International Council for Traditional Music: 26th Symposium and the Assembly of the Germany National Committee
Münster, 01.-02.02.2019
Von Dorit Klebe, Berlin – 22.09.2019 | The Symposium and the Assembly were held by invitation of Ralf Martin Jäger, Director of the DFG-Project „Corpus Musicae Ottomanicae“ (CMO) at the Universität Münster. The topic „Global – digital – medial: Musik in transkulturellen/traditionellen Räumen und Kontexten“ was build up widely and attracted a great circle of scholars and students. The symposium opened with welcoming remarks by the host Ralf Martin Jäger and the Chair Dorit Klebe. The keynote speaker Tiago de Oliveira Pinto dedicated his speech to „Musikalische Transkulturation: ein musikwissenschaftliches Konzept“. In his presentation Ralf Martin Jäger, Director of the CMO, demonstrated the project in regard to concept, content, objectives, distribution of research areas in its current phase.
In seven sessions there were given 23 papers, as well a performance in a hybrid form of concert and critical discussion. The papers outlined different issues of the topic both in a great variety and going into differentiations and detailed various orientations and partly new perspectives.
Significance and revival of regional music practices and specific genres, the consequences of globalization and technology in a regional-traditional context and in other cultural contexts as well as a global digitally connected world were taken into consideration by Gertrud Maria Huber, Felix Morgenstern and Marco Dimitriou. Effects of globalization and mediatization processes as identity-forming and -shaping factors of human everyday life, in regional education and training investigated Heiko Fabig & Muhammet Mertek, and Keivan Aghamohseni studied football and music in Iran as global phenomena, with football fans constructing identities in their football songs reflecting even ethnic identities.
The importance of cultural competence for intercultural communication, musical phenomena, and musical cultural change was the in the center of the papers of Lisa Herrmann-Fertig and Gergana Panova-Tekath. Andreas Meyer focused on the cultural memory as a transmitter of a collective / cultural identity. Bernhard Bleibinger gave us – via Skype from South Africa – insight into indigenous music and cultural events in a transcultural perspective. Reflections on and developments of a concept of transcultural compositions were pointed out by the composer and musicologist Acácio Piedade, while on the topic’s complex of a digitized world, Barbara Alge thematized the handling of research data. Nepomuk Riva demonstrated transformations of musical notation in the course of digitization.
In which form digital publications of audiovisual recordings as a safeguard and preservation of the traditional heritage should be provided to the makers – even to future generations – given as a medium into their hand, was discussed and questioned by Edda Brandes. On influences of the Internet and consequences of connected spaces Jörgen Torp had undertaken his research of mediatized transformation of „popular“ music; Sepideh Raissadat has tracked down virtual rumors about influencing the status of female singers in Iran and transforming public opinion.
Reports from recent research included the role of the German children’s choir as a mediator of musical culture (Frances Falling), children’s songs in the context of current musical life in Tanzania (Caroline Albers), political songwriting against inequality and corruption in Tanzania (Irina Yilmaz), Bavarian dialect Rap (Fabio Dick), the Persian instrument tar as a medium of cultural memory (Mitra Behpoori), the process of transformation of the Yangge in contemporary China (Yongfei Du) and the analysis of sacral drum patterns in Brazilian and Afro-Cuban religions (Mariano Gonzàlez). Mariano Gonzàlez and Mukasa Wafula presented a live-performance entitled „Can We Understand Each Other?“ in a hybrid form of concert and critical discussion. All abstracts are available on the ICTM-Germany countrypage (http://www.ictmusic.org/world-network/germany-national-committee). The next Annual Symposium will take place at the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg at Halle/Saale in February 2020. It will be a Joint Symposium of the ICTM National Committees of Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Germany. Further details will be circulated via the ICTM mailing list in April 2019.