The Centre for Intercultural Musicology at Churchill College
Akin Euba, Director
A new research unit, the Centre for Intercultural Musicology at Churchill College, has been launched and the details of it appear below.
Context
The movements of people around the world and the cultural contacts arising therefrom have always resulted in the mixing of musics. One can hardly find any “authentic” music existing in the world today and even the so-called traditional types have in historical times been subjected to innovation through cultural contact. It can therefore be said that interculturalism in music is likely to be as old as music itself. At the same time, specific musical cultures and traditions of instrumentation, composition and performance indubitably exist.
However, as a result of new developments in music technology and increasingly better means of music transmission, together with improved air travel facilities, intercultural activity in music intensified during the closing decades of the twentieth century. The world’s great music cultures became more easily accessible and composers were encouraged to explore new music in which elements from different cultures were combined. Moreover, performers became specialists in the musics of other cultures. As a result, composers around the world (especially those from non-Western countries) are producing music in which resources derived from traditional and folk music (normally the province of ethnomusicology) are combined with Western techniques of composition (normally the area of specialization of historical musicologists and music theorists) and neither ethnomusicologists nor historical musicologists are adequately equipped for the analytical study of such music. Hence the need for intercultural musicology. The study of this kind of composition requires a new theoretical approach by scholars who possess combined expertise in analytical techniques that have hitherto belonged to separate fields of scholarship.
Objective
The objective of the Centre for Intercultural Musicology at Churchill College (CIMACC) is to provide a forum that will lead to the development of such expertise.
Intercultural musicology combines features of historical musicology with those of ethnomusicology, so both these fields will be represented. Another area of interest for the CIMACC is the phenomenon of musical appropriation, whereby regional types of music are being globalized. For example, the symphonic tradition (which was a manifestation of European classicism in music) has become world music and no longer belongs to the West. What kind of mechanics produce such globalization? Can the process be reversed and can the Javanese gamelan, the Japanese gagaku, or the jembe drumming tradition of West Africa also one day become world music? The CIMACC will also be a platform for the exploration of the transcendental nature of music – that aspect of music which, for example, enables Asian performers to become masters of the European practice (Yo Yo Ma, Fu Tsong, Zubin Mehta, Seiji Ozawa, to name a few) and vice versa. In addition to its purely artistic value, does musical transcendentalism have political or economic implications? Is it in any way symbolic of power?
These are some of the questions in which the CIMACC will be interested. The Centre will promote the concept of intercultural musicology through lectures, seminars, workshops, residencies, symposia, concerts, festivals and publications. In all of its activities, the Centre will ensure that opportunities exist for composers, performers and scholars to interact with one another. The practical dimension of actual music-making and experiment will be vital to the Centre, since musicians (comprising composers, performers, and scholars) learn by doing. Intercultural musicology may be described as the study of specific musics using techniques that are applicable to all musics. It will be an important (perhaps necessary) adjunct to existing musicologies.
Music is remarkable for its ability to build bridges across cultures and promote understanding among the peoples of the world. Contrary to popular belief, music is not a universal language and different peoples have different languages of music. However, the ease with which we can acquire one another’s musical languages is an indication of the unifying power of music. In spite of the diversity of cultures, there is a high incidence of shared resources in the musics of the world and this is a phenomenon that reflects historical and contemporary contacts between the world’s populations. Think, for example, of the globalization of the symphony orchestra and of jazz. Think also of the spread of African resources first to the Americas and thence to other parts of the world through idioms of popular music. The symphony orchestra is today found in practically all regions of the world and it is almost impossible to believe that it was born partly through the European acquisition of musical instruments that originated from the Middle East (and this by the way is an early example of intercultural activity). As a result of intercultural mobility, jazz has acquired the status of world music and is no longer “American”. The objectives of the Centre for Intercultural Musicology at Churchill College (CIMACC) are guided by the comments made above; the Centre is devoted to the study and promotion of cross-cultural activity in music, including composition, performance and scholarly work.
Background
The creation of CIMACC is the culmination of activities carried out in the United Kingdom for over 15 years. CIMACC was preceded by the Centre for Intercultural Music Arts (CIMA), which was established as a British charity in 1989. Since 1990, CIMA has organized a biennial international symposium and festival and published a series of books under the general title Intercultural Music. CIMA was recently relocated to Spain, under the presidency of Prof.Dr. Maria Angustias Ortiz Molina of the University of Granada, where the 9th biennial international symposium and festival took place in April 2006. The new organization, CIMACC, is a direct offspring of CIMA, not least because the director of CIMACC, Akin Euba, was also the founding director of CIMA (UK) and is now honorary director of CIMA (Spain). Since 2001, Euba has organized a biennial international symposium and festival on “Composition in Africa and the Diaspora” at Churchill College and this event, too, has been a catalyst for CIMACC. The new organization, then, is a formalization and expansion (both thematically and geographically) of ongoing activities and is based on a solid record of previous achievement.
CIMACC’s Programme
CIMACC’s programme will include international symposia and festivals, which have taken place biennially at Churchill College since 2001, and the series “Dialogues in Music”. In addition, there will be summer residencies for composers and scholars, ad hoc concerts of traditional and modern music from various parts of the world, and publications, including the bulletin, Intercultural Musicology (previously issued by CIMA UK) and CDs of selected materials from the CIMACC festivals.
Symposia and festivals planned for the period 2007-10 are as follows.
2007 4th Biennial International Symposium and Festival on Composition in Africa and the Diaspora. 2008 Symposium and Festival on Composition in Asia. 2009 Symposium and Festival on Composition in Latin America. 2010 Symposium and Festival on the theme “Bridging Musicology and Composition: Bartok’s Method in a Global Context.”
Dialogues in Music are planned for Beijing (2007), Madras (2008), Los Angeles (2009) and Berlin (2010).
CIMACC Board of Management
Tim Cribb, formerly Tutor for Advanced Students and Director of Studies in English, Churchill College, Cambridge.
Ruth Davis, University Senior Lecturer in Ethnomusicology and Fellow and Director of Studies in Music at Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge.
Akin Euba, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Music, University of Pittsburgh.
Maxine Franklin, Concert Pianist.
Abiola Irele, Professor of African and African American Studies and Romance Languages and Literatures, Harvard University.
Karl Sandeman, Director of Studies in Physics, Churchill College, University of Cambridge.
Hwee-San Tan, Lecturer in Ethnomusicology, University College Dublin.
Jeremy Thurlow, Lecturer in Music, Robinson College, University of Cambridge.
For more information about CIMACC, please contact:
Professor Akin Euba
Centre for Intercultural Musicology
Churchill College
Cambridge CB3 ODS
UK
E-mail: aeuba@pitt.edu
CIMACC 
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