IMC MUSIC WORLD NEWS  
  The weekly music news bulletin of the International Music Council
Produced by the International Music Council with the collaboration of the Music Council of Australia  Published with the support of the UNESCO Culture sector
Issue 28/2010  28 July 2010
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CONTENTS. Music World News is divided into these sections. Scroll through or, if you wish, click on one of the sections to be taken straight to those stories.

Music the artform and artists
Music the industry
Policy, research and politics
Music education
Technologies and media
The Pointy End

 Posted: 22-07-2010Music the artform and artists
Choir is pop music's next frontier
Source: La Stampa

 Posted: 27-07-2010Music the artform and artists
The mystique - no, the mystery - of Serge Gainsbourg
Both his voice and his looks ("like a drowsy turtle") were unprepossessing; he played piano and guitar, though not very well; he could be difficult and boorish and he drank way too much. Yet Serge Gainsbourg became one of France's biggest stars - and biggest Lotharios.
Source: The Independent

 Posted: 27-07-2010Music the artform and artists
Hey ladies: being a woman musician today
Hundreds of women working as musicians today were interviewed to tell what it's like right now: the good, the bad and the same as it ever was.
Source: NPR

 Posted: 27-07-2010Music the artform and artists
China's pop queen Faye Wong plans comeback
The almost effortlessly cool Faye Wong has sold millions of albums and won fans across Asia, with songs ranging from the heart-rending early hit "Easily Hurt Woman" to the ersatz, Buddhist-inspired trip-hop of her 2000 album "Fable." The entertainment pages of Chinese internet portals were dominated last week by pictures of Wong at a brief Beijing news conference to announce her return, many simply carrying the headline "The Diva Is Back."
Source: Reuters

 Posted: 27-07-2010Music the artform and artists
Expanding the boundaries of a West African instrument
There were no Western instruments onstage when the Malian griot Bassekou Kouyate and his band performed at SummerStage in Central Park (NY).
Source: The New York Times

 Posted: 27-07-2010Music the artform and artists
Composer of sounds for electric cars?
Source: Cyberpresse

 Posted: 27-07-2010Music the artform and artists
'Nuits d'Afrique' keeps on making mistakes
Source: Cyberpresse

 Posted: 27-07-2010Music the artform and artists
Orchestrated plea for peace, lest we forget the price of war
The War Requiem was Benjamin Britten's pacifist tribute to those killed in war, particularly the two 20th-century wars that decimated Europe. Juxtaposing the Latin text of the traditional Requiem Mass with the poetry of World War I poet Wilfred Owen, it neither glorifies nor condemns those who took part in hostilities, nor does it seek salvation through religion.
Source: The Australian

 Posted: 28-07-2010Music the artform and artists
Russian rap inspires a movement
Resistance movements often have a soundtrack. In the Soviet Union during the last decades of communist rule, dissidents listened to the Beatles and admired guitar-strumming bards like Vladimir Vysotsky, whose bitter lyrics contrasted sharply with the cheeriness of official propaganda. Nowadays, dissenters in Vladimir Putin's Russia have found a new source of musical inspiration: a homegrown version of Tupac Shakur and Public Enemy.
Source: The Wall Street Journal

 Posted: 28-07-2010Music the artform and artists
Way out West
Formed in 2001 to celebrate the cultural diversity of Melbourne's western suburbs, the sextet incorporates Vietnamese instruments and West African rhythms into a contemporary jazz setting.
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald

 Posted: 28-07-2010Music the artform and artists
South African music festival lineup strikes a note of discord
Organising a music festival is an act of curation, conscious or not. Ideally, acts are selected to represent the best of a genre, however defined. They are combined to complement one another. Overall structure provides context and allows listeners some active choices. Just as pathways, display cases and explanatory texts help us to better understand and appreciate museum exhibits, so should the frames of sequencing or staging help us do the same for festival music.
Source: Mail & Guardian online

 Posted: 28-07-2010Music the artform and artists
Yet another attempt to honour musicians in Zimbabwe
The issue of music awards has proved to be a complicated puzzle in Zimbabwe over the years. First it was the Tatenda Siyabonga Music Awards (Tsama) then Zimbabwe Music Awards (Zima) but consistency seemed to elude both efforts to honour outstanding musicians. There were also one-off Gramma Awards and the proposed People's Choice Music Awards that suffered a stillbirth… Now there is a new player on the field in the form of Progressive Music Awards (Proma)
Source: The Standard

 Posted: 28-07-2010Music the artform and artists
Festival of 1000 stars in Ethopia
In the Ethiopian City of Arba Minch, the capital of the southern province of Gamo-Gofa, a unique music festival is held annually. In the course of three days, the audience can feast their eyes and ears on a wide variety of cultures and styles. Dozens of peoples from the region present their dances and, especially, their music.
Source: Africa News

 Posted: 28-07-2010Music the artform and artists
That was me - the musical life of Anthony Burgess
The author of A Clockwork Orange may have been better known as a novelist, but Anthony Burgess was also a prolific composer whose music is only now being explored. Paul Phillips discusses the work of an artist who wrote novels in sonata form.
Source: Journal of Music

 Posted: 28-07-2010Music the artform and artists
Iraqi traditional music revisited in a war era
As Iraq makes daily news coverage for the rapidly progressing political events many are concerned about the preservation of traditional Iraqi arts. Among them is the uniquely Iraqi music genre called Maqam Baghdadi, a style of singing distinguished from the rest of the Arab World in the performance, composition, and instrumentation.
Source: Al Jadid

 Posted: 28-07-2010Music the artform and artists
Julien Weiss discusses traditional and contemporary Arab music
In 1976, a 23-year-oldFrench classical guitarist listened to a record of classical Arab music, fell in love with it, and dedicated the rest of his life to studying this art. Born and raised in Paris, Julien Weiss, of Swiss and Alsatian heritage, has become one of the few accomplished qanun players in the world, having studied with masters from throughout the Arab world.
Source: Al Jadid

 Posted: 22-07-2010Music the industry
Music industry dilemma: evolution or revolution?
Source: La Stampa

 Posted: 27-07-2010Music the industry
French nuns seek chart run after record deal
Benedictine nuns from a secluded convent in southern France have had their prayers answered after beating 70 other religious orders to a deal with Universal Music with the hope of creating a chart-topping album.
Source: Reuters

 Posted: 28-07-2010Music the industry
Total discord in the music industry in Kenya
After a month-long training programme in the UK and Switzerland, music producer George “Jojo” Ouma Onyango of Jojo Productions is back with both good and bad news for players in the music industry in Kenya.
Source: Daily Nation

 Posted: 28-07-2010Music the industry
If music be the food of love, rock on!
The impact of music in influencing the consumer. When it comes to the music one should use in advertising, one has to be a little more objective. If you want your radio spot or your TV commercial to be given more musical impact, you must learn to put aside your personal preferences and consider what will work best with your target audience. Unfortunately many marketers do not understand their target audience well enough to be able to form a clear opinion on this.
Source: Botswana Gazette

 Posted: 28-07-2010Music the industry
Meagre royalties -- musicians fear victimisation in Zimbabwe
Most local musicians could be living in fear of the unknown following revelations that they have refused to present their complaints against record labels in writing to the Competition and Tariffs Commission. Musicians have always complained that they are getting raw deals at their record stables prompting the commission to open a probe into the operations of Gramma Records and its sister companies, Ngaavongwe Records and Zimbabwe Music Corporation early this year.
Source: The Standard

 Posted: 26-07-2010Policy, Research and Politics
Snip on musical tradition
Source: El Pais

 Posted: 27-07-2010Policy, Research and Politics
The Elvis of cultural theory
In the midst of a crisis of capitalism, the Western underground is rediscovering communism. Its star is the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, who mixes Marxism with pop culture and psychoanalysis. His appearances offer stand-up comedy for a radical leftist avant-garde. There are Zizek T-shirts and Zizek records, and there is a Zizek club and an international Zizek journal. One could say that he's reinvented the profession. Some would say he's defiled the profession.
Source: Der Spiegel International

 Posted: 27-07-2010Policy, Research and Politics
Are musicians losing the incentive to create?
The last decade’s drop in music sales is correlated to a drop in the number of professional musicians in the U.S., according to some number crunching by the RIAA, possibly meaning that musicians are motivated by expected earnings from recorded music.
Source: Billboard

 Posted: 27-07-2010Policy, Research and Politics
Points of culture: what Brazil can teach Britain about art
Twenty years ago, it seemed as if Brazil couldn't stop dreaming about its future. Now the future has arrived; Brazil is an economic and political world leader with a seat at the globe's most influential table. In 2003, the Brazilian government created an initiative called Points of Culture: thousands of community and arts projects of all sizes and types that would work to strengthen people's involvement in the life of their neighbourhoods and the larger society.
Source: The Guardian

 Posted: 28-07-2010Policy, Research and Politics
European cost-cutters target culture
The financial crisis and the need to escape crippling levels of public debt has prompted severe cutbacks in the arts throughout Europe.Cost-cutting politicians see culture as a soft target: somehow an unemployed singer does not have the same electoral impact as an unemployed car worker. As a result the knife is slicing to the very quick of European identity.
Source: The Australian

 Posted: 28-07-2010Policy, Research and Politics
The Fatwa endorsing music
Saudi Sheikh Adel al-Kalbani, who is well-known for his Quranic recitation, provoked a storm of controversy in Saudi Arabia recently, after he stated that he was convinced by the juristic argument that singing accompanied by musical instruments was not prohibited in Islam, and that it would only be prohibited if this music was obscene or immoral.
Source: Al Arabiya news channel

 Posted: 27-07-2010Music education
What the USA can really gain from El Sistema
I have never seen Symphony Hall erupt the way it did that night in 2007, with Venezuela’s Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra onstage. It was not the precision and polish of the group’s Bartok or Beethoven that set off the crowd, but the sheer expressive potency and exuberant physicality of the performance. My guess is that the music meant more to those in the audience that night because, at its core, it meant more to these players, some of whom had risen up beyond violent streets and poverty.
Source: Boston Globe

 Posted: 27-07-2010Music education
Counterpoint : the chief classical music critic of The New York Times explains an important musical technique
There is a whole language of technical jargon to describe music. Though these words and concepts are very handy to musicians, they tend to mystify non-musicians. Even people who go to concerts all the time, upon being confronted with terms like chromatic harmony, passacaglia and sonata form may have no real idea what they mean.
Source: The New York Times

 Posted: 27-07-2010Music education
Jazz and classical meet to learn and improvise
Improvisation, a fundamental quality of jazz, is by nature a risky business. The act usually involves a confrontation between two perspectives — that of a composer and that of a performer or performers — with the goal of achieving a combination informed and enriched by both perspectives.
Source: The New York Times

 Posted: 28-07-2010Music education
Orchestrating racial harmony in the French banlieues
Taught to play instruments in just six months, children from the banlieues are set for a prestigious Paris debut.
Source: The Independent

 Posted: 28-07-2010Music education
Thousands of musicians head to China for world music conference
Over 7,000 music education professionals and performing groups from over 90 countries will gather in Beijing next month for the upcoming International Society of Music Education (ISME) World Conference 2010.
Source: Global Times

 Posted: 28-07-2010Technologies and media
Introducing FanRank: The world's first automated fan list segmentation engine
The FanRank algorithm automatically tracks all the interactions your fans have with your communications, using the FanBridge Fan Relationship Management platform, and then automatically places fans on your list into one of three Fan Segments (Super Fans, Casual Fans, At-Risk Fans) based on these interactions.
Source: ASCAP

 Posted: 27-07-2010Technologies and media
Rapidshare in German court victory
Online locker service Rapidshare will not have to use a word filter to combat file-sharing, a German court has ruled.
Source: Billboard

 Posted: 28-07-2010Technologies and media
Skype rehearsals and new works: Maestro cues Symphony to evolve
Known for his commitment to music education, Michael Tilson Thomas has expanded the symphony's educational program to include new initiatives like the multimedia project "Keeping Score," which tries to make classical music more accessible by providing the back stories behind the music and the musicians performing it.
Source: The Wall Street Journal

 Posted: 28-07-2010Technologies and media
Arcade Fire enlists Terry Gilliam to direct concert webcast
Terry Gilliam will direct the live webcast of Arcade Fire's concert at New York City's Madison Square Garden. The Arcade Fire show kicks off "Unstaged," a new online concert series being launched by American Express and streamed on YouTube.
Source: Billboard

 Posted: 28-07-2010The Pointy End
Ex-top diplomat Condoleezza Rice opts for Mozart concerto
Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice abandoned international affairs for a Mozart piano concerto, teaming up with Soul legend Aretha Franklin to perform at a charity concert.
Source: Yahoo! Music

 Posted: 26-07-2010The Pointy End
Kings of Leon forced off stage by incontinent pigeons
Band abandon gig after pigeons let their true feelings be known from the rafters of a US concert venue. 'It landed near my mouth' says drummer.
Source: The Guardian

 Posted: 27-07-2010The Pointy End
Jazz things to do before you die
Lee Mergner, editor-in-chief of JazzTimes, has issued an interesting column: a jazz bucket list. Cheekily, it's phlegmatically subtitled "Forty jazz-related things to do before you die (or Keith Jarrett kills you)."
Source: NPR

 Posted: 27-07-2010The Pointy End
President Wyclef? Ex-Fugee mulling Haiti campaign
Singer Wyclef Jean is considering a run for president of Haiti but has not decided whether to seek a five-year term as leader of the quake-ravaged nation, the musician's family said.
Source: Yahoo! Music

 Posted: 27-07-2010The Pointy End
How to make newborn guitars look artfully ancient
Not everybody wants a shiny new guitar these days. A few connoisseurs want one that looks like it’s taken more abuse than Keith Richards.
Source: Wired

 Posted: 28-07-2010The Pointy End
Clap along with the Proms (and in the middle of the Proms)
People are beginning to clap between movements, so perhaps change is afoot in our concert halls. Bravo!
Source: The Guardian