- Part of 'A topology of musical encounter' (summary) -
Characteristic for the collective value of life we grew up with in Amsterdam is the large space for one’s individual freedom to determine choices, interests, opinions and engagements in life. And, whether as cause or effect, we now have great amount of concrete tools to our disposal that enhance the organisation of life around this strong personal reality. The omnipresent availability of digital media plays an essential role in this process. The development towards a highly individualised personal life goes hand in hand with the extended possibilities to earn a living with music. If the physical here and now is not the limiting element anymore between regional borders, it is logical that musicians will search globally for means to perform and collaborate, and will share their inspiration with those who truly feel connected. Clearly, those listeners are everywhere, and not only in the direct physical surrounding
In earlier times the physical reality one lived in played a more fundamental role in daily life. One was simply not able to have continuous access, exchange and confrontation with anything ‘other’, and the means to stay alive were much more bound to that near surrounding, being family, social and geographical environment, than the life of the average Amsterdammer is nowadays. Societies were structured in a way that access to the ‘other’ was a rarity. A striking example of cultural exchange in music ‘avant la lettre’ is the ‘Turkish March’ for piano by W.A. Mozart. Mozart had this once-in-a-lifetime chance of encounter with a truly alien culture. Of course it is not to be expected from him at that time to treat his experience with Turkish music with more care or musical intelligence than he did. The sounds and rhythms he heard were an exotic surprise, and the way he translated it into his own musical world is therefore not more than ‘occasional’, a rather superficial but fresh and frivolous element that happened to pass by.
What was a slight touch of the unknown for Mozart, has turned into the foremost characteristic of our musical reality. The mixture of influences is total, and I believe the cross-over is complete. This is why in my opinion it is necessary to take a next step in engaging our musical realities for innovating sounds and music. We don’t need another cross-over experiment, because the cross-over of cultures is already present in everyones daily experience. We hear Bach from the one corner, and electronic house-music from the other. We hear the sounds of Arab music from the neighbour on the right, and those of Surinam music from the left. Bringing these ‘styles’ together had to happen, and it happened largely and completely. Now, any next musical cross-over is no more than an uninteresting generalisation of that what is already fully part of our consciousness, whether we like it or not.
Still the way music life is organised in the present gives little rise to true innovation in this field. I believe the main problem in the approach towards the encounter of cultures is the outdated notion of cultural traditions that can be blended, represented or serve as inspiration. The actuality of these cultural traditions in twenty-first century Amsterdam is highly questionable. The image of a ‘melting-pot’ beautifully expresses a process that is completed by now. The present situation is a ‘melted-pot’, of which every unique individual is now part of. We can’t separate the initial ingredients anymore and refer back to the fact that one once belonged there and the other here. Therefore we shouldn’t treat the possibilities of tomorrow’s musical encounter by means of yesterday. They ask for a different perspective on culture and a new dynamic way of establishing connections between musicians.
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