the beginning. Do you have any plan of doing a catalog of artists on this web page? If not, what is the plan for this section? I think this is a relevant question because you guys, the board and all the members, are renowned professionals, so I think the artists who are and will be on your website have a kind of quality seal, am I right? Another option would be to create a kind of totally inclusive catalog. Please, explain what the plan is.
KD: You are absolutely on the right track. Yes, this just a beginning. We will be creating an exclusive catalogue of Asian artists. The best selection will be featured on this catalogue. We are in the process of collecting data’s and have so far received more than 300 band data’s from across Asia.
Mapamundi Música: There are other “MusicConect”, like the Italian one (an event that took place in December 2021 for the first time) or MusiConnect Canada. Is there any relationship between these “musicconect” networks, besides the name?
KD: The term ‘MusiConnect’ was coined by me. My friend Michael from Canada asked me whether he can use the term and I agreed. It was then decided that we will work as a conglomerate but finally it didn’t happen. MusiConnect Italy was born while we were touring in Canada. We are not connected at the moment but in future we will surely look forward to a possible partnership.
Mapamundi Música: If there is anything else you want to explain, please proceed.
KD: We are launching Asia Music Summit physical version this year (www.asiamusicsummit.com) in India. Our dates are 24-28 February, 2022 but unfortunately due to the travel restrictions declared in many countries we may have to reschedule our event. This event will be an important destination for cultural tourism, international art exchange and a vibrant market for music of all genres. AMS will act as a platform to create and extend professional opportunities for the music industry and will provide international performing arts practitioners with a one stop access to the blossoming Asian music market. The aim of “AMS” is to provide a global platform, where the exchange and birth of ideas, and concepts will be fostered, to create exciting new partnerships within Asia and the rest of the World.
Another heavyweight figure, another high-octane questionnaire. Dušan Svíba appears in this magazine in two roles: as an agent for world music artists, with his agency Earth Music, and as the director of a festival, Colour Meeting, which takes place in July in Polička.
I think his dual point of view, on one side and the other of the, shall we say, service sales process, is very enriching, and his own life story will probably resonate with many of us.
Thank you, Mr. Svíba!
About your work as a booking agent:
Mapamundi Música: Which is your background, what made you become an agent for world music artists
Dušan Svíba: If you’re asking about my musical background, it was rock of the 60s and 70s and later the Czech underground movement (Plastic People Of The Universe, DG 307 etc.) And I was already 14 when I played in my first band. Then came punk and New wave and out of that a lot of great music came – Joy Division, Talking Heads, Devo, Tuxedomoon, This Heat, Suicide etc… And Rock in Opposition – Art Bears, Henry Cow, Art Zoyd… and also Samla Mammas Manna, Lars Holmer, Embryo. And I mustn’t forget the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Especially with those last bands I was attracted to the combination of experimental rock, jazz and traditional music and this was probably where my journey to world music began, although we didn’t know the term back then :). But when I look back, it was actually with old Led Zeppelin that I loved, and still do, the combination of rock, blues, English folk and African or Indian music. Nobody still can beat their version of Gallows Pole.
But if you’re asking about my work background, it’s a woodworking. I used to work as a carpenter and also spent some time fixing up old timber houses. Then I started to work as the assistant and booking agent for the Czech singer Ida Kelarova and later also the Gypsy band Terne Čhave. It was just a coincidence that the booking agent job eventually took over because I still love woodworking a lot.
Ok, so let’s listen to what was so loved by Dušan:
And to his first artist as an assistant and booking agent, Ida Kelarova:
Mapamundi Música: From your training, education, previous experiences, which ones of the skills or knowledge you got have been the most useful for your career as an agent of musicians?
DS: I guess like most agents I know, I’m self-taught in this business, no prior education. Add the handicap of no music business in the former communist bloc and it’s clear that the vast majority of my skills and knowledge come from my personal experience and discovering what has already been discovered :). It’s great that in the last few years there are already training opportunities for young music professionals in Central and Eastern Europe, but when I started in 2002 there was nothing like that here. My personal experience is that the most useful quality for career of booking agent is to stay constantly open, to communicate, to follow what’s going around and how others cope with it.
“The most useful quality for career of booking agent is to stay constantly open, to communicate, to follow what’s going around and how others cope with it.”
Mapamundi Música: Apart from that or those skills, which other do you think are essential to succeed in this field of work?DS: The job of a booking agent is neverending story. If you don’t have a band that everyone wants, they write and call you and all you do just ask “what’s your offer?”, then for all other artists there are always plenty of other promoters and festival bookers that you haven’t approached yet or that you should remind again with your offer. So if you really want to succeed, don’t go to sleep ;).
Mapamundi Música: Any particular advice for a fellow newcomer or someone who wants to get started in this field?
DS: Never offer booking of artist you don’t burn for. You won’t enjoy it and no one will want that band from you.
Mapamundi Música: And now, for the artists. I’m sure you get requests from artists every day to be their manager. I am sure because it happens to me too, and many colleagues tell me the same thing. Do you have any recommendations for the artists, so that they can improve the way they communicate when they do it for this purpose?
DS: Yes, of course. I think the very first thing is to approach the right person. Not to shoot blind, but first to find out which artists that agent represents. That’s an easy way to find out what kind of music he prefer. As I said above, an agent has to enjoy the music of the band they represent to be able to put their energy, time and enthusiasm into the job, because let’s face it, without that it would just be a terribly boring office job. Hours and hours in front of a computer monitor or with a phone to your ear.
The second thing is to be prepared. Have a short bio, 3-4 good photos (both portrait and landscape) and above all 2-3 good live videos ready. When I say good, I don’t necessarily mean professionally shot videos, but the ones that capture the energy of the band at a live show, ideally with audience reactions. That’s what every agent and especially promoters are interested in. Studio recordings are fine, they are a must for fans and for radios, but every promoter, before booking an unknown band, wants to see them live or at least needs to be convinced by a good live video. If the music of the artist in question appeals to me, and if they give me quality material to convince promoters with, then it’s half won.
Mapamundi Música: Do you think it makes sense for the artists to try to find an agent? Have you ever started a stable collaboration with a band or artist that approached you in their search for an agent?
DS: Sure it makes sense, but the band need to know what they want, to be prepared and also to come at the right time. The artist must be aware that for the agent music is not only his hobby, but he also does it for living. He can’t work long term without financial reward. So the artist/band should already be able to function professionally and start “generating some income” soon.
Yes, I started working with a few artists based on the offer they sent me because they met all the above. But it’s hard to rely on that because first of all the agent has to read your offer, which unfortunately often doesn’t happen due to the huge amount of emails. In such a case it’s good to meet him at some public or professional event, like a showcase festival etc.
Mapamundi Música: I think there will still be, at least for many years, a lot of artists and a much smaller number of agents, that is the current situation. This makes me think that we are not in a very interesting business, otherwise there would be many more agents working in world music. Nevertheless, it seems the artists requiere us. Something seems to be wrong, what is it?
DS: Excellent question. I’m not sure I know the answer, but I’m glad to know I’m not alone :). And it doesn’t just apply to the world music scene, it applies in general to other genres as well. Let’s put aside the big mainstream artists, it’s a different world. Could it be related to the generally poor funding of culture? And that in turn with an underestimation of the role and importance of culture in our world? The money just isn’t there, it’s not a big business. Maybe if it was, the best artists would be with agents for whom music is second only thing to money. Which brings me back to the beginning, this happens quite often in the world of big music business.
Mapamundi Música: Especially in recent times, because of the pandemic, many of us, independent agents or micro-companies, have felt a bit alone and misunderstood. I have heard claims from colleagues from different countries arguing they have not been considered in support for the arts after the ravages of the pandemic. My experience in Spain has not been exactly like that (I have got support because I am an independent worker in a field with loss of income, not because I worked with art, and the support in Spain depends a lot on the region, so the situation is a bit complex), but what has been your experience in Czechia?
DS: Thanks to the aforementioned lack of a music industry in the former communist Czechoslovakia, the Czech music scene was very fragmented and unorganized. There have been several attempts to unite and bring the scene together, but compared to Western European countries the situation is still very inadequate. When covid appeared, this need had arisen very acutely. Industry associations and unions negotiated with the government on behalf of the industry, but there was no one to speak for musicians and all the related professionals. At that moment we initiated the establishment of several professional organisations and I personally participated also in the founding of the umbrella association Česká obec hudební, which should bring all these professionals together. We managed to establish a dialogue with the government and the result was financial support for musicians and some professionals in the field. But it was difficult to explain to the government officials how the whole organism works, how many people work in the field, what the relationships are, how the financing is done, etc. Some professionals, such as technicians, who are mostly employed only seasonally, did not reached this support and unfortunately had to leave their jobs, which will only become apparent when the activity is fully restored. It is already clear that if all the major festivals were to restart in the summer 2022, they will not have staff enough.
“It was difficult to explain to the government officials how the whole organism works, how many people work in the field, what the relationships are, how the financing is done, etc.”
Mapamundi Música: Related to the previous question, I have several questions:a. We are required by the artists but, at the same time, it seems we are a bit invisible. Do you feel that?
DS: I don’t think that’s a problem. In all fields there are “stars” in the limelight and plenty of invisible ones. Those, who want the spotlight, go on stage, those who don’t have that need work in the background. And some are even grey eminences :).
b. How could we explain briefly which is the value we, the agents, provide to the value chain?
DS: We create conditions and facilities for artists to focus on their artistic work. We translate artists’ requests and chaotic information to the organizers so that they understand them, have them in time and, above all, have them at all.
Mapamundi Música: My last question in this section. Explain in one or two sentences, to the wider culture community, the reasons to book musicians from around the world that give a relevant presence to their roots.
DS: Face to face to traditions and roots of people from other cultures, you become more aware of your own roots which strengthens your awareness of your own identity, broadens your horizons and enriches your life. And it’s fun :).
The second part is about you as an artistic director of a festival:
Mapamundi Música: How did the festival start?
DS: Colour Meeting was created in 2001 as a reaction to my visit to several festivals where I liked one out of twenty bands who played there. I had an idea to make my own festival where only bands I like will play. Soon I found out this was a naive idea because as a festival director, especially in the first 15 years, I had no time to enjoy the bands. Sometimes it still happens today. But instead I have discovered another benefit – it’s amazing when other people like the festival.
“I had an idea to make my own festival where only bands I like will play. Soon I found out this was a naive idea.”
Mapamundi Música: What do you search for in an artist when you program?DS: Great music, passion, enthusiasm, energy, something new… But then I mix it all together and select it so the programme makes sense, the individual performances build on each other in some way, all the possible genres are there, there are fresh discoveries and current names there, the programme is gender balanced and finally couple of little bit well-known Czech artists are there. Even though we’ve cultivated our audience over the past 18 years that they love to discover new music, always well-known Czech names sell more tickets.
Mapamundi Música: Which are the global objectives of your festival?
DS: Colour Meeting’s aim is to bring to the festival’s audience original, new and innovative artists and projects that speak about the current state of the world we live in and try to offer a new perspective on it or their own solution. We present artists and projects that draw from traditional culture, but also those that confront tradition and the present, use new technologies and independently of media trends create today’s urban folklore. At the same time, we support the local community where the festival takes place and involve local volunteers in the organisation of the festival.
Mapamundi Música: What are the most complicated or difficult issues to deal with in your festival (your festival, specifically)?
DS: We are currently struggling with a shortage of people for the core festival team. It is not a full time job, but it still takes up a significant amount of time. Up until now it has been done by a few volunteers, but this model has become inadequate to the increasing demands and most of the volunteers have left us. Now we are trying to build a core team of a few professionals and shift resources to pay them.
We are also dealing with the funding structure of the festival. We have no commercial partners, relatively unknown names on the festival lineup and low capacity of the festival are not attractive for commercial partners. Most of our budget is covered from public grants. This model provides us with important artistic independence, but on the other hand it is quite vulnerable if any of the grants fall through. The simplest solution could be to raise the admission fee but for a festival of our size and in our circumstances our admission is already relatively high. Another option is to spread the structure of public grants over multiple donors. The real solution is likely to be a combination of both approaches.
Our third pain point is the size of the festival site, which is already at the edge of its capacity. It is a park in the middle of the city between medieval walls and a pond, a beautiful place. However, thanks to its location and genius loci, this place is one of the great assets of the festival and we would certainly not want to move the festival to any green field without an atmosphere somewhere on the edge of town.
Mapamundi Música: Which are currently the main challenges for this kind of cultural proposal like yours (in general, not only about yours)?
DS: The two problems described above with the lack of festival stuff and with funding are more or less common to all similar festivals in our country. And of course the last 2 years with covid have thoroughly tested viability of all festivals.
Mapamundi Música: In one sentence, summarize the reason/s to go to your festival.
DS: If you like the idea of a small family festival in a park under medieval walls, with home made food, workshops, theatres and a music programme made up of current and interesting artists regardless of genre and country of origin, come!
Mapamundi Música: How are the plans for 2022? Are you working considering a scenario of normality, concerning the pandemic?
DS: In the Czech republic unlike big festivals, small festivals had been able to operate with relatively minimal restrictions over the last 2 years. The main problem for Colour Meeting was getting foreign artists to come to us. But we hope that in 2022 the situation will be more under control. We are preparing for a standard version of the festival.
Credits:
Portrait of Dušan, provided by him and credited to Tomáš Moudrý.
Do you have a call of interest for our community that you want to share? Let me know asap.
OPEN CALLS AND PROFESSIONAL EVENTS
If you have anything to share in this section in a future edition, let me know.
Mobility grants to book Spanish artists, by Acción Cultural Española. The dates and conditions for this grants have been dramatically enhanced. The official information is here.
Fira Mediterrànea de Manresa. The application for showcasing is open until January 20th at 12 PM. It will take place from 6th to 9th of October 2022. More info, here. And for the application, here.
Andrea Parodi Prize competition. NEW. The subscription (for free) for the 15th edition of the contest is open until May 31st, here. “The overall winner will be entitled to a scholarship of € 2,500, as well as the opportunity to perform in some of Parodi’s partner festivals in 2023, such as the European Jazz Expo (Sardinia), Folkest (Friuli), as well as in the Andrea Parodi Prize itself.”
Folk Alliance International annual conference. Hybrid event. Postponed to 18th-22nd May. More info, here. Registration is open, both for the in person and for the only online categories, here. My Vigüela are part of the official selection and they will participate with a new online showcase.
MEET ME AT…
Most of the time, at my house. I won’t attend the concert by Monsieur Doumani on 21st of January in Coimbra. The rise of the infections in Spain is too high to increase more uncertainty for attending and they will be perfectly looked after by the Sons em Trânsito team.
This is still planned:
Lisbon, Portugal, for the third concert of the series of Músicas Escondidas at the Museum of Orient. 4th February: Daud Khan Sadozai
And besides that, the rest of the concerts I have, among them the presentations of the new Vigüela’s album, are in Spain (Madrid and Toledo for now).
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 50 stations in 18 countries). We produce the Transglobal World Music Chart with our partner Ángel Romero from WorldMusicCentral.com.
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.
This newsletter is open to sponsorship. Feel free to ask for details.
Flash news: 120 minutes with the music of my life, at the Slovak New Model Radio
Brief news from the media, chats and sister projects
Talk with Laurent Boireau, from Crépuscule Productions
Open Calls and Professional Events ?
Meet me at…
Hello, how are you? I hope well! I don’t know what to tell you about how I am. In January I will have the pleasure of collaborating again with alba Kultur and their project Klangkosmos, with a tour of Jako el Muzikante in Germany and with a date in Belgium. And although I am not superstitious, I am starting to touch wood with my fingers crossed. Not true, I say this only to express that I feel subject to forces over which I have no control. I imagine you understand that perfectly.
In any case, activity continues in many countries with a certain degree of normality. Let’s look ahead. I hope your plans continue and that you have a wonderful holiday season too.
As always, if you have any news of interest for our community, let me know. Thank you very much for your attention.
A few days ago I had the honour of participating in the initiative of the Slovak radio station New Model Radio, which consists of inviting a person from the world of music to select 120-minute playlist.
My selection ranges from a rebetiko recording from 1932 to some of today’s most exciting artists, such as Sam Lee, through little-remembered milestones in history, such as Reinette l’Oranaise, and others who have gone on to big success, such as Mori Kanté with his Yeke Yeke, or pioneers of the concept of “world music”, such as Aksak Maboul, with a piece from 1980. And of course, some of the apple of my eye, like Janusz Prusinowski Kompania or Vigüela.
Mundofonías: our monthly favourites for December are the albums: Zār: Music for the spirits (V.A.), Xanthoula Dakovanou’s Lamenta and La caña de millo: Voz histórica y silenciada de la cumbia (V.A.)
The colleagues of World Music Charts Europe have released their list of 2021. Their top 10 are the albums by: Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino, Warsaw Village Band, Monsieur Doumani, Antonis Antoniou, Liraz, L’Alba, Sofia Labropoulou, Altin Gün, Samba Touré and Tara Fuki. Congratulations! Check the complete list here.
AND NOW THE FLOOR IS FOR: LAURENT BOIREAU
I don’t remember when I met Laurent, the director of Crépuscule Productions. Maybe at the long-missed Babel Med. For me he has been one of those people who have always been part of the world music scene and with whom you feel you share certain things, such as good taste. Hehehe.
According to his website, Crépuscule Productions is a booking agency dedicated to world musics and “musiques actuelles sans frontières”. I keep this part in French because this concept of “musiques actualles” is very French.
His offer includes artist from Portugal (Danças Ocultas), Argentina (Las Hermanas Caronni), Italy (Rachele Andrioli e Rocco Nigro), Tunisia (Ghalia Benali) and many others. And it is my pleasure to share his insights with you.
Thank you, Laurent!
Mapamundi Música: Why are you doing this? What is your personal background?
Laurent Boireau: I’ve always been passionate about music. I was a young teenager when the punk movement emerged, soon followed by the post-punk era which was extremely creative and musically open. I should also thank the French public radio network who gave me easy access to classical, experimental music, jazz and blues when I was a kid.
When I moved to Paris in 1992, I worked in a theater close to the capital where the Africolor festival was taking place at that time. This is where I attended my first concert of Danyel Waro. A complete shock. The day after, I was immersed in a mandingo Christmas night with Malian musicians playing all night long and an incredible audience coming up on stage, dancing and throwing bank notes at them. It was crazy. Later, I met Africolor’s creator Philippe Conrath. I was looking for work in the music field, he was looking for someone for a short replacement. The six months replacement period eventually lasted ten years. I worked on the organization of the festival and we started developing a touring department for the musicians Philippe was producing on his record label Cobalt. This is how it started.
It is easy for me to understand the impression that Danyel Waro made on Laurent. I’ve only been lucky enough to see him live once, at the FMM in Sines, and that man carries the music in each of his cells. After that experience that Laurent recounts, Danyel Waro has returned to Africolor on several occasions. Here you have one.
Mapamundi Música: From your training, education, previous experiences, which ones of the skills or knowledge you got have been the most useful for your career as an agent of musicians?
LB: It’s not easy for me to answer to this. I just feel my only “skill” is my passion for music and that alone drives me to do what I’m trying to do: help musicians develop their career. Then, it’s a cocktail of patience, experience over the years with failures, mistakes and successes, the people you meet and network with,…
Mapamundi Música: Apart from that, which other skills do you think are essential to succeed in this field of work?
LB: Conviction and patience. A lot of patience. Luck can also be a crucial factor: when you meet the great, smart artist at the right time…
Mapamundi Música: Any particular advice for a fellow newcomer or someone who wants to get started in this field?
LB: Have confidence and enthusiasm. Never forget you’re at the service of the musicians. A French colleague had a relevant formula: we are the employers of our bosses.
Mapamundi Música: And now, for the artists. I’m sure you get requests from artists every day to be their manager. I am sure because it happens to me too, and many colleagues tell me the same thing. Do you have any recommendations for the artists, so that they can improve the way they communicate when they do it for this purpose?
LB: A lot of the requests I get come from artists who are musically very or too close to artists I am already working with. I would advise them to get in touch with agencies where they would be kind of unique, different, complementary from the rest of the catalogue. But I understand you are inclined to knock at every door when you are looking for partnerships.
Mapamundi Música: Do you think it makes sense for the artists to try to find an agent? Have you ever started a stable collaboration with a band or artist that approached you in their search of an agent?
LB: Definitely. First, the artist will save a lot of time and energy. Second, we can use our expertise and network to resolve problems the artist may not be able to solve by himself (search for a label, distributor, etc.). I’ve been working with artists since the creation of Crépuscule Productions in 2008 and we’re still enjoying working together despite the inevitable ups and downs.
Mapamundi Música: I think there will be still, at least for many years, a lot of artists and a much smaller number of agents, that is the current situation. This makes me think that we are not in a very interesting business, otherwise there would be many more agents working in world music. Nevertheless, it seems the artists require us. Something seems to be wrong, what is it?
LB: French mainstream media have reduced their support for world music. I don’t believe that the use of social networks compensated for this decrease, like for other musical genres. Now, mainstream media is watching what’s popular in social nertworks… I don’t know how to solve this equation. The audiences we traditionally target use social media but not as intensively as the younger generations. And the younger generations are overwhelmed by the content valued on these social networks, which does not really value musical diversity (although the word “diversity” is now a mantra used to enhance our western multi-cultural societies…).
“It has never been easier to discover new music and the public has never seemed so unconcerned.”
For me, the development of the use of the internet has created a paradox: it has never been easier to discover new music and the public has never seemed so unconcerned. The offer is suddenly so vast that we are lost, helpless, facing this digital ocean and we take refuge in musical genres or artists that we already know, which reassures us. The world music scene is a vast ocean in itself, which is great for us, but probably kind of scary (or boring!) for some people. This is perhaps what makes us fragile.
“We are now more and more confronted with this market reality. For most of us, it does not correspond to our philosophy.”
We are a niche, within the music industry, which has benefited from public financial support for culture, and which has perhaps preserved us from the fierce competition of the market. Since the last decade and over, things have drastically changed, and we are now more and more confronted with this market reality. For most of us, it does not correspond to our philosophy, our desire to defend and promote musical aesthetics which, for us, carry much more than thei commercial potential. We must try to hold on with conviction, patience, confidence and enthusiasm, but I believe it’s the artists themselves who give us the strength to continue. And if the public could support us a little more, it would almost be heaven!
Do you have a call of interest for our community that you want to share? Let me know asap
OPEN CALLS AND PROFESSIONAL EVENTS
If you have anything to share in this section in a future edition, let me know.
Mobility grants to book Spanish artists, by Acción Cultural Española. The dates and conditions for this grants have been dramatically enhanced. The official information is here.
Apply for Folk Spot Denmark 2022. Open until December 21th 12.00 PM, TOMORROW!!! Folk Spot Denmark is a showcase program in connection with Tønder Festival. Find more details, here.
Fira Mediterrànea de Manresa. The application for showcasing is open until January 20th at 12 PM. It will take place from 6th to 9th of October 2022. More info, here. And for the application, here.
Folk Alliance International annual conference. Hybrid event, with the in-person portion being held at the Westin Crown Center Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri, USA. 23rd-27th February. More info, here. Registration is open, both for the in person and for the only online categories, here. My Vigüela are part of the official selection and they will participate with a new online showcase.
MEET ME AT…
Since August I have lived as before the pandemic in terms of travelling but now who knows…
Coimbra, Portugal, for a concert by Monsieur Doumani. 21st January. This concert has been postponed several times. Let’s see what happens for this new date.
Lisbon, Portugal, for the third concert of the series of Músicas Escondidas at the Museum of Orient. 4th February: Daud Khan Sadozai. The first and second concerts of this series two times postponed have been a real success. They have been by Nouruz Ensemble and by Egschiglen. The third one will be by this Afghan master of rubab and sarod, Daud Khan.
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 50 stations in 18 countries). We produce the Transglobal World Music Chart with our partner Ángel Romero from WorldMusicCentral.com.
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.
This newsletter is open to sponsorship. Feel free to ask for details.
Flash news: new call from MOST Music, artistic selecion of Folk Alliance International announced
Brief news from the media, chats and sister projects
Talk with Peter Van Rompaey, from Muziekpublique.
Open Calls and Professional Events ?
Meet me at…
How are you? I hope well!
Womex took place again in person, with an atmosphere that almost seemed normal, with close to the usual number of delegates. I have many tasks pending and many emails to answer related to Womex. Life as it used to be.
It was a delight to see so many colleagues again and to finally meet in person some of those with whom I had only been in contact from afar. I have also received thanks, face to face, from some of the subscribers to this newsletter and it has strengthened my commitment to it even more. And it took place the showcase by Hudaki Village Band, my Ukrainian band, that was a success!
I have also missed some people, some who have not come because of the situation of still some uncertainty related to the international travels and others, for a different reason. For example, Leo Ličof, creator of the Okarina festival in Bled, Slovenia. He was our protagonist in this edition. I will focus on him for one reason. Last month I commented on how the pandemic has accelerated some things and made it easier for others to be destroyed. During my stay at WOMEX, Leo warned me that the festival was disappearing, there would be no more Okarina Festival, by decision of the city council. I’m sure there are many similar situations that I don’t know about.
But there is also hopeful news for our community and colleagues who have managed to retake their activities with the usual strength, like today’s protagonist, Peter Van Rompaey. I share with you some of this good news and, as always, if you have any news to share with the community, let me know.
Thank you very much for your attention. As always, if you have any news of interest for our community, let me know.
Araceli Tzigane | info@mundimapa.com | +34 676 30 28 82 Subscription is available here.
FLASH NEWS
? MOST MUSIC, BRIDGE FOR BALKAN MUSIC: OPEN CALL
— The reach of this project is limited to Europe and countries included in Creative Europe. Nevertheless it can be interesting for you if you are not in that case, as it is a very inspiring project —
This project was our main topic in this edition, in which Balázs Weyer and András Sőrés answered to many answers. And their website is also very informative. I recommend you to check it and in any case, I will bring a little info:
MOST Project has four main areas of activity, focused on artists (export), festivals (exchange, and it includes festivals in several regions of Europe), urban policies and management training for emerging professionals.
And the activity is focused on some Balkan countries: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo (this designation is without prejudice to positions on status, and is in line with UNSCR 1244/1999 and the ICJ Opinion on the Kosovo declaration of independence), Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania and Serbia.
The second year is about to begin, so:
Is this for you? What are they searching for?
From the 9 countries:
Bands, orchestras and musicians
Young, junior, cultural or music managers, bookers, or other world music professionals, who share the goal to join the international world music scene.
From any country that is a part of the Creative Europe programme: festivals and clubs or event venues that have an existing world music programming.
? FOLK ALLIANCE INTERNATIONAL, OFFICIAL PROGRAM FOR THE CONFERENCE, ANNOUNCED!
“The 2022 Folk Alliance International Conference will be a hybrid event, with the in-person portion being held at the Westin Crown Center Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri, USA, on February 23-27.
Our 2022 conference theme is Living Traditions and will showcase various traditional folk music forms regionally, nationally, and internationally. The theme will be explored through topics of music preservation, migration, evolution, and authenticity, while the Global Summit will highlight the work of folklorists.”
I am honoured to announce that my Spanish band Vigüela has been selected for the official programme. ? Their showcase is one of the few online ones.
Check all the official showcase artists, here. And all the details about the 2022 conference are here.
BRIEF NEWS FROM THE MEDIA, CHARTS AND SISTER PROJECTS
Mundofonías: our monthly favourites for November are the albums: Magija djin muzika vlahilor / Vlaška muzička magija / The magic of Vlach music: Gergina 2009-2018 (V.A.), In the year 2021: Looking back at 40 years of JARO music (V.A.), Göç by Cihan Türkoğlu.
Out colleague from World Music Charts Europe Milan Tesař and me will participate in an online presentation in the Rio Music Market, to present their platform and the Transglobal World Music Chart, as resources for the musicians, record labels and promotors. It will be on December 8th at 15:30 CET.
AND NOW THE FLOOR IS FOR: PETER VAN ROMPAEY
I met Peter Van Rompaey more than 10 years ago, in Bergen, Norway, at the beginning of a short trip to a fiord before the Førdefestivalen. Yes, it sounds really chic. After then, we have met in several places, as he is a regular on the traditional musics scene and very multifaceted.
I love his story, for several reasons. One of them is that the process of creation and growth of your organisation, Muziekpublique, is organic. Rather than the result of a detailed, multi-faceted plan, it is the result of responding to social and vital objectives as they emerged. Another reason is that, as you will see from his words below, it is a story of effort, not easy, but a story of success.
Muziekpublique, as he explains in the interview, is a concert and festival organiser, a management and booking agency, a record label and a music school, operating from Brussels.
I have little more to add, as he has generously gone into detail, other than to wish him and his team the achievement of their challenges and the continuation of this fascinating path.
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Mapamundi Música: Why are you doing this? What is your personal background? Peter Van Rompaey: I am the only son of a family of butchers. As my parents were working everyday from 7am until 11pm, I was much alone at night. So, I listened a lot to the radio. One way or another, I’ve always liked a lot of music. And one evening, on the television, I saw the Flemish traditional singer Wannes Van de Velde. As he sings in Flemish, he is not known abroad. Unfortunately, he has passed away in 2008. In Belgium, we are a crosspoint between many countries and it is a flat country, we couldn’t keep the traditions. Some parts of Europe could keep it easier. Some mountainous regions, or Irland… But in Belgium, we have a lot of influences from abroad, and we had the radio and television, the Beatles and the Stones and everything… So, we’ve lost our musical tradition. But Wannes Van de Velde, who lived in Antwerp, still was real traditional singer, who learned it from his father who also was a folk singer. Wannes sang in the pubs and he met a lot of sailors… He was almost our only living link with the traditional scene. When I saw him on television, he did not perform a traditional song, but he was singing an alphabet: A is America that is governing us, B is the bomb that us threatening us. C is the culture that is dying because of all those laws, D are the thieves (dieven) who are stealing from us the artists. That you could talk about society in a song, a political song, was a real eye-opener for me. I was very moved by it. I realised that you could say critical things with traditional music. It went straight to my heart.
If you don’t know Wannes Van de Velde you can discover this in this video that has been suggested by Peter. And if you know him, you may also enjoy it! The interview continues below.
Mapamundi Música: How old were you? Peter Van Rompaey: I think I was like 14 or 13, I don’t remember exactly how old I was. I started to be really interested in traditional music, but more in the topical songs. Every week I went to the library to get new records and to find out about protest singers who sang in the languages that I could more or less understand, like Victor Jara, Atahualpa Yupanqui, some English ones, Dick Gaughan, American folk singers, Woody Guthrie…Some years later, at university in Leuven, I’ve met a lot of friends who were active in music. My neighbour, Bert Bernaerts was a bass and trumpet player. He is still running some very creative musical brass bands. Bert and I discussed all the time about music, discovered artists together such as Charles Mingus (who was also a topical jazz musician), Paul Bley,… Still another friend, Sam Versweyveld, was a jazz trumpet player, now playing with the Belgian mestizo band Chicos y Mendez. Thanks to him, I’ve discovered Miles Davis, Chet Baker. We went to see the first Belgian concerts of then young jazz artists such as Roy Hargrove and Joshua Redman together. Another friend played blues guitar and harmonica and he introduced me to the music of the old folk blues artists such as Robert Johnsson, Lightning Hopkins. We started organising blues concerts together with people like Honeyboy Edwards or Spencer Bohren. Another friend was Piet Maris, the accordion player and leader of Jaune Toujours and Mec Yek. For a very short moment, I was Jaune Toujours sound man, I must have been the worst sound engineer in the world, but at least I was wearing a yellow overall, fitting with the name of the band, which means always yellow in french. Together with Piet I organised concerts in unusual places in student town Leuven such as a solo concert with soprano saxophone player Steve Lacy in a swimming pool.One way or another, all my friends were into music. And also my wife, who I met at university, was playing music and very interested in accordionists and Irish folk music. With them, I starting making radio. I also started writing about music for a student newspaper and a Belgian folk magazine, and I made my first steps organizing concerts of jazz and blues.
After university, I followed my wife to Brussels and started teaching Dutch to people with migrant background. In the class, I was always singing traditional songs to teach them dutch. One of my students was Marisol Palomo, of whom all the family were making Galician music. They also organized folk nights. Marisol knew that I was writing about music for some world music magazines, and that I was very interested in folk music. So, she asked me if I could write the texts for their folk dance nights, which I started to do as a volunteer. At that time, I worked as a freelance journalist, mainly writing about economics.
At that moment, the Palomo family, who were also running the Galician association of Brussels had renovated La Tentation, an old big shop of curtains in art nouveau style in Brussels. They turned it into Galician cultural center with a capacity of 700 people. They asked me to help them to organise folk music concerts. At the opening night we invited some of the best Belgian folk bands to play, among them my all time hero, Wannes Van de Velde.
Very quickly there was so much work for the Galician cultural center that I had to tell my friend “I have not enough time for my job as free lance journalist anymore. If you want me to continue, you will have to give me some sort of paid contract”. And I started to work for them. We were organizing concerts of traditional music on a regular base, one or two concerts a week, most of it of European traditional music. Little by little, we opened up to other parts of the world. And we added music lessons, becoming a small music school, with teachers such as Didier Laloy, Wim Claeys or Anne Niepold (button accordion), Luc Pilartz (violin), Veronica Codesal (pandeireta),… But after 4 years they fired me, together with my former student Marisol Palomo, who was the daughter of the president of the Galician association. It was also a family problem. As La Tentation had become a very fructuous concert place for traditional music, with the concerts and the school, we decided to start a new association, which is Muziekpublique.
Mapamundi Música: What was the name of that Galician cultural center? Peter Van Rompaey: Centro Galego de Bruxelas and the building was called La Tentation. We had people playing there like Kepa Junkera, Breton singer Erik Marchand with Tarab de Caráncebes, the Irish folk band Dervish, also Habib Koite from Mali, Gacha Empega (the first band of Manu Théron from Lo Cor de la Plana)… It was the place to be for traditional music from the world. Mariza played there her first Belgian concert, we had Czech singer and violin player Iva Bittová, the Klezmatics… It was a very nice period but also difficult. First of all, there was the discussion about being mainly Galician center for Galician culture or opening up to different cultures, … They also wanted us to become more commercial than what we wanted to do. They could not understand that it was great to have Alim Qasimov playing there, or Monâjât Yulchieva… that sort of people, and that in those concerts you would do a break even, and not earn a lot of money. They wanted us to make salsa concerts where you can make five thousand or ten thousand euros with the bar instead. That was the discussion all the time: “you should do more commercial things and less those types of concerts”.
Mapamundi Música: And they fired you because of that. Peter Van Rompaey: Yes. Also the building was very special. When the musicians came, they were impressed. So, when we had to start again from scratch with Muziekpublique, we did not have the charm of the hall. In that building, La Tentation, we had every night 700 people… It was really working a lot, well situated in the center of Brussels and we thought “What we do is great, we have a great program, we’ll do the same type of program”. When we started as Muziekpublique we noticed that in fact there were quite some people coming for the building, that they were used to that place. With Muziekpublique we had to travel between concert halls all the time, because we didn’t have our own hall. And then, we had 100 people for the same artist for which would have come 700 in La Tentation. So, that was a very hard reality check.
Mapamundi Música: Who made Muziekpublique with you at the beginning? Peter Van Rompaey: We were four at the start. There was Marisol Palomo, who is one of the singers of Ialma, and two of the other collegues of La Tentation and a lot of volunteers. Most of the volunteers of La Tentation followed us, as did the teachers of our academy, except two. So, we started from scratch but already we had great help.
Mapamundi Música: So you had to work in other places. And what happened with the previous building, La Tentation? Peter Van Rompaey: They still continued doing some concerts but not with the same taste, much more latin, more commercial music. What was hard was that some people who used to come to the concerts before, from the traditional music scene, were angry on us, considering us as traitors… It was a very hard period. I lost a lot of hair and it became grey.
Mapamundi Música: When was this? Peter Van Rompaey: 2002. The family didn’t own the building, but had the possibility to buy it for 300.000 euros. If you see the building you know that the real price should be a least ten or twenty times that amount. It is a large, very beautiful building. They could buy for 300.000 euros in the first 3 years of their renting contract of 30 years. The government was ready to give Centro Galego a 300.000 euros grant to buy it, but they had one condition: they wanted to have one observer in the board. Unfortunately the board of the Centro Galego didn’t accept it and they have never bought the building. Now, 20 years later the Centro Galego de Bruselas has gone bankrupt. They don’t have the building anymore. Now the building would have been worth at least 3 million or 4 million euros, maybe double.
Mapamundi Música: Oh, my god! Peter Van Rompaey: There are many stories. Once with did a concert with Roma musicians and we managed to have the Romani singer from Romania Nicolae Guță. I don’t know if you know the record “La grande voix tsigane de Roumanie”.
This is the album mentioned by Peter. You might like to listen to it while you continue reading the interview.
Peter Van Rompaey: He is a hero for the Romani people in Romania. In our hall, half of the audience were Roma living in Brussels. It was crazy. In a certain moment they started to give him money and he was almost not singing anymore, but always saying “this song is for you, and this is for you” and he got his pocket full of money. But the president of Centro Galego got very angry that we did such things: “We are not a place for Gypsies”…When we left and started Muziekpublique, we had created an association, that was called La Tentation, in order to have government grants to support the cultural activities. We changed the name La Tentation into Muziekpublique. As we had left the building, we needed a new name. Brussels has two official languages. How can you be working with traditional music and be open to everyone and not like the persons who speak the other language? By having a name with the two official languages – Dutch and French – we made a statement of openness, tolerance for the others. However, there is more in the name: of course, “Muziek”, that is music, that was logical, and “publique”, to work with the audience, music of the people. We wanted to make contact between the audience and the music. For us, they are not separated worlds like in most of the concert places, the theatres, where you have artists on the stage with a huge distance with the audience. You come to the concert, you go out and do not get to talk, meet the artists… We want to create links between them… Muziekpublique is music of the people, for the people and with the people. That was the idea. In addition, “publique” means public, something for everyone.
The first years we travelled around Brussels. Next to the concerts, we continued the music school, where you have the smallest gap between the musicians and the audience who become musicians themselves. We grew little by little, first slowly. At the beginning, it was very hard. I think we wanted to stop every two months, because it was so much work every time. We were organizing like every week at least one concert, sometimes two. We had to use gym halls where we had to put up the stage ourselves, install the lights, do everything ourselves. It was so heavy, physically exhausting… Sometimes you think “Why are we doing this, it is crazy”. And after a while we had some fixed partners, halls where we could go. After three years we found a very nice hall in the centre of Brussels, which would be given to us by the city of Brussels. We had a press conference where the city council announced it, etc… But then, which is a typical Brussels thing, the region of Brussels with other political parties in it, decided to break the decision of the Brussels’ city council. So we were still homeless… Our dream of a place where we could have the concerts, the music classes, the rehearsals,… together, fell apart.
Luckily, one year later we found an empty theatre in the African neighbourhood in Brussels, Matonge, which is also the name of a neighbourhood in Kinshasa. Belgian has a diaspora from Congo, as it was a Belgian colony, a dark page of our Belgian history. The renovation of the Molière theatre was a neighbourhood project of the city of Ixelles (other part of Brussels), to restore the neighbourhood. So, thanks to that project and thanks to the city of Ixelles, we finally found our concert hall, where we still are situated.
It was really a big push. Having a fixed place, is much easier for the communication. We are easier identified as Muziekpublique at that place. Before, when were travelling between halls, people often thought it was a program of that hall… It was very difficult to communicate and get known. Sometimes, we couldn’t find a free hall to organize our concerts. That’s the reason that in our second year, a small festival that was born. As we had no concert halls, we decided to go into peoples houses. “Living Room Music” is a festival in 10 living rooms in one neighbourhood. People discover one Brussels’ neighbourhood and can see three concerts of different artists in different living rooms.
Mapamundi Música: In houses? Peter Van Rompaey: Yes. It has become a classic in the Muziekpublique program. Every year we go to another neighbourhood in Brussels. It is very nice. It is again linked to the meaning of our name. We tell the people of who live in the house “This day you are the organizer, you are the hall, you present the artists, you welcome them”. Ok, we have volunteers doing the ticketing, etc. It is not that they are all on themselves. But, they also have to keep in mind the timing of the concert and… This small scale festival creates relationships with the owners and the neighbourhood. Afterwards, we have a party together with all the owners and the volunteers. That’s the place where to owners get to see the other artists, who played at another house. There, the musicians play together in a jam session. For us, Living Room Music is a way to connect with a new audience.
Traditional music represents the 99% of the music of the world, although we only get 1% of attention on the radio or in press in general. However, there is so much diversity in the world… Still it is only that 1% what people get to know. Often they do not know traditional music or have bad ideas about it… We try, with those concerts, to attract people who wouldn’t go to hear traditional music. Because they are curious to discover the apartments in the neighbourhood or discover a new neighbourhood. Sometimes the owners get in contact with music they wouldn’t listen to. In our program, we often try to find new ways of getting another audience.
Mapamundi Música: How did you manage this in the legal side? In Spain, everything is so bureaucratic, and you have to guarantee there is an emergency exit and these kind of things. It is no easy to make that in Spain. Did you have to face any difficulty? Peter Van Rompaey: Not really. In Belgium, per meter of exit, you can have one hundred people. Of course, you need an emergency exit. As the concerts are for 30 or 40 people, they don’t make a big problem of it. One year, we had a problem with our ticketing system. We always work with three languages, Flemish, French and English. That year, our registration system didn’t take into account the subscription for the Flemish and for the English pages, because of a bug with the website. Before we go to visit the apartment and we estimate for instance that there is place for 30 people. For every concert we give 5 tickets to the owners to invite their neighbours. Because, if the neighbours hear there is music it can be disturb them. That’s why we encourage the owners to invite them. They also make connections; start to know each other better… So, for an appartement of 30 places, there should be 25 tickets. At that time our ticketing system didn’t count the registrations in Dutch and English. So, we were really overbooked. Everybody was packed in the apartments. It was really too much. I remember one person in the public asking for the emergency exit. One of the musicians opened the window behind him, which was on the second floor, and said “It is here, madam”. At the end, the concerts went well. We did not need an emergency exit.
In the first years of Living Room Music, you could go to one concert. After a few years, we have decided that you have to choose three concerts, all of different styles, so, for instance, someone who likes flamenco has to take two others, that could be a Syrian musician or Belgian traditional music, or African… Therefore, the audience has to choose two other concerts they normally wouldn’t go to. In this way, we push the audience to discover. We oblige the audience to be curious and see other things.
We always try to find ways that people go to concerts they normally wouldn’t go to, by combining artists from different cultures, doing a double or triple concerts. For instance, the theme would be violin, but different styles of violin. Maybe you like Balkan music and you would go to hear a Balkan violin player, but you’ll find on the same concert night a solo violin player from Tajikistan or someone from Norway playing hardanger fiddle. We often try to do this. We also do free noon concerts with solo artists, where we put all the audience on the stage around the artist. There we have another audience. People that are older and wouldn’t go out at night, still come to those kinds of concerts. When it is holiday, there are a lot of families coming to that type of concerts.
As I told you, when we had finally managed to find the hall in Matonge, it gave us a lot of opportunities. The hall has great acoustics. It sounds good, it is not difficult to amplify. One day we started recording. We thought “Muziekpublique is now existing for 5 years. We will make a compilation of local artists that we think they are worth to be known. Sometimes they have good recordings, sometimes they don’t.”
When we started, there were still a lot of world music or traditional music concerts in the cultural centers in Belgium. But often it was imported music for me. For instance, you saw the artists who were popular in World Music Chats Europe or Songlines brought to make a tour in the cultural centers. That is very nice but I did not see them develop artists or picking out emerging artists that deserve to be known. In the city of Brussels, there is such a large community of artists from everywhere… Sometimes you have artists that are better than those who come on tour. They might your neighbours, but sometimes you don’t know it and you only see an old man or the lady who is cleaning buildings but in fact he or she is an important artist. That’s why we wanted to work with artists from Brussels or from Belgium, that we think are worth to be known. And we try to get them known outside of Belgium. For the migrant communities is important to see that their heroes are also known outside of their own communities. Sometimes they are stars in their own community. It’s important in Belgium but also in other cities in Europe that people with migrant background can think “In my new city they like the artists of my own community”. It is important, it makes you feel that you, as a newcomer in the country, are also accepted.
The first artist we recorded an album with was Malick Pathe Sow, a Senegalese Fulani (English) or Peul (French) musician. He plays hoddu, what is called djeli ngoni in Mali. It is a small lute, like the one that Bassekou Kouyate plays. At that moment Malick was my teacher of guitar of African Senegalese style. During the classes we discussed lot and I felt his love for the more traditional Fulani music. At that time, he was playing a lot of mbalax music, a mixture of pop, rock and traditional. He was doing that because he didn’t dare to play his traditional music. Malick had made some CDs with quite success before. He had played with Baaba Maal. But he was afraid to do the more traditional things, because he thought he would have more success with mbalax. He was one of the artists we wanted to put in a compilation for the 5 years of Muziekpublique. The recording was done by a musician, Emre Gültekin, who is a baglama player and a sound technician. Malick played one song with his band, and we asked them to play more traditional. It was a difficult process because the musicians were so used to the previous things… They recorded such a nice song and they played another one and at the end we didn’t do the compilation, we made a complete album with Malick Pathe Sow. The album was a lot of work, because Malick himself wasa ready to play more acoustic, more into his roots, although it is not 100% traditional because he plays his own compositions. Not all the musicians were Fulani, something that happens when you live abroad: you don’t find enough musicians from your own community. The other musicians were Bao Sissoko, a Mandinka kora player from Senegal who is not Peul but as he had played with Fulani musicians such as Baaba Maal, het felt the music they were going to record. Another came was from Guinea Konacry, playing balafon and guitar, the percussionist was from Togo… They were used to play the more commercial mbalax and we had to ask the percussionist not to put the accents with cymbals. We wanted to hear the calabash. The recording of our first album ‘Maayo Men’ took a long time, but thanks to the vision of Malick and Emre, it turned out to be a beauty.
This is the album Peter is talking about:
Peter Van Rompaey: We did not have the intention to become a record label, because we already had enough work organizing the concerts and running the music school. We tried to find another label to edit it. We had other good musicians in mind we wanted to record and proposed to be a sublabel of another record label that would do all typical label work, printing, distributing, dealing with author rights… We almost made an agreement with Home Records, but at the end we did not agree. They wanted us to have the artists recorded in their studio with their sound engineer and we wanted to continue with Emre Gültekin as sound engineer in our hall in order to be able to follow up the recording process. As we did not find another record label, we finally became one ourselves.Initially we didn’t want to do the bookings or the management of the bands either, but all the people that we found wanted Malick to make again the more commercial mbalax. So, at the end we though that if we left him to another agent, in two weeks he would be playing mbalax again and we didn’t want that. At the end we started doing it ourselves and since then we have a record label and do the management and booking of the artists on our label.
Mapamundi Música: So, why were you working as a freelance in economy? Did you study economics? Peter Van Rompaey: I studied Germanic languages. I started to write for a students’ newspaper, a very good one, almost like a professional newspaper. Every week some of our articles got into the national newspapers. Some of the news topics we found or wrote about, they took it over and it went to the national newspapers. I was the coordinator of that students’ newspaper for one year. Afterwards I tried to find a fixed place in a newspaper. I almost got to be hired in one of the two major Flemish newspapers, but at the end they took over someone else from another newspaper, and I felt really depressed, because my dream had felt apart.
I worked a freelance journalist tackling many topics. I wrote a lot for the economic pages of one of our major Flemish newspapers. I did not write about the hard economic subjects such as the stock exchange, but I wrote about weapon exports industry, pollution by the industry and how to clean it, about people having debts… Topics that were still economics but with a social character. Subjects that went a bit broader than hard economics. How Eastern Europe changed from communist system to capitalism. I wrote about the case of Slovakia going from state market economy to free market economy. At that time I used to go to Slovakia very often for a social Gypsy project. When the state companies were privatised the Slovaks received bonds or actions of the big state companies, but after a very short time all the bonds were already owned by very few people, often linked to the government. I wrote about that kind of subjects. I put a lot of time in each of the articles, doing a lot of research and interviews. I liked it a lot but I had to stop because I didn’t earn enough to do it properly. If I wanted to make a decent living, I would have to do a lot of shit articles, go to press conferences that were not interesting and quicly write an article to earn my money. I did not want to do that kind of journalism and I had to find to do something else.
Mapamundi Música: So with Muziekpublique you organize concerts, you are a label, you make management and booking and you have the music school. You also organize festivals, like the one in the living rooms and like Hide&Seek Festival. And about the school, you started when you were at La Tentation? Why? Peter Van Rompaey: One of the reasons comes back all the time. There are some sorts of musics that are not well known and, what is the best way to understand them ? I’ll give an example: kora music. When you learn kora music yourself, you have learnt to play a basic song, like Jarabi, you are in a concert and Toumani Diabate plays Jarabi and you will understand much more what he is doing and you will listen differently. So, always the ideas about educating the public so they can understand what they are listening to, is one of the things.
This is Toumani Diabate playing Jarabi, the piece mentioned by Peter.
Peter Van Rompaey: A second reason is that the market for the concerts of these musicians is so small that they have to find other ways of earning their living. One of the ways is teaching. We offer them the possibility to make part of their living with the teaching.The third reason is that we want to form new musicians because the tradition can’t get lost. We live in different contexts than you in Spain. You are maybe able to keep more of the rural society with some traditional ways of transmitting the music as it used to be done before in some communities. But we in the city are in a different situation. We have lost that way of living and transmitting music. That’s why we have to find other ways to make the music continue and live on.
Those are the main three reasons. And it is also a way to create connections between the artists and the audience, “Muziek” and “publique”.
I experienced it myself when I was student of Malick Pathe Sow. Even though I didn’t learn to play very well because of my limited talents, it was an incredible experience to have a master musician as a teacher, who also tells you all the stories of his country and his tradition. It was magical. I would advise anyone to study, once in their lives, with some master who is very rooted in the tradition and wants to share his passion about it. It is an incredible experience to listen to the master or to talk a lot with him or her. You do not only learn to play but get lessons in history, live, philosophy… Those moments are magical. That is why we are privileged in our world, because we have those contacts with the musicians and we can learn a lot from them. In general in culture and traditional music, we do not earn a lot of money but the artists pay us with their culture, their experiences… We are very privileged in a way.
Mapamundi Música: Was it easy to find students? What is the profile of the students? Peter Van Rompaey: Students are mainly adults. We started with 8 or 9 lessons and now we have 50 classes. It has evolved enormously. We don’t have a lot of children, because we are not specialized on that. Since this year, we are more and more together with schools.
We started mainly with adults. Some people have stopped classe because they though it was easy, because it is world music. People that want to travel with their instrument and that think that in one year of lessons they can travel and play in the streets. That is the extreme example. But most of the students are music lovers. Sometimes they have music education, sometimes they don’t. The ones who have, maybe they want to broaden up their horizons. Some are ambitious and want to become professional musicians or they already are, and some are amateurs. Some of the students just come for the atmosphere. That is not so nice for the teachers when they see these students are not advancing enough.
The profile of age can be from 16 to 80 maybe. Almost all ages, except very young children. It is quite diverse, but it depends on which class it is. So let’s say, diatonic accordion is less diverse or will be another profile that qanun. For qanun they can be more Moroccan people and for diatonic accordion they are more Belgians. In our ideal world there would be a Moroccan playing diatonic accordion or a Portuguese playing qanun, but it is their choice.
Mapamundi Música: So you have 50 classes. Peter Van Rompaey: Yes. There are some dance classes but most of them are instrument classes: from bagpipe to ud. We have also ensemble classes, where students get the chance to play together and make bands.
Mapamundi Música: So you have a lot of teachers. What have been the main challengers of working with them as teachers? Were they all already trained as teachers or did some of them start to be teachers in Muziekpublique? Peter Van Rompaey: Most of them started to be teachers in Muziekpublique. It is out strength but also our weakness: we are not imposing them a method. So about the balafon teacher, in West Africa they don’t teach. You are just sitting there with one of the older people and you do what they do. Our balafon teacher makes a compromise between teaching in Africa and teaching for Europeans. It is difficult to explain but it is not like a method with notes and so.
Others are stricter, with notes and everything written down… It is a little bit free and when we see it is not going well we try to help them. As I said, it is also our weakness that we give them a lot of liberty on how to approach it.
Mapamundi Música: I think it is not easy to give lessons of a skill like that, because in their communities those are learn intergenerationally, you learn in the ambient where it is happening, so, how do they deal with this, do they need support, do they ask to the other teachers how do they do it, how can they assess the development of the students? You mentioned they want the student to learn, sometimes they are not fast enough, and they can get frustrated, so there must be a way of evaluating the progress of the students? Peter Van Rompaey: We don’t have an exam but once in the year most of the students play for an audience. We have like a students festival for two days and they have to play a the Moliere theatre, where is Muziekpublique, on the big stage, to be seen by the audience. That is the exam. There is some goal, because you have to play.
But sometimes it doesn’t work and we try to help the teacher but sometimes at the end we have to say “Sorry, it will never work” and we stop the class.
Mapamundi Música: Do you need each teacher to have a minimum number of students? Peter Van Rompaey: We need at least 3 or 4. It can happen, exceptionally at the beginning, when the class is starting, to start with 1 or 2 and then it grows, but we use to start with 3 or 4 minimum.
Mapamundi Música: So you must have at least 200 students. Peter Van Rompaey: We have 650. Some teachers have 4 or 5, others have 20.
Mapamundi Música: How do you manage all this in the financial side? You make a lot of things so at the end, some amount from this, form that and from the other… keeps the structure alive. How many people are you working there and how do you support it economically? Peter Van Rompaey: We are 9 people now. When we started, we were 0 paid. We’ve done two years with all volunteers. But now we are 9 people, equivalent to 7 and a half full time for technics (sound and light), accountancy, production, communication in French and Dutch, the music school, the volunteer coordination, the label and the bookings,…
And how do we pay it? We have grants from the two communities, the French and the Flemish. It more or less pays the employees. The rest, we pay with the tickets sales or the drinks at the bar or all the other incomes. Grants are like 35 to 40% of the income, and the rest is 60%, that is our own revenue.
Mapamundi Música: Which is the total budget for one year? Peter Van Rompaey: Around one million or one million two hundred thousand. It is difficult to say with covid. The last turnover I have is around one million, before covid. The first year it was about one hundred thousand, but many artists supported us, playing for free.
Mapamundi Música: And since you started working with these kinds of music, not only since Muziekpublique, what do you feel that is the evolution of the public? Sometimes, I think that many of us feel that world music has been getting weaker, at least in Europe. What you have been doing must have supported the creation of new public, of giving more knowledge to the big and making them appreciated more these musics. How has been this evolution? Peter Van Rompaey: Until now (the last year it was different -Covid-) we have been growing every year. More students,… Everything has grown. On Muziekpublique level, it was going very. But in a broader sense, I am sure that world music is losing strength in general. It is very hard to convince people… let’s say, decision makers, the national radio… to show them there is really an audience, with also young people. For them, the young people should be listening to either urban music, hip hop, rap,… But I can show you, when we have a jam session, it is all young people having fun, having as much or even more fun as people doing hip hop… We don’t find a real way to convince of our reality in fact. It is a neverending battle to get into the broader national media.
Mapamundi Música: You have public radio. Peter Van Rompaey: We have some exceptions, like Didier Melon, with his daily show ‘Le Monde est un Village’ on La Première (French speaking national radio). And we still have radio programs on the national classical radio. For us it is a gift that Didier Melon is still there. We touch wood to keep him, because we are so lucky that he still has his program every day of the week, and he is also thinking about the musicians and supporting them… He has an exceptional personality, who is not afraid to go against the ideas of some of his superiors. On the Flemish radio it is worse. They are really looking down on traditional music.
Mapamundi Música: And in these radios, they are supported with public money, aren’t they? Peter Van Rompaey: They are supported with public money but in a way they think very commercial. They interpret their public function in their own way. But we think that radio has a mission to also play other music than the popular music, or classical or jazz. At the moment, jazz is highly regarded, it got some standing that the traditional music don’t have. It is difficult to explain why. The radio directors have the idea that when you put traditional music on the radio, people won’t listen any more.
We’ve had so many discussions with, we have gone so many times to the radio to complain and to suggest them to find other ways… For instance, we have a radio station which main objective is to give news items. We told them to link music to it when they dig deeper into a subject, for instance about what has happened in Kabul in Summer of 2021, “Why don’t you play some Afghan music? You have music to illustrate the news from all over the world, but you play Radiohead or Lady Gaga… Why don’t you try to illustrate it?”. They don’t care.
Mapamundi Música: What are you doing now and what is the future? Peter Van Rompaey: We are still trying new ways to bring new audience. This Summer, and the next years, we are doing the “Firefly sessions”. In Belgium you can only see the fireflies during three weeks. We go to into the woods in Brussels, we do a walk, it takes around one hour. One of the musicians, Raphael De Cock, who is Flemish and is one of the singers of Voxtra and Toasaves, is not only musician but also a scientist specialized in fireflies. He is the guide. We do into the wood to see the fireflies and he explains about it and about nature until we reach a small lake. There we invite other musicians to play a small concert acoustically. Often they do something together with Raphael. They play or sing one or two songs and then the fireflies arrive and we go back to the woods with all the fireflies. That is really magical experience for the people. It is a way also to have people discovering traditional music but in another setting. Sometime they know a little about nature in Brussels, but they don’t know about fireflies in Brussels. We continue the Hide & Seek Festival, this year it as the 6th edition. It has the same philosophy. By choosing special places in Brussels, sometimes unknown places where you can’t go often and doing concerts there, you attract another audience that wants to see those places and they see a concert of traditional music. For me, it is a way of programming artists that would attract 50 people in the hall. In the context of the Hide & Seek Festival, these concerts will sell out. The audience shows up thanks to the magical setting. With the Hide & Seek Festival we combine the promotion of Brussels and the discovery of new places with the promotion of music.
Of course, we continue the line of our actual work. More and more we try to make connections with schools, with younger kids, because we are aware that they are the future of our society and of traditional music. It is very important. We didn’t do it before because there were other organizations specialized on that but some of them stopped working so we decided now to, little by little, develop this aspect.
For the label, we have just released a new album by Tamala, a trio with two West African musicians, Bao Sissoko, who was already in the album by Malick Pathe Sow, kora player, Mola Syla, who is a singer, and Walter Vandenabeele, Belgium violin player. It is their second record. And for the next year we are planning the release of a group called Toasaves, that means in the dialect of Antwerp something like home port, the port where you feel at home. It is all about the songs of Wannes Van de Velde, his traditional songs, but with the spirit of opening up to all the influences you get into a port. You start from the Flemish tradition but it is often linked to melodies you get from other countries that come with the sailors to the port. It can be combined with an Afghan traditional song or with something from Creta… It is a very exciting project.
And we will do a new album by Refa, that is the new version of Refugees for Refugees. They changed the name because the musicians do not want to keep the label of refugees. They want to be seen first of all as humans or musicians, and leave behind that they were refugees, or are refugees. We are preparing a new album with the band which has evolved a lot. They have done great things together lately but they haven’t done any recordings and we have no way to show it. We are also preparing an album with the Syrian band, Jawa, the last breaths of Aleppo. The rich musical Sufi tradition has been transmitted orally in Aleppo for decades. Jawa’s mission is to preserve this heritage, which has been threatened by the Syrian war. The Sufi masters, who kept the secrets of this musical tradition, are gradually disappearing from the scene, threatening to lose a treasure of songs forever. As guardians of this rich cultural heritage, Jawa revives the music and does so in a contemporary way. Las Lloronas are working on a second album. We will probably release others.
These are Refa (formerly known as Refugees for Refugees):
Mapamundi Música: Do you want to share anything else? Peter Van Rompaey: We are working now with a large Congolese project. We have decided to do more about Congolese music, because we are situated in the African neighbourhood. Congo had the statute of a Belgian colony. We should be proud of Congolese rumba as Belgians as well. We have the Congolese tradition and we have big masters of the Congolese rumba, so we are working now with a great friend who is Klay Mawungu, who is like a passionate person about Congolese rumba, he also sings not professionally. We are trying to do things together, we are hosting a large band with Congolese musicians from Brussels and from Paris. The band is called MRCI!, that is like merci, thank you in French, and also Mythique Rumba Congolese International. We are trying to restore the spirit of the old rumba. And with Klay we are also developing projects of teaching the History of Congolese rumba, but with a live band. So they will play the different styles, how they evolved and the links to our past. It is linked to the dark pages of Belgian history, that we had those colonies, the crimes our country did, the reactions of the Congolese, which songs they created to protest… So it is at the same time a music and history lesson and a concert.
These are the Mythique Rumba Congolese International band:
Peter Van Rompaey: Many things are going on, some of them might not happen… That is also part of the story: sometimes you try out things and sometimes they don’t work out well.
We are also dreaming, for a long time already, of an online music school. If it will happen, you will find out in the next years on https://www.muziekpublique.be
Do you have a call of interest for our community that you want to share? Let me know asap.
OPEN CALLS AND PROFESSIONAL EVENTS
Just a little bunch of them, the ones I have identified. If you have anything to share in this section in a future edition, let me know. This place is for sharing useful dates and I don’t charge for including news here ?
European Folk Network face to face meeting: Budapest, 17th and 18th of November. Taking place from tomorrow and the registration is closed.
MOST Music Balkan Explained above.
PIN Conference, in Skopje, 25-27th November. The registration is right now open here and I don’t know when is the deadline.
MusicConnect Italy, in Pistoia, Italy, 2nd-5th December.
“All about the Italian world music scene professionals meet-up and showcase festival”. The participation as a delegate is open now, but only for Italians. There is a bunch of international guests but it seems there is no way to register now if you are not an Italian. More info, here.
Rio Music Market, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. 6th-9th December
“The Rio Music Market (RMK) is an annual music conference that brings together a large number of professionals in lectures, discussions, panels, showcases, pitchings, mentorships and speed meetings. […] For the 2021 edition, we will invite companies and professionals from around the world to participate in activities with themes of relevance to the entrepreneurial market: digital marketing, market numbers, new tools, copyright, social media, blockchain, big data and artificial intelligence are among the topics.”. The registration is open. More info, here.
Folk Alliance International annual conference. Hybrid event, with the in-person portion being held at the Westin Crown Center Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri, USA. 23rd-27th February.
“The Folk Alliance International Conference, presented by Folk Alliance International, is the world’s largest gathering of the folk music industry and community (crossing a diverse array of genres including Appalachian, Americana, Blues, Bluegrass, Celtic, Cajun, Global Roots, Hip-Hop, Old-Time, Singer-Songwriter, Spoken Word, Traditional, Zydeco, and various fusions).” More info, here. Registration is open, both for the in person and for the only online categories, here.
MEET ME AT…
PIN International Music Conference, Skopje, North Makedonia, November 26th and 27th.
According to the website, “PIN is the first and only international music conference and showcase festival in Macedonia. […] Our goal is to enrich the local music sector by bringing the diversity of best practices, up-to-date knowledge and people who will be part of this development in Macedonia and the Balkan region.”
Lisbon, Portugal, for the second concert of the series of Músicas Escondidas at the Museum of Orient. 10th December: Egschiglen
The first concert of this series two times postponed was on October 15th. It was by the Nouruz Ensemble and it was an outstanding performance in a venue full at the 100%.
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 50 stations in 18 countries). We produce the Transglobal World Music Chart with our partner Ángel Romero from WorldMusicCentral.com.
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.
This newsletter is open to sponsorship. Feel free to ask for details.
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Hello, how are you? I’m fine, sending this letter from home with the t-shirt of the Viljandi Folk Music Music Festival. It is a really nice design, I’m loving to wear it. I share some more insights about the festival here below.
The European Folk Network’s annual meeting, open registration until August 26th. It will take place in Manresa during the Fira Mediterrània. The welcome to the attendants will be on Friday 7th of October and the day of talks and meeting will be on Saturday 8th. After the activities of the network, the attendants will be able to enjoy the showcases of the Fira. Non-members of EFN are very welcome to attend the conference and can register to access airport transfers and lunch, etc., but will pay their own hotel costs. More details and registration, here.
Call for talent-hunters: the Afro Pepites Show is a tool dedicated to talent-Hunters. “The committee members will receive the instructions by e-mail. You will have to select 5 musical projects and 5 other projects (painting, dance, sculpture, short film….), in the quiet of your home, between 03/10/22 and 23/10/22.” Learn more, here.
How are you? I’m fine, a bit late than I would like to be but the truth is that I’m really busy this month and I also have something to tell you that has gone on for a long time and I think it’s interesting.
Ben explained about that mythical meeting where this miscellaneous set of music was baptized as “world music”. He explained that in 1987 there was no marketing concept of “world music”. A group of people, mainly from the UK, developed a marketing campaign to identify what was already there. They raised money for an ad campaign and voted for the name. They invested £3,250 in a three-month campaign. They started putting “File under: world music” on the records, so that the shops would know where to put the music and would make a space with that label. All this is no secret. The minutes of the meeting are publicly available, for example, here: 
Will we meet? Drop me a line!
As mentioned above, the WOMBA conference will soon take place in Novi Sad: from 7 to 10 of July. It will happen within the framework of the EXIT festival. In addition to the conference, the festival has a stage dedicated to world music: the Pachamama Stage, powered by MOST. This is how they present this stage: 
Registration for Global Toronto, open. NEW. “Global Toronto 2022 (GT22) will be held online from June 20-22, with pre-conference activities being held in Toronto in person from June 7-10, including a diverse selection of international and cross-country delegates.” The registration is open, 
met Sonja Heimann at WOMEX 2015, in Budapest. The World Music Forum Netherlands was planning a very ambitious project, the European World Music Monitor.
I have a more serious picture of Eric but I found this one on his Facebook profile and I loved it. He gave me permission to use it.
WOMEX, call for proposals open. DEADLINE NEXT FRIDAY! The expo will take place in Lisbon, Portugal, from 19 and 23 of October. The call is open until Friday 18th March, for conferences, showcase, club summit and films. The submission site is 
Mundial Montréal. Deadline for the call for artists extended until April 1st. The 12th edition will take place in Montréal, Canada, from 15th to 18th of November. The submission form is 
Hello, how are you? I hope well! I am well. We got to complete the series of 3 concerts at the Museu de Oriente in Lisbon without further postponements (and with the intention of repeating it), with the concert by the Afghan master Daud Khan on 4th of February, Vigüela is presenting the new album on the stages (by the way, you can listen to it 
It is impossible to look at her face and not feel overwhelming sympathy. She is Sabina Schebrak, founder & owner at CultureWorks, an essential figure in the European music landscape.
MOST Open Call for Urban Projects. 
Hello, how are you? I hope well! Happy 2022! I am well. The tour 
Mapamundi Música: If there is anything else you want to explain, please proceed. 
Another heavyweight figure, another high-octane questionnaire. Dušan Svíba appears in this magazine in two roles: as an agent for world music artists, with his agency 
Mapamundi Música: And now, for the artists. I’m sure you get requests from artists every day to be their manager. I am sure because it happens to me too, and many colleagues tell me the same thing. Do you have any recommendations for the artists, so that they can improve the way they communicate when they do it for this purpose? 
Here you are:
Mapamundi Música: And now, for the artists. I’m sure you get requests from artists every day to be their manager. I am sure because it happens to me too, and many colleagues tell me the same thing. Do you have any recommendations for the artists, so that they can improve the way they communicate when they do it for this purpose? 
Apply for Folk Spot Denmark 2022. 
I have also missed some people, some who have not come because of the situation of still some uncertainty related to the international travels and others, for a different reason. For example, Leo Ličof, creator of the Okarina festival in Bled, Slovenia. He was our protagonist in 
I met Peter Van Rompaey more than 10 years ago, in Bergen, Norway, at the beginning of a short trip to a fiord before the Førdefestivalen. Yes, it sounds really chic. After then, we have met in several places, as he is a regular on the traditional musics scene and very multifaceted.
MusicConnect Italy, in Pistoia, Italy, 2nd-5th December. 
Rio Music Market, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. 6th-9th December